Samuel Johnson’s Other Life
Thirty years after his father had asked him
to watch the bookstall, his family’s only livelihood,
and Sam being seventeen, too in love with sneering,
had refused, the author of arguably the greatest
dictionary ever, returned to his native village and in
a downpour so heavy no one sensible even thought of
going outside, and with no covering for his head, stood
on the square in the exact site where his father’s
bookstall had been, and out of grief and penance,
language’s surest foundation, stared down the
townsfolk’s mockery, and let the rain teach him
a lesson as only it could.
by Walter R. Rawlings
from The First Inhabitants of Arcadia
The University of Arkansas Press, 2006
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