This morning's reading: an Octavio Paz poem, translated by Elizabeth Bishop. 'Objects & Apparitions, For Joseph Cornell.' Here's a pair of stanzas to whet the appetite:


'"One has to commit a painting," said Degas,
"the way one commits a crime." But you constructed
boxes where things hurry away from their names.

Slot machine of visions,
condensation flask for conversations,
hotel of crickets and constellations.'