And in Places It Seems That a Large, Now Absent, Animal Must Have Passed the Night

• There will be aargh today and tomorrow, I'm going to try to get it out of my system, none (or at least that's the plan - see, I leave myself an out) Wednesday and Thursday (when I'm away, there's a clue where in this post though most of you can guess), I'm almost certain it will return Friday but hold out a thin gleam of curiosity.
• Let me try it this way: Obama does use incrementalism, moving to the right at the inch by inch pace calculated to not alienate his Democratic base.
• Let me try it this way: Obama does move incrementally to the left on social issues he knows he enjoys majority support on to the precise amount he moves to the right on the issues he's truly cares about.
• We're not smart enough to appreciate Barack Obama.
• Surveillance society.
• Bet a pint Obama will nominate this fuck. Not that, in terms of policy, it will make a difference whom Obama chooses.
• The smart boys.
• Political corruption as duplicitous exclusion.
• Of course they were lying.
• A social history of wiretaps.
• Hillarian inevitability.
• The fake shop and capitalist nostalgia.
• New Inquiry's Sunday links.
• Not written in the stars.
• Written in the stars:

• Speaking of inevitabilities. Yes, the whole post for that.
• The boy with spirograph eyes.
• Best Kensington road construction sign ever.
• Research says cats have healing powers.
• Beyond narrative.
• Szymborska.
• Szymborska. Click on Szymborska tag for more poems.
• Sun Ra, for those of you who do.
• Jim's latest playlist. This is true: I can conceive of loving teams, I can conceive of hating teams, I just can't - never could - conceive of giving a fuck one way or the other about the Atlanta Braves.
• Who is Harry Nilsson and why is Van Dyke Parks talking about him?

HEAVY SUMMER RAIN

Jane Kenyon

The grasses in the field have toppled,

and in places it seems that a large, now

absent, animal must have passed the night.

The hay will right itself if the day

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.

None of your blustering entrances

or exits, doors swinging wildly

on their hinges, or your huge unconscious

sighs when you read something sad,

like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,

where he traveled after Clover died.

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:

white irises, red peonies; and the poppies

with their black and secret centers

lie shattered on the lawn.