Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Happy Birthday!

Today, I celebrate my very first post on this blog on April 26, 2005. It is hard to believe that a year has passed since that day. Since I began with a poem, I shall post another. This one very different from the first. The title: Out, Out. The author: Robert Frost. Although it is quite sad and perhaps morbid, I have always had a strange fascination with it. So, here it is.

"Out, Out - "
by: Robert Frost

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behing the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap -
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all -
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart -
He saw all was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off -
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. The hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.


Frost just had such a way with words. So, happy birthday, Kitchen Talk. And, many thanks to our readers. Wishing you the best on this day.

8 comments:

joe4444 said...

*bakes a 3-layer birthday cake*

*smashes it in Laura and Emily's faces*

Happy Birthday yall ;) to many years of wonderful, enjoyable, and yet sometimes humorous Kitchen Talk.

Anonymous said...

OTD,

Your poetic taste certainly seems to bend towards biting, bleak works. "And they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs"--rather harsh, but perhaps nonetheless true. Congratulations to Kithchen Talk reaching its first anniversary: it has been less narcissistic than most blogs while still offering us amusing glimpses of life. Forget not to drink a little wine for thy stomach's sake.

Table of Stone said...

I mean, i like it.

Life is better in the South said...

Happy Birthday, Kitchen Talk.

Gracie said...

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Kitchen Taaaalk, happy birthday tooo youuu! Congrats!

Anonymous said...

Happy 1st Kitchen Talk!

Table of Stone said...

oh yes, we would be so inviting (see 2am)

Nomos said...

Happy Birthday! And I applaude your taste in poems, by the way. Poems are good beginnings and endings.