mj@pur-ee.UUCP (Slartibartfast) (10/03/86)
I was up at about 4am last week and saw "NIGHT OF THE IGUANA" (or most of it) with Richard Burton. It was great, and at the end there was a fantastic poem ("fantastic" is a pun, if you know the play). Anyway, I looked it up, and here it is. Since this is an (albeit late) review of the play, no copyright infringement is intended: How calmly does the orange branch Observe the sky begin to blanch Without a cry, without a prayer, With no betrayal of despair. Sometime while night obscures the tree The zenith of its life will be Gone past forever, and from thence A second history will commence. A chronicle no longer gold, A bargaining with mist and mould, And finally the broken stem The plummeting to earth; and then An intercourse not well designed For beings of a golden kind Whose native green must arch above The earth's obscene, corrupting love. And still the ripe fruit and the branch Observe the sky begin to blanch Without a cry, without a prayer, With no betrayal of despair. O Courage, could you not as well Select a second place to dwell, Not only in that golden tree But in the frightened heart of me? From The Night of the Iguana, Act III Tennesee Williams (1961) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark A. Johnson - Purdue University Department of Electrical Engineering (Department of Redundancy Department) UUCP:..allegra!purdue!pur-ee!mj USPS:Box 260, EE Building, Lafayette IN 47907
hope@gatech.EDU (Theodore Hope) (10/03/86)
In article <4764@pur-ee.UUCP> mj@pur-ee.UUCP (Slartibartfast) writes: > > Anyway, I looked it up, and here it is. > > How calmly does the orange branch > Observe the sky begin to blanch > Without a cry, without a prayer, > With no betrayal of despair. >Mark A. Johnson - Purdue University Department of Electrical Engineering > Strange... I could have sworn that the old man says: How calmly does the olive branch (olive, not orange) .... .... It could be that the old man's accent and the fact that the TV / VCR which I saw it on was less-than hi-fi made me hear 'olive.' Has anyone out there also heard it this way? -- Theodore Hope School of Information & Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332 CSNet: Hope @ gatech ARPA: Hope@ics.GATECH.EDU uucp: ...!{akgua,decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!hope