Philosphical Poems
Philosophical Poems
From “West Running Brook” – Robert Frost
Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.
It is this backward motion toward the source,
Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,
The tribute of the current to the source.
It is from this in nature we are from.
It is most us.
From “For Anne Gregory” – William Butler Yeats
I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.
From “Tao Te Ching” – Lao Tzu
If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.
From “West Running Brook” – Robert Frost
Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.
It is this backward motion toward the source,
Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,
The tribute of the current to the source.
It is from this in nature we are from.
It is most us.
From “For Anne Gregory” – William Butler Yeats
I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.
From “Tao Te Ching” – Lao Tzu
If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
you must first allow it to flourish.
If you want to take something,
you must first allow it to be given.
This is called the subtle perception
of the way things are.
Comments (238)
Time mashup:
In its flow, in its motion
The past can never live up to the present,
especially when the color is yellow.
Nature's rhythm enables those who listen.
Is that your own? Don't make me bring out my poetry. Things could get ugly.
For me, poetry either works or it doesn't. Most of it doesn't. If it doesn't for you, that's just the way things go.
I did like the “Tao Te Ching” – Lao Tzu poem though.
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and ac-
cepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of chil-
dren,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
-Burnt Norton I, from Four Quartets, by T.S. Elliot
I think great poetry, like any art form, works on multiple levels. It should suck you in viscerally and emotionally, but have enough depth that you can reflect on it later, analyze it, and gain something new from it. And once that cycle has completed, and begins again, the new info you've gleaned through analysis influences the fresh, visceral experience of re-reading. This is how a poem gains depth. And yes, the poem is what gains depth over time, because your individual experience of the poem is what's undergoing an evolution.
I have never liked T.S. Elliot, but I liked that. I wonder if it's because I'm almost 66.
Dunno; I'm much younger than that but love him. Was your dislike because of The Wasteland, by any chance? Edit: saw what you quoted, re: age. Never mind. I like the time stuff because it's confusing, but intuitively feels right.
Four Quartets is a must read, to me. That's just the first section; it's about 50 pages long, and all equally as arcane, profound, annoying, and beautiful. It's the kind of long form poem I'll be reading for the rest of my life, and always gleaning something new from.
Also, Elliot studied philosophy, and then turned to poetry later. The minimalist composer Steve Reich did the same thing, turning to music.
It's just that the way he talks about time matches how it feels looking back. Not exactly the same thing - but I often feel as if everything that ever happened in my life is still happening. My whole life is happening at once. Things that happened 50 years ago are just as real, and close at hand, as things that happened yesterday. My father, who died in 2001, is just as much with me as he was then.
That makes sense; I was made aware of that to a small degree when I was in therapy; living with regret or shame causes us to live in the past, or rather, the past is living with us in the present. Hopefully there's positive applications of that as well.
Actually, re: Elliot as a philosopher-turned-poet, I love how in that first section of Burnt Norton, he sets out a philosophical proposition, and then, rather than providing a logical argument, he paints a dream-like picture of the surreal concept of "what might have been and what has been" (all of which occurs in "the rose-garden"). And then finishes off the section with a re-statement of the proposition. The way he creates that world, through imagination, feels more "real" than a logical proof attempting the same goal.
of lived-in Things...
Time that they came and knocked down every wall
inside my house. New page. Only the wind
from such a turning could be strong enough
to toss the air as a shovel tosses dirt:
a fresh-turned field of breath. O gods, gods!
who used to come so often and are still
asleep in the Things around us, who serenely
rise and at wells that we can only guess at
splash icy water on your necks and faces,
and lightly add your restedness to what seems
already filled to bursting: our full lives.
Once again let it be your morning, gods.
We keep repeating. You alone are source.
With you the world arises, and your dawn
gleams on each crack and crevice of our failure...
-Rainer Maria Rilke, from Uncollected Poems (1923-1926)
No, it's because you're more than 65.
XII
He disposes the world in categories, thus:
The peopled and the unpeopled. In both, he is
Alone. But in the peopled world, there is,
Besides the people, his knowledge of them. In
The unpeopled, there is his knowledge of himself.
Which is more desperate in the moments when
The will demands that what he thinks be true?
Is it himself in them that he knows or they
In him? If it is himself in them, they have
No secret from him. If it is they in him,
He has no secret from them. This knowledge
Of them and of himself destroys both worlds,
Except when he escapes from it. To be
Alone is not to know them or himself.
This creates a third world without knowledge,
In which no one peers, in which the will makes no
Demands. It accepts whatever is as true,
Including pain, which, otherwise, is false.
In the third world, then, there is no pain. Yes, but
What lover has one in such rocks, what woman,
However known, at the centre of the heart?
Perhaps a bit obvious, but worth noting all the same.
Bad for your head.
The more you think,
The more your brain farts.
The more your brain farts,
The worse you think.
So let's pour philosophy down the sink.
(Y)
Wisdom and Follies Haikus
by George Bruce
Books – thousands – on shelves –
Wisdom of ages.
Folly if not in me
When two words do
for ten, then there is
the possibility of wisdom
When ten words set out
to do what two will do
then there is foolishness
Mindfulness of Righteous Anger
by McGuire
Mindfully running for the bus and missing it anyway.
Mindfully mistreating a cold caller with disproportionate contempt.
Mindfully furious as the news unfolds.
Mindfully shouting until you’re red in the face at the opposition.
Mindfully arming yourself against injustice
by doing nothing for a bit.
Mindfully arguing for an hour and wanting to be right
about something you don’t entirely understand yourself
but you are too invested in now
to be willing to concede anyway.
Mindfully breaking suddenly in your car
at a pedestrian walking out in front of you shouting:
‘WATCH WHERE THE HELL YOU’RE GOING, IDIOT!’
Mindfully alarmed with the awareness
that it is in your nature to die, have accidents and get ill.
Mindfully alone, unbalanced and tear-filled.
Mindfully slamming the door and deleting all accounts.
Mindfully finished.
Mindfully snapping the last straw.
Mindfully to the bin with it all.
Mindfully in a love hate relationship with dissatisfaction.
Mindfully sitting with your eyes squeezed shut
wishing to vanish the world away.
Mindfully so had it with the world
you’ll give this mindfulness malarkey a miss
for an hour of screaming at the sky instead.
Mindfulness of this.
Or how the cookie crumbles.
Aubade
I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.
This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anesthetic from which none come round.
And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.
Philip Larkin
Pretty bleak. As I've gotten older, I've felt less and less this way, for what that's worth. I think it started changing when my father died in 2001, when I was 49. It brought my family together in a way that had never happened before. That change continues.
Whose posts were too stupid to cut it
So he gave a quick glance as he unzipped his pants
And said if. @Baden must ban me he can suck it.
Sir Hanover
The closer I get to death, the funnier it seems. There's also that feeling of vertigo you get when you stand close to the edge of a great height.
Changing the subject, this is from "Aunt Celia, 1961" by Carl Dennis:
[i]People will tell you there are many good lives
Waiting for everyone, each fine in its own way.
And maybe they’re right, but in my opinion
One is miles above the others.
Otherwise it wouldn’t have been so clear to me
When I found it. Otherwise those who lack it
Wouldn’t be able to tell so clearly it’s missing
As they go on living as best they can
Without complaining. Noble lives, and beautiful,
And happy as much as doing well can make them.
But as for the happiness that can’t be earned,
The kind it makes no sense for you to look for,
That’s something different.[/i]
Poet, presidential candidate, goatherd, philosopher. Is there anything he can't do.
:lol:
The Cookie Thief - Valerie Cox
A woman was waiting at an airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shops, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.
She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be. . .grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.
So she munched the cookies and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I would blacken his eye.”
With each cookie she took, he took one too, when only one was left, she wondered what he would do. With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half.
He offered her half, as he ate the other, she snatched it from him and thought… oooh, brother. This guy has some nerve and he’s also rude, why he didn’t even show any gratitude!
She had never known when she had been so galled, and sighed with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate, refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.
She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat, then she sought her book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise, there was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.
If mine are here, she moaned in despair, the others were his, and he tried to share. Too late to apologize, she realized with grief, that she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.
:clap: :clap: :clap:
Amazing.
:rofl:
There once were some fools from a bucket
Whose brains told 'em, dearies just fuck it
So they opened their head
Found nowt but sliced bread
They came all the same; please don't dough-t it.
Quoting A History of Western Philosophy in 108 Limericks
For example ?
If you're reading, read.
If you're eating, eat.
Pay attention and never ever
Judge a book by its cover...
And if you do
Don't be too hard on yourself
Or the other.
That's life.
Welcome to TPF, enjoy :cool:
Well I did indeed find myself sympathetic with the woman of the story all the way until the end. Then when I realized the twist and I had to ask myself why I thought the way I did. I just assume that most people would follow along the same line of thinking and be surprised too, then that lead me to think, if that's just a passive acceptance of stimulus or should I be more forward thinking, or open-minded enough to force out/delay any thoughts of judgement until the very end of any situation or experience. It was just an eye opening moment. Not sure if I described it well.
And thank you for the welcome. So far, TPF seems great!
I actually thought it was an interesting social commentary. The woman perceived the man as a bully for stealing the cookies. The man perceived the woman as a flirt when she was stealing the cookies.
Even at the end, she had my sympathies. We can all be guilty of only seeing what we want to see.
Especially, with nose in her newly bought book - apparently a quick read or she just skimmed.
On the plane 'she sought her book, which was almost complete'.
So, an unthinking read using only a small part of her mind which was elsewhere. Stolen. Like the cookies - and again, she was the 'thief'...her physical wants and emotions distracting. Perhaps just like the book itself was intended to be. A brief encounter.
Quoting theUnexaminedMind
She thinks of herself as the goodie -
Rabbie Burns springs to mind:
O, wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!...'
Quoting theUnexaminedMind
A poem with a twist in the tail - taking us by surprise, can make us look again, perhaps to change our own tale.
Quoting theUnexaminedMind
I think if you read it and received the sting, loud and clear, then it wasn't passive.
Don't we all judge as we go, even if open-minded, and that is why we can appreciate the turn of events.
When we learn something...about our own perspectives. So as not to assume that there is only one way of looking, thinking or expressing.
Quoting theUnexaminedMind
The whole raison d'etre of the poem ?
Thanks for answering my question; describing it well and making me think again... :sparkle:
Tales of the unexpected... :scream:
Another way of looking at it. Didn't see that at all !
Jay, huh - are you blue ?
Thank you for your analysis, you've given me even more to think about with this one. I was mainly digesting it as Jay said too.
Quoting Hanover
You guys are insightful!
(Whom Hitler had made all aquiver)
Tried hard to be hailed
Nazi-Plato, but failed
Then denied that he tried, with great vigor.
On Heidegger
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
:smile:
Not a fan, then ?
Like Sam Rickless, here:
Quoting A History of Western Philosophy in 108 Limericks
I guess limericks are a relatively easy way to criticise and poke fun of anyone.
They can raise smiles, eyebrows, applause and emoticons...sometimes curiosity and questions:
What about this is true ?
Why hold the negative/positive judgement ? How was the conclusion arrived at ? From where ?
Is there a counter-limerick out there...
. Meditate over this poem ...
. This poem is as antique ... as ... earth itself ...
Dark Night of the Soul
Once upon a time,
When time was the time of no time,
When time was not born,
When cycles were not known,
When the knowable was the unknowable,
When the unknowable was the known,
When the known and the unkown were one with the unknowable,
A little boy, a little body, a little Bullah,
Fragile, like a flower, alone was in his aloneness.
Under a Tree was he,
Sitting like a Lotus,
Being soaked, being drowned by the lunar crystalline rays,
Into the foggy,
Into the moteless sky,
Was he staring heartly intoxicated.
When tempting voices, descending from the seven Skies,
And arising from the twenty-eight Hells,
Moving, through mischievous no-moves,
Dancing, through an ineffable rhythm,
Singing, through the song of no-song,
Mockingly, said to the little Bullah:
Ó Son of ?uddhodana,
Where have your Bullah been?
Now listen, ó incarnate spirit!
Open your eyes.
Open your heart.
And you shall see me.
The boy did it.
When eyes were open,
A vast emptiness enchanted Bullah heart.
He was not.
And for the first time,
He was.
Marvelously,
In a drunken state,
The Bullah, the soul pronounced:
How boundless is the sky of Samadhi!
W.S. Merwin tackles some phenomenology:
Talking
Whatever I talk about is yesterday
by the time I see anything it is gone
the only way I can see today
is as yesterday
I talk with words I remember
about what has already happened
what I want to talk about is no longer there
it is not there
today I say only what I remember
even when I am speaking of today
nobody else remembers what I remember
not even the same names
I tell parts of a story
that once occurred
and I laugh with surprise at what disappeared
though I remember it so well
From Flower and Hand
Are you talking about the Frost poem? I never really knew what that was about. I just like the way it feels in my mouth. The parallelism. The sense that we grow out of the unity of the world. Recently I came across some lines in the Tao Te Ching that reminded me of it strongly. From Derek Lin's translation of Verse 28:
[i]Know the masculine, hold to the feminine
Be the watercourse of the world
Being the watercourse of the world
The eternal virtue does not depart
Return to the state of the infant
Know the white, hold to the black
Be the standard of the world
Being the standard of the world
The eternal virtue does not deviate
Return to the state of the boundless
Know the honor, hold to the dishonor
Be the valley of the world
Being the valley of the world
The eternal virtue shall be sufficient
Return to the state of plain wood
Plain wood splits, then becomes tools
The sages utilize them
And then become leaders
Thus the greater whole is undivided[/i]
The idea of returning is important in the Tao Te Ching. I'm not sure whether or not he is thinking of it the same way as Lao Tzu. Probably not. But still ...
Merwin does recognize what Frost is pointing at. On the other hand, Merwin uses "us" and "we" differently; He expresses certainty about his perceptions and encounters but is unsure about the world unless it can show itself. Like the following:
Twilight
Oh you are never tame
fire on a mountain
eyes beside water
first day of petals
lying across the bed
in afternoon rainlight
arms of evening
wherever we are is a shore.
- W.S. Merwin, Flower & Hand, page 47
So it is "Taoist" in recognizing limits of speech but is reluctant to draw conclusions as others do.
stood between two bales of hay,
would not decide which to fancy,
until it starved and withered away.
I decided to test out this theory,
that when tested did not prove a fact,
the donkey ate both, and though it may be crass,
I'm renaming the concept, Buridan's fat ass!
Not Idea About the Thing but the Thing Itself
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.
The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow . . .
It would have been outside.
It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier mâché . . .
The sun was coming from outside.
That scrawny cry—it was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,
Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.
I really like that. I've been meaning to read Stevens. I have to be in a special mood to want to read poetry.
He's well worth reading. Quite philosophical, I think. A student of George Santayana, for whom he wrote a poem--To an Old Philosopher in Rome. Also a lawyer, who got into a fist fight with Ernest Hemingway in Key West.
Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.
Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,
Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.
We have oft described the causeless—
That which was always never the less,
As well as the beginnings of our quest,
And too have detailed in the rarest of glimpses
The slowing end of all of forever’s chances.
So now we must now turn our attention keen
To all of the action that exists in-between—
All that’s going on and has gone before,
Out to the furthest reaches, ever-more,
For everything that ever happens,
Including life and all our questions,
Meaning every single event ever gone on,
Of both the animate and the non,
Is but from a single theme played upon.
This then is of the simplest analysis of all,
For it heeds mainly just one call—
That of the second law’s dispersion,
The means for each and every occasion,
From the closest to the farthest range—
That which makes anything change.
These changes range from the simple,
Such as a bouncing ball resting still,
Or ice melting that gives up its chill,
To the more complex, such as digestion,
Growth, death, and even reproduction.
There is excessively subtle change as well,
Such as the formations of opinions tell
And the creation or rejections of the will,
And yet all these kinds of changes, of course,
Still become of one simple, common source,
Which is the underlying collapse into chaos—
The destiny of energy’s unmotivated non-purpose.
All that appears to us to be motive and purpose
Is in fact ultimately motiveless, without purpose.
Even aspirations and their achievement’s ways
Have fed on and come about through the decay.
The deepest structure of change is but decay,
Although it’s not the quantity of energy’s say
That causes decay, but the quality, for it strays.
Energy that is localized is potent to effect change,
And in the course of causing change it ranges,
Spreading and becoming chaotically distributed,
Losing its quality but never of its quantity rid.
The key to all this, as we will see,
Is that it goes though stages wee,
And so it doesn’t disperse all at once,
As might one’s paycheck inside of a month.
This harnessed decay results not only for
Civilizations but for all the events going fore
In the world and the universe beyond,
It accounting for all discernible change
Of all that ever gets so rearranged,
For the quality of all this energy kinged
Declines, the universe unwinding, as a spring.
Chaos may temporarily recede,
Quality building up for a need,
As when cathedrals are built and formed,
And when symphonies are performed,
But these are but local deceits
Born of our own conceits,
For deeper in the world of kinds
The spring inescapably unwinds,
Driving its energy away—
As All is being driven by decay.
The quality of energy meant
Is of its dispersal’s extent.
When it is totally precipitate,
It destroys, but when it’s gait
Is geared through chains of events
It can produce civilization’s tenants.
Ultimately, energy naturally,
Spontaneously, and chaotically
Disperses, causing change, irreversibly.
Think of a group of atoms jostling,
At first as a vigorous motion happening
In some corner of the atomic crowd;
They hand on their energy, loud,
Inducing close neighbors to jostle too,
And soon the jostling disperses too—
The irreversible change but the potion
Of the ‘random’, motiveless motion.
And such does hot metal cool, as atoms swirl,
There being so many atoms in the world
Outside it than in the block metal itself
That entropy’s statistics average themselves.
The illusions of purpose lead us to think
That there are reasons, of some motive link,
Why one change occurs and not another,
And even that there are reasons that cover
Specific changes in locations of energy,
The energy choosing to go there, intentionally,
Such as a purpose for a change in structure,
This being as such as the opening of a flower,
Yet this should not be confused with energy
Achieving to be there in that specific bower,
Since at root, of all the power,
Even that of the root of the flower,
That there is the degradation by dispersal,
This being mostly non reversible and universal.
The energy is always still spreading thencely,
Even as some temporarily located density—
An illusion of specific change
In some region rearranged,
But actually it’s just lingering there, discovering,
Until new opportunities arise for exploring,
The consequences but of ‘random’ opportunity,
Beneath which, purpose still vanishes entirely.
Events are the manifestations
Of overriding probability’s instantiations—
Of all of the events of nature, of every sod,
From the bouncing ball to conceptions of gods,
Of even free will, evolution, and all ambition,
For they’re of our simple idea’s elaborations,
Although for the latter stated there
And such for that as warfare
Their intrinsic simplicity
Is buried more deeply.
And yet though sometimes concealed away,
The spring of all creation is just decay,
The consequence and instruction
Of the natural tendency to corruption.
Love or war become as factions
Through the agency of chemical reactions,
The actions being the chains of reactions,
Whether thinking, doing, or rapt in attention,
For all that happens is of chemical reaction.
At its most rudimentary bottom,
Chemical reactions are rearrangements of atoms,
These being species of molecules
That with perhaps additions and deletions
Then go on to constitute another one, by fate,
Although they sometimes only change shape,
But too can be consumed and torn apart,
Either as a whole or in part, so cruel,
As a source of atoms for another molecule.
Molecules have neither motive nor purpose to act,
Neither an inclination to go on to react
Nor any urge to remain unreacted;
So then why do reactions occur if unacted?
Molecules are but loosely structured
And so they can be easily ruptured,
For reactions may occur if the process energy norm
Is degraded into a more dispersed and chaotic form,
And so as they usually are constantly subject
To the tendency to lose energy, as the abject
Jostling carries it away to the surroundations,
Reactions being misadventure’s transformations,
It then being that some transient arrangements
May suddenly be frozen into permanences
As the energy leaps away to other experiences.
So, molecules are a stage in which the play goes on,
But not so fast that the forms cannot seize upon;
But really, why do molecules have such fragility,
For if their atoms were as tightly bound as nuclei,
Then the universe would have died, being frozen,
Long before the awakening of the forms chosen,
Or if molecules were as totally free to react
Every single time they touched a neighbor’s pact
Then all events would have taken place so rapidly
And so very crazily and haphazardly
That the rich attributes of the world we know
Would not have had the needed time to grow.
Ah, but it is all of the necessitated restraint,
For it ever takes time a scene to paint,
As such as in the unfolding of a leaf,
The endurations for any stepping feat,
As of the emergence of consciousness
And the paused ends of energy’s restlessness:
It’s of the controlled consequence of collapse
Rather than one that’s wholly precipitous.
So now all is known of our heres and nows
Within this parentheses of the eternal boughs,
As well as the why and how of it all has come,
And of our universe’s end, but that others become.
Out of energy’s dispersion and decay of quality
Comes the emergence of growth and complexity.
(The verse lines, being like molecules warmed,
Continually broke apart and reformed
About the rhymes which tried to be non intrusions,
Eventually all flexibly stabilizing to conclusions.)
. Have a taste of this ...
But, and If ...
The outer sky is the outer sky;
But, and if it is not the expression of our inner sky?
But, and if it is not an outer symbol, a direction, an insight leading to our innermost core?
The clouds are the clouds;
But, and if it is not a subtle sign from God, whispering about the messy state of our inner sky, filled by thoughts.
Adam and Eve were expelled of the Kingdom of God;
But, and if God did it compassionately, with no hatred?
But, and if God was trying to indicate that innocence and not knowledge is the doorway to truth, to awe, to tao?
But, and if God was trying to say to Adam:" You shall reborn again, innocently not knowledgeable, to enter into the Kingdom of God."
But, and if human beings are born as Adam's, fragile flowers, whose winds of knowledge take them away from Heaven to Hell?
Jesus is God;
But, and if Jesus is not God.
But, and if Jesus is just a finger pointing to the moon, pointing to the formless form reality, pointing to the thought of no thought, pointing to the voiceless voice of truth?
The serpent is the Devil;
But, and if the Devil and God are just one?
But, and if Man is God when the cycles of rebirth are finished, and he turns to pure consciousness, just a pure mirror, just a crystal lake reflecting the moon shape?
But, and if Man is Devil when he is far away from his being, when he thinks that which he is not, when he is just a cloud of thoughts, occluding the sun rays coming from his heart source?
If is if;
But, and if if's can be reality?
But, and if if's are the hidden truth?
But, and if if's are the hidden truth, trying to waking up that whose dream has become vigil and that whose vigil has become a dream?
I didn't like this when I started it, but the rhythm works really well. It made me pay more attention. I thought the "but and if" format was strained and pretentious, but I got into it more and more as the poem went on. It feels like a gentle poem. Dealing with contradictions without jamming our faces into them. Without saying "What about this? What about this?"
Retrace our steps, if back to the beginning we go
Our journey will end
When we meet the philosopher who set the trend
I knew the bottom wasn't there,
Nor legs nor back, but I just sat,
Ignoring little things like that.[/i]
? Hughes Mearns
Definitely philosophical. I guess it's Platonic idealism. He sat in the ideal form of the chair, not the chair itself.
They did not like
sunlight on your skin,
ordered you sit in the shade,
said: you are repellent
vile, they kept you pale,
insistent endless bullshit
made you wonder
if it was in fact true
the fault was yours?
Clever like that, they are.
Still, the moon
shines for you regardless
all the brighter in fact
child, you stash
light in your cells
wherever you find it
eyes like a magpie
trained to catch a glitter
on water,
reflections bright
on buildings
the long ocean glade
or shushing fields of gold,
so when the dark
falls (and it does)
after all this time
it’s die
or glow.
***
Quoting Scottish Poetry Library - Jenni Fagan
https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/narcissist-light-stasher/
Thanks for sharing Amity :up: It was a really good poem. Also, this thread looks so good and I never noticed it until today. I going to publish one poem in the following days.
:up:
en español ?
Sí! Y también en inglés.
:fire: :100: :sparkle: :cool:
[i]¿Olas o alas?
Olas: Alas del agua.
¿y las gaviotas?
Alas del mar.
¿Vienen o van?
Vienen y se van.
¿Nave o nube?
Nube: Nave de la luna.
¿la luna?
Si, momia del agua.[/i] - Yong Tae Min.
--------------------------------
English translation by me (sorry if is broke or something but I do not trust Google in this context).
[i]Waves or wings?
Waves: The wings of water.
And the seagulls?
Wings of the sea.
Do they come or they leave?
They come and they leave.
Ship or cloud?
Cloud: The ship of the moon.
The moon?
Yes, the mummy of the water.[/i]
If you want check more about the author: Yong-Tae Min
My interpretation of this poem from Yong goes on two ways: White colour reflection (seagulls, moon, ship, etc...) and also freedom (that could be related to white colour itself) when he speaks about the arbitrate movement from de seagulls: "they come and they leave" as much as the waves of the sea. when we see animals flying we tend to interpret it as a freedom metaphor.
https://www.academia.edu/187810/Was_verse_the_default_form_for_Presocratic_Philosophy
Good poem. I really love it when my old threads are kept alive.
By Mahmoud Darwish
Ironically enough, I like it.
¿Quién me compra un sombrero
lleno de nieve?[/i]
- Matsuo Basho.
--------------------
[i]come here, friends:
who wants to purchase a hat
full of snow?[/i]
I think Basho master is referring to snow as purity or infinite. The stations and meteorology are very important to Japanese culture. The simplicity of life can be related to white color interpretation and thus, to snow. A hat? I guess this is due to this garment is put on our heads and filled our knowledge and dreams.
I enjoy this kind of poetry. Haiku or hokku.
As to its meaning, hmm...
A mystery.
I like being called in to him in the first line.
Who wants or needs to buy a hat - when - why ?
In winter to shield from the cold.
In summer to shield from the sun.
You might be glad of a hat full of snow in summer to cool off. But where would you find snow in summer ?
Quoting Wiki: Basho
:cool:
Me too. It is so pretty and philosophical.
Quoting Amity
haha! true you are right! but Haiku poems have to be interpreted to the different stations in the year. We are not in winter yet so we have to wait to understand and experience this haiku.
Quoting Amity
It is interesting to point out that in Japan is common to wear a hat just for everything. More usual if you are worker in a farm. Probably this is why Basho is referring to a hat. Nevertheless, I do not want to sound so simple because this poem goes further than just the practical meaning of a hat.
Quoting Wiki: Basho
:flower: :up:
Quoting Wiki: Basho
:up: I don't know how that sounds in Japanese but it's actually prose in English: "Now then, let's go out to enjoy the snow...until I slip and fall."
Has something been lost in translation? I dunno.
Probably. This is why translation is key in these poems. I don't know if it is accurate at all. My book version is in Spanish and the author who translated it explains to me that he did his best to translate Kanji in our vocabulary.
For example:
Gogori to
Kusa ni
Fundoshi kawaita.
---------------------------
Un revolcon en la hierba
Los calzoncillos ya
Están secos.
--------------------------------
A scramble in the grass
My pants are
Already drought.
- Taneda Santoko.
The translator explained that was difficult to interpret Kusa ni which literally is when you fall in to the grass o field. In Spanish means "revolcón". I searched and English means "Scramble"
That kinda gives me an idea; if we speak with a rhythm, even prose becomes poetry. :point:
That kinda gives me an idea;
If we speak with a rhythm,
Even prose becomes poetry.
[quote=TheMadFool]That was an aside; picking up where we left off, I wonder what the deal is with blank verse. This particular strain of poetry is about rhythm and not rhyme. Rhythm is, bottom line, just another way of keeping time, no? So, metaphysically speaking, poems, whether rhythm/rhyme, are clocks, linguistic clocks. What say you?[/quote]
The above from The Metaphysics of Poetry
Yes, it is true. There are a lot of different types or manners to compound a poem. Haiku is the one I love the most because it is so philosophical. It doesn't even rhyme at all but this is why I guess it sounds so good.
One of the objectives of poetry, as Taneda Santoka explained back in the day, is freezing a particular moment in our life: the sunset, night, moon, nostalgia, parents, etc... Probably this is what we can consider as rhythm.
Billow slowly overhead
The soft city groans
:ok: You know a lot about poetry. Great to have you on the TPF team. It looks like most forum members have their own unique talents - just needs the right thread for members to go public with whatever's their shtick!
The only Haiku poetry I can remember from my youth is,
[quote=Gy?dai]
Leaves fall
And pile up;
Rain beats on rain.[/quote]
There was a connection there between the poem, the poet, and me but it's lost now. Too bad, I wish I could go back about 30 years ago and re-read the poem and re-experience those emotions again.
Numinous,
Back then it was,
Now,
Like a spent candle,
Nothing!
That's not haiku brah..
Indeed, it says it's hokku. Mind telling me what's the difference between hokku and haiku?
By the way,
[quote=Internet]Hokku is the pre-modern form of Haiku.[/quote]
Where?...
Never mind!
A'ight, well, anyways I left you guys a haiku I wrote during lockdown a couple posts back. Whatevs
Thank you so much for this comment! It cheered me up! When I was a kid I used to write poetry in my notebook. Sometimes I think if I make a good effort I could write good poems and participate in some competitions.
Beautiful Haiku :flower: I will check Gyodai more deeply beacuse I never heard about him until today.
It's not a haiku tho...
:up: Forget about it!
Quoting javi2541997
Do. Good luck!
Which one?
The one you referenced as a beautiful haiku..
Oh! I thought it was a haiku. Well, I want to share with you a real haiku then.
It is debating the decadence of a summer
At the cafeteria.
Butterflies flutter.
-----------------------------
Kafe ni Dekadan o ronzu natsu no ch? toberi.
By Taneda Santoka.
Maybe you know more than I do. I'm looking for the 5/7/5 pattern I know, but I'm not seeing it. I'm aware that the original Japanese structure isn't the same. It still doesn't quite add up to 17, so again, maybe I'm in the dark here.
It does not fit the classical pattern because Taneda Santoka changed it. He wanted to revolution the classical pattern of 5/7/5. Sometimes is usual to see in their poems some variations from the original haiku.
But here is a classical good one:
even a horse.
arrests my eyes—on this.
snowy morrow
--------------------------------------
uma wo sae
nagamuru yuki no
ashita kana
By
Matsuo Bash?
Interesting to consider if the form or structure of haiku is changed is it still 'haiku'.
I think not. The changes detract from the discipline. Free-verse haiku ?!
Quoting Wiki: Taneda
What is a poem ? A single utterance ?!
This is a poem :up:
From wiki:
Similar poems that do not adhere to these rules are generally classified as senry?.
Haiku:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku
Hmm. If you run any lines in a poem together does it become prose ? Suppose so.
I think that might diminish the effect of the breaks and paying attention to each line and how they fit with each other, or not.
Quoting javi2541997
Yes, exactly this. A moment in time.
Quoting TheMadFool
I like that!
Back to prose and poetry. Have you thought of a prose poem ?
Quoting writers - prose poetry definition
Quoting TheMadFool
Yeah, I know that feeling. It's like when you re-read a book. However, down the line a bit we can still experience emotions, even if they might be different and unexpected...
Interesting point of view, Amity. It opens and interesting debate if we should consider Taneda Santoka's works as haiku when sometimes he changed the pattern of the poem. I think in overall we can say Santoka was a good haiku master but sometimes he used to not care about the classical pattern.
But it is true that if we are sharing haiku poems, at least, they have to respect the pattern. We can also find some works of Santoka that are so related to.
??????????????
-------------------------------------------------
Así, tal cual,
como hierbas que son,
los brotes se abren
-----------------------------------------------
As is well,
As leafs they are,
Buds open.
Note: sorry if it doesnt fit the pattern. I translated it to English by myself... :fear:
Quoting javi2541997
Thanks for all of this :sparkle:
Translations of Santoka and others, here:
Quoting terebess - haiku - taneda
https://terebess.hu/english/haiku/taneda.html
There's so much here, it's incredible. Need to keep scrolling, scrolling...
***
:fire:
Haiku in Western languages:
https://terebess.hu/english/haiku/haiku.html
True! This is so awesome and beautiful. I am so interested on it. Probably it can take even months or years but Haiku is already part of my life.
https://terebess.hu/english/haiku/cage.html
Can anyone - possibly a musician/poet @Noble Dust explain how this is like haiku ?
John Cage - Seven Haiku
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn6aQDFJabk
Prose poetry: From the examples in the link you provided, all that stood out to me was rhythm (cadence?). The point of prose poetry seems to be to express thoughts and emotions as they flash through the poets mind for the first time; these when ruminated upon rationally become standard prose. I guess we could say prose poetry is reminiscent of and recapitulates humanity's earliest encounters with language and cogitation - vague, fragmentary, emotional more than rational, directionless, borderline coherence, so on.
Possibly.
From the prose poetry link:
I was thinking about how haikus are composed.
If they are to capture a moment in time and still must follow certain 'rules'...
I suppose it's like taking a snapshot ? It has to be almost instantaneous, or does it ?
Or is it more like - capturing a moment in the mind and then 'painting' it afterwards from memory.
A landscape artist who can't paint en plein air might use a photograph of the scene.
But that wouldn't quite have the same 'feel' to it, would it ?
I wonder if the rules become second nature - like our grammar rules, or driving a car - so that some haiku poets don't even have to remember to shift gear, they just do it automatically?
Hmm...
Exactly. It is like a photo or a paint. The sun goind down in the afternoon. The moon raising up in the night. A beautiful butterfly fluttering around, etc...
The ability of freeze these life experiences in a poem is extraordinary. It is not more than 19 syllables but it says everything. I have a tiny book about haiku what is called "peeing in the snow". The main author argue that the nature of these poems is more what you do not say that what you say actually. He warns that we should not explain so much the Haiku after it is written because we can destroy their nature. It is so much interesting.
Quoting Amity
I think yes. They can do so automatically. They wrote a lot of haiku back in the day so probably they just followed the pattern as we drink water or see a boat leaving from the port. The basic rules of Haiku were the life emotions to them
Some are natural poets, they don't have to learn the ropes like others and mayhaps the difference between these two can be seen in their respective works. The trained have their moment in the sun and we must give them credit due but its the talented who are the trailblazers. I maybe biased though and may have ruffled some feathers already. That's all. Good day.
More here.
The million dollar question: How did modern literary researchers recognize Enheduanna's work as poetry? Is there some cross-cultural leitmotif to poetry that helps the careful reader identify a work as verse instead of prose?
Agua del cielo.
Pero, ¡Que peces, madre
Qué peces tan lento abajo se van![/i]
------------------------------------------------
[i]Air.
Water of the sky.
But, what fishes, mother
What fishes so slow down they go! [/i]
Note: This is not a haiku.
Another poem from Yong Tae Min. I guess this poem is referring to the drops of the rain. Fish as an animal from the sea, could be related to water. Thus, the little drops converted on fishes that so slow down they go like swimming in a cascade.
I have never seen in this world anyone as gorgeous as you.
Truly within the garden of the soul there can be,
No gesture so elegant as your tall erect cypress.
Although there are many beauties among humanity,
There is none,
O Beauty,
So radiant as you."[/i]
From Khata'i, my favorite poet
BY PAUL TRAN
Someone standing at the mouth had
the idea to enter. To go further
than light or language could
go. As they followed
the idea, light and language followed
like two wolves—panting, hearing themselves
panting. A shapeless scent
in the damp air?...
Keep going, the idea said.
Someone kept going. Deeper and deeper, they saw
others had been there. Others had left
objects that couldn’t have found their way
there alone. Ocher-stained shells. Bird bones. Grounded
hematite. On the walls,
as if stepping into history, someone saw
their purpose: cows. Bulls. Bison. Deer. Horses—
some pregnant, some slaughtered.
The wild-
life seemed wild and alive, moving
when someone moved, casting their shadows
on the shadows stretching
in every direction. Keep going,
the idea said again. Go?...
Someone continued. They followed the idea so far inside that
outside was another idea.
Source: Poetry (October 2019)
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150941/the-cave-5d70274986958
In their spotting
Are the only ones
Non-rotting
While every
eternity
Bloodery
Or nitty
Nor witty
Rots to the bone
Their flesh stays young
Like their every tone
In the waters of heaven
In the aromas of hell
On Stratford on Avon
In all that they tell
Their creation runs freely
At least, so it should
Like Dan oh so Steely
Down there under the Hood
Consider them dead though
As our friend once proclaimed
Give it a go bro
Nihilistically maimed
Dwelling the Earths
Undetermined and steady
Finding love on the road
Route 66
Lacks a 6 at the end
Or at the beginning
Is it that what they meant
And made us write down
The points that we do
Or faces that frown
And on and on and on
On and on and on
And on and on and on
And on and on and on it goes
On and on and on
Oh and on and on
Yay bro's
On and on on tippy toes
Thankfull am I
They made it all happen
That I walk on and by
Them so I reackon
I tell them to screw
Turn the blind eye in them
The big bangs they blew
An Inflation divine gem
All hail to the western gods...
God damn them!
Against the odds
Can't standem!
On and on they say of Who paved the way,
Then even tell the nature of such Theity,
And on and on they presume further upon,
Joining that group called ‘On and On Anon’.
Just for fun, using 'MadFool' because I needed a two-syllable extendable name…
The MadFool, trapped in a cave by a poem,
As by the writing on the wall stranded,
Was martially both right and left handed;
Such he slashed rhythms and rhymes from the stone.
Madfool sights an ominous type of cloud,
And shakes, hearing thunderous rhymes so loud,
Just having survived the meters’ melodies
And scans, with the ten syllables allowed.
He runs breathless through meadow and forest,
Fast pursued by the stings of wind and rain;
On and on he pushes, wild without rest,
Searching for haven from the forum’s pain.
The storm chases him till he can go no more;
He stands helpless, backed up against a door,
But falls through it before death can touch him,
Saved by the library admitting him.
He wanders deep, down the poetic path,
Aglow in the soft beauty that it hath.
He sees John Keats kissing Fanny Brawne,
As he spoke more than words but less than song.
And Byron, endowing form with fancy,
While Wordsworth pens his thoughts to Lucy,
And Shelley, plumbing depths of mystery.
He reads them all; they grow his poet-tree.
Deeper still he probes, looking in on it,
And hears Mrs. Browning reading a sonnet.
Poetically, he takes them all in, even
The shadowy Emily Dickenson.
As soon as the lightning storm is past,
The MadFooler enters the courtyard vast.
Here the secret garden, half as old as time,
Where poets live and write their words and rhyme,
While the nightingale creates the rose,
By moonlit magic, from their thoughts sublime.
Literary scenes unfold before him,
Such as music approaches and surrounds,
And builds on the vibrance which in one is—
To fill with beautiful visions and sounds.
His quick thoughts rise, mist wafting from the dew,
As living dreams unveil more than he knew.
From poetry’s light the garden grew,
Revealing mysterious wonders new.
There MadFool relaxes, up against a tree,
Savoring the feeling of the poetry,
Where all the flowers used in Shakespeare’s plays
Grow together in a living bouquet.
“What are you?”
“I’m the artist’s stylus. I am finally freed from the pen!”
“How so?
“I will no longer illustrate the written word. From now on I will draw whatever is seen and heard. Then writers and poets can re-de-scribe my sketches with their wondrous words and jive!”
“I get it,” she says. “The proof of writing is in the living of it, especially one’s philosophical advice, as writ. Live it, feel it, and then write it.
“Now there is a living pen coming by, who seems to be a companion of the artist’s stylus.”
“What are you?” she asks.
“I am the writer’s pen of poems. I deal with ever enduring themes, those universal to everyones’ means. As you can see, I am structured, intense, rhythmic, melodic, and pure. I am a unified body of sensation, thoughts, and passions. I translate all that is deep felt, suchly, although sometimes only very roughly.”
“Are you essence or existence?” I wonder.
“I am both; I am the form as well as the idea risen. I am an object that is born of precision, from one’s profoundest visions. I am the image of feeling in diction, but concise. I am, at once, all the remains, both the container and the contained.”
“You’re an expression of the mess that may be difficult to express,” she notes.
“I am truth, fleshed in living words attended. I express thoughts subtended, those that would otherwise go unapprehended. I lift the veil that separates mind from soul, and thereby show the proof of beauty told. I am life’s image drawn in the eternal truths of old.”
“You are immortal then, poem?” I splice.
“Poetry makes immortal what is best in life, by freeing images from all the strife, those in our spirits that are deeply impressed, for, these vanishing notions I arrest, clothe them in words, the best, and then send them forth, fully dressed.”
“So how is it known if I’ve written a poem?” she questions.
“Well, use the highest powers of language and wit to translate the nature into poetic words, lit. The reader will translate the words back into spirit. If the reader’s soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!”
I offer, “Let us write a poem about love, for that is the greatest thing known of, but it’s hard to get it to rhyme. Out of desperation, we have the following lines:”
The Trouble with ‘Love’.
Only a few words rhyme with love above,
Like the overflown dove, the heartless shove,
And the ill-fitting glove. Alas, love’s rhymes
Remain unheard of, or aren’t well thought of.
“Let us walk along the earth, feeling our words’ worth.”
The artist’s stylus and the writer’s pen further discuss:
The writer’s pen stands forth, being first,
Instructing the artist’s stylus
To illustrate the words of his epic,
Since a picture is worth a thousand words.
“Perhaps we don’t even need the words”,
Retorts the artist’s stylus,
“As I am worth so many”.
“Well,” replies the writer’s pen,
“It’s true that many people now refuse
To read books without lots of pictures in them.”
“How sad, for I guess some words
Are needed to round out the tale.”
“True, for the two sides of the brain
Can then combine in unity.”
“Or I could draw the pictures first
And then you could write the words.”
“It could be like that sometimes, I suppose.”
“OK, shake; it’s a deal either way,
For we need each other."
Nice! Strangely that reminds me of a poem (faux haiku) I wrote about 20 years ago:
Lonely at the heart
the silent moon
crying over the dark ranges
I say it's "faux haiku" since its syllabic line structure is not strictly haiku (5, 7, 5) and it makes no reference to the season.
I could change it to make it closer:
Lonely at the heart
the silent moon is crying
over the dark range
or even closer:
Lonely at the heart
silent winter moon crying
over the dark range
or:
Lonely at the heart
silent winter moon crying
over dark ranges
Constraint is the mother of invention.
:blush:
TheMadFool trapped;
wishes wings he could've flapped.
To flee the hunger and/or the greed;
his body eaten/sold, his mind bought/freed.
:grin:
Part 1
The Music of the Spheres lights the sparkles
Flung through the night, from our Father, the Sky,
On through the dark, to our Mother the Earth,
To us, their audience and progeny.
The music of the night is in the breeze,
A prelude borne by the airy musicians
Of the trees: the evening calls of the birds
That open for the cosmic symphony.
The planets join in a concert to the
Merrie Monthe of Maie, arrayed as follows:
There is Venusia, the Bringer of Peace,
Singing side by side with warring Marsius.
Flitting about is the wingéd Mercuria,
The speedy messenger who conducts
The orchestra, melting all of us who
Are touched by her wand of burning desire.
And mighty Zeus is there, full to the brim
With the jollity of the fat man’s belly.
By Jove, comes Saturnus, so very grey
With age, lumbering into the party.
Thence sits Urania—the magician, and
The old sea captain—King Nep, the mystic,
But not Pluto; he was downsized, no more
One of the harmonics—an underworld!
Jupiter’s music is round and robust,
While Saturn’s booms with sounds of grandeur
And the old venerable melodies;
But Mercury soon picks up the pace.
Now flow the serene love songs of Venus,
Followed inexorably by Martial marches.
This is the time for Urania’s magic—
She plays musical jokes and surprises.
At last, their music comes to mesh as one,
And our wanderers of the night float
Away on the haunting, mystical strains
Of King Nep’s tune, into the May Flower moon.
…
[i]Since we all become of this universe
Should we not ask who we are, whence we come?[/i]
Insight clefts night’s skirt with its radiance:
The Theory of Everything shines through!
Lovely. Feels cool.
The Music of the Night - Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=77umP7IRxD4
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Clever Clefts. Keys opening the door to the mysteries. Or not...
Perhaps the best album of music ever made.
Part 2
Oh, dome of night, spotted with silver stars,
We must ask more than you can grant unto us,
So that thus we might at least obtain that
Which we but wish for in the first place.
[i]We beg you to yield your dearest secrets,
To reveal the full truth of what you are.[/i]
“Oh, man, I cannot tell thee of all there is,
Though I am that, as all that IS—the Wiz.
As I never began, I earned not my throne,
But I reside as the All for reasons unknown.”
Much we already know from twilight dreams
And from poems unveiling truth and beauty,
Yet we ask, with our most persuasive looks,
To learn the deepest mysteries of the night.
“I have always been, and must be, so jot:
That All is ever here to be, since nothing cannot.”
[i]Well then, might lesser answers we obtain, in lieu
Of never us knowing really the why-fore of you?[/i]
“Oh, heavens yes; pose your quandaries,
But ask not immortality, nor youth, nor birth
From my powers of the night, ‘though these I have
But know not the Why, for I have no First.”
Why then, is the universe so extravagant—
With trillions of galaxies of billions of stars
About which so many planets whirl and twirl,
With so much dust swirling in between worlds?
“There are vast multitudes, true, so easily made,
And more; yet they are finite, as must be,
For no cap can be placed on infinity;
If it could, then night would be white with light.”
(And if the universe were not expanding.)
[i]So then, there are stars to burn, as with riches,
But why, really must the largest be so large?[/i]
“It is because the infinitesimal, the smallest,
Must be so very tiny, so minuscule,
As a simple, continuous function,
Neither composite nor of course complex.”
So there is a basic lightness of being
Because anything more would then be of parts
And thus well beyond the fundamental arts?
“Yes it is that the base can only be as such
When it’s just a bit more than nothing;
But there is some more to it; just ask to learn.”
Is it too that there are then so many more chances
For arrangements, due to the extravagances?
“Not as meant, but that falls out, as it must,
For since the opposite Not cannot be,
It must then be Everything—of Possibility.”
[i]All at once? Then that is a superposed All.
What makes time begin and then gear its call?[/I]
“As great as I am, there are two limits
To which even I must ever obey:
My superpositions must either trace back
To total order or to disorder: two.”
And so time can only begin from order,
As with matter separated from antimatter—
Time pushed forward by this arrangement,
And further pulled forward by disorder?
“‘Tis confirmed, with the Big Bang start,
Through the vast stages of diversity,
Unto the end—of entropy’s heat death.”
[i]As protons to stars to their explosions
And radiations to atoms to cells to life
Unto brains and consciousness?[/i]
“Yes, from the stars cometh not just your help,
But me too and everything else out there.
All is the continuance of just the one big effect
Of the one big event of the beginning of time.”
Atoms from stars of electrons/protons became
From the quantum vacuum fluctuations names
For the positive/negative balances of nonexistence,
That penultimate compositioning of our persistence.
“I am that, as the night sky, whom you ask.”
We wish that we can retain your presence
Within us, in rhythm and resonance.
“Everything is part of the IS,
Which is really the best answer to your quiz.”
Who are we really talking to?
“Your selves, for you are the universe come to life.”
I live; I love.
“You do not just live; you are life.
You do not just love; you are love.”
They are both here.
“Life and love do not flee on,
Just ahead of you, unreachable,
Leaving you but to lean forth and drink their wind.
You are the universe turned around to view itself.”
I strive.
“Zest, desire, caring, and other feelings sweet
Are your lightning feet for triumphant feats.”
I reason.
“All manner of shapes haunt the wilderness of the mind,
Many as waste, as in the universe, at large, in kind,
Just waiting and asking to be tamed as sane.”
I ponder.
“You are the golden chalice to the wine that flows;
Drink, drink!
You are the live and resultant existence that knows.
Think, think!”
I imagine.
“Thoughts fly in the mind
Like birds wing the wind;
“Imagination is the atmosphere
Wherein ideas are born and borne
On the waves of the sea in which one sees.”
We have arrived, after 13.57 billion years.
“The glorious light flashes us into being shone,
As the light ‘eternal’ of all time to be known.
“All possibilities must exist,
Because nonexistence cannot be so.
Existence is inevitable.”
What does exist?
“Whatever is possible to exist does exist.”
Are there others elsewhere as we and all?
“Yes, in quite a few places, but afar,
With much intervening space in between.
“Your fruits are of a universal seed,
As yet another yield of All possibility treed,
And siblings elsewhere in the entropic sea
Are also born of such probability.
What more could human mammals want?
“This is it.
There is nothing more,
But in future growth.
“Why fret about life’s ultimate secret,
For whose thoughts can escape this worldly net?
It’s so easy: don’t despair, be happy!
All told, ‘tis best to live without regret.”
It is now and we are here.
“That’s the best place and time.”
…
(Next in the poem,
we will go down, down, to the deep,
Such as those who went
deep into the cave poem you posted.)
by Salah Stétié
(English translation: O5; original poem below)
It's raining rain on Palestine
Rain without rain, rain of fire
For Marie the Virgin there were seven swords
But there are more in the hearts of those
Who can’t sleep in their frail houses no more
Who have only the street of the terrible poor
To twist their arm for their lost son
It's raining rain, raining night
In the plain sunlight of the day lost
Where life begets no more the beautiful name of life
The heart can’t do it anymore the heart can’t do it no more
To see the children cry of distress
The snotty boy the girl with the braided hair
This country of olives is of Christ
The Palm here is his long lost sign
We sang his clear birth
His fragility of convicted child
By the awful Caesar by the awful Herod
Whose hands never would be bleached
If all the Jordan came to wash them
This child of yesterday is today reborn
In the black fold of Palestinian women
Husbands are dead the sons are lost
Sheet metal and bare concrete houses
Have fallen like at Guernica pipes cry out
Facing the tanks and helmeted soldiers
Dumb from the silence of those who kill
Moses, O Moses
Did not want that
It is our planet, earthly and so blue
That was made of air and water so that they live
Together: he harnessed of leather
And the teenager left to cook
In the fire created where the cylinder
gas exploded under accurate fire
Moses, O Moses
Did not want that
Precise shrapnel aimed to the heart
Of the stillborn child in the white church
All are asleep and not just the guards
But the white man of Rome too, so old,
Democracies and their seedy leaders
That one whose forehead is so narrow
Over narrow eyes he confirms Darwin
Poor Palestine of the poor, why
Oh why would you want them to wake up?
In Jerusalem reigns Ubu Roi
Sabra and Shatila in his pocket, and the other
The Nobel Peace Prize, the fake nose
Yes, why would you want us to wake up?
If they want double portion, why not?
Our princes are fast asleep in barrels/day
Le Pen in France comes in with his glass eye
And the House of Glass, in New York
Is once again this "thingy" we know
Why would you move at all, poor Palestine
When they at long last propose to finish you off?
Country of Christ do you remember Christ?
Country of Islam why do you want to live?
There are for you the starry tanks of Sharon
As Putin is for Chechnya
And Bush is there to direct the music...
Country of Christ why do you want to live?
Easter is spent and it's the "spring epidemic"
It rains it rains it rains on you, my Palestine,
Country without rain country with rain of fire
And for Marie, "the un-touched by any man",
Always, in the heart of her heart, the thorns
Original :
Pluie sur la Palestine
Il pleut de la pluie sur la Palestine
De la pluie sans pluie de la pluie de feu
Pour Marie la Vierge il y eut sept épées
Il y en a bien plus dans le coeur de celles
Qui ne dorment plus dans leurs maisons frêles
Et qui ont la rue des pauvres terribles
Pour tordre leurs bras sur le fils perdu
Il pleut de la pluie il pleut de la nuit
Dans le plein soleil de ce jour perdu
Où la vie n’a plus son beau nom de vie
Le coeur n’en peut plus le coeur n’en peut plus
De voir les enfants pleurer de détresse
Le garçon morveux la fille en ses tresses
Ce pays d’olive est pays du Christ
La palme est ici son signe perdu
Nous avons chanté sa naissance claire
Sa fragilité d’enfant condamné
Par l’affreux César par l’affreux Hérode
Dont les mains jamais ne seraient blanchies
Si tous les Jourdain venaient les laver
Cet enfant d’hier renaît aujourd’hui
Dans le giron noir des Palestiniennes
Les maris sont morts les fils sont perdus
Les maisons de tôle et de béton nu
Sont tombés comme à Guernica les tuyaux crient
Face aux tanks et face aux soldats casqués
Muets du silence de ceux-là qui tuent
Moïse, Moïse
N’a pas voulu ça
C’est notre planète, terrestre et si bleue
Celle qu’on fit d’air et d’eau pour qu’ils vivent
Ensemble : celui harnaché de cuir
Et l’adolescent qu’on a laissé cuire
Dans l’incendie créé où la bonbonne
De gaz explosa sous le tir précis
Moïse, Moïse
N’a pas voulu ça
Précise mitraille ajustée au coeur
De l’enfant mort-né dans l’église blanche
Tous dorment et pas seulement les gardes
Mais l’Homme blanc de Rome aussi, si vieux,
Les Démocraties et leur Chef miteux
Celui-là de qui le front si étroit
Sur des yeux étroits confirme Darwin
Pauvre Palestine des pauvres, pourquoi
Oui pourquoi veux-tu que ça les réveille ?
A Jérusalem règne l’Ubu-Roi,
Sabra et Chatila en poche, et l’autre
Le Prix Nobel de la Paix, le faux-nez
Oui, pourquoi veux-tu que ça nous réveille ?
S’ils veulent double portion, pourquoi pas ?
Nos princes se sont assoupis en barils/jour
Le Pen en France arrive avec son oeil de verre
Et la Maison de Verre aussi, à New York
Est redevenue le " machin " qu’on sait
A quoi bon bouger, pauvre Palestine
Puisqu’on te propose enfin d’en finir ?
Pays du Christ te souvient-il du Christ ?
Pays d’Islam pourquoi veux-tu revivre ?
Il y a pour toi les chars étoilés de Sharon
Comme il y a pour la Tchétchénie Poutine
Et Bush est là pour régler la musique …
Pays du Christ pourquoi veux-tu vivre ?
Pâques est passé et c’est "printemps d’épidémie"
Il pleut il pleut il pleut sur toi, ma Palestine,
Pays sans pluie pays à pluie de feu
Et pour Marie, "la non-touchée d’un homme",
Il y a toujours, au cœur du cœur, les épines
Beautiful and tragic. Lovely words for a terrible situation. May it bring solace and peace and love to the poor people on who the objective fires of selfrighteousness are rained down. :cry:
If I take an umbrella, I won't get wet
If I take an umbrella, it won't rain
It is an extraordinary poem. I will have to read it again. Did you translate it ?
It does read very well - but I wasn't sure about:
Est redevenue le " machin " qu’on sait
Is once again this "thingy" we know
A minor detail but 'thingy' jarred a little. Why not just use the word 'thing' ?
Yes I did translate it. Translating poems is always a treason though. As the Italians say: traduttore traditore.
As you know I am not a native speaker so I get things wrong all the time.
Le "machin" is a reference to De Gaulle calling the United Nations (The House of Glass in New York) "un machin" (a thing, but derogatively, i.e. a thing that doesn't do anything). I tried to render the derogative nuance with "thingy"... Any suggestion?
Nah. Mostly you are brilliant :100:
Quoting Olivier5
Thanks for the explanation. I am not getting all the references, as yet.
I can't think of anything-y better :sparkle:
I wish I had half * your talent for translation and interpretation...
* or 'smidgeon'.
How does that translate ?
pincée - so Google tells me...
Is there more, then, to the beginning?
“Yes.”
Thus, we ask from the powers of the night,
Not immortality, nor youth, nor birth,
But only that we glimpse the enigmatic—
That riddle solved of the conundrum.
“Then we must go downward and pastward
Into the Depths of the Deep.”
[i]Here we stand, each holding fast,
Onto our other half.[/i]
“Follow.”
The door resists at first.
Then creaks into the crypt,
Powdered rust streaming from the hinges.
[i]Here the answer to All is kept;
But not all was pleasant—it speaks of death,
Of life’s end, separate by just a breath.[/i]
“To learn the Secrets—what IS and e’er WAS,
One must brave the crypt and ghost of cause.
