A FEW ACRES OF SHINY WATER
I guess anything gets old: being rich, yep,
pretty soon it's old—occasional pleasant
spurts of realization, then—celebrity, a big
ox in your way wherever you turn, that gets
old: having nothing to do gets old in a hurry,
going from having something to do to not being
able to find anything to do, I'll say: being
in love, oh dear, even that, about the third
month, gets old as hell, all those re-arisings:
on the bestseller list—great the first week,
also the second week; then it's every week,
expected. tedious, getting old: market up.
wow, up again, oh boy, still up, up and up,
I see, okay, really: you are finally thought
to be as good a poet as you thought—so; so
what, what is a poet: even getting old gets
old, the novelty aches and pains, surprising
and scary at first, they don't wear off but
the novelty does: finding, and trying to
find, something new gets old: find a new
risk to take, a new cliff to sail off from,
pretty soon it's a drag to get all the way to
Nepal or a Filipino trench: telling about
getting old and everything getting old gets
old, I'll tell you, it sure does …A.R. Ammons, Bosh and Flapdoodle
(Norton, 2005)
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