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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 25, 1970)
fill r ) I'MHi: I ? f . i I T I j ) M HI I Discontent It is the sixteenth day toward evening away from hot water and wallpaper the telephone and news. My beard has enveloped my face like moss on a stump. If something of the woods has grown in me, my hair is but the blossom of the secret root. I think this I go on. 2 I have things to do. I walk out of the circle of trees and skirt the shore. A lone duck browses the surface of the' lake like a woman picking lint from her coat. I think of women polishing themselves in the private pockets of their lives. I think of the empty seat in the stadium the mail warm against the door under which the cat has crawled. 3 And then I want to go back to the belligerent city the fast flesh of women and the limited view from my window water made bitter by men's success, my smooth face in the glare of streetlamps and the fires of celebrations. by Greg Kuzma (reprinted from the Southern Humanities Review) 0Bfe?(H?v edited by B$an Ladcly Greg Kuzma Icenogle I ! i ( ' I Ed The morning singer The single sun comes My way again. Each day (from China) he comes To sit atop my cottonwood and I watch him, At first Then, We go about our business (The blue black starling and me) While the sun Showers some All over us. The crazy sun. He rings high, High above the wood And makes puddles of shine At my feet. The split His nights soon paralleled His days. There was no sound Nor space of light around him Left Ignored. Half-toned time Was gathered and was stored Upon the shelf his wealth of Quiet epigram, allusion and short rhyme, Slated for revenge upon the night. No pause, no sound, no ringing In His ancient ear no whispered word That once was native will. Pve been walking for so very long --by Jim Plum 1 c Xi 03 I've been walking for so very long. Not the self-confident strutting of a Christ, thorns biting his head, a cross digging a furrow in his back. Oh, to be able to walk so sweetly, the very people you are going to save collecting rheum and spittle, waiting to lay an oyster in your face as you pass. No, mine is the sluggish, palsied walk of a creature with no hope of a resurrection. I carry a load that would make Jesus Christ fall to the ground and beg mercy from above. I have sinned; I don't know how or why, but I have sinned. It's very difficult to obtain my bearings. Sometimes, I look around and everything looks so frighteningly familiar I'm sure you've had the feeling yourself. In this life or another, you've stumbled over that very rock and landed In the same brick road. Once, I looked down and thought I saw my own footprints, though one can never be sure. This would mean I am walking In a circle and my end Is my beginning. You can bet I don't think about that more than I have to. But, all In all, its been a fairly enjoyable experience, everything taken In perspective. There's a pond every few miles and I can relax, have a drink, even though the pond Is brackish and strange insects skate back and forth over the top of the water. Often times, I daydream as I walk. One dream in particular keeps coming back, day after day. I'm walking (I even walk in my fantasies) and I sec a flea, a single flea, flying in a drunken circle. Looking toward the sky there are more and more fleas until the sun is entirely blotted out by their tiny bodies. But, in the end, they're only fleas. Often, stars take the place of the fleas. I look at a star, then glance to left and right and there are more and more of them until the sky is like a glowing ball. I jump for the stars like a man possessed. However, they remain just out of reach. But in the end, they're only stars. In the final analysis, though, this has been a pretty rotten experience, this walk. A low trick by a cheap come dian. They tell me that the writer, Dostocvsky, was once under the power of an unscrupulous publisher, who paid little and demanded much. Dostocvsky had to crank out a novel every two months, or everything he wrote for the next nine years belonged to the publisher. What a delectable position that man was in. A god-like power over creation. Well, they tell me that Dostocvsky fulfilled his contract and went on to write some of the most monumental literature ever written, but only after escaping the clutches of that rascal. That Is neither here nor there; I'm wasting my time and yours, and I must be to my affairs. Oh yes! One other thing escaped my notice, and I think you should hear It. It echoes in my mind like a hammer on an anvil. It may be important or it may not: my guilt Is nothing more than that uncharted area between what I am and what I want to be. And, I think, that Is why I am walking. n Toward the morning It is a late-stained night of sirens, hostile cars on liquid pavement, silver shadows rimmed on mud and simple, evil, dark perfection. The World is with the World tonight and men are guiltless beasts holding spirits in their palms, touching shadows with their shadows in the foot-deep mud. Hastened elements make their play and die swift atomic deaths in tiny, shelter ed, cosmic spaces. Now, strange brightness brings the dark. It is a late-stained night of sirens. Morning is hours and eons away. by Bill Smithcrinaii Li f la : , . . PAGE 4 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1970 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN by Dan Ladelyl BfflHB&BBHBn PAGE 5