Scrivener

This morning within till 11 o’clock, and then with Commissioner Pett to the office; and he staid there writing, while I and Sir W. Pen walked in the garden talking about his business of putting his son to Cambridge; and to that end I intend to write to-night to Dr. Fairebrother, to give me an account of Mr. Burton of Magdalene.
Thence with Mr. Pett to the Paynter’s; and he likes our pictures very well, and so do I. Thence he and I to the Countess of Sandwich, to lead him to her to kiss her hands: and dined with her, and told her the news (which Sir W. Pen told me to-day) that express is come from my Lord with letters, that by a great storm and tempest the mole of Argier is broken down, and many of their ships sunk into the mole. So that God Almighty hath now ended that unlucky business for us; which is very good news. After dinner to the office, where we staid late, and so I home, and late writing letters to my father and Dr. Fairebrother, and an angry letter to my brother John for not writing to me, and so to bed.

This writing pen
is like a mole
sunk into the now,
that unlucky office—
at home in letters’
fat fair rot.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 1 February 1661/62.

Dear universe, I am nobody

and because I am that, I dare
to converse, having just witnessed
a storm of blackbirds descend
on the path below my window,
then wheel upward as if they were threads
worked into a flickering net a hand
cast over an invisible sea—

And I know nothing
right now will change— Children
will cry over their fathers’ coffins
but won’t bring them back; widows
will find no portents in twisted vines,
and old men will keep their own counsel
when valleys fill with the skins
shed by snakes—

And I do not look
for signs or wonders,
only for a plainer
meaning that might be seen—
frost that came in the night
bringing brittle death to the crops,
animals caught in stillbirth.
Not the sight of bodies turned
inside out in the grass.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Getting religion.