You scored as White Lighter. You are a White Lighter! You seek the dawning of the New Age and the raising of the consciousness of mankind (which of course happens in 2012, and all in one day). You seek only to do good, and are determined to cut out that pesky dark side once and for all. You know your own role in the coming Earth Changes is important, and you must let all know so they know whom to turn to at that crucial moment!
What Subversive Alternative Paradigm Are You? created with QuizFarm.com |
25 February 2007
22 February 2007
If Nothing Breaks
by Catherine Wiley, 45 years old
It is not torture if nothing breaks
if the dog's teeth click without meeting skin
if the bruise is blue but does not turn yellow
if the bile is yellow but does not turn green
if the bone leaves the socket without piercing skin
if eyeballs roll to white but stay inside the sockets
if eyelids close but the tears number less than 20
if electrodes dangle but are not connected
if the noose is never tightened
if pain turns to fear but fear does not turn to pain
if screams do not sound like songs
if we understand they'd do the same or worse to us
if imagination offers something else
if no one takes a picture
if no one writes it down
if no one puts it up online
if no one says no
It is not torture if nothing breaks
if the dog's teeth click without meeting skin
if the bruise is blue but does not turn yellow
if the bile is yellow but does not turn green
if the bone leaves the socket without piercing skin
if eyeballs roll to white but stay inside the sockets
if eyelids close but the tears number less than 20
if electrodes dangle but are not connected
if the noose is never tightened
if pain turns to fear but fear does not turn to pain
if screams do not sound like songs
if we understand they'd do the same or worse to us
if imagination offers something else
if no one takes a picture
if no one writes it down
if no one puts it up online
if no one says no
21 February 2007
some snippets from Vachel Lindsay, dreamer
St. Francis of Assisi
Would I might wake St. Francis in you all,
Brother of birds and trees, God’s Troubadour,
Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor;
Our wealth undone, all strict Franciscan men,
Come, let us chant the canticle again
Of mother earth and the enduring sun.
God make each soul the lonely leper’s slave;
God make us saints, and brave.
Buddha
Would that by Hindu magic we became
Dark monks of jeweled India long ago,
Sitting at Prince Siddartha’s feet to know
The foolishness of gold and love and station,
The gospel of the Great Renunciation,
The ragged cloak, the staff, the rain and sun,
The beggar’s life, with far Nirvana gleaming:
Lord, make us Buddhas, dreaming.
Lincoln
Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,
That which is gendered in the wilderness
From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness.
Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,
Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,
Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,
Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire —
Fire that freed the slave.
Would I might wake St. Francis in you all,
Brother of birds and trees, God’s Troubadour,
Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor;
Our wealth undone, all strict Franciscan men,
Come, let us chant the canticle again
Of mother earth and the enduring sun.
God make each soul the lonely leper’s slave;
God make us saints, and brave.
Buddha
Would that by Hindu magic we became
Dark monks of jeweled India long ago,
Sitting at Prince Siddartha’s feet to know
The foolishness of gold and love and station,
The gospel of the Great Renunciation,
The ragged cloak, the staff, the rain and sun,
The beggar’s life, with far Nirvana gleaming:
Lord, make us Buddhas, dreaming.
Lincoln
Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,
That which is gendered in the wilderness
From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness.
Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,
Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,
Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,
Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire —
Fire that freed the slave.
20 February 2007
Man in Clown Outfit
by Gretchen Mattox
He's waving a plastic pointer, stiff flag enter lot here, parking
at the edge of Lincoln--bright-yellow clown suit with bold ruffles
and floppy shoes
(the kind with stuffed toes) and from even a short distance he could be
anyone degraded selling what?, he could be, but he is a man,
clearly Mexican,
underneath the nose that honks, a black mustache, illegal alien? probably.
Like the girls in bikini tops and grass skirts outside casinos in
Las Vegas,
who say Come get your free lei (colored plastic wrap รก la Hawaii), he does
what he's been told to do: on automatic, flag arm ticking like a metronome.
Underneath the painted smile is another expression--harder to place.
The urgency of traffic, who has time to care?
He takes his job seriously. On the way home, reverse route back,
he's still there waving, a swimmer treading water.
From Buddha Box, 2004, New Issues Poetry & Prose
He's waving a plastic pointer, stiff flag enter lot here, parking
at the edge of Lincoln--bright-yellow clown suit with bold ruffles
and floppy shoes
(the kind with stuffed toes) and from even a short distance he could be
anyone degraded selling what?, he could be, but he is a man,
clearly Mexican,
underneath the nose that honks, a black mustache, illegal alien? probably.
Like the girls in bikini tops and grass skirts outside casinos in
Las Vegas,
who say Come get your free lei (colored plastic wrap รก la Hawaii), he does
what he's been told to do: on automatic, flag arm ticking like a metronome.
Underneath the painted smile is another expression--harder to place.
The urgency of traffic, who has time to care?
He takes his job seriously. On the way home, reverse route back,
he's still there waving, a swimmer treading water.
From Buddha Box, 2004, New Issues Poetry & Prose
16 February 2007
The Key to Life
by Alexandra Haman
The Haque
01-08-2004
Life is strange
Life is bitter
Living with the knowledge that others suffer
While you are happy
Should make you think
About the way
Life is divided
Living in luxury and wealth
Should make you feel guilty
And wonder
How it comes
That all the good things
Are yours
While others have nothing
To live for
While others should pray
To die
Instead of living the life
That was imposed on them
By people who wanted
The best in life for themselves
Life should be easy
Life should be honest
Towards all the living on this planet
If honesty was the keyword
To guarantee life
Life would be different
For us all
The Haque
01-08-2004
Life is strange
Life is bitter
Living with the knowledge that others suffer
While you are happy
Should make you think
About the way
Life is divided
Living in luxury and wealth
Should make you feel guilty
And wonder
How it comes
That all the good things
Are yours
While others have nothing
To live for
While others should pray
To die
Instead of living the life
That was imposed on them
By people who wanted
The best in life for themselves
Life should be easy
Life should be honest
Towards all the living on this planet
If honesty was the keyword
To guarantee life
Life would be different
For us all
15 February 2007
the window, at the moment of flame
by alicia ostriker
and all this while I have been playing with toys
a toy superhighway a toy automobile a house of blocks
and all this while far off in other lands
thousands and thousands, millions and millions
you know — you see the pictures
women carrying bony infants
men sobbing over graves
buildings sculpted by explosion —
earth wasted bare and rotten
and all this while I have been shopping, I have
been let us say free
and do they hate me for it
do they hate me
and all this while I have been playing with toys
a toy superhighway a toy automobile a house of blocks
and all this while far off in other lands
thousands and thousands, millions and millions
you know — you see the pictures
women carrying bony infants
men sobbing over graves
buildings sculpted by explosion —
earth wasted bare and rotten
and all this while I have been shopping, I have
been let us say free
and do they hate me for it
do they hate me
13 February 2007
Henry Lichenwalner: Living in the Middle
by Dave Etter
Here in Alliance, Illinois,
I'm living in the middle,
standing on the Courthouse lawn
in the middle of town,
in the middle of my life,
a self-confessed middlebrow,
a member of the middle class,
and of course Middle Western,
the middle, you see, the middle,
believing in the middle way,
standing here at midday
in the middle of the year,
breathing the farm-fragrant air
of Sunflower County,
in the true-blue middle
of middle America,
in the middle of my dreams.
From Alliance, Illinois, 1983, Spoon River Press
Here in Alliance, Illinois,
I'm living in the middle,
standing on the Courthouse lawn
in the middle of town,
in the middle of my life,
a self-confessed middlebrow,
a member of the middle class,
and of course Middle Western,
the middle, you see, the middle,
believing in the middle way,
standing here at midday
in the middle of the year,
breathing the farm-fragrant air
of Sunflower County,
in the true-blue middle
of middle America,
in the middle of my dreams.
From Alliance, Illinois, 1983, Spoon River Press
09 February 2007
Thanatopsis
by William Cullen Bryant
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world -- with kings,
The powerful of the earth -- the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, -- the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods -- rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. -- Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings -- yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep -- the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest -- and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn, shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world -- with kings,
The powerful of the earth -- the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, -- the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods -- rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. -- Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings -- yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep -- the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest -- and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn, shall follow them.
So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
08 February 2007
Rivers of Blood Flow thru the Corporate-Spine Spin
By Diana Gwinn
8/2004
On a conveyor belt of carnage and death
Flag draped coffins glide silently by,
Hidden from view.
Sacrificial lambs fed to the false god of insatiable greed and endless war.
Endless war for endless peace.
Corporate spin zone kicked the “Vietnam Syndrome”.
No body bags this time around.
Trapped in 1984, conditioned, unthinking drones
Rest in peace in living tombs.
Wolves wrapped in red, white and blue
Battle dark skinned phantoms.
Emboldened by our silence and indifference to life
Rivers of blood flow
Rivers of blood flow thru the corporate spine
Rest in peace till the end of time.
WAKE UP!
8/2004
On a conveyor belt of carnage and death
Flag draped coffins glide silently by,
Hidden from view.
Sacrificial lambs fed to the false god of insatiable greed and endless war.
Endless war for endless peace.
Corporate spin zone kicked the “Vietnam Syndrome”.
No body bags this time around.
Trapped in 1984, conditioned, unthinking drones
Rest in peace in living tombs.
Wolves wrapped in red, white and blue
Battle dark skinned phantoms.
Emboldened by our silence and indifference to life
Rivers of blood flow
Rivers of blood flow thru the corporate spine
Rest in peace till the end of time.
WAKE UP!
07 February 2007
Burial Practice
by Srikanth Reddy
Then the pulse.
Then a pause.
Then twilight in a box.
Dusk underfoot.
Then generations.
*
Then the same war by a different name.
Wine splashing in a bucket.
The erection, the era.
Then exit Reason.
Then sadness without reason.
Then the removal of the ceiling by hand.
*
Then pages & pages of numbers.
Then the page with the faint green stain.
Then the page on which Prince Theodore, gravely wounded, is thrown onto a wagon.
Then the page on which Masha weds somebody else.
Then the page that turns to the story of somebody else.
Then the page scribbled in dactyls.
Then the page which begins Exit Angel.
Then the page wrapped around a dead fish.
Then the page where the serfs reach the ocean.
Then a nap.
Then the peg.
Then the page with the curious helmet.
Then the page on which millet is ground.
Then the death of Ursula.
Then the stone page they raised over her head.
Then the page made of grass which goes on.
*
Exit Beauty.
*
Then the page someone folded to mark her place.
Then the page on which nothing happens.
The page after this page.
Then the transcript.
Knocking within.
Interpretation, then harvest.
*
Exit Want.
Then a love story.
Then a trip to the ruins.
Then & only then the violet agenda.
Then hope without reason.
Then the construction of an underground passage between us.
From Facts for Visitors by Srikanth Reddy 2004 University of California Press
Then the pulse.
Then a pause.
Then twilight in a box.
Dusk underfoot.
Then generations.
*
Then the same war by a different name.
Wine splashing in a bucket.
The erection, the era.
Then exit Reason.
Then sadness without reason.
Then the removal of the ceiling by hand.
*
Then pages & pages of numbers.
Then the page with the faint green stain.
Then the page on which Prince Theodore, gravely wounded, is thrown onto a wagon.
Then the page on which Masha weds somebody else.
Then the page that turns to the story of somebody else.
Then the page scribbled in dactyls.
Then the page which begins Exit Angel.
Then the page wrapped around a dead fish.
Then the page where the serfs reach the ocean.
Then a nap.
Then the peg.
Then the page with the curious helmet.
Then the page on which millet is ground.
Then the death of Ursula.
Then the stone page they raised over her head.
Then the page made of grass which goes on.
*
Exit Beauty.
*
Then the page someone folded to mark her place.
Then the page on which nothing happens.
The page after this page.
Then the transcript.
Knocking within.
Interpretation, then harvest.
*
Exit Want.
Then a love story.
Then a trip to the ruins.
Then & only then the violet agenda.
Then hope without reason.
Then the construction of an underground passage between us.
From Facts for Visitors by Srikanth Reddy 2004 University of California Press
06 February 2007
To a Terrorist
by Stephen Dunn
For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem
without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one
might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.
Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefullness that makes you fall
in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house
and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.
Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,
the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.
The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.
For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem
without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one
might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.
Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefullness that makes you fall
in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house
and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.
Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,
the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.
The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.
05 February 2007
The Blue-Flag In The Bog
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open to us, bereft.
Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
And 'twas God who walked ahead;
Yet I wept along the road,
Wanting my own house instead.
Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
"All you things my eyes have kissed,
Fare you well! We meet no more,
Lovely, lovely tattered mist!
Weary wings that rise and fall
All day long above the fire!"—
Red with heat was every wall,
Rough with heat was every wire—
"Fare you well, you little winds
That the flying embers chase!
Fare you well, you shuddering day,
With your hands before your face!
And, ah, blackened by strange blight,
Or to a false sun unfurled,
Now forevermore goodbye,
All the gardens in the world!
On the windless hills of Heaven,
That I have no wish to see,
White, eternal lilies stand,
By a lake of ebony.
But the Earth forevermore
Is a place where nothing grows,—
Dawn will come, and no bud break;
Evening, and no blossom close.
Spring will come, and wander slow
Over an indifferent land,
Stand beside an empty creek,
Hold a dead seed in her hand."
God had called us, and we came,
But the blessed road I trod
Was a bitter road to me,
And at heart I questioned God.
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the heart would most desire,
Held Earth naught save souls of sinners
Worth the saving from a fire?
Withered grass,—the wasted growing!
Aimless ache of laden boughs!"
Little things God had forgotten
Called me, from my burning house.
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the eye could ask to see,
All the things I ever knew
Are this blaze in back of me."
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the ear could think to lack,
All the things I ever knew
Are this roaring at my back."
It was God who walked ahead,
Like a shepherd to the fold;
In his footsteps fared the weak,
And the weary and the old,
Glad enough of gladness over,
Ready for the peace to be,—
But a thing God had forgotten
Was the growing bones of me.
And I drew a bit apart,
And I lagged a bit behind,
And I thought on Peace Eternal,
Lest He look into my mind:
And I gazed upon the sky,
And I thought of Heavenly Rest,—
And I slipped away like water
Through the fingers of the blest!
All their eyes were fixed on Glory,
Not a glance brushed over me;
"Alleluia! Alleluia!"
Up the road,—and I was free.
And my heart rose like a freshet,
And it swept me on before,
Giddy as a whirling stick,
Till I felt the earth once more.
All the earth was charred and black,
Fire had swept from pole to pole;
And the bottom of the sea
Was as brittle as a bowl;
And the timbered mountain-top
Was as naked as a skull,—
Nothing left, nothing left,
Of the Earth so beautiful!
"Earth," I said, "how can I leave you?"
"You are all I have," I said;
"What is left to take my mind up,
Living always, and you dead?"
"Speak!" I said, "Oh, tell me something!
Make a sign that I can see!
For a keepsake! To keep always!
Quick!—before God misses me!"
And I listened for a voice;—
But my heart was all I heard;
Not a screech-owl, not a loon,
Not a tree-toad said a word.
And I waited for a sign;—
Coals and cinders, nothing more;
And a little cloud of smoke
Floating on a valley floor.
And I peered into the smoke
Till it rotted, like a fog:—
There, encompassed round by fire,
Stood a blue-flag in a bog!
Little flames came wading out,
Straining, straining towards its stem,
But it was so blue and tall
That it scorned to think of them!
Red and thirsty were their tongues,
As the tongues of wolves must be,
But it was so blue and tall—
Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!
All my heart became a tear,
All my soul became a tower,
Never loved I anything
As I loved that tall blue flower!
It was all the little boats
That had ever sailed the sea,
It was all the little books
That had gone to school with me;
On its roots like iron claws
Rearing up so blue and tall,—
It was all the gallant Earth
With its back against a wall!
In a breath, ere I had breathed,—
Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!—
I was kneeling at its side,
And it leaned its head on me!
Crumbling stones and sliding sand
Is the road to Heaven now;
Icy at my straining knees
Drags the awful under-tow;
Soon but stepping-stones of dust
Will the road to Heaven be,—
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Reach a hand and rescue me!
"There—there, my blue-flag flower;
Hush—hush—go to sleep;
That is only God you hear,
Counting up His folded sheep!
Lullabye—lullabye—
That is only God that calls,
Missing me, seeking me,
Ere the road to nothing falls!
He will set His mighty feet
Firmly on the sliding sand;
Like a little frightened bird
I will creep into His hand;
I will tell Him all my grief,
I will tell Him all my sin;
He will give me half His robe
For a cloak to wrap you in.
Lullabye—lullabye—"
Rocks the burnt-out planet free!—
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Reach a hand and rescue me!
Ah, the voice of love at last!
Lo, at last the face of light!
And the whole of His white robe
For a cloak against the night!
And upon my heart asleep
All the things I ever knew!—
"Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord,
For a flower so tall and blue?"
All's well and all's well!
Gay the lights of Heaven show!
In some moist and Heavenly place
We will set it out to grow.
God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open to us, bereft.
Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
And 'twas God who walked ahead;
Yet I wept along the road,
Wanting my own house instead.
Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
"All you things my eyes have kissed,
Fare you well! We meet no more,
Lovely, lovely tattered mist!
Weary wings that rise and fall
All day long above the fire!"—
Red with heat was every wall,
Rough with heat was every wire—
"Fare you well, you little winds
That the flying embers chase!
Fare you well, you shuddering day,
With your hands before your face!
And, ah, blackened by strange blight,
Or to a false sun unfurled,
Now forevermore goodbye,
All the gardens in the world!
On the windless hills of Heaven,
That I have no wish to see,
White, eternal lilies stand,
By a lake of ebony.
But the Earth forevermore
Is a place where nothing grows,—
Dawn will come, and no bud break;
Evening, and no blossom close.
Spring will come, and wander slow
Over an indifferent land,
Stand beside an empty creek,
Hold a dead seed in her hand."
God had called us, and we came,
But the blessed road I trod
Was a bitter road to me,
And at heart I questioned God.
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the heart would most desire,
Held Earth naught save souls of sinners
Worth the saving from a fire?
Withered grass,—the wasted growing!
Aimless ache of laden boughs!"
Little things God had forgotten
Called me, from my burning house.
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the eye could ask to see,
All the things I ever knew
Are this blaze in back of me."
"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the ear could think to lack,
All the things I ever knew
Are this roaring at my back."
It was God who walked ahead,
Like a shepherd to the fold;
In his footsteps fared the weak,
And the weary and the old,
Glad enough of gladness over,
Ready for the peace to be,—
But a thing God had forgotten
Was the growing bones of me.
And I drew a bit apart,
And I lagged a bit behind,
And I thought on Peace Eternal,
Lest He look into my mind:
And I gazed upon the sky,
And I thought of Heavenly Rest,—
And I slipped away like water
Through the fingers of the blest!
All their eyes were fixed on Glory,
Not a glance brushed over me;
"Alleluia! Alleluia!"
Up the road,—and I was free.
And my heart rose like a freshet,
And it swept me on before,
Giddy as a whirling stick,
Till I felt the earth once more.
All the earth was charred and black,
Fire had swept from pole to pole;
And the bottom of the sea
Was as brittle as a bowl;
And the timbered mountain-top
Was as naked as a skull,—
Nothing left, nothing left,
Of the Earth so beautiful!
"Earth," I said, "how can I leave you?"
"You are all I have," I said;
"What is left to take my mind up,
Living always, and you dead?"
"Speak!" I said, "Oh, tell me something!
Make a sign that I can see!
For a keepsake! To keep always!
Quick!—before God misses me!"
And I listened for a voice;—
But my heart was all I heard;
Not a screech-owl, not a loon,
Not a tree-toad said a word.
And I waited for a sign;—
Coals and cinders, nothing more;
And a little cloud of smoke
Floating on a valley floor.
And I peered into the smoke
Till it rotted, like a fog:—
There, encompassed round by fire,
Stood a blue-flag in a bog!
Little flames came wading out,
Straining, straining towards its stem,
But it was so blue and tall
That it scorned to think of them!
Red and thirsty were their tongues,
As the tongues of wolves must be,
But it was so blue and tall—
Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!
All my heart became a tear,
All my soul became a tower,
Never loved I anything
As I loved that tall blue flower!
It was all the little boats
That had ever sailed the sea,
It was all the little books
That had gone to school with me;
On its roots like iron claws
Rearing up so blue and tall,—
It was all the gallant Earth
With its back against a wall!
In a breath, ere I had breathed,—
Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!—
I was kneeling at its side,
And it leaned its head on me!
Crumbling stones and sliding sand
Is the road to Heaven now;
Icy at my straining knees
Drags the awful under-tow;
Soon but stepping-stones of dust
Will the road to Heaven be,—
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Reach a hand and rescue me!
"There—there, my blue-flag flower;
Hush—hush—go to sleep;
That is only God you hear,
Counting up His folded sheep!
Lullabye—lullabye—
That is only God that calls,
Missing me, seeking me,
Ere the road to nothing falls!
He will set His mighty feet
Firmly on the sliding sand;
Like a little frightened bird
I will creep into His hand;
I will tell Him all my grief,
I will tell Him all my sin;
He will give me half His robe
For a cloak to wrap you in.
Lullabye—lullabye—"
Rocks the burnt-out planet free!—
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Reach a hand and rescue me!
Ah, the voice of love at last!
Lo, at last the face of light!
And the whole of His white robe
For a cloak against the night!
And upon my heart asleep
All the things I ever knew!—
"Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord,
For a flower so tall and blue?"
All's well and all's well!
Gay the lights of Heaven show!
In some moist and Heavenly place
We will set it out to grow.
01 February 2007
Souvenir of the Ancient World
by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, translated by Mark Strand
Clara strolled in the garden with the children.
The sky was green over the grass,
the water was golden under the bridges,
other elements were blue and rose and orange,
a policeman smiled, bicycles passed,
a girl stepped onto the lawn to catch a bird,
the whole world—Germany, China—
All was quiet around Clara.
The children looked at the sky: it was not forbidden.
Mouth, nose, eyes were open. There was no danger.
What Clara feared were the flu, the heat, the insects.
Clara feared missing the eleven o'clock trolley,
waiting for letters slow to arrive,
not always being able to wear a new dress. But
she strolled in the garden, in the morning!
They had gardens, they had mornings in those days!
Clara strolled in the garden with the children.
The sky was green over the grass,
the water was golden under the bridges,
other elements were blue and rose and orange,
a policeman smiled, bicycles passed,
a girl stepped onto the lawn to catch a bird,
the whole world—Germany, China—
All was quiet around Clara.
The children looked at the sky: it was not forbidden.
Mouth, nose, eyes were open. There was no danger.
What Clara feared were the flu, the heat, the insects.
Clara feared missing the eleven o'clock trolley,
waiting for letters slow to arrive,
not always being able to wear a new dress. But
she strolled in the garden, in the morning!
They had gardens, they had mornings in those days!
31 January 2007
To the United States Senate
by Vachel Lindsay
The following verses were written on the evening of March the first,
nineteen hundred and eleven, and printed next morning
in the Illinois State Register.
They celebrate the arrival of the news that the United States Senate
had declared the election of William Lorimer good and valid,
by a vote of forty-six to forty.
[Revelation 16: Verses 16-19]
And must the Senator from Illinois
Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes?
This brazen gutter idol, reared to power
Upon a leering pyramid of lies?
And must the Senator from Illinois
Be the world’s proverb of successful shame,
Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal,
Who, when the sad State spares them, count it fame?
If once or twice within his new won hall
His vote had counted for the broken men;
If in his early days he wrought some good —
We might a great soul’s sins forgive him then.
But must the Senator from Illinois
Be vindicated by fat kings of gold?
And must he be belauded by the smirched,
The sleek, uncanny chiefs in lies grown old?
Be warned, O wanton ones, who shielded him —
Black wrath awaits. You all shall eat the dust.
You dare not say: “To-morrow will bring peace;
Let us make merry, and go forth in lust.”
What will you trading frogs do on a day
When Armageddon thunders thro’ the land;
When each sad patriot rises, mad with shame,
His ballot or his musket in his hand?
In the distracted states from which you came
The day is big with war hopes fierce and strange;
Our iron Chicagos and our grimy mines
Rumble with hate and love and solemn change.
Too many weary men shed honest tears,
Ground by machines that give the Senate ease.
Too many little babes with bleeding hands
Have heaped the fruits of empire on your knees.
And swine within the Senate in this day,
When all the smothering by-streets weep and wail;
When wisdom breaks the hearts of her best sons;
When kingly men, voting for truth, may fail: —
These are a portent and a call to arms.
Our protest turns into a battle cry:
“Our shame must end, our States be free and clean;
And in this war we choose to live and die.”
[So far as the writer knows this is the first use
of the popular term Armageddon in present day politics.]
The following verses were written on the evening of March the first,
nineteen hundred and eleven, and printed next morning
in the Illinois State Register.
They celebrate the arrival of the news that the United States Senate
had declared the election of William Lorimer good and valid,
by a vote of forty-six to forty.
[Revelation 16: Verses 16-19]
And must the Senator from Illinois
Be this squat thing, with blinking, half-closed eyes?
This brazen gutter idol, reared to power
Upon a leering pyramid of lies?
And must the Senator from Illinois
Be the world’s proverb of successful shame,
Dazzling all State house flies that steal and steal,
Who, when the sad State spares them, count it fame?
If once or twice within his new won hall
His vote had counted for the broken men;
If in his early days he wrought some good —
We might a great soul’s sins forgive him then.
But must the Senator from Illinois
Be vindicated by fat kings of gold?
And must he be belauded by the smirched,
The sleek, uncanny chiefs in lies grown old?
Be warned, O wanton ones, who shielded him —
Black wrath awaits. You all shall eat the dust.
You dare not say: “To-morrow will bring peace;
Let us make merry, and go forth in lust.”
What will you trading frogs do on a day
When Armageddon thunders thro’ the land;
When each sad patriot rises, mad with shame,
His ballot or his musket in his hand?
In the distracted states from which you came
The day is big with war hopes fierce and strange;
Our iron Chicagos and our grimy mines
Rumble with hate and love and solemn change.
Too many weary men shed honest tears,
Ground by machines that give the Senate ease.
Too many little babes with bleeding hands
Have heaped the fruits of empire on your knees.
And swine within the Senate in this day,
When all the smothering by-streets weep and wail;
When wisdom breaks the hearts of her best sons;
When kingly men, voting for truth, may fail: —
These are a portent and a call to arms.
Our protest turns into a battle cry:
“Our shame must end, our States be free and clean;
And in this war we choose to live and die.”
[So far as the writer knows this is the first use
of the popular term Armageddon in present day politics.]
30 January 2007
Whitman
by Alfred Kreymborg
After we've had
our age of gold
and sung our song of brass,
fingers will brush
the age aside,
fingers and leaves
of grass.
After we've had
our age of gold
and sung our song of brass,
fingers will brush
the age aside,
fingers and leaves
of grass.
26 January 2007
Poetry is the Antithesis of Fascist Terror
In my humble opinion, the extremist religions work together with government and the ruling class to repress and supress "the people".
It all is a question of freedom versus control.
Someone wise once said:
"No poetry after Auschwitz."
But he was wrong.
No poetry is what the militarist, dominionist, and terrorist want.
After September 11, 2001, poets contained the only light I saw in the world.
Sharon Olds refused an invitation to the White House.
The poets of America began a project to write and collect poetry.
It took years for Americans to begin questioning again, but the poets never lost their souls.
I copied this essay, then, and ran across it once in a while. Posting here, even though I'm dedicating this site to all kinds of poetry. Albeit prose I think it has a place here.
September 27, 2001
Disaster Calls Poetry to Action; Auden's Verses Are Back at Workby Sven Bikerts
I teach two writing courses at Mt. Holyoke College, normally an orderly drill in which I try to supply useful strategies for a series of expressive tasks.
But of course "normally" vaporized this year as soon as the semester began, and I found myself, like every teacher in the country, faced with the question of how to proceed with my course, the premises of my subject, in the face of a collective sadness and unease unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Meeting my creative-writing class last week for the first time since the disaster, I brought in copies of W.H. Auden’s "September 1, 1939," a poem that’s been everywhere in the air these last days. I thought that if my students didn’t know it, they should. And as I was reading out the later lines of the opening stanza—
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.
I felt, I thought I felt, an attentiveness in the room that went beyond the usual open-eyed, if sometimes undiscriminating, receptivity. I had the sense that the words, to paraphrase a line from another Auden poem, were hurting and connecting.
We did not go on, as I’d thought we might, to talk about the poem. Instead, somehow, we got onto the question of the place of poetry—and, by extension, literature—in the face of the unspeakable. Why read or study it? What does it give us? Can words arranged on a page make a difference? Of course, I had to cite T.W. Adorno’s famous dictum: "No poetry after Auschwitz." What could that mean?
Expressions around the room were mostly baffled. I wanted to break the question down. Did Adorno mean "no poetry" because we should not write it? Because the writing of poems celebrated the human in ways that had become unconscionable? Or because the assertion of purpose and inner coherence that poetry necessarily represents was somehow wrong, no longer viable? Or did Adorno mean "no poetry" because we could not? Because an extreme of barbarism had revealed language to be inadequate, limited in what it could represent? Because barbarism had thus undermined the core assumption of the enterprise? But why single out poetry? Everything is ultimately limited. One might as well mark the enormity of moral devastation by insisting no anything.
Which becomes, of course, a paper argument, carried on in the face of human contrariness, the biological persistence that will rebuild the world no matter how many times it’s torn apart. The argument about the writing and reading of poetry is also finally academic. No poetry after Auschwitz. Except that there was and there is: Akhmatova, Milosz, Bishop, Brodsky, Heaney, Lowell, Walcott, Plath, Herbert and thousands of others. Poetry has flourished since the time of the death camps, and not because it has looked away. It hasn’t.
Problem solved. Except, alas, that it continued to vex, as it must now that the world has been torn apart again. Must, for asking the question is a way of addressing the pain, the very real sense of hopelessness that floods me over and over throughout the day. What is the place, the purpose, of poetry? I was asking it again that afternoon as I blazed my way east on the Mass Pike, lost in a thought fugue rare even for me, who am given to thought fugues on these long commutes. And by the time I reached the outskirts of Boston, I had a kind of answer.
It took a while to get there. My first thought, contra Adorno, was that disaster requires poetry precisely because of the implied perspective it—all literature—assumes: the seriousness and ongoing point of all things, however fragile the web of meaning may seem at times; and because poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication. As I’d just declaimed to my class from Auden:
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages
But then I had another, less expected idea. To understand the use of poetry, its particular importance in times like this, I realized, we need to understand the nature of trauma. This is a subject for deep study, of course, but a few generalizations are possible. To begin with, catastrophic trauma shatters norms; it upsets, in a way that feels permanent, the balance of things. It overwhelms our psychic system, melting down the usual response mechanisms whereby experiences are organized and stored as the stuff of memory. Further, this trauma creates for itself a kind of perpetual present. What is post-traumatic stress disorder but the psyche’s inability to banish hurt to the past? In the sufferer—and we are now all to some degree sufferers—the pain stays alive, there to be activated at any moment. The plane keeps slicing into the building, each time fresh; it doesn’t stop. We don’t even need to see the loop any more.
And this, I thought, is where poetry comes in. Poetry does not, with its meanings and messages, defeat trauma; it does not argue it away with its countervailing sense of purpose. Nothing so simple: Poetry works on a deeper level. Because it mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor, reading it—the best of it—can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma.
For poetry is the reverse of the terrorist act, its antithesis—just as the terrorist act is the complete negation of the spirit of poetry. We read poetry because we need something to hold against horror, something to place alongside it that is equally persistent. Not because poetry overturns or disarms horror, but because it helps restore the delicate inner balance we call sanity.
And when this balance, this instinctive sense of moral proportion, is threatened—as it is now—we need poetry in the worst way. Shakespeare asked: "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?" A rhetorical question. He knew. As did Auden, who in that most sustaining poem, with a modesty that seems to me just slightly disingenuous, wrote:
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Auden would not allow that poem to be reprinted in his Collected Poems, arguing that "We must love one another or die" was misleading, a false choice. I’ve always wondered where this sudden literalism came from, this misplaced sense of scruple. It’s his best line.
This column ran on page 1 in the 10/1/2001 edition of The New York Observer.
It all is a question of freedom versus control.
Someone wise once said:
"No poetry after Auschwitz."
But he was wrong.
No poetry is what the militarist, dominionist, and terrorist want.
After September 11, 2001, poets contained the only light I saw in the world.
Sharon Olds refused an invitation to the White House.
The poets of America began a project to write and collect poetry.
It took years for Americans to begin questioning again, but the poets never lost their souls.
I copied this essay, then, and ran across it once in a while. Posting here, even though I'm dedicating this site to all kinds of poetry. Albeit prose I think it has a place here.
September 27, 2001
Disaster Calls Poetry to Action; Auden's Verses Are Back at Workby Sven Bikerts
I teach two writing courses at Mt. Holyoke College, normally an orderly drill in which I try to supply useful strategies for a series of expressive tasks.
But of course "normally" vaporized this year as soon as the semester began, and I found myself, like every teacher in the country, faced with the question of how to proceed with my course, the premises of my subject, in the face of a collective sadness and unease unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Meeting my creative-writing class last week for the first time since the disaster, I brought in copies of W.H. Auden’s "September 1, 1939," a poem that’s been everywhere in the air these last days. I thought that if my students didn’t know it, they should. And as I was reading out the later lines of the opening stanza—
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.
I felt, I thought I felt, an attentiveness in the room that went beyond the usual open-eyed, if sometimes undiscriminating, receptivity. I had the sense that the words, to paraphrase a line from another Auden poem, were hurting and connecting.
We did not go on, as I’d thought we might, to talk about the poem. Instead, somehow, we got onto the question of the place of poetry—and, by extension, literature—in the face of the unspeakable. Why read or study it? What does it give us? Can words arranged on a page make a difference? Of course, I had to cite T.W. Adorno’s famous dictum: "No poetry after Auschwitz." What could that mean?
Expressions around the room were mostly baffled. I wanted to break the question down. Did Adorno mean "no poetry" because we should not write it? Because the writing of poems celebrated the human in ways that had become unconscionable? Or because the assertion of purpose and inner coherence that poetry necessarily represents was somehow wrong, no longer viable? Or did Adorno mean "no poetry" because we could not? Because an extreme of barbarism had revealed language to be inadequate, limited in what it could represent? Because barbarism had thus undermined the core assumption of the enterprise? But why single out poetry? Everything is ultimately limited. One might as well mark the enormity of moral devastation by insisting no anything.
Which becomes, of course, a paper argument, carried on in the face of human contrariness, the biological persistence that will rebuild the world no matter how many times it’s torn apart. The argument about the writing and reading of poetry is also finally academic. No poetry after Auschwitz. Except that there was and there is: Akhmatova, Milosz, Bishop, Brodsky, Heaney, Lowell, Walcott, Plath, Herbert and thousands of others. Poetry has flourished since the time of the death camps, and not because it has looked away. It hasn’t.
Problem solved. Except, alas, that it continued to vex, as it must now that the world has been torn apart again. Must, for asking the question is a way of addressing the pain, the very real sense of hopelessness that floods me over and over throughout the day. What is the place, the purpose, of poetry? I was asking it again that afternoon as I blazed my way east on the Mass Pike, lost in a thought fugue rare even for me, who am given to thought fugues on these long commutes. And by the time I reached the outskirts of Boston, I had a kind of answer.
It took a while to get there. My first thought, contra Adorno, was that disaster requires poetry precisely because of the implied perspective it—all literature—assumes: the seriousness and ongoing point of all things, however fragile the web of meaning may seem at times; and because poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication. As I’d just declaimed to my class from Auden:
Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages
But then I had another, less expected idea. To understand the use of poetry, its particular importance in times like this, I realized, we need to understand the nature of trauma. This is a subject for deep study, of course, but a few generalizations are possible. To begin with, catastrophic trauma shatters norms; it upsets, in a way that feels permanent, the balance of things. It overwhelms our psychic system, melting down the usual response mechanisms whereby experiences are organized and stored as the stuff of memory. Further, this trauma creates for itself a kind of perpetual present. What is post-traumatic stress disorder but the psyche’s inability to banish hurt to the past? In the sufferer—and we are now all to some degree sufferers—the pain stays alive, there to be activated at any moment. The plane keeps slicing into the building, each time fresh; it doesn’t stop. We don’t even need to see the loop any more.
And this, I thought, is where poetry comes in. Poetry does not, with its meanings and messages, defeat trauma; it does not argue it away with its countervailing sense of purpose. Nothing so simple: Poetry works on a deeper level. Because it mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor, reading it—the best of it—can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an awareness that can be as ongoing in the soul as the stop-time of trauma.
For poetry is the reverse of the terrorist act, its antithesis—just as the terrorist act is the complete negation of the spirit of poetry. We read poetry because we need something to hold against horror, something to place alongside it that is equally persistent. Not because poetry overturns or disarms horror, but because it helps restore the delicate inner balance we call sanity.
And when this balance, this instinctive sense of moral proportion, is threatened—as it is now—we need poetry in the worst way. Shakespeare asked: "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, / Whose action is no stronger than a flower?" A rhetorical question. He knew. As did Auden, who in that most sustaining poem, with a modesty that seems to me just slightly disingenuous, wrote:
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Auden would not allow that poem to be reprinted in his Collected Poems, arguing that "We must love one another or die" was misleading, a false choice. I’ve always wondered where this sudden literalism came from, this misplaced sense of scruple. It’s his best line.
This column ran on page 1 in the 10/1/2001 edition of The New York Observer.
25 January 2007
On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam
by Hayden Carruth
Well I have and in fact
more than one and I'll
tell you this too
I wrote one against
Algeria that nightmare
and another against
Korea and another
against the one
I was in
and I don't remember
how many against
the three
when I was a boy
Abyssinia Spain and
Harlan County
and not one
breath was restored
to one
shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not
one
but death went on and on
never looking aside
except now and then
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.
Well I have and in fact
more than one and I'll
tell you this too
I wrote one against
Algeria that nightmare
and another against
Korea and another
against the one
I was in
and I don't remember
how many against
the three
when I was a boy
Abyssinia Spain and
Harlan County
and not one
breath was restored
to one
shattered throat
mans womans or childs
not one not
one
but death went on and on
never looking aside
except now and then
with a furtive half-smile
to make sure I was noticing.
21 January 2007
Abou Ben Adhem
by James Leigh Hunt
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made all of sweet accord
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men.”
The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!
------------------------------------------
I memorized this in fifth grade, and it's one of the few memorizations that stuck with me all of these years. Ask me sometime and you can have a free performance... I guess if the favorite old book Fahrenheit 451? was fact instead of fiction, 'Abou' would be my reason d'etre.
Trivia: This poem once got the young Isaac Asimov into trouble in school.
When asked why Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest, he waved his hand wildly and answered, “Alphabetical order!” ... a spirited but unappreciated stand against the belabouring of the obvious.
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
“What writest thou?” The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made all of sweet accord
Answered, “The names of those who love the Lord.”
“And is mine one?” said Abou. “Nay, not so,”
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, “I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men.”
The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest!
------------------------------------------
I memorized this in fifth grade, and it's one of the few memorizations that stuck with me all of these years. Ask me sometime and you can have a free performance... I guess if the favorite old book Fahrenheit 451? was fact instead of fiction, 'Abou' would be my reason d'etre.
Trivia: This poem once got the young Isaac Asimov into trouble in school.
When asked why Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest, he waved his hand wildly and answered, “Alphabetical order!” ... a spirited but unappreciated stand against the belabouring of the obvious.
18 January 2007
Congo and Other Poems
Fifth Section of book, Vachel Lindsay's Congo and Other Poems
War. September 1, 1914
Intended to be Read Aloud
I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
(In Springfield, Illinois)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us: -- as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come; -- the shining hope of Europe free:
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?
II. A Curse for Kings
A curse upon each king who leads his state,
No matter what his plea, to this foul game,
And may it end his wicked dynasty,
And may he die in exile and black shame.
If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens,
What punishment could Heaven devise for these
Who fill the rivers of the world with dead,
And turn their murderers loose on all the seas!
Put back the clock of time a thousand years,
And make our Europe, once the world's proud Queen,
A shrieking strumpet, furious fratricide,
Eater of entrails, wallowing obscene
In pits where millions foam and rave and bark,
Mad dogs and idiots, thrice drunk with strife;
While Science towers above; -- a witch, red-winged:
Science we looked to for the light of life.
Curse me the men who make and sell iron ships,
Who walk the floor in thought, that they may find
Each powder prompt, each steel with fearful edge,
Each deadliest device against mankind.
Curse me the sleek lords with their plumes and spurs,
May Heaven give their land to peasant spades,
Give them the brand of Cain, for their pride's sake,
And felon's stripes for medals and for braids.
Curse me the fiddling, twiddling diplomats,
Haggling here, plotting and hatching there,
Who make the kind world but their game of cards,
Till millions die at turning of a hair.
What punishment will Heaven devise for these
Who win by others' sweat and hardihood,
Who make men into stinking vultures' meat,
Saying to evil still "Be thou my good"?
Ah, he who starts a million souls toward death
Should burn in utmost hell a million years!
-- Mothers of men go on the destined wrack
To give them life, with anguish and with tears: --
Are all those childbed sorrows sneered away?
Yea, fools laugh at the humble christenings,
And cradle-joys are mocked of the fat lords:
These mothers' sons made dead men for the Kings!
All in the name of this or that grim flag,
No angel-flags in all the rag-array --
Banners the demons love, and all Hell sings
And plays wild harps. Those flags march forth to-day!
III. Who Knows?
They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows?
They say one king is doddering and grey.
They say one king is slack and sick of mind,
A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.
Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place?
Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane?
Their place of maudlin, slavering conference
Till every far-off farmstead goes insane?
IV. To Buddha
Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace,
Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise.
And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend,
Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes?
Good comrade and philosopher and prince,
Thoughtful and thoroughbred and strong and kind,
Dare they to move against your pride benign,
Lord of the Law, high chieftain of the mind?
* * * * *
But what can Europe say, when in your name
The throats are cut, the lotus-ponds turn red?
And what can Europe say, when with a laugh
Old Asia heaps her hecatombs of dead?
V. The Unpardonable Sin
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: --
To speak of bloody power as right divine,
And call on God to guard each vile chief's house,
And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine: --
To go forth killing in White Mercy's name,
Making the trenches stink with spattered brains,
Tearing the nerves and arteries apart,
Sowing with flesh the unreaped golden plains.
In any Church's name, to sack fair towns,
And turn each home into a screaming sty,
To make the little children fugitive,
And have their mothers for a quick death cry, --
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost:
This is the sin no purging can atone: --
To send forth rapine in the name of Christ: --
To set the face, and make the heart a stone.
VI. Above the Battle's Front
St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John --
Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand,
Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare,
And walked upon the water and the land,
If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings
For sober conclave, ere their battle great,
Would they for one deep instant then discern
Their crime, their heart-rot, and their fiend's estate?
If you should float above the battle's front,
Pillars of cloud, of fire that does not slay,
Bearing a fifth within your regal train,
The Son of David in his strange array --
If, in his majesty, he towered toward Heaven,
Would they have hearts to see or understand?
. . . Nay, for he hovers there to-night we know,
Thorn-crowned above the water and the land.
VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings
Though I have found you like a snow-drop pale,
On sunny days have found you weak and still,
Though I have often held your girlish head
Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill: --
Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings
I hide to-night like one small broken bird,
So soothed I half-forget the world gone mad: --
And all the winds of war are now unheard.
My heaven-doubting pennons feel your hands
With touch most delicate so circling round,
That for an hour I dream that God is good.
And in your shadow, Mercy's ways abound.
I thought myself the guard of your frail state,
And yet I come to-night a helpless guest,
Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings,
Against the pallor of your wondrous breast.
War. September 1, 1914
Intended to be Read Aloud
I. Abraham Lincoln Walks at Midnight
(In Springfield, Illinois)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us: -- as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why,
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come; -- the shining hope of Europe free:
The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?
II. A Curse for Kings
A curse upon each king who leads his state,
No matter what his plea, to this foul game,
And may it end his wicked dynasty,
And may he die in exile and black shame.
If there is vengeance in the Heaven of Heavens,
What punishment could Heaven devise for these
Who fill the rivers of the world with dead,
And turn their murderers loose on all the seas!
Put back the clock of time a thousand years,
And make our Europe, once the world's proud Queen,
A shrieking strumpet, furious fratricide,
Eater of entrails, wallowing obscene
In pits where millions foam and rave and bark,
Mad dogs and idiots, thrice drunk with strife;
While Science towers above; -- a witch, red-winged:
Science we looked to for the light of life.
Curse me the men who make and sell iron ships,
Who walk the floor in thought, that they may find
Each powder prompt, each steel with fearful edge,
Each deadliest device against mankind.
Curse me the sleek lords with their plumes and spurs,
May Heaven give their land to peasant spades,
Give them the brand of Cain, for their pride's sake,
And felon's stripes for medals and for braids.
Curse me the fiddling, twiddling diplomats,
Haggling here, plotting and hatching there,
Who make the kind world but their game of cards,
Till millions die at turning of a hair.
What punishment will Heaven devise for these
Who win by others' sweat and hardihood,
Who make men into stinking vultures' meat,
Saying to evil still "Be thou my good"?
Ah, he who starts a million souls toward death
Should burn in utmost hell a million years!
-- Mothers of men go on the destined wrack
To give them life, with anguish and with tears: --
Are all those childbed sorrows sneered away?
Yea, fools laugh at the humble christenings,
And cradle-joys are mocked of the fat lords:
These mothers' sons made dead men for the Kings!
All in the name of this or that grim flag,
No angel-flags in all the rag-array --
Banners the demons love, and all Hell sings
And plays wild harps. Those flags march forth to-day!
III. Who Knows?
They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows?
They say one king is doddering and grey.
They say one king is slack and sick of mind,
A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.
Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place?
Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane?
Their place of maudlin, slavering conference
Till every far-off farmstead goes insane?
IV. To Buddha
Awake again in Asia, Lord of Peace,
Awake and preach, for her far swordsmen rise.
And would they sheathe the sword before you, friend,
Or scorn your way, while looking in your eyes?
Good comrade and philosopher and prince,
Thoughtful and thoroughbred and strong and kind,
Dare they to move against your pride benign,
Lord of the Law, high chieftain of the mind?
* * * * *
But what can Europe say, when in your name
The throats are cut, the lotus-ponds turn red?
And what can Europe say, when with a laugh
Old Asia heaps her hecatombs of dead?
V. The Unpardonable Sin
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: --
To speak of bloody power as right divine,
And call on God to guard each vile chief's house,
And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine: --
To go forth killing in White Mercy's name,
Making the trenches stink with spattered brains,
Tearing the nerves and arteries apart,
Sowing with flesh the unreaped golden plains.
In any Church's name, to sack fair towns,
And turn each home into a screaming sty,
To make the little children fugitive,
And have their mothers for a quick death cry, --
This is the sin against the Holy Ghost:
This is the sin no purging can atone: --
To send forth rapine in the name of Christ: --
To set the face, and make the heart a stone.
VI. Above the Battle's Front
St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John --
Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand,
Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare,
And walked upon the water and the land,
If you, with words celestial, stopped these kings
For sober conclave, ere their battle great,
Would they for one deep instant then discern
Their crime, their heart-rot, and their fiend's estate?
If you should float above the battle's front,
Pillars of cloud, of fire that does not slay,
Bearing a fifth within your regal train,
The Son of David in his strange array --
If, in his majesty, he towered toward Heaven,
Would they have hearts to see or understand?
. . . Nay, for he hovers there to-night we know,
Thorn-crowned above the water and the land.
VII. Epilogue. Under the Blessing of Your Psyche Wings
Though I have found you like a snow-drop pale,
On sunny days have found you weak and still,
Though I have often held your girlish head
Drooped on my shoulder, faint from little ill: --
Under the blessing of your Psyche-wings
I hide to-night like one small broken bird,
So soothed I half-forget the world gone mad: --
And all the winds of war are now unheard.
My heaven-doubting pennons feel your hands
With touch most delicate so circling round,
That for an hour I dream that God is good.
And in your shadow, Mercy's ways abound.
I thought myself the guard of your frail state,
And yet I come to-night a helpless guest,
Hiding beneath your giant Psyche-wings,
Against the pallor of your wondrous breast.
17 January 2007
When you are Old
by William Butler Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
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