Someday he's going to take stock of sleepwalking days

I am not dead. I aten't dead, even. I have had a bit of a health crash, which is annoying me very much. The most exciting thing that happened to me this week? I had three poems rejected.

That is perhaps not fair: I also acquired unholy amounts of Peter Bellamy, loved Eric Jay Dolin's Leviathan (courtesy of fleurdelis28), watched three episodes of the new Doctor Who, and was dragged to see Iron Man (2008), which I liked all out of proportion to my expectations. Even celebrated ericmvan's birthday last week, which was quite awesome. But still, in the last five days I haven't been moving much. Who do I have to bribe for an immune system that works?

In honor of the lilac tree in our back yard, which I need to photograph, have some poetry that is not mine. I am going back to proofreading.

Lilacs in dooryards
Holding quiet conversations with an early moon;
Lilacs watching a deserted house
Settling sideways into the grass of an old road;
Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom
Above a cellar dug into a hill.
You are everywhere.
You were everywhere.
You tapped the window when the preacher preached his sermon,
And ran along the road beside the boy going to school.
You stood by pasture-bars to give the cows good milking,
You persuaded the housewife that her dish-pan was of silver
And her husband an image of pure gold.
You flaunted the fragrance of your blossoms
Through the wide doors of Custom Houses—
You, and sandalwood, and tea,
Charging the noses of quill-driving clerks
When a ship was in from China.
You called to them: "Goose-quill men, goose-quill men,
May is a month for flitting."
Until they writhed on their high stools
And wrote poetry on their letter-sheets behind the propped-up ledgers.
Paradoxical New England clerks,
Writing inventories in ledgers, reading the "Song of Solomon" at night,
So many verses before bed-time,
Because it was the Bible.
The dead fed you
Amid the slant stones of graveyards.
Pale ghosts who planted you
Came in the night time
And let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems.
You are of the green sea,
And of the stone hills which reach a long distance.
You are of the elm-shaded streets with little shops where they sell kites and marbles,
You are of great parks where everyone walks and nobody is at home.
You cover the blind sides of greenhouses
And lean over the top to say a hurry-word through the glass
To your friends, the grapes, inside.
—Amy Lowell, "Lilacs" (1925)