Antonio Porchia drains the swamp

This morning the whole enterprise seems focused on getting back to normal as soon as possible, though to say what normal is is impossible, only that the way things seem this morning don't seem normal, they seem odd, disturbed as if everyone living around us will rise up and come out of their homes at any moment to speak out against the way things seem.

I for one have left the newspapers at my feet, in search of other news.

Soon voices speak to me in the English translation of the lucid, enigmatic poems of Antonio Porchia. "Voices", a collection of poems by the Argentinian writer translated by W. S. Merwin, is a book I've kept around for such situations, consulting it in each election year when once again I'm called on to reconcile the unease of the abnormal with the desire for paranormality.

It's not so much the unknown that causes me to feel that nothing's normal this morning, it's that the unknown has only one of two possible outcomes, one of them being slightly less normal than the other.

Porchia's little poems-if they can be called poems-all have perfect outcomes. Each of them provides the much needed solace of silence that one can get lost in, if only for a few moments.