A brief email from Jerry (Imago Theatre) arrived on Monday, explaining that he was extending the casting process for Cinder and wouldn't be making any decisions until the middle of June. This was not unexpected. I sent him part of a poem by Tennessee Williams that I had come across the day before. It is called "The Dangerous Painters." Tennessee's image of cinders made me take note as "Cinder" was on my mind. This is from the end of the poem:
Black bread of pity the old nurse gave as supper.
She passed it among the quiet and stupefied people,
as evening fell with cinders drifting, drifting,
everywhere cinders drifting.
The spent and purified people crouched on the pavements,
hunched along broken walls and were grateful for stillness,
grateful for effortless breathing now that the wind
had begun to freshen the city.
The city slept.