“So into the deep we go, without pause,
To look down, ever down, no self to keep—
Through birth, death, and the shade of sleep,
Through paths unkempt, under swept—
“To the deep,
“Through the cloudy strife of this hazy life,
Through the equations of eternity—
Their non-paternity nor maternity,
Past the realm of the things which seem or are,
Even o’er the steps of the remotest bar.
Down, down,
“Where the mind whirls round and round,
As the ear draws forth the sound,
As the eye sees the light,
And of the dark the fright.
“Down, down,
“Beyond all death, despair, love, and sorrow,
Past yesterday, today, and tomorrow—
The body’s guide but the logic of the ‘know’.
“Down through the fog, the not, and the void,
Where ‘God’ and everything fail; Oh, zoids!
“Down,
“Where reigns the night, where the air is thin,
Where the sky and stars are not, but within,
Where the glorious have not their throne,
Where there is one presiding, all alone.
“Down, down,
“To the fathoms of the cryptic;
Where substance slept with arithmetic,
“Toward the spark yet nursed by embers,
To the first and last the universe remembers,
To seek the gem that shines—the wealth of mines,
The jewels so treasured by thee and thine.”
[i]What truth accelerates life’s momentous gem,
Letting the motto become ‘Carpe diem?
Who seized the moment or lost its momentum,
Wearing not the time as its royal diadem?[/I]
“Down, down!
“We guide thee, we must carry thee;
We’re illumination beside thee…
“Down!
“Fear not the proof—
It’s the beauty of the truth:
“Above the ground you were ever born again,
When the roseate hearts were cleansed by dew,
And lucky were you if spring found you new,
As every blossom on the bush blew full.
“When these wonders the new morning bestrew,
The beauty of truth was all that you “knew”.
“Life’s hardships there were softened by beauty,
All its weaknesses strengthened by the truth—
As when roses blossomed, like realizations,
Beauty itself bloomed from the well of truth.
“For now, rarely enough, existence is left aside,
And yet the essence ever has its other side.”
When sadness brooded over the morrow,
I once visited the deep well of sorrow.
There enshrined, inseparate, Beauty said,
‘Twas from me that sadness you borrowed.’
“Down, down,
“The essence beckons you back home,
As the contained-container is the poem.”
[i]So do we live the life of art,
Each playing our part?[/i]
“Nay, that is not life, nor a part, bit,
For there’s another dimension to it.
Art and poetry enrich human experience
But they’re not substitutes for the living of it.”
Like Keats’ figures on the urn, blest,
Should we live life any less?
“No—because what is deathless is also lifeless!”
“Down, down!”
[i]Truth and beauty must be inseparable,
Although this is seemingly imponderable.[/i]
On that sphere above,
Soft breezes ever blew, caressing me and you
As we kissed the roses new and drank their dew.
[i]Reason and passion then merged into one,
As truth and beauty made their rendezvous.[/i]
“Down, down, ever down—
“Through the antiquity, past all of the known—
Arriving at the lowest, remotest throne,
One of the highest perfection,
For it is of the two contrasting directions.
“Plus and minus from little came to be,
But while most charges rejoined, some went free,
The pluses forming matter, energy,
And the minuses forming gravity.
“Opposite twins rule the causing call,
The positives and negatives constituting All.”
[i]Here the enigma of the ever immortal
Is undone and unloosed through its portal:
The Theory of Everything mortal—
The Idea for which we’ve opened the door to.[/I]
“Down, down,
“To the end at last!”
Here be the lawless and the formless
Of the unordered, uncreated scene.
Here the causeless reigns supreme.
…
(The timeless-formless contains ev’ry path,
Useless as the Library of All Books—
Its sum of information is zero,
Yet, one of the avenues became ours.)
The Telephone - Robert Frost
[i]“When I was just as far as I could walk
From here to-day,
There was an hour
All still
When leaning with my head against a flower
I heard you talk.
Don’t say I didn’t, for I heard you say—
You spoke from that flower on the window sill—
Do you remember what it was you said?”
“First tell me what it was you thought you heard.”
“Having found the flower and driven a bee away,
I leaned my head,
And holding by the stalk,
I listened and I thought I caught the word—
What was it? Did you call me by my name?
Or did you say—
Someone said ‘Come’—I heard it as I bowed.”
“I may have thought as much, but not aloud.”
“Well, so I came.”[/i]
As you may have guessed by now, I love Robert Frost. He has a reputation as something of a misogynist, but I love the way he portrays women and relationships between women and men in his poetry. I think this may be his most romantic poem. Willing to be convinced otherwise. Not particularly philosophical, so I'll put in the final verses from "Two Tramps in Mud Time."
[i]The time when most I loved my task
These two must make me love it more
By coming with what they came to ask.
You’d think I never had felt before
The weight of an axhead poised aloft,
The grip on earth of outspread feet.
The life of muscles rocking soft
And smooth and moist in vernal heat.
Out of the woods two hulking tramps
(From sleeping God knows where last night,
But not long since in the lumber camps.)
They thought all chopping was theirs of right.
Men of the woods and lumberjacks,
They judged me by their appropriate tool.
Except as a fellow handled an ax,
They had no way of knowing a fool.
Nothing on either side was said.
They knew they had but to stay their stay
And all their logic would fill my head:
As that I had no right to play
With what was another man’s work for gain.
My right might be love but theirs was need.
And where the two exist in twain
Theirs was the better right — agreed.
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes.[/i]
Gives me chills whenever I read it.
Only when love and need are one
And the work is play for mortal stakes.
Damn, damn, damn.
Minding only bussiness of mine
The etalage offered what it could
A peeking under hood
My bitch on my side
Looking in young year
No need to abide
There was nothing to fear
Then the arrival arrived
Harsh words were spoken
Ratio deprived
What an artistic token
Flanel smart cell phones
Used like dumb smart gun
Speking were underones
Reason able on the run
Jealous minds spoke to police
Troop were called out for
The soft morning breeze
Had better in store
The door of his store
Received foot from my hand
How stupid his pussy galore
The artman that I can't stand
Police was called to
But they didn't arrive
Anticipation I stalled to
But no jar to jive
Later that nice day
Jealous supplier supplied
It gave, though unknow yet, me way
A disturbing of me was implied
Police accounted objective
But didn't account
My story subjective
Tails went wiggling round
It got me a place
To show of my art
That black jealous face
I will make it start
Seringes will stuff I
Plastic guns will I fill
Thinking of buff-eye
On his provided canvas the colors will drill
Explaining the Cosmos is as easy as pie:
It’s an endless extravagance beyond the sky,
Which shows that matter’s very readily made—
Underlying energy raising the shades.
[i]This All sounds rather like an ultimate free lunch,
For the basis is already made, with no punch,
It ever being around, as is, never a ‘was’—
Everywhere, in great abundance quite unheard of.[/i]
There’s even more of it than can be imagined—
Of lavish big spenders, there in amounts unbounded:
Bubbles of universes within pockets more,
Across all the times and spaces beyond our shore!
What is the birthing source of this tremendous weight?
There is nothing from which to make the causeless cake!
Its nature is undirected, uncooked, unbaked?
There can’t be a choice to that ne’er born and awaked!
[i]There can’t be turtles on turtles all the way down;
The buck has to stop somewhere in this town.[/i]
‘Nothing’ is unproductive—can’t even be meant;
All ever needed is, with nothing on it spent!
[i]Yes, none from nothing, yet something is here, true;
But, really, you can’t have your cake and Edith, too![/i]
And yet I’ve still all of my wedding cake, I do—
It’s just changed form; what ever IS can never go.
[i]Since there’s no point at which to impart direction
The essence would have no limited, specific,
Certain, designed, created, crafted, thought out meaning![/i]
Thus the Great IS is anything and everything!
[i]This All is as useless as Babel’s Library
Of all possible books in all variety![/i]
Yes, and even in our own small aisle we see
Any and every manner of diversity.
[i]The information content of Everything
Would be the same as that of Nothing![/i]
Zero. The bake’s ingredients vary widely,
And so express themselves accordingly.
What’s Everything, detailed? Length, width, depth, 4D—
Your world-line; 5th, all your probable futures;
6th, jump to any; 7th, all Big Bang starts to ends;
8th, all universes’ lines; 9th, jump to any;
10th, the IS of all possible realities.
Your elucidation is quite a piece of cake!
Yo, it exceeds, as well, and so it takes the cake.
Everything ever must be, because ‘nothing’ can’t?
Yes, it’s that existence has no opposite, Kant!
[i]So, we’re here at the mouth of the horn of plenty,
For a free breakfast, lunch, and a dinner party;
Yet many starving are fed up with being unfed.[/i]
Alas, for now I have to say, Let Them Eat Cake!
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith
Restless resolutions steal my safe, considered self away
Dislodging what I think I feel to make it possible today.
No mysteries to give me pause (constructed so that I might hide!)
Only the grip of iron claws that drag me to a world inside.
And yet, more beautiful it seems to cease to wonder evermore,
And be ruled by a world of dreams whose universe is in their core.
The sparrows and the robins soft are calling to th'awakening morn;
Before they can be borne aloft, within their songs my dreams are born.
Shall I eat and drink only that I may hunger and thirst and eat and drink again, till the grave which is open beneath my feet shall swallow me up, and I myself become the food of worms? Shall I beget beings like myself, that they too may eat and drink and die, and leave behind them beings like themselves to do the same that I have done? To what purpose this ever-revolving circle, this ceaseless and unvarying round, in which all things appear only to pass away, and pass away only that they may re-appear unaltered;—this monster continually devouring itself that it may again bring itself forth, and bringing itself forth only that it may again devour itself?
This can never be the vocation of my being, and of all being. There must be something which exists because it has come into existence; and now endures, and cannot again re-appear, having once become such as it is. And this element of permanent endurance must be produced amid the vicissitudes of the transitory and perishable, maintain itself there, and be borne onwards, pure and inviolate, upon the waves of time.
Our race still laboriously extorts the means of its subsistence and preservation from an opposing Nature. The larger portion of mankind is still condemned through life to severe toil, in order to supply nourishment for itself and for the smaller portion which thinks for it;—immortal spirits are compelled to fix their whole thoughts and endeavours on the earth that brings forth their food. It still frequently happens, that when the labourer has finished his toil, and promises himself in return a lasting endurance both for himself and for his work, a hostile element will destroy in a moment that which it has cost him years of patient industry and deliberation to accomplish, and the assiduous and careful man is undeservedly made the prey of hunger and misery;—often do floods, storms, volcanoes, desolate whole countries, and works which bear the impress of a rational soul are mingled with their authors in the wild chaos of death and destruction. Disease sweeps into an untimely grave men in the pride of their strength, and children whose existence has as yet borne no fruit; pestilence stalks through blooming lands, leaves the few who escape its ravages like lonely orphans bereaved of the accustomed support of their fellows, and does all that it can do to give back to the desert regions which the labour of man has won from thence as a possession to himself. Thus it is now, but thus it cannot remain for ever. No work that bears the stamp of Reason, and has been undertaken to extend her power, can ever be wholly lost in the onward progress of the ages. The sacrifices which the irregular violence of Nature extorts from Reason, must at least exhaust, disarm, and appease that violence. The same power which has burst out into lawless fury, cannot again commit like excesses; it cannot be destined to renew its strength; through its own outbreak its energies must henceforth and for ever be exhausted. All those outbreaks of unregulated power before which human strength vanishes into nothing, those desolating hurricanes, those earthquakes, those volcanoes, can be nothing else than the last struggles of the rude mass against the law of regular, progressive, living, and systematic activity to which it is compelled in opposition to its own undirected impulses;—nothing but the last shivering strokes by which the perfect formation of our globe has yet to be completed. That resistance must gradually become weaker and at length be exhausted, since, in the regulated progress of things, there can be nothing to renew its strength; that formation must at length be completed, and our destined dwelling-place be made ready. Nature must gradually be resolved into a condition in which her regular action may be calculated and safely relied upon, and her power bear a fixed and definite relation to that which is destined to govern it,—that of man. In so far as this relation already exists, and the cultivation of Nature has obtained a firm footing, the works of man, by their mere existence, and by an influence altogether beyond the original intent of their authors, shall again react upon Nature, and become to her a new vivifying principle. Cultivation shall quicken and ameliorate the sluggish and baleful atmosphere of the primeval forests, deserts, and marshes; more regular and varied cultivation shall diffuse throughout the air new impulses to life and fertility; and the sun shall pour his most animating rays into an atmosphere breathed by healthful, industrious, and civilized nations. Science, first called into existence by the pressure of necessity, shall afterwards calmly and carefully investigate the unchangeable laws of Nature, review its powers at large, and learn to calculate their possible manifestations; and while closely following the footsteps of Nature in the living and actual world, form for itself in thought a new ideal one. Every discovery which Reason has extorted from Nature shall be maintained throughout the ages, and become the ground of new knowledge, for the common possession of our race. Thus shall Nature ever become more and more intelligible and transparent, even in her most secret depths; and human power, enlightened and armed by human invention, shall rule over her without difficulty, and the conquest, once made, be peacefully maintained. This dominion of man over Nature shall gradually be extended, until, at length, no farther expenditure of mechanical labour shall be necessary than what the human body requires for its development, cultivation, and health; and this labour shall cease to be a burden;—for a reasonable being is not destined to be a bearer of burdens.
We will all be born into retirement with no sweat.
A Love Story of the Earth and the Moon[/b]
As the moon, challenge night and gain the light;
As the rose, suffer the thorn—gain the fragrance;
Of life, surrender to live forever—
Enlightened more than a thousand suns.
[i]I am thy moon, thy constant satellite,
Thy crystal paramour of day and night.
Above and below, and within thy sight,
I whirl around you in loving delight.
In a magnetic dance, I whirl and twirl,
Attracted to you, oh liveliest world.
Around you as a necklace I’m aswirl—
Wear me as thy crystalline gem impearled.
Wherever thou orbits ‘round Apollo,
I must twirl and whirl, hurry and follow;
Dust I gather, meteors I swallow,
Ranging far and wide through space not hollow.
Thy romantic beam, as Cupid’s arrow,
Pierces my heart and kills my sorrow,
Injecting life and love for tomorrow;
Henceforth, I’ll shine with this life I borrow.
Around you I whirl, a necklace of pearl,
Trailing afterimages of my world,
Adorning you, thy bosom bountiful,
With crystalline gems of another world.[/i]
Oh moon, thy Earth would wobble like a top
With your steadying influence not,
In turns quick of searing and freezing ruins,
Unto dying soon, without you, oh moon!
As twin planets, our orbits must convolve;
Into each our tidal motions dissolve.
Around a common center we revolve—
The focus from which our passions evolve.
As twin planets, each other’s way we pave,
With the push-pulse of the graviton wave.
We’re captured, but not as each other’s slave,
For to the sun our orbits are concave.
[i]To your lines of flux my path I align—
I’m your constant paramour, crystalline.
Your world pours life on mine, on mine!
Dearest Earth, I must be thine, must be thine!
A magnetic beam emanates from thee,
Attracting me, holding me, kissing me.
Tidal love washes freely over me,
Linking you and me for eternity.
Basking warmly in your reflected light,
I’m bright, oh so radiant in your sight!
In the love and light of your spirit bright,
I need not ever face the endless night.
Your vibrations travel without a sound,
Circling from all directions to surround.
This affection touches me ‘round and ‘round,
And closely binds me to you—I’m love-bound![/i]
We’re as different as midnight and noon,
Yet drawn close by the force of Earth and moon;
As lovers we merge, in a sweet eclipse,
When world meets world, as a kiss on our lips.
[i]Oh, as your shadow of love covers me,
I am full, so full in the shade of thee;
When we overlap, that union is us;
The you is in me, the me is in thee![/i]
As moon and Earth we bathe in radiance,
Cleansing our hearts in love’s grand alliance;
Around and around each other we dance,
Entranced by the whirl of our dalliance.
My blood runs warm with the sun’s heat at noon.
My spirit is swept by thee, swelling moon.
Space surrounds us. The tides flow through us.
Global rhythms are always playing our tune.
@schopenhauer1 @Antinatalist
I don't know if you saw this, but I thought you might be interested. It is not the same argument you guys use, but it's similar. I found it more convincing.
Thank you for the information.
What information where you referring to? I didn't see a link.
I was referring to Pentagruel's post up above. Here's the link again.
I can see that your poetry is heart-felt and sincere. It's romantic, which is fine. It is also philosophical, as the OP specifies. But it is not good poetry.
[i]"Lovers to-day and for all time
Preserve the meaning of my rhyme:
Love is not kindly nor yet grim
But does to you as you to him.
"Whistle, and Love will come to you,
Hiss, and he fades without a word,
Do wrong, and he great wrong will do,
Speak, he retells what he has heard.
"Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget."[/i]
- Robert Graves
----------------------------------------------------------
"jisei" ("death poem") :
[i]A small night storm blows
Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’
Preceding those who hesitate[/i]
—Yukio Mishima (composed as a prelude to his seppuku)
What is wrong with it ? Constructive criticism, any ?
***
I'd be Interested to hear what people make of this one, if anything.
I haven't read it yet...long-length poems...not usually to my liking.
But I'm open to persuasion...and sometimes there are surprises...
The article gives background - why and how he wrote it - with extract:
A poem about the pandemic. 'Pandemonium'- 'a mock epic' - by Armando Iannucci:
Quoting Guardian: Iannucci's epic covid poem
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/sep/25/armando-iannuccis-epic-covid-poem-its-my-emotional-response-to-the-past-18-months
FUTILITY
[i]Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved,—still warm,—too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?[/i]
- Wilfred Owen
Great poem. Plenty philosophical. Even if it weren't, there's always leeway for a good poem.
Quoting Michael Zwingli
Love it. Love it. Love it.
Myself as well. Owen served as a Lieutenant in the British Army during the First World War. Through his poetry, he was one of the major writers chronicling the horrors of the war. This is my favorite of his poems, of which I especially admire the rhyme scheme. The fact of an odd number, seven, of lines per stanza, I find interesting. Note how lines 1-3 and 2-4 of both stanzas uses alliterative/consonantal rhyme, and lines 5-7 uses true, direct rhyme. It's just really good in it's effect.
Thy.
Lie.
Why?
Cry.
Sigh.
Ply.
Tie.
Fly.
Try.
Buy.
Vie.
Sly?
Pie.
I.
Modern life in a nutshell.
You read poetry more closely than I do. When I first read it, I did note the meter as being very satisfying. Serious, but not too somber. Matter of fact. Even after your explication, the rhyme scheme doesn't jump out at me.
What gets to me is the imagery, especially the lines I quoted, but the rest as well. I really like "wake" and "woke." The first line is great. "Move him into the sun—." Completely concrete before it moves on to the imagery.
Hi.
I
try
my
wry
reply
hereby.
sigh,
goodbye.
[b]FLORA SYMBOLICA
Lore and Legends of the Flowers[/b]
[I]A tale I’ve written, invented, yes, hence
An attempt to unite the Christian pense
With the non-belief, in a middle ground,
Somewhere between mystery and good sense:[/I]
With flora mystical and magical,
Eden’s botanical garden was blest,
So Eve, taking more than just the Apple,
Plucked off the loveliest of the best.
Thus it’s to Eve that we must give our thanks,
For Earth’s variety of fruits and plants,
For when she was out of Paradise thrown,
She stole all the flowers we’ve ever known.
Therewith, through sensuous beauty and grace,
Eve with Adam brought forth the human race,
But our world would never have come to be,
Had not God allowed them His mystery.
When they were banished from His bosom,
Eve saw more than just the Apple Blossom,
And took, on her way through Eden’s bowers,
Many wondrous plants and fruitful flowers.
Mighty God, upon seeing this great theft,
At first was angered, but soon smiled and wept,
For human nature was made in His name—
So He had no one but Himself to blame!
Yet still He made ready His thunderbolt,
As His Old Testament wrath cast its vote
To end this experiment gone so wrong—
But then He felt the joy of life’s new song.
Eve had all the plants that she could carry;
God in His wisdom grew uncontrary.
Out of Eden she waved the flowered wands,
The seeds spilling upon the barren lands.
God held the lightning bolt already lit,
No longer knowing what to do with it,
So He threw it into the heart of Hell,
Forming of it a place where all was well.
Thus the world from molten fire had birth,
As Hell faded and was turned into Earth.
This He gave to Adam and Eve, with love,
For them and theirs to make a Heaven of.
From His bolt grew the Hawthorn and Bluebell,
And He be damned, for Eve stole these as well!
So He laughed and pretended not to see,
Retreating into eternity.
“So be it,” He said, when time was young,
“That such is the life My design has wrung,
For in their souls some part of Me has sprung—
So let them enjoy all the songs I’ve sung.
“Life was much too easy in Paradise,
And lacked therefore of any real meaning,
For without the lows there can be no highs—
All that remains is a dull flat feeling!
“There’s no Devil to blame for their great zest—
This mix of good and bad makes them best!
The human nature that makes them survive,
Also lets them feel very much alive.
“That same beastful soul that makes them glad
Does also make them seem a little bad.
If only I could strip the wrong from right,
But I cannot have the day without the night!”
So it was that with fertile delight Eve
Seeded the lifeless Earth for us to receive.
Though many flowers she had to leave behind,
These we have from the Mother of Mankind:
…
:rofl:
Quoting T Clark
Now, don't make me cart my copy of "Best Loved Poems of the American People" out of mothballs...
Thank you. The war poems - always moving - the awful personal circumstances and philosophy of war expressed. Wanting to find out more about this poem and its meaning, I found this:
https://poemanalysis.com/wilfred-owen/futility/
I am sure there are many more interpretations.
Also of interest:
Quoting poem analysis - wilfred owen - futility
--------
Quoting Michael Zwingli
I first read that as 'out of mouthballs' ! [ hmm, mothballs > gob balls > gob=mouth ]
Also made me wonder about war poets from other countries.
War is global; impacting many. Voices not heard or listened to. So, for a different perspective, I googled Russian female war poets and discovered more than I bargained for.
A very long alphabetical list of countries.
https://femalewarpoets.blogspot.com/p/female-poets-of-first-world-war-revised.html
Scrolled down, down, down to Russia...
I wanted to read the poems of 2 women soldier poets but a further search failed.
However, here's something about Marina Tsvietaieva and one of her poems:
From: https://femalewarpoets.blogspot.com/2014/12/marina-tsvietaieva-1892-1941-russian.html
Quoting female war poets
As in Owen's 'Futility' - the life, death, nature connection is clear.
And even as it questions our gatherings of thoughts - do they matter? - it shows a sense of togetherness. A philosophical, personal 'truth' which inspired others.
I walk through graveyards for perspective.
Virginia Astley - Futility (1983)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1HmFmYvdnE
Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem": A Letter From Wilfred Owen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTlGGqR5jUU
Quoting Wiki: War Requiem
Haha, and I thought I was the only one... Actually, I walk through graveyards, especially older portions of graveyards, for another purpose as well. Symbology is another interest of myself (along with linguistics, semantics, philosophy in general, "maths"...I must be the king of dillettantes), and the iconography on some of the old headstones is of great interest to me.
Ah well, I was using a bit of poetic licence - I gain a sense of perspective whenever I visit graveyards or listen to haunting imagery. It isn't a hobby.
I do enjoy the peace of old graveyards - rarely anyone there - the headstones leaning in the grass.
I wonder about the lives of the people - only a glimpse on headstones.
Re: Symbolism. A particular symbol stood out. It was white and looked modern.
A perfect circle. A hole carved into the stone. Eternity.
And of course - the spiritual symbol of the Celtic cross.
:sparkle:
Please do.
I have found myself doing this as well.
Quoting Amity
I have never seen a hole cut through a headstone, but love the symbolism of it. Many of the symbols to be found on gravestones are known from other sources: military, naval, fraternal (Masonic, Elks, Odd Fellows have the best), etc. Some, however, are unique to the funerary realm, such as the broken branch, signifying one whose life was cut short, or the sickle, signifying the eventuality of death.
See Circle:
https://stoneletters.com/blog/gravestone-symbols
This like of the poem relates particularly with another, let me explain my view regarding this.
Note that while the first stanza of this poem, following the imperative statement, Quoting Michael Zwingli comprises a series of observations regarding the unnamed subject, the dying soldier, the second stanza amounts to an argument, made by Owen's unnamed soldierly narrator to those present with him, and perhaps to the world as a whole, presenting a rationale supporting his initial imperative.
One of the aspects of this poem that I have always admired, whether intended by Owen or not I am unsure, is the set of logical relationships inherent within the causal sequence of that argument. The series of lines: Quoting Michael Zwingli
represents a sequence of statements comprising the narrator's argument. Note also the semantically induced connection made between the Earth and the dying soldier, perticularly by means of repetitive use of "clay" applied variously to Earth and the soldier, in: Quoting Michael Zwingli, and Quoting Michael Zwingli I have always found this very bright, and have benefitted Owen with my presumption of intentionality with respect thereto.
The final line,
Quoting Michael Zwingli
of course, is a narrative statement recognizing the "futility" of the preceding argument, tying the entire achievement to it's title.
This is not an argument against anything you've written about the poem, or what I've written for that matter - I loved the poem before I thought about it. Before I went back and thought about your comments and formulated mine. The explication was interesting and helped me think about language and poetry in general, but I loved the poem first.
I used this phrase in the "Definition of Art" thread. It's sometimes used to describe country music. I don't know if you're familiar with it - Three chords and the truth. You don't necessarily need sophistication to speak from the heart.
Hey, I can imagine that being said in the world of Country Music, especially by the older Country musicians, who often came from hardscrabble places.
Quoting T Clark
I agree. As you seem taken with the poem, I just wanted to discuss a couple of the things that I have noticed about it. There is a certain usual process of appreciation that happens with me when I initially read a fine poem. At first blush, I feel a general sense of profundity and awe the basis of which I cannot always quite discern. With subsequent readings, though, often begin to notice the poetic devices used in the creation of something special.
I wasn't finding fault with the process you and I are going through. I've really enjoyed it. I just always want to make sure I keep my eye on the experience of poetry rather than the interpretation. As you've noted, the kinds of things you and I are talking about can deepen the experience. Most of the poetry interpretation I've read is baloney.
Yes, these things can enrich one's appreciation afterwards, but as you have noted, first comes the love. I will try to find more new poems for you to love, as time goes by. Have you read much Tennyson, or Emily Dickinson?
Not much Tennyson. A bit of Dickinson. I remember writing an essay about one of here poems in 11th grade English. I like her ok. Pick one of hers you like and we can have some more fun.
I love this poem for all those reasons, and also because it's wonderful.
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
[i]In the great green room
There was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of
The cow jumping over the moon
And there were three little bears sitting on chairs
And two little kittens
And a pair of mittens
And a little toy house
And a young mouse
And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush
And a quiet old lady who was whispering “hush”
Goodnight room
Goodnight moon
Goodnight cow jumping over the moon
Goodnight light
And the red balloon
Goodnight bears
Goodnight chairs
Goodnight kittens
And goodnight mittens
Goodnight clocks
And goodnight socks
Goodnight little house
And goodnight mouse
Goodnight comb
And goodnight brush
Goodnight nobody
Goodnight mush
And goodnight to the old lady whispering “hush”
Goodnight stars
Goodnight air
Good night noises everywhere[/i]
FitzOmar’s Rubaiyat and Its Interpretations
Edward FitzGerald’s ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’ poem stunned Victorian England soon after Darwin’s ‘Origin of the Species’ had shocked their sensibilities, but soon they and the world came to embrace what came to be known as the greatest poem in history, and also the one most often illustrated.
Omar had the deep and grand ideas, but it was FitzGerald, as a kindred soul and poet, who dressed them in such fine clothes, attracting the world to them forever.
The synergy of FitzOmar takes us far and away from the mundane, everyday, low-life, blah-blah, sit-com type situations, into the glorious reaches of deeper thinking about the Big Questions, as well as to the great philosophical tenet of enjoying life to the fullest.
FitzGerald’s transmogrification of Omar is near unbelievable in its excellence, one of those rare poetic products that could go on for hundreds of years without equal. Shelley was close, in his poem, ‘Adonais’, as well as was Thomas Gray, in ‘An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard’.
See the ‘Concordance of the Rubáiyát’ online to see from what very plain original language FitzGerald developed his stupendous quatrain gems time and time again. FitzGerald even discarded some quatrains because they were merely quite masterful instead of meeting the perfectly superb standard he had set for himself. I have restored them.
All things, roll on “impotently”, by Omar. We are, as Shakespeare noted, but actors in a play, strutting and posturing. When were we ever responsible for how we were or are at any given moment?
What benefit to life then? I suggest it is Experience, which can be mostly a joy—with Omar’s love, drink, food, friends, adventure, romance, and deep feeling, although transient, but ever of the glorious Now, and generally free of shame and blame, being in the Paradise of right here, plus we being just as organic as anything else in nature, and thus no more important, “willy-nilly blowing”.
“Round which we Phantom Figures come and go” is about the noumena from which our phenomena arise from, as a kind of holo-graphic phantasmagorial realm of the “Magic Shadow-Show”. What lies behind is difficult to get at, but there has been some progress, such as insights into our brain networks.
“The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour’d/Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour” because, well, in short, it has to, all things happening over and over again for all time. It’s Deja vu all over again.
“Which, for the Pastime of Eternity, He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold” and the like is that, if one plays along with the myth, it is like that He thought of, planned, designed, and implemented humans and their nature, with an inherent wide-ranging spectrum of capacity for and from Good to Bad; however, in this myth-take ‘God’ bears no responsibility for His recipe expressing itself in just the way He all-knowingly intended it to. Why His surprise and disappointment?
Often, big paradoxes mightily arrive when a proposed realm is declared ‘invisible’, and Omar is ever up to the task. Brave Omar knocks ‘god’ without fear.
When “You shall be You no more” and “And naked on the Air of Heaven ride”, and the like, it is perhaps that there not really a redundant soul ever living on, made of some invisible angelic vapour that duplicates and preserves our brain neuron network, which readily maintains what is already you just fine, in some essence of an already evolutionarily expensively formed brain. FitzGerald’s ‘quicksilver’ is either as the above soul or as wine coursing through us.
Omar cites the limits to Knowing Everything as us moving toward a carpe diem centering in the now. He writes “…evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went”, “…But not the Master knot of Human Fate”, and so forth. Not being able to know is the same dilemma facing his Impotent Great Wheel itself.
And so Omar unveils his basic human philosophy for the human condition, the central tenet being the primacy of the ‘Now’— over “Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday”.
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
While the above probably refers to predestination by Allah, as made more explicit in other quatrains, it can also relate now-a-days to more scientifically modern views as to how each moment arises in Time, in the Now, and then completely passes away, wholly replaced right then and there by the next Now, which process, or even ‘processing’, can’t be stopped, much like the deterministic chain “That none can slip, nor break, nor over-reach”.
Whether there is being or becoming, as eternalism or presentism, is still an open question. We don’t know the mode of time, for either mode would have the same appearance to us.
What one did long ago is done, dead, and gone, obviating any real shame and blame, but one must as well give up any fame, as well, crediting all to Fate. Plus, indeed, can anyone really be held responsible for who/what they’ve come to be from nature and nurture?
While Omar rails against a predestination by ‘God’, it is for other, godless, reasons that determinism might still be much the way events have to be, but for some possible quantum level randomness, if any, which damages the will, anyway, harming it, not helping it at all, as much as we somehow wish to think that our will can be free of itself or that we or any part of physical Nature can do the same to somehow be self-made entities as mini first causes. It seems that for one to have ‘God’, whatever Nature does is what ‘God’ does, and so thus ‘god’ is not required.
Omar reveals that an ultimate basis without Origin, such as his causeless Great Wheel. standing in for the Eternal Basis, cannot even know its own reason for existence, and is powerless over this and its state, with no choice given to it for its being, it having to do just what it does and naught else, much as we may also have to admit to at our level.
“It rolls impotently on as Thou or I”, or it just ‘IS’, ever and eternal, without a beginning or end, and what never begins cannot have a certain direction, design, meaning, or purpose put to it in the first place that never was.
Whose secret Presence through Creation’s veins
Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;
Taking all shapes from Máh to Máhi and
They change and perish all—but He remains;
Thanks to you both, Edward FitzGerald and Omar Khayyam, for the insights, as well as for attending to the serious task of pointing out the dubious and the deep.
Part 1:
Towards the Gods Far and Unknown[/b]
My reverie took flight, with autumn’s sight,
For I was abstracted, entranced, and light.
I beamed to the site suffused with insight—
The solutions are deep within the mind,
Reachable by dreams of the lucid kind.
I flew south from my home, in New Hamburg,
Over the Hudson river, toward Newburgh,
Past Chelsea, and the great Storm King Mountain—
On philosophical aspiration.
A wake of leaves trailed behind, like a stream,
While I gathered clues, through my musing means.
My design, in this vaporous pipe dream,
Was to converse with all the Gods who seemed.
If Fishkill’s and Peekskill’s murderous names
Had not been token enough, there soon came
A sequence of locales that seemed to be
Ominous in their triple proximity.
First was Sleepy Hollow, the haunted land
Of the gambols of the headless horseman,
Then the Gate of Heaven Cemetery,
And the surprising Town of Valhalla—
A bright afterlife of an old-time place,
Of shops built right up against the road race.
I stopped to rest, well away from the maze,
Dazzled by the lustrous autumnal haze,
In a warm day’s musk, before twilight dusk,
Near shining gates, toward the unearthly sod
Of the refulgent Graveyard of the Gods.
Over the stream, there was an arched bridge thrown.
Then I knew I’d gone beyond the known:
For in that span, each piece was a keystone.
I questioned two luminous angel goths,
“Where be the mythic Graveyard of the Gods?”
They looked askance, then smiled and pointed past,
“It’s just beyond the Land of Epitaphs.”
…
[i]The cemetery was where the ducks were fed,
Where two friends feasted on wine, verse, and bread,
Amidst the flowered trees and quiet streams—
The home for both the living and the dead.
We lived at once, aware that life was dear,
Oft smiling at Heaven and Hell without fear;
Yes, we had some laughs, gave true love, and made
Life better—for it was now and we were here.[/i]
Here the grave-sign of The Four Elements:
From the fires of stars to those of the cremation,
He has breathed, flourished, and dissolved:
Life is ashes to ashes, stardust to stardust.
Of airy winds, vapors, and a soft earth,
He rests, at last, under the spinning skies,
Those of Earth’s sunny days and starry nights.
The Symphony of Life plays for the dead:
All that we know, even the loveliest of the best,
Decomposes into the dust of earth compressed.
The songs once composed now lie in repose;
Of this dust the future rearranges to recompose.
En-graved is ‘THE END’ of your Earthly sigh:
Six sides ‘round you: five are dirt, one is sky.
Shov’ling, Death talks to you at last, and says:
“What were you doing during all of nigh?”
From Heaven’s stars came our dust eterne;
Time’s seas nurtured thee and thine in turn.
From time, death, and dust we thus became,
And by this, thus, and that we must return.
What would be the price of a moment’s breath
Purchased from Death’s hand at the final hour?
All the world’s wealth can’t extend the power
That drains the cup and withers the flower.
The light of Heav’n did the Earth illumine,
When He shaped human nature’s acumen.
Temptations He then placed everywhere,
But He’ll punish us for being human!
The wings of time are checkered black and white,
As fluttering ‘round the day flies the night.
Like chess pieces, we gamely play for life,
Until into the box we return, quite!
Now my cup was nearly empty and done;
There was left but one last drop for the sun
To drink, or with which to make rivers run:
Its flavor burst in joy—my life was won!
Not all poems are pleasant—some speak of death,
Of life’s end, separate by just a breath.
I saw tombstones overgrown, under swept,
Names unknown—and to all the message saith:
Read Me, it said, engraved beyond the brink,
You, who live, up above: of life go drink;
And you, underneath, now lying so dead:
Rest in peace, RELAX—it’s later than you think!
[i]Refreshed, I wandered among the tombstones,
Under which rested little more than bones,
Where from the life had fled when dreams were dead,
Which under me became life’s stepping stones.[/i]
I’ll play the game and roll the earthly dies,
And through this worldly life enjoy the prize;
If Earth is Hell for love’s adventurers,
Then I wish no more for God’s Paradise.
Good and evil were wrought from wrong and right,
When, of nought, twin genii split day and night.
Some may think that black’s might can vanquish white,
But night can’t even quench the smallest light!
Every-thing, every order happens for a reason.
Yes, for the most part, for most seasons,
But not for the bottommost cause the first,
For there was nothing before it to direct it forth.
Youth and Beauty made agèd Winter mourn,
For Summer’s grain—the waving wheat and corn;
For Old Autumn, withered, wan, had passed on,
Leaving the Earth a widow, weather worn.
At first, you sleep in your dear mother’s womb;
At last, you sleep in Earth’s cold silent tomb.
In between, Life whispers a dream that says
Wake, live, for the rose withers all too soon!
Waste not the time of your life in gloom’s doom!
By these verses, your lamp of life relume:
Your live body, full of warmth and bloom,
Is worth ten thousand lying in the tomb.
Art and poetry enrich human experience,
But they’re no substitutes for the living of it.
Like Keats’ figures on the urn, should we live life less?
No, because what is deathless is also lifeless!
…
Into supernatural figmentations,
I strode, through brilliant imagination,
To interview all the supposed Gods there—
Some no more and some ruling everywhere.
Notions of ‘God’ are of the wide purview
Of the inquiring mind confined—its ‘why’,
That wide expanse of fables, faith, hoaxes,
Lies, imaginations, fictions, guesses,
Foggy notions, concoctions, phantasms,
Fantasies, falsehoods, conceptions,
Decrees, fiats, misrepresentations,
Dead ideas, magic, proclamations,
Wild tales, anecdotes, revelations,
Untruths, revelations, hearsay, scrap heaps,
Yarns, and fish stories, stated as beliefs
In that unseeable supernatural station,
Through faith’s without knowledge ration;
These are all figmentations of the imagination.
Strewn about this great panoramic realm
Of the One possibly conceivable at the helm
Were all of the unknowable fabrications
Often dreamt up, via exaggerations,
By the human race of mammal sapiens.
The realm of such pronouncements has come to be
Superposed at the furthest edge of Reality,
Poised by the scope of some wishful thinking,
By all those dreaming and wild supposing,
Who wish for such legends to be ever
Actualized and realized; however,
These unknowns have never ever made it
Into our observable realistic habitat in any way,
They but remaining in the minds, joint,
Of the God-beholders—
Even as wildly varying viewpoints.
Without so much much as a word to say,
I passed those to whom most no longer pray,
Nor believe in, but once did, namely,
Those of the tombstones now deemed unholy:
Astrology—the God of the stars that plod,
Eternally blazed and marbled in the sod,
Monuments of Diana the Moon God,
Druid Gods, Apollo, Baal, Zeus, Wotan,
Aphrodite, Mithras, Isis, Amon,
Poseidon, Thor, and on and on, anon—
Posed in the burial ground of the Gods.
I ever hurried past the ledgering
Of those older Mythologies preceding
The formation of the Old Testament story—
Those ancient superstitions whose very
And various olden amalgamations
Brought forth to form it whole for our salvation.
I paused at that Old Testament maligned,
To mark the old but lingering lines
Of the ‘knowing’ of more invisibles—
The beliefs in imagined Angelics:
There were angels standing, frozen in stone,
Over the timeworn memorials’ poems,
As well as atop the crumbling gateposts,
Cast as undying and near-living ghosts
Of the representations of the three spheres
Of the Heavenly host: the demigod-near
Seraphim, Cherubim, Ophanim,
Thrones, Principalities, Dominions,
Powers, Archangels, Angels, and, those final,
And the most useful—the Guardian Angels,
Who are said to protect children from harm.
There, Amaranth, its dead red leaves never
Fading on this Earth, unto forever,
Gave some color ‘round the graveyard pallor
And to the dateless headstones’ gray squalor.
There was a garish maroon view, on high,
Of streaking lights of an electromagnetic sky,
Heretofore never imagined by my self.
I strolled on, and into the vale itself.
To The Eternally Dead
Here lie the Gods, once so high,
Beneath an electromagnetic sky.
Lo!—the eternally marbled monuments
Of the Moon God, the Sun God (Apollo),
Baal, Zeus, Wotan, Aphrodite, Thor,
Mithras, Isis, Amon, Poseidon, Krishna,
The Druid Gods, and so many more.
Behold!—the ledger of those many Mythologies
That preceded, paraded, and then passed on.
Here they rest, the dead and long gone rhyme,
Adorned with the splendor of mouldering time.
I approached a semitransparent,
Theistic Embellishment, quite well lit,
Who was holding out an eyeball—a shove
Of His hand for me to take note of.
“Who might you be?” He mimed,
“For I am the God of Intelligent Design,
The One who was made by the signs discerned,
When the creationists noted them all, unlearned.”
I answered, “I am Austin, Earth’s flower,
Although not ‘Powers’, but ‘Higher Powers’.”
“Ha. Lo, they saw inexplicable complexity in Nature,
And thus they leapt and promulgated that Nature
Must have a Grand Designer of its mechanical dance,
For how could life have come about by ‘chance’?”
I replied, “You’re right about ‘chance’s’ stance,
But wrong about ‘chance’ too, for little greatness,
If any at all, comes about by mere ‘chance’,
“Especially as some giant leap in one bound,
Up the sheer cliff-side of Mt. Improbable—
To find on its top a great complexity
Of something like the eye that You show me;
“However, it is actually an error to suppose
That ‘Chance’ is the scientific alternative
To Intelligent Design, for that’s quite negative.
“Natural Selection is the means of the design,
For it, unlike a one-shot ‘chance’, being not in kind,
Is a cumulative effect that ever winds,
And slowly and so gently climbs
Around the mountain’s other side, behind the sight,
To eventually arrive at the great height
Of complexity—from which we can then view
The beautiful sights through our eye anew.”
“But the widespread Watchtower Zines
Always pronounce that the biological Designs
Were created by Me instead of by ‘chance’!
“Just look at these eyeballs—take a glance—
And the optic system hanging behind them!
How could that come about by ‘chance’, these gems?”
“You, like your followers, may listen,
But You do not hear, writing with untruth’s pen.
IDers deceive by this wrong approach,
Whether they mean to or not; I give reproach.
“‘Chance’ is not the opposite of Nature’s design;
Evolution of the Species through the graduality
Of Natural Selection is the path to complexity;
Your ploy falls as flat as an imaginary line.
“A flatworm has but an optical system’s spark
That can only sense but light and dark;
Thus it sees no image, not even a part;
“Whereas Nautilus has a ‘pinhole camera’ eye
About as good as half a human eye
That sees but very blurry shapes;
Thus these are examples of intermediate stages.
“‘Rome’ can not be built in a day by ‘chance’;
‘Chance’ is not a likely designer at all!
“Really now, could a 747 ever be
Assembled by a hurricane blowing free
Through Boeing’s warehouse of all the parts?
Now is this the sum of Your conversational art?”
“No, Austin—it’s quite unlikely—’tis just to confuse,
And that’s why we always so misleadingly use
The 747 argument as the contrast to ID…
“So then, Austie, ‘chance’ and Intelligent Design
Are not the two candidate solutions we’ll find
To the riddle posed by the improbable?
It’s not like a jackpot or nothing at all?”
“‘God’, Your ID ideas persist, as repetition,
But again, ‘chance’, for one, is not a solution
To the highly improbable situated Nature,
And no sane anti-creationist, for sure,
Ever said that it was; your tale is impure.
“Intelligent Design, is neither a solution—
Because it raises a much bigger question
Than it solves, as You will soon see, in a lesson.”
“Well, I’ll be darned,” replied the Designer.
“Natural selection is a good answer;
“It is a very long and summative process,
One which breaks up the problem’s mess
Of improbability into smaller pieces, less,
Each of which is only slightly improbable,
“But not prohibitively so, thus it’s reasonable,
As the product of all the little steps of which
Would be far beyond the reach of chance—it’s rich!
“The creationists have been looking askance,
Seeing only the end product, perchance,
Thinking of it as a single event of chance,
Never even understanding
The great power of accumulation.
“Such they didn’t know much else—their fall,
Not having any other natural ideas at all,
So they outright claimed that ID did it, as the Tree
That can magically grow the All, namely Me.”
“So ‘God’ You have now seen the light
Of the accumulative power’s might;
This is the elegance of Evolution’s ‘sight’.”
“Yes but what is to become of Me, the Person,
For I only ‘exist’ through their speculation.
“In fact, the improbability of Me is so High,
And so much more so from where I lie so ‘sure’,
Compared to that of ‘simple’ Nature,
That My own origin…”
“…Is a near-infinitely Larger dilemma, Mate,
For the creationists—the problem they love to hate;
That being that You, therefore, can only be explained
By another, Higher Intelligent Designer claimed!
“Far from terminating the endless regress,
They’ve aggravated it with a vengeance
That is way beyond repair or redress—
As beyond could ever be yonder of! Out west!”
With that, the poor Guy faded toward oblivion,
Which remarkably was the very location
I was visiting, but hence he soon reappeared,
Although in another guise, but quite well attired.
[God created Adam, then Eve, of Adam’s rib,
Both fully formed, imbued with God’s knowledge
And memories of times that never were,
Such as childhood.]
[They believed a shifty talking snake,
Ate the verboten fruit,
And were cast out, to fend for themselves,
God being quite surprised at their sin…]
(Poem inspired by Dawkins)
“Hello, Austino; it’s time for more perplexity,
For I am now the God of Irreducible Complexity.”
“That you are, being the unmade All,
And so it shall become your downfall.”
“Eh? I’m never to be at all?”
“Your believers have given You some fine new clothes:
But Intelligent Design is falsely based, God knows,
On Irreducible Complexity—
So I still recognize You as the God of ID.”
“That I am is what I really am now.”
“Well, Darwin said long ago that his theory
Would break down if Irreducible Complexity
Were shown to be true, and yet
No proposal has ever stood up to the analysis.”
“Still, here I am, Mr. A, alive merely by possibility,
Myself indeed quite complex, even irreducibly,
“For “I am the be all and end all—the Prime Maker,
And so I keep tabs on every form and splinter
Of the Universe, planning its every constituent
That I designed. So then, simple I am NOT.
“Yes, man, I am an extremely complicated System,
Yet I have no parts, for then My parts that stemmed
Would be even more fundamental than Me!”
“Yes, ‘God’, if You existed you would surely be
Very very very complex, irreducibly so…”
“…So…”
“…So, by the Creationist Theory, such as it must be,
You cannot be explained except by a larger ID.”
“I’m falling…”
“…Into the hole that they dug for you.”
Yet another Theity appeared, out of the mist.
“I am the God of the Gaps, of all those missed.
I Myself personally fill in all the gaps withstanding,
In the present-day knowledge of non understanding,
“Albeit a very large and unwarranted assumption,
But I surely do fill them all in—via the fiat lent
To Me by the creationist’s fine endorsement.”
“These gaps shrink as science advances anew.”
“And so there is less and less for Me to do.”
“What worries me is not so much that You
May be eventually laid off, having nothing to do,
But that those of Religion think it is a virtue
To be satisfied with not understanding a quandary;
Enigmas drive scientists on—they exult in mystery.”
“True, My believers exult in mystery
Remaining as mystery and so they go no further,
But it keeps Me from being history!
They worship all these evolutionary gaps as being Me.”
“With no justification?”
“We have a ‘get out of jail free’ card—a vocation;
It’s an immunity to
The rigorous proofs of science;
We just claim by the ‘say so’.
All must respect that stance.”
“You lead a charmed life then,
One with no faults,
But You seek ignorance
In order to claim victory by default,
As a weed thriving in the gaps
Of science’s fertile fields.
“Scientists rejoice in (temporary)
Uncertain yields,
Whereas You halt all inquiry.”
“I remain as a mystery.”
“You’re the same God
Of Intelligent Design assumed—
Now known by a much more
Desperate nom de plume.”
“I repeat that I intervene
To fill the evolutionary gap.
I even alter DNA.”
“We could check the evidence for that.
We researchers fill the gaps in the fossil record.”
“Then there are twice as many gaps. Absurd.”
“I’d laugh, but I know You’re not joking.”
“No joke. Try what we’ve been smoking.
Lack of 100% complete documentation
Of Evolution means that I aid its motion.”
“‘God’, that is not a good default stance.”
“It’s an unknown happenstance.”
“So do we let criminals go
Because we don’t have a video
Of their every intermediate foot step
To and from the lawless event?”
“No, of course not, but we now have great worry
About our precariously perched gappy theory.
“Also, you made a typo—it’s a God default stance,
Certified by nothing more than proclamation
Of Our Bull of Decree covering all instantiation.”
“An edict, huh.”
“Why not, duh.”
“It was also once avowed that an Evil Spirit,
One that You Yourself allowed to exist,
Produced physical illnesses, on us weighing,
But, thank God—just an old saying—
That scientists persevered, and still do,
“Such as finding out the immune system’s zoo—
Our defense against the non evil spirits
Of germs, viruses, and bacterial fits.”
“Yes, agreed; that claim was dead wrong; take pills,
But evil spirits still cause the nonphysical mental ills
That are called sins and bad thoughts,
Even crimes of wills.”
“Still trying to halt scientific inquiry,
I see, for the burning.
Mental lapsing ‘sins’
Stem from upbringing, wrong learning,
“And/or low serotonin and
Such imbalances, needing cures,
Not to mention the differences in cultures,
“Such as other religions
Causing a problem of stability,
For people think this undermines
Their own belief’s credibility.”
“Okay, I give up for now, AustinTorn. Be.
Go on with your work, with My blessing,
To discover important truths about reality,
But some fossils are evidently missing!”
“Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize;
However, not even a single fossil guy
Has shown up in the wrong geological stratum;
How’s that for absolutely no erratum?”
“Well… it’s sad for Me, but true.
I’d still love to find wrong a few,
Like a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian.
I’d have planted one there if I existed then.”
“Dream on. Lazy reasoning is all that’s behind
These declarations of the irreducible complexity kind.”
“Yes, but all this ignorance, for sure,
Of the possible steps of Nature
Has kept Me forever alive,
Allowing Me to ever thrive.”
“And has just as soon forgotten You, in truth,
But for those sustaining your being without proof.”
“Wait, what about an arch of bricks?
I’ll try to use this one as a trick.
“Pull one away and the arch falls apart;
It cannot survive the subtraction of a part,
So how then was it built in the first place?
With this insight, I can win the human race.”
“By scaffolding, the same as seen in Evolution.”
“I was afraid that would be the solution.”
With that, the holely God of the Gaps separated
And nearly evaporated
To become a discontinuity Himself,
But the creationists gave Him help
By trying to hold Him together
With their ditch efforts.
(Yes, ‘gapping’ still goes on, it seems.
When the argument first gathered steam,
There were but a few transitional forms known,
Although good ones, enough for the idea to own,
One being the bridge to vertebrates
And another the bridge to flying creatures.
But there are many more now, a wide range,
So then it is the data that has changed.
These ‘gap’ arguments were already down
To the faint hope that scientists, as clowns,
Wouldn’t find any more natural explanations;
But the finds were the most inevitable situations.
Creationists yet remain at the pointward
Of not being able to ‘push forward’,
So all that’s left to is push backward,
Albeit at the firmly established fact words
Of evolution. Even the Pope concedes this
But tries to salvage the faith and solve,
By saying that the mind was not at all involved.)
“In the darkness I alit from the Wiz,
And tried to make sense of this world of His.
Now I’ve found the answer to life’s dark quiz:
One must live this life by what light there is.”
A Poison Tree
[i]I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.[/i]
- William Blake
Another God appeared, a mere Deity,
Meaning no intervention, so He’s not a Theity,
And thusly said, “Forget the Theity solution.
I am the Smart God who seeded Evolution.
“It was I that set the whole universal notion
And all of life’s evolution into motion;
That was My elegant and foreseeing way
Of creating the kind of life that would stay.”
“I thought You were all powerful;
Why not just make 20-40 million species,
All fully formed, as immutable as Thee,
Along with their usable natural habitats,
“For this is how most Gods would do it.
What energy loss could that be to You?
Your infinity could all this in an instant do.”
“I’m not so Great, plus, since Evolution is too stable
For some creationists to scoff at, as a fable,
They have assigned the job to Me, the Creator,
As all of Nature’s natural Instigator,
“Because they must take retreat from the first ID God
Who zooms souls into humans at birth—it’s so odd.
So, now I am not a Theity any more of proof,
And thus I must ever remain aloof.
“Of course, now I have very little to do,
And so I am not much needed, true,
For I can’t even muddle with their lives;
They are all stuck now with their wives.
“I might really just as well retire,
For I am superfluous and tired.”
“Well, You’re still kind of close to our Universe,
Not completely outside it, the place the worst,
As I suppose your successor will have to be placed,
Absolutely, totally invisible to the human race.
“At least You made some
Basic primordial substance,
And foresaw the billion years
Of combinatorial chance,
“Predicting every turn,
Or at least knowing that something neat
Might probably come out of it,
Which was still quite a feat.”
“Thank you, but it was nothing.”
“On the contrary—I say verily—
You’re the Super Scientist,
An Engineer Par Excellence—
The Ultimate Inventor of All Time—
Much better than than the old God of ID.”
“Yes, I am a Scientist, making all that’s real—
I Had to be, but it was really no big deal.”
“You’re too modest.”
“It was just some little quarks,
And some electrons that I sparked,
And some forces that arose,
As reality was composed.”
“But look what became of its simplicity—
Through its stages, to astounding complexity,
Over billions of years of circumstances;
We’ve traced the composites to simple substances.”
“Well, um, it did really take that long for My intention,
By some coincidence, the same as that for evolution;
“However, I guess I’m just as surprised as you, frown,
That when some examine substance and get down
To these simple subatomic levels of unadorned things,
“That they then take a giant leap back, of all things,
To the composite complexity of Me, the Ultimate.”
“Isn’t complexity a much higher product
Of combination upon combination,
And thus not lower than simplicity itself?”
“Yes, it would seem so; that’s a near empty shelf.”
“Then I suppose You’re some Great Alien Scientist, odd,
Highly evolved from somewhere, but not really God.”
“True, and you, Austin, as a scientist,
Should seek what underlies the all,
Not some Great Complexity who oversees it,
For that’s for what the theory calls.”
“Wise thoughts.”
“The best that can’t be bought.”
“Well, whatever on the alien thing of it,
But the creationists are not keen on scientists,
For scientists regard the honest seeking after truth
As a supreme virtue beyond all reproof.
“If they ever found out…”
“Yikes, they know not what they have made Me.
As a Scientist Myself, I truly value honesty
And skepticism over the dishonestly faked beliefs,
Those that only seem to bring Rolaid’s relief.”
“The Founding Fathers of America liked You,
Although some of them, as Thomas Jefferson too
Were outright non theists, many seeing You as a Deity
Who just started things up,
never interfering with reality.”
“Funny how President Bush’s and Trump's America sings,
Straying so oppositely from its humble beginnings.”
“Not to mention that some the world’s peoples, really,
Are squandering their precious time
Worshiping a Theity, and sacrificing to Him,
Begging, fighting, and dying for Him,
“Even threatening the world with its destruction.”
“What a waste.”
“Are you real?”
“No, I am but a figment of imagination, see,
But some really do like harmless old Me.”
“So what’s really fundamental?”
“The real fundamentals, just below
What you now call ‘fundamentality’,
Have always existed—the quantum reality.”
“There’s perhaps no time of ‘forever’
At that level for Your ‘always’ ever.”
“True, they just are, and had to be—the possible,
For a state of absolute nothing is indeed impossible.”
I see you like Stevens, have you read "Sunday Morning"? I wonder what you think of it. I'm just stumbling into philosophy here, so I'm missing a lot of background as yet. I took one elective in undergrad and then I've been trying to read things when I get time. I've found a weird kind of comfort in thinking about existentialism, of all things. I saw part of Sunday Morning quoted in Reginster's "Affirmation of Life" (a Nietzsche interpretation):
Looks like a fairly straightforward naturalist (?) anthem:
But the last stanza goes a bit wild:
Can't quite pin that down. Ah well, I'm easily entertained by the lyricism :)
'Seventh' serenade, non-singular set, arranged. The concise view of knowledge from the perfect angle.
A great poem by a great poet, who was a student of and friend to Santayana, and wrote many philosophical poems. He wrote a poem about Santayana: To an Old Philosopher in Rome. Other poems of his I think philosophical are The Snow Man, and The Ultimate Poem is Abstract. Also Sunday Morning, of course. He was something of a naturalist, I think, but as Sunday Morning indicates he was aware of the longing for something more.
I like the poem too. I'd never read it before. I should read some Stevens. It's very sensual, visual, olfactory. I sense some darkness in it though.
I came next upon a God sitting on a high fence,
And waved to Him, saying
“Come down and talk the whence.”
“I can’t; I am stuck here, but Salutations to you.
I am the God of Agnosticism, one neither false nor true.
None of the agnostics know if I exist or not,
So here I must stay put a lot,
“Along with the Tooth Fairy,
Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny,
Just in case we all might exist or not,
As a quadzillion-to-one shot.”
“Why can’t agnostics make up their minds?”
“My followers cannot even make or see
Probability judgments about the question of Me.
This is the limitation of agnosticism,
“Perhaps the error of no consideration
Of the likelihood of that for which evidence seeable
Is not even the least bit conceivable.”
“It is a fallacy; what I call the poverty of agnosticism,
Because though being agnostic is reasonable criticism
For some things, such as whether life exists elsewhere,
It is not appropriate for those things undoable,
“For which the idea of evidence is not even applicable;
However, actually, we can actually still talk
About the probability of the event,
While even going for a walk.
“The true fallacy, however, is that the existence ever,
And the nonexistence of You never,
Are not even on an even footing to begin with.
The two are not at all equiprobable cases.
“The burden of proof lies with the believers,
For anything that we can conceive of
Can be claimed to exist, as that we love,
Such as ghosts, spirits, and such forth.
“Are we then to straddle a fence that has no worth?
And, never seen. So, then, at the end of the day,
“Probability creeps into the beliefs of the agnostic way,
For in practice they end up in the lurch,
Not going ‘half the time’ to Church,
But mostly deciding not to go at all.”
“Yes, they still decide that which is ‘undecidable’,
For the fence is very uncomfortable
And so then the superposition
“Decoheres into the inclination
Of non belief—until, right here,
The Extraordinary’s evidence appears.”
He came down off the fence,
For he couldn’t exist and not exist at the same time.
I continued on through the undulating hills.
(We can refer to the fence sitters as non theists
In order to get away from labels like ‘agnostic’
Which might imply that the probability of thinking
God or not is on some kind of equal footing;
Plus that the fence sitters don’t really stay
On the uncomfortable fence but usually…
Go one way or the other way
In life’s practice of the everyday,
Although some might go to church
On alternating Sundays.
In between, perhaps they go
On wild picnics with their sweetie
And drink wine and do all that ‘bad’ stuff,
That we can’t say here, while waiting for some
Extraordinary evidence to appear.
I will soon have a talk with
Old Jehovah Yahweh’s Thee.
He’s not so terrible as many
Have made Him up to be,
But then again He’s not
So great either—He’s quite off,
Just another poor middle manager
Caught up in the layoffs.
I already spoke to the Deity
The God who doesn’t ever interfere
In the running of the universe.
The Pope doesn’t know it here,
But a Deity is what he’s
Leaning toward when he says then
That evolution is acceptable now
For Catholics to believe in (no mind).
The Deity Guy was
Actually kind of a great scientist.
And I already met with
The Creationist’s ID God,
Who while still a Designer
Is, well, not so cool at all, either,
For He gets back to what
The Fundamentalists believe,
And neither, they would say,
Did evolution happen,
Or if it did ever function,
God constantly stepped in
To rectify its direction.
I haven’t really begun
To scratch the surface of all the Gods,
Though, for so many lie now beneath the sod.
I’m only interested in
The person-type Gods of monotheism,
And I’m hardly even getting
Through those variant theisms
That fight amongst themselves
Over Jesus’ divinity, or if there is a Hell,
Or a Devil and some Angels about thee,
And over so many more
And other major differences, totally.
Then there are the multiple Gods,
Now up in the millions,
And the many Gods-who-are-not-persons,
Plus the TAO, the Consciousness,
And some way-out Ones.
There are also hundreds
Of long gone, ‘sure thing’ Gods,
Which I needn’t get into,
Except to wonder, and say:
Is that how the future will
Look at our Gods of today?
I can also skip the many
Weird offshoots that persist,
Like those saying that
The self is not allowed to exist,
Even calling it ‘ego’ to make
It seem so much worse;
I don’t have time for these
And other cult-level verse.)
by A. E. Housman
How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.
To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.
Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.
Ah, yes. The story of my life.
Realized I hadn't responded to this one. Yes, it seems familiar. It doesn't move me like some of his other poems. What is it you like about it? Is it the content or do you find the form pleasing?
The retirement-aged Inspector was not well, suffering in the end from a perforated ulcer, an enlarged liver, and heart disease. A little bit later in the story, Morse had a heart attack and died. It was the final episode of a wonderful series that had run for 8 years.
A 'good drug trip' is said to require the right setting and the right set. The same goes for poetry, I think. The scene in the television show was the right set and setting.
I rather think it is the statement made, and the succinct, parablic way in which it presented. I have always rather liked it, even though I tend towards sentimentality in poetry, and if one is looking for sentiment, Blake is probably not one's first stop.
Or perhaps more like this:
This made me want to ask - do you like "Song of Hiawatha?" Maybe more romantic than sentimental. I don't know if it's a good poem, but I love it.
Of all my rotten luck,
The God of the Old Testament
Appeared and proclaimed,
“I am Yahweh, never absent,
For those schooled from infancy
In My strange ways
Have become desensitized
To My horrific side,
“And so they continue to
Keep Me very much alive,
Through their thoughts;
So, fire away at Me;
I no longer bite that hard, you see.”
“You’re too easy of a target to attack for free—
So it would be rather unfair of me.”
“True, and I won’t deny it—
It’s all there in the Testament.
I was the most unpleasant character
That anyone ever made up in literary fiction.
“I was revealed to be jealous and proud of it,
Petty, unjust, controlling, vindictive,
An ethic cleanser, genocidal, infanticidal,
“Filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
Homophobic, misogynistic, sadomasochistic,
And much more, and a Bully—who gave it
Free will only if it matched My own Will.”
“Peace be with you.
How about the New Testament
To replace and hide Your scent,
As many religions have already
Done through Jesus sent?”
“Yes, that Testament is quite opposite in tone,
But I am still the Father of Jesus sown,
So the problem of Me can never really go away.
I am what I was, still here unto the present day.”
“Well, so long. You’re the worst role model yet
That human mammals have ever dreamed up.
Who would imitate, emulate,
Or follow You as a ‘leader’?”
“Well, My followers are those numerous slaves
Who excuse my mysterious [insane] ways,
Along with my exclusive desert tribe.”
“Well, You’re the Boss, and, anyway,
Who ever said that a God
Had to be perfect and good?”
“Everyone that I told—
And those who thought I should.”
“Oh well, never mind; whatever pleases.
So, um, Joseph was not
The biological father of Jesus?”
“No, I was.”
“So Jesus really did descend from David?”
“That was on his mother’s side.”
“Well, my ancestors descended from the trees.
Hey, why don’t Catholics get the 72 virgins
That Islam gives for martyrdom for their sins?”
“I told each religious faith a different story.”
“You also gave a bible half-different
To the Mormon founder,
Joseph Smith, finely engraved
On golden plates he discovered?”
“Sure. I thought at the time ‘why not’.”
“You had Islam add different things
To their Koran as well?”
“Yes of the many more ways to avoid Hell.”
“And You told only the Catholics
That there were umpteen levels of angels
And that bread was your body
And that wine was your blood?”
“Yep, I told just them and a few other selves,
But they made up the Saints themselves.”
“And You presented differing visions
To the Lutherans,
The Episcopals, and the Jewish,
And to many other also-rans?”
“Pretty much,
Except that a King of England
Founded the Episcopals—
The Anglicans, of course,
Since his own religion
Wouldn’t give him a divorce.”
“And you killed everyone but Noah
And his family in the Great Flood, wet,
Even young children and their pets?”
“Sure, again, why not? Life is cheap.
However, My creation of the rainbow
Says that I’ll never be so cruel again.
What can I say—I goofed. My sin.”
“But You are infallible, and even omniscient
And so You know all of the future meant.
You even broke your own commandments!”
“My omnipotence of changing my mind
Got in the way.”
“But your omniscience knew you would…
One day.”
“Yeah, I know—it’s a paradox; oh the strife.
And I can still technically end all life,
By means other than a flood.”
“You burned people in Hell, not saved,
When they didn’t follow
The unfree will that you gave?”
“Yes, because I was not a loving God.”
“Well, God, who made You?”
“No problem—either I was Eternal or I made Myself”
“This is remarkably the same, but for Thee,
As the Universal ingredients would be.”
“Then who would need me—wait,
I don’t want the answer told.”
“Is the Earth only about 4000 years old?”
“Of course not but I may have let that slip to some,
To tease their intelligence apart from being dumb.”
“Do you mind-read
The thoughts of every human,
Using all of your acumen,
And write the earthly script for each event,
Being so omnipresent?”
“I tried that at first, but it didn’t work for Me
To put my finger on every atom that be,
To micromanage its doings for all of thee.”
“That’s called ‘God’s Will’,
By some, even now.
What went wrong?
Was it the where and how?”
“It disrupted the atoms’ normal
And natural movements.”
“And that’s what caused the storms unfocused,
The lightning bolts and the plagues of locusts?”
“Yes, so I stopped making such a mess of things.”
“So the prayers of six million Jews pleaded
In the holocaust went all unheeded?”
“Yes, plus I have better things to do, in time,
My sooth,
Than look after some old experiment of Mine
From my misspent youth.”
“Did you really make Adam and Eve
And all of Earth and Nature, as we believe?”
“Yes, I made Nature,
Including the humans, in My image.”
“It shows in their rage.”
“Thank you.”
“God, it’s ID deja-vu all over again—
I really have to move on.”
“No, wait. I like your questions.
I’m mellower now, this being My new direction.
Not as many strictly admit to Me anymore.”
“How come so many of the gospels were omitted
From the New Catholic Testament,
Like those of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus,
Philip, Bartholomew, and more,
“As well as whole books kept from us,
Although You told some other religions to keep them,
Such as the Book of Revelations?”
“Those gospels were embarrassing and wild;
They told about My Son doing magic tricks
And practical jokes on people when He was a child.”
“Oh, we never heard much about his youth.
And didn’t You send the Mormons proof
That Jesus spent an early era
In what was to become America?”
“Probably.”
“What about the trillions of galaxies in the sky?”
“They’re just for show and scenery on high.”
“Where’s all your rantings and ravings
That I’ve heard about?”
“I now take Prozac for
My mood swings and bouts.”
“You don’t really exist, do You, as mental,
For how could You have an emotional system—
As composite—and still be absolute and fundamental?”
“No, I don’t exist,
For how could I since I am so horrible?
Human mammals made all of Me up
As a very bad example,
“As it turned out, from their many fears
In the childhood of their species’ years.
Unfortunately, it caught on to their children’s ears.”
“So, yet You still subsist
In this indefinite locus of wishes?”
“Yes, sort of.
I am sustained here since many children
Have learned to obey and listen
To what is-was told to them,
“For this obeying was an
Evolutionarily useful thing,
As many of their obediences
Resulted from warnings of things
“That were truly dangerous,
And so the children grew up
To indoctrinate their own children
In all the ‘knowledge’.”
“We’ll have to offer more reason
To those so indoctrinated.
Now farewell to You, the impersonated.”
“See you. Pay no attention to Me as certain,
But to all those blinded by the curtain.”
He soon dozed off into never land.
When I started this thread, I should have specified that posters should not include more than a limited number of personally written poems. Alas. Because I didn't, you have filled it with, by my count, 18 self-indulgent, poorly written poems.
I really like this thread. Lots of good interesting poetry and people with interesting ideas. What I've really liked is that it hangs around or a while, then goes away, then comes back again. Whenever it pops back up, it gives me pleasure. You have taken this nice, pleasing little thread and turned it into a dumping ground for your failed attempts at profundity to the extent that you've almost drowned out the good poetry out there. What I fear is that you have dozens more poems hidden away on your computer that you will continue to place here.
Please stop. There are plenty of poetry forums out there. Please stop damaging one of my favorite discussions.
Who can dislike an epic poem which is yet endearing? I first encountered the story of Hiawatha and Minnehaha as a child. It may have lost popularity today, as young people today are more (I want to say "vulgarly jaded", but I'll say...) worldly than they once were, but for a long time that story has entered the American mythos, and was often told to children.
I'm glad you like it.
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.
‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.’
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
‘Who made the eyes but I?’
‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.’
‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’
‘My dear, then I will serve.’
‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
So I did sit and eat.
George Herbert 1593 -1633
I assume this is an explicitly Christian sentiment, but it would be more interesting if it weren't.
Why would it have been better had a pagan said it?
Love is the love of Jesus, God. Takes away blame, easy peasy. It would just be more interesting, psychologically, philosophically if the love of each other, the love of other people, the love of other people for you, could take away blame. That would take some thought.
That is my biggest caveat against evangelical Christianity: all you’ve got to do is “repent” of your sin, which means you can sin all you want to...as long as you repent soon afterwards!...
...and as long as you confess belief in Jesus, you are saved, however much you may sin. James knew much better: “faith without works is dead.” And Jesus preached much better too. You may cry “Lord, lord,..” I did this or that in Your name, to gain significance among the faithful, but He replies, “I never knew you.”
Quoting T Clark
Love your neighbor as yourself. How many who confess their faith in Jesus turn their backs on their neighbors? fail to stop for the guy carrying a gas can down the road?
We project human traits onto God and describe them as perfect and transcending or exceeding the human domain. The love that Herbert depicts is perfect. Is our human love capable of transforming ourselves or someone else?
It is, of course. The experience of human love is how we know love can be transformative. Human experiences of many kinds are transformative. In tact, we don't have any experience except human experience--of anything.
So one can read Herbert's poem as an account of human love -- maybe exceptional love, but human love, nonetheless. Do people ever display exceptional love? Yes, sometimes. I wouldn't advise anyone to hold their breath waiting for an example of exceptional love, but it sometimes happens. When experienced, it is transformative -- as much so as the experience of God's love would be.
And by "love" I am not primarily thinking of ordinary romantic love. I'm thinking more about the selfless love of Agape. We might experience Agape and romantic love at the same time, but being the species we are, we'd probably be more fascinated by the erotic aspects of an erotic/romantic love / agape combination.
In objecting to the idea of giving to the poor because one might "entertain angels unaware", some dismiss the angels from the equation. The reason to tend to the poor is that they need care, and there but for the grace of God go I. Never mind angels--they are without need.
The hard-bitten Puritans, early exemplars of what would later be evangelical Christianity, believed that it was anything but simple. The 5 points of the Puritan faith were extremely harsh:
Humanity is totally depraved
Salvation is beyond mortal striving
Grace is predestined for only a few
Most were condemned to eternal damnation
No earthly effort could save one
Hard-boiled Calvinism!
The Puritans had some very beneficial influences on the United States, but I find their Calvinism abhorrent.
But yes, salvation can become simplistic and formulaic -- bastardization.
In the big oceans of jellyfish
Formal free
Cut loose
From culture and program
Sunrays play hide and seek
Their colors making me
Awe
I'm breathing like day and night
Tentacles tickle
Smoothness
It was there
Where I met you
Say what you will, like it or not, sincere repentance and forgiveness are at the heart of Christianity. If there ain't forgiveness of sins, it ain't Christianity. That rubs some people the wrong way. Not me. Although I'm not Christian and original sin doesn't make sense to me, I still think it's a wonderful thing. And it's not evangelical Christians, it's all of them.
Quoting Leghorn
There are hypocrites of all religions, philosophies, and persuasions.
I guess that's part of my point. What can God's love do that human love cannot?
Quoting Bitter Crank
This makes me think of one of my favorite poems, "Aunt Celia, 1961," by Carl Dennis. I heard it first on "The Writer's Almanac" and I've quoted it here before, probably in this thread somewhere. Here's an excerpt:
[i]People will tell you there are many good lives
Waiting for everyone, each fine in its own way.
And maybe they’re right, but in my opinion
One is miles above the others.
Otherwise it wouldn’t have been so clear to me
When I found it. Otherwise those who lack it
Wouldn’t be able to tell so clearly it’s missing
As they go on living as best they can
Without complaining. Noble lives, and beautiful,
And happy as much as doing well can make them.
But as for the happiness that can’t be earned,
The kind it makes no sense for you to look for,
That’s something different.[/i]
In defense of this particular point, I will note that the Christian conception of "true repentance" necessarily involves a "turning away" from the particular "sin" in question. For my part, the "biggest caveat" against any flavor of Christianity is the apparent non-existence of "God", and of "gods".
Change "you have filled it with, by my count, 18 self-indulgent, poorly written poems" to "...18 quite lengthy, self-indulgent, poorly written poems". I don't feel good having to say that, @PoeticUniverse, disliking to critique the opera of another in a way that might be hurtful, but such appears true. I have learned one thing from your contributions, though: that "stream of consciousness" writing is best kept within the realm of prose fiction, and then within the hands of masters such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. I think that you should desist in the pace of your contribution...maybe one poem per month, deal?
"Oh Piggy Pigly on the wall
Who is ugliest of them all?"
After heavy, steaming snore
It replied to Sister Soar
"Oh Big Hog, behold
That's where the beauty lies
The ugliest are you, I'm told
By my hideous eyes
But beware that in time
Beauty too can rhyme
Upon your dirty slime
As on every random swine"
"If that's the case"
Growled Sister in delight
"On will be the chase!
Thanks Oh Pigly Bright!"
Every eye was asked with force
To collect with every other
Devourng them, wild like horse
She didn't care to bother
Every eye, her own ones too
Cracked by her tombstone teeth
Filling her with ugly foo
From her pighead big to teeth
So her ugliness was frozen
Beauty was no more a but
Feeling lucky to be chosen
She wallowed ugly in the mud
I can agree to not posting any more lengthy poems.
Amnity asks: What is wrong with it ? Constructive criticism, any ?
Any specifics concerning "But it is not good poetry?" to make your generalization helpful?
Here is the poem: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/599584
:up:
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Your poetry displays/employs a definite "stream of consciousness" style, whether deliberate or accidental. The problem with that, as I have noted above, is that lyric poetry, which truth be told is the type of poetry that Mr. Clark seems to enjoy and so is the proper, tacitly implied focus of this thread, in order to be "good", is best written with great deliberation and attention to meter and, if applicable, to rhyme. That is to say, it should be the opposite of stream of consciousness writing. The composition of a quality lyric poem is something tremendously difficult to achieve. Trust me, as a great lover of poetry, I have tried mightily, only to be confronted with the realization that I simply do not "have the muse". I can write snippets of good lyric poetry, perhaps put together a decent stanza, but in trying for a finished, coherent whole, cohesiveness always flees away from me. This just makes me appreciate the great poets even more.
There are types of poetry other than yours which employ a stream of consciousness style, such as free verse and slam poetry, and I think that they would both become as readily tiring as have your works...especially slam poetry, as I think Mr. Clark might object to the egregious use of profanity employed. Since this thread is tacitly about lyric poetry, I think that there is a limited tolerance for large contributions of other poetic styles, especially where said contributions are of great length.
Another problem that I discern in your poetry, is that it is just too damned intellectual. Rather, it is intellectual without the needed affect. In the poetical enterprise, intellectualism can be other than a good thing...quite detrimental to the end product, if it is not passed through the sieve of affect. Great poetry, even as it relates profound thoughts, does not do so by thinking, it does so by feeling, if that makes any sense. Great poetry presents the intellect filtered through the affect, with the result that it should make us think as a complement to feeling and this is something powerfully difficult to achieve.
That is my main style, not a stream of consciousness, but in ten syllable quatrains that take quite a while to rhyme without the rhyme being an intrusion, plus to package a pearl in each stanza, making them easy digestible units of the whole poem, as in the one referenced, plus 'Flora Symbolica' intro, and more, near to those in this thread when Amnity was responding. "Intellect" often shows in very philosophical poems as much as it does in philosophy.
I don't use stream of consciousness; the poems don't come out that quickly. I don't aim for free verse either. Poetry requires more work than what can just go plop in just a live stream of thoughts arising.
Perhaps Mr. Clark might also add or rewrite a stanza in the referenced poem to show how it could become good poetry beyond its already lyrical, rhyming, metered form that you say he likes, but, first, let us see what he says this second time around of being asked to bolster his bare generalization about the 'Worldly Love' poem. How did you like it? Are you also still claiming '18'?
(Explaining the poetic style only):
A long time ago I read all of Shelley’s poems,
He being a scientific romanticist known,
Who plumbed the depths of mystery,
And too Keats and Byron, as eagerly,
They being the romantics of the Earthly realm,
Along with Omar Khayyam, at Sultan’s helm,
A romantic scientist who invented algebra,
As well as cherishing all of nature above Allah.
Omar was as Mr. Spock’s logic,
But with the glory of life added to it,
While Shelley was more of Dr. McCoy’s
Excessives of emotional, romantic ploys,
But Keats and Byron were more
Of a blend, like Captain Kirk’s sure
And dashing action tempered with reason—
A man for each and every season.
So, I ended up writing poems in the styles
Of Shelley’s and Old Khayyàm’s wiles,
The former being flowingly lyrical—
The latter twistingly epigrammatical,
Short ones at first, very precise,
But also using them as a concise
Way to whittle down entire books
To the few gems and pearls in their nooks.
So now after many educated years,
I still use them to boil down the idears.
(Anyway, no more epics, as being too long for the readers, plus they are not easy to do.)
I now will fetch some examples and discuss them in a next comment.
This piece, written in the English of Chatterton's own eighteenth century, is more reflective than philosophical, as the title suggests, but as an homage to the season, here you have it:
from Elegy
[...]
[I]When golden Autumn, wreathed in riped’d corn,
From purple clusters prest the foamy wine,
Thy genius did his sallow brows adorn,
And made the beauties of the season thine.
Pale rugged Winter bending o’er his tread,
His grizzled hair bedropt with icy dew;
His eyes, a dusky light congeal’d and dead,
His robe, a tinge of bright ethereal blue;
His train a motley’d sanguine sable cloud,
He limps along the russet dreary moor;
Whilst rising whirlwinds, blasting keen and loud,
Roll the white surges to the sounding shore.
A dreary stillness broods o’er all the vale,
The clouded Moon emits a feeble glare;
Joyless I seek the darkling hill and dale,
Where’er I wander Sorrow still is there.[/i]
-Thomas Chatterton
Yeah, this is the nature of my primary "beef" with free verse and so-called "slam poetry".
I was thinking, @PoeticUniverse, of how to describe what a good poet does that others do not, and I think I might have the words to describe it. We all have, upon occasion, intense inner experiences associated with places, events, or situations, which we cannot seem to describe adequately to make another person feel what we have felt, and understand what we have understood. A great poet is able to use language in a manner which recalls such experiences, and makes one think, "yes, I have experienced that, but could never describe it". It is the experience upon reading a poem of finding the expression for something profound that one has experienced but never been able to describe. This experience upon reading a poem tends to give someone the "fifty mile stare", and makes a person feel a need to say "...thank you so much..." to the poet.
This is a reasonable request. I'll look at what the others have written and see if I have anything to add.
I'll make this point again - it's not the poetry that bothers me. I never would have commented if it had been a couple, or even a few, poems. It was the fact that they had taken over the thread to the detriment of other poetry.
For the record - @Michael Zwingli said:
Quoting Michael Zwingli
I don't agree with this. There was no "tacit implication" of a particular kind of poetry, only that it be philosophical. The poetry you posted met the stated requirements for inclusion. It was the overwhelming volume that I object to.
Oh, sorry, man, for putting words into your mouth that you never intended to say. I'm trying to give "Poetic" some constructive criticism, so that he can improve his output.
No, don't apologize. I just wanted to be clear about what concerns me. When I have specific things I want to see in a thread I start, I try to be as explicit as possible about what should be and what should not be included. As I noted, I was not explicit enough in this case.
Thanks for discussing. Yes, many of my poems are meant to convey scientific and the philosophical themes in a non dry manner in digestible stanza chunks. I'm not a physicist but I understand it enough to interpret it for the lay reader. Your physics posts in other thread are as excellent as I've seen anywhere; you even understand the math, too, so your reviews will be helpful. I involve humans in other poems.
Yes, that's it, and you are a helpful discusser.
What you said about "something profound" as the basis for poetry can be described by poems about poetry:
A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
Which by showing unapprehended proof
Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty—
It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.
Poetry dresses the phantasmic new
By enshrining the apparition’s brew,
Captured and bottled as aquavita,
Wisdom’s pearls, from the evanescent dew.
Poetry lives silently in an illustration;
A poem’s beauty is its painting with diction.
These, like music, are works of worldly art,
Just shadows of a deeper perfection!
Poetry makes clear what is barely heard,
For it translates soul-language into words,
Whereas, melody plays straight on the heart;
Merged, they create song; heart and soul converge.
Poetry makes immortal what is best
In life: it frees images of dreams impressed,
Apprehends the vanishing phantasms,
And sends them forth in fine words, fully dressed.
('fully dressed' phrase borrowed from someone)
The Rubaiyat Poetic Form
The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
Line four delivers the sting, just in time.
Good news! Thanks.
On the lengthy and plenty point, that's fixed, plus I've found a way to reference longer poems by just pointing to a link that downloads a PDF hosted on one of my websites, such as the whole of the 'Flora Symbolica' poem about the lore and legends of the plants and flowers:
text: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/flora-symbolica-text-8.5x11.pdf
illustrated (may take a minute to arrive):
https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/fsi-17x11-jpg-jpg-150-dpi.pdf
video (long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOZknZJNA2U
I like autumn, too, and its portend of winter.
OLD AUTUMN
The glow-worms, fairy stars come down to ground,
Gleam the shadowy woods through summer’s round;
Then fall’s leaves flutter through the quiet air,
The autumn being the sunset of the year.
The rustling of the trees comes to my ear,
In this,the most mellow time of year.
The harvest brings fulfillment, yearning too,
For autumn is both a smile and a tear.
Each year in October Jack-in-the-Green
Has a chilled rendezvous with Old Autumn,
Who colors the leaves that Jack made verdant
A season ago. They meet out in the woods,
Although never in the same place, for seasons
Come and go and meet each other as they may.
[hide="Reveal"]This year Old Autumn was a little late,
So Jack-in-the-Green sat down on a stump.
Jack pondered his disappearing green youth,
For someday he would have to take Autumn’s place
And perform all of his withering tasks.
A few days later Old Autumn came by;
He gave unto Jack a cheery greeting
And a warm embrace that marked summer’s end.
He gazed fondly at Jack, his younger self,
And saw the vitality that was once his,
And said, “Once I was young; once I was you!”
“I know,” said Jack, “Do you remember how
I refused to believe you, saying ‘no’?”
“Yes,” remembered Old Autumn, “very well,
Like the time I met the Old Man, Winter
On a snowy December day long ago.
He told me that he was my older self—
But I didn’t believe him! Told him off!
“True, I was already feeling my age
But after seeing the old white-haired geezer
I felt young again! Yes, he knew me well.”
“Right,” said Jack, “so I made a little poem:
“When younger, I knew not my elder same,
But when older I told my younger same
That youth must be young; he knew not my name!
It was my younger self who was to blame!”
Swallows twittered in the skies as sprightly
Jack-in-the-Green picked a ripening gourd
And gave it to Old Autumn, who encouraged,
“You won’t have to meet the Old Man until
You take my place, for only I can see him—
After I take down the last of the oak leaves.
“For now, the Old Man sends but his errand boy,
Jack Frost, your twin brother. Hi ho, here he comes!
Aye, young Jack, this is the rarest of days,
For the three of us can be together
But once a year on this bright day / cool night.”
“The Old Man is so lonely, is he not?”
Asked Jack-in-the-Green, “for he sees only you.”
“Yes. Old Man Winter lives cold and alone;
He never sees the fair maidens of spring
Who reinvent the natural world each year.”
There is a chill in the air as Jack Frost arrives
And sings out a greeting: “Hello my brother!
Hello Old Autumn! It’s going to be cold—
Our first frost, but don’t worry too much—
It won’t harm the pumpkins any at all.”
Old Autumn sighed and quick replied: “Good.
Now the rest of the leaves will crack and fall
All the more due to the ice in their veins;
Yes, they’ll fall like the illusions of youth,
‘Lying carelessly on the granary floor’ and
‘On a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies’, as Keats wrote.”
Composing himself, Old Autumn continued:
“And for those of you who think that ‘warm days
Will never cease’, let us ever remember
Dear Johnny Keats, who died so young, at 25;
However, he lived and saw more than some
Of us might hope to do in a lifetime.”
A shiver ran through Jack-in-the-Green,
Hence he said: “It’s cold; I must go now, for
Summer passed away in his sleep last night;
Autumn, sweet and plump, carries his offspring.
The year dies in the night; ghostly winter looms;
Lo; the flower is already in the seed.”
“Well done, young Jack-in-the-Green; quick, go,
For soon enough comes your autumn of care
Sobering into age, thence into
The pale white winter of death,
Though not yet your warm indolent summer
Of contentment lazing into middle-age,
But surely past is our crisp,
Flowering youth-spring of joy!
“Such then, comes the end of summer’s dreams,
The blanching of the grassy banks of streams,
But all fragrances my elves remember
Through their long sleep in the winter embers.
“The blossoms fall, showers of fragrant beauty,
As leaves fade, while the bulbs store up energy.
Nature’s floral dreams grant this destiny,
For these leavings enrich earth’s potpourri.
“Flowers lay their heads to sleep in soft beds,
Blanketed by webs of gossamer threads;
My elfin creatures cast their spectral glow,
As winter stars—floral twins—start to grow.
“Later, when surely all the world is dead,
An elf will stand atop Old Winter’s grave
And say, ‘’tis not dead’, and by magic bred
Make Snowdrops flower in the tomb’s heat wave.”
Once I, the author, ventured outside at
Four on a dark frosty October morning.
It was so quiet that I could sense the
Cosmos as it played rhythm to my beating heart.
I saw a preview of the winter stars:
Orion, you are so high in the sky—
There for only the astronomer’s eye,
As all those meteors go flying by.
Then I heard a rustling sound in the leaves
Around me—a skunk perhaps—but no,
It was the sound of many falling leaves.
I knew that it must be him, Old Autumn.
He was out there somewhere. Then I sensed him
Going by, for some of the leaves on the
Tree right in front of me broke loose and
Floated away, hitting some other leaves
On the way down, making that rustling sound.
Soon it started up on the next tree, and
Then the next—and so I could very well
Follow the path of Old Autumn making
His rounds in the misty October morn.
Chrysanthemums drank the mellow day,
Falling petals carried the light away.
The weed-flowers grew, marking autumn’s track,
The blossoms that almost brought the spring back,
But winter’s white death wrap was drawn over,
Smothering the earth’s last warm sweet odour.
The autumn fog enswirled, the mist upcurled;
Into nothingness the wisp slow unfurled.
November flew by, a colorless dearth,
And December, amid death, a festive birth.
Youth and Beauty made agèd Winter mourn
For Summer’s grain—the waving wheat and corn,
For Old Autumn, withered, wan, had passed on,
Leaving the earth a widow, weather worn.
Long since have the winds scattered the leaves
Of the trees to make of them a
Burial shroud for the flowers that died
Grieving at summer’s passing. All is death.
The fall is now nearly lost to memory.
Winter is summer’s ungrateful heir,
Squandering his riches and abusing his gifts.
It’s not Old Man Winter’s fault, but his duty.
Summer lies underground now, forgotten,
Silent and crusty, covered by winter’s
Stern mantle. Only April’s tears can make
His grave lush again, in the spring-tide.
As seasons pass, the world comes to our door:
Spring sings through the wingèd troubadour;
Summer calls with the rose, ’midst the wood-lore;
Autumn crows, plump and sweet, through frosty hoar.
Joy and exuberance are spring’s largesse.
Sunlight, warmth, and growth are summer’s bequest.
Autumn brings wealth with the mellow harvest.
Winter’s fruit is peace—its bounty is rest.
Past us is the flower of spring’s soft breath;
Though not ended our summer of promise;
Soon enough will come the autumn of care;
Beheld, at last, the dull white shroud of death!
March, April! spring! We’ll reign as we May there,
Between June and her sister, September,
Then prolong the fall, till November come
December, when we can sweet Remember.
In the whisperings of the after-years
The winds of time slowly dry the tears;
Nor would I take back a single drop, for
From those tears the flowers grew without fears.
In spring we rise from the garden at birth.
Summer blooms long with the roses’ fresh mirth.
Autumn creeps in—we wither on the vine.
Last comes winter, when we return to earth.
————
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
English poet (1792 - 1822)[/hide]
What are angels, demons and spirit guides?
They are Halloween!
For Halloween Season
She frowns, “Lo, the woods are growing dense, filling with mist and shadowed goods.”
“What’s that fuss, behind us?”
“An old witch has just sprung up, to our rear, she being the specter of fear, and of all that is worrisome here.”
The witch asks, “What is your deepest fear?
We don’t answer.
The witch continues, “Do I ask of the air? Hell, death? Which shall it be? How about Heaven? Is that it? All three?”
“I banish you,” I say, “for death is merely the natural end of all living things of nature’s blend. What has no death has no life principle! My turn to live would never have come about, to ripple, if it were not for the deaths before, of people. As for Heavens and Hells, those are what we create within ourselves, as we can turn our souls outside in, to create a Heaven or Hell from within. Hell surely arrives when we make our own difficulties, in life’s wake, when we our common sense forsake. However, I do have one fear that’s grown, although just one alone.”
“What is that fear?, the witch pleads. “My hopes suddenly rise in pitch, but my form is ready to fade, for your anxiety unmade.”
“My one and only fear besought is that of not living well, as ought! So, with that answer furnished, witch, you, the specter of fear must vanish, like the mist, cold, on the morning wind unrolled.”[hide="Reveal"]…
The Horrit Witch
They take an overgrown side-path to the haunt of a known sorceress. The signs say ‘Enter All Who Welcome Death!’ but still they continue, for they need clues. The witch meets them at the outer gate and bids them to enter.
They gallop to the entrance of the evil place but as they arrive they see her to be already inside, a trick, but enough to unnerve any squire who knows not of the use of doubles and twins. The abode is crawling with Tarantulas; it has the desired effect on Bogar and Hargrave. “Oh!” says Hargrave. “Woe!” says Bogar.
“Do not believe all that you see,” whispers Percevale to the squires; “Merlyn has revealed many magic tricks to me.”
“We seek Thorelf the Viking!” announces Hargrave.
“Purchase the spear that bleeds, which you will never find.” reveals the witch. “It is but one link in a long chain that may strangle you or save you! And seek the land of ice and fire!—it is far to the north—there you may find Thorelf’s wake that will take you to him across the ocean desert of despair. And you, Percevale, you would have found love on a foreign soil—However, you will not survive to use the clues I have given you!”
And with that admonition, all sink to their knees and thence to the floor, overtaken by the fumes coming from the witch’s pot. The fumes are not deadly, for the witch does not derive power from killing men, but only from controlling them.
No, this witch rules by chemistry: the very air is drugged with gases. The price of information is sometimes dear, for she means to enslave them. The squires cry out as their heads fill with visions of demons and creatures so hellish as to defy description on this printed page. Logic and good sense are stilled, as terror reigns and begins to take over the squires’ souls.
But, the King’s heart is tested and grown strong. Before reason escapes altogether, a calmness of thought occurs to Percevale: “if that which cannot happen, does indeed seem to be happening, then one must be experiencing a non-reality—a dream perhaps or something akin to it—”
To test his theory Percevale closes his eyes. “Aha! The demons are still there.” They are but put in his mind, he realizes, and are hallucinations induced by potions, not really very different from night dreams.
The Knight King arises calmly from the floor, ignores the visions, grabs the two squires, and exits the hovel, holding them firmly in the night’s embracing chill until their minds have cleared and their lungs are free of the witch’s potion.
The witch’s slaves and legions are not allowed to follow, lest their minds be cleared as well. “Why is it,” thinks Percevale, “that those with second sight and such rare powers, those who could be so useful to the world, often fail to use their powers wisely. He turns and stands before the witch’s hovel and vows to someday find the power to return and destroy it!
They ride through the night without sleeping, for their hearts are still beating quickly. The morning finally dawn on the squires and they see that nature is new and that the grass is now green. Renewal is at hand; nature is reinventing the world.
…
The Rites & Wrongs of Spring
The trio comes to a road that is blocked by the passing of a spring carnival. It is the annual “Rites of Spring Celebration”, doubly raucous this year because it also celebrates the recent victories of war. There are tumblers, troubadours, circus acts and the like, and it is well attended with drunken revelry.
A vendor on Bogar’s right is selling sacred objects for unbelