Look, I’ve had a bad day. Even those of us who plod the ethereal attics of language, getting owl shit and faded pink insulation on our shoes, have bad days. I had coffee with a good friend this morning, and a nice meeting with friends this evening, but in between and afterwards… Ah, you don’t wanna know.

Look, people love me and I love them and sometimes life on its own terms — our crippled search for meaning and consolation — just resists all our best efforts to live it passively; it shudders and bucks under our feeble anesthesia. A bad day will not be ignored. And though the evil of the day is sufficient to itself, tomorrow, they all tell me, is another day. Whether the sun gonna rise and shine in my backdoor, or I’m goin’ out in the cold rain and snow, remains to be seen. So here’s a poem.

Conscientious Objector

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.

He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.

But I will not hold the bridle while he clinches the girth.

And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.

With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends nor of my enemies either.

Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man’s door.

Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?

Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me

Shall you be overcome.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay