Der Panther

Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf –. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille –
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

(A Rilke)

I REFUSE to translate Ms. Spears into Teutonic though.

"They almost have a sense of mysteriousness about them". Almost. Man, this crap is almost as good as Cienna Madrid's romance novel from a while back. Almost.

Amusing, too, that she can sense a "constant quest for survival" in a critter locked up in a zoo, where survival is tossed in by the keeper at regular intervals, pre-killed. The only thing the tigers she's seen are in constant quest of is the exit.

Well . . . let's not be too catty here, people.

:-)

"The fear they give you when you pass them is stunning."

If I died right now, I would die happy.

Fnarf--

That was my favorite line too. Under a different set of circumstances, maybe Brit could have bloomed into a teenage romance writer. And I could have been a bloated pop legend...

Check out that sentence, though:

"The fear they give you when you pass them is stunning." That's a hell of a sentence.

Now, someone who actually knows something about syntax will be able to tack on terminology to all of this, but look:

We have the important bits:
THE FEAR they give you when you pass them IS STUNNING.

This is, of course, the meat of the sentence. Or: "The fear is stunning."

Then, we have the paired, simultaneous verbings:
"The fear THEY GIVE YOU when YOU PASS THEM is stunning."

Of course at the center of the sentence, there is the temporal hinge:
"The fear they give you WHEN you pass them is stunning."

Added together: "They give you the fear when you pass them." Or, better still: "They generate and you receive the fear they give you when you pass them."

11 words, 5 on either side of the hinge. And notice the delicate pattern of this sentence:
a b c d e f e d c g h

"Bloomed"? She's 24! Isn't that twice the age you were when you wrote your little masterwork? When Britney was 12 she was writing "I luB yUO MOmMy Birhtday".

I would like to point out that Rilke as far as I know never put on a Catholic schoolgirl outfit and writhed around on the floor tonguing out the words "hit me baby, one more time". So, uh, that's one for Mrs. Federline.

Actually, Rilke's mommy did dress him up in dresses when he was a little boy, so that's one thing. And legend has it he died of an infection he got from pricking his finger on the thorn of a rose, which is just sickeningly melodramatic. So it's no surprise that a little cat poetry would work its way into his oeuvre.

Yeah, but if you want to get my attention, you have to WRITHE.

I was just on the 14 bus and saw a horiffic poem on one of the "poetry on the bus" signs. It was titled "Asterisk" and it went something like this:

Asterisk
Like a Greek Star
Exploding
Wiggling wildly
Oozing chunklets
Exposing an ommission of hair
As the cat walks away

I may have embellished a little bit, but the whole poem was about staring at a cat's asshole. What the fuck is going on.

You embellished a lot! That's my favorite bus poem. Actual version:

Asterisk
little Greek star
daisylike
indicating
omission
of fur
as the cat
walks away
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apparently written by someone named Nancy Pagh.

Jerfu, you just made my night.

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it was a
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