antidotes?

[fflo]

From moireach, whom I don't know, comes Starting Today: poems for the first 100 days, syndicated for lj as 100dayspoems.

She suggests they might be good for disappointment in the inaugural poem. They do contain one that makes me feel less snarky about that, and put the question mark on my title for this post. I should just change it, but when I typed the word up there, I rather fell in love with it.

It comes from/through antididonai: to give (as a remedy) against. To give, against.

Now, a bonus Cornelius Eady:

HANDYMEN

The furnace wheezes like a drenched lung.
You can't fix it.
The toilet babbles like a speed freak.
You can't fix it.
The fuse box is a nest of rattlers.
You can't fix it.
The screens yawn the bees through.
Your fingers are dumb against the hammer.
Your eyes can't tell plumb from plums.
The frost heaves against the doorjambs,
The ice turns the power lines to brittle candy.
No one told you about how things pop and fizzle,
No one schooled you in spare parts.
That's what the guy says but doesn't say
As he tosses his lingo at your apartment-dweller ears,
A bit bemused, a touch impatient,
After the spring melt has wrecked something, stopped something,
After the hard wind has lifted something away,
After the mystery has plugged the pipes,
The rattle coughs up something sinister.
An easy fix, but not for you.
It's different when you own it,
When it's yours, he says as the meter runs,
Then smiles like an adult.