Anyway, I muddled through what was left of the afternoon and then the still-sultry evening, finally getting a bit of cooler air near midnight. I had to drink an awful lot of water again. It's getting tedious. And I'm getting tired, as the computer crashed and I had to wait a long time for it to fully reboot. I'll just do this then get to bed:
Sunday Verse
Pledge
by James Merrill
from A Scattering of Salts
House on alert.
Sun setting in a blaze
Of insight kisses book and budvase
Where they hurt.
Did the page-turner yawn and slacken,
Or an omen flip by unread?
Prime cuts that once bled
Now blacken.
Her brimming eyes say
More than they see.
He is all worried probity
About to get its way.
Dance steps the world knows curiously well
Ease them asunder—
Friends "rallying around her,"
His "move to a hotel."
Which one will get
The finger-wagging metronome,
Which one make a home
For the aged cricket
Who sang togetherness ahead
From a hearth glowing bright?
In the dark now, I write
Propped up in bed:
"You who have drained dry
Your golden goblet are about to learn—
As in my turn
Have I—
How life, unsweetened, fizzing up again
Fills the heart.
I drink to you apart
In that champagne."