p. called me last night. p. is taking a week or so off work to do very little, nothing maybe, just relax. asked me if i knew what day it was.

--of course, i said, 5th anniversary. there's a lot of sanctimonious posturing on tv right now.

--yeah, but did you see shrub interviewed by matt lauer on the today show?

--yes, i said, caught a few minutes of it before i left for work.

--has he made you feel, um, safer after all these years?

--what kind of stupid thing is that to ask? so far this administration is only capable of duplicity, scare mongering and starting what seems to be an endless, stupidfuckingugly war.

--i can't stand to hear shrub talk.

and so it went for a few minutes. i observed the 5th anniversary as i would any other day. i went to work, came home, had dinner, and then went to bed early. should i feel guilt that my obsessions remain anna, nicholas, poetry, movies, beer and friends. yes, poetry makes nothing happen. agreed, auden, now you can shut the fuck up.

and yet, poetry, for me, is not an avocation or vocation. it is part of the processes of living. it goes with life, and hopefully goes into death when i die. there are no careers in it, just the same as there are no careers in the fact that you sleep at night and wake in the morning. if i worry about the sorry state of the world, poetry does so with me. and it does so for you too. yr poems, yr writing, the whole of it, is part of yr life. how integral is up to each individual writer. in other words, to paraphrase whitman, mi page es tu page.

anyway, after i put the phone back on its cradle i went to the bookshelf and reread this poem by the postwar polish poet ryszard krynicki.

Yes, She Says

Yes, I survived.
Now I face an
equally serious challenge: to get
on a bus,
to get home.

[translated by stanislaw baranczak and clare cavanaugh]

then went into the kitchen to help anna get dinner ready.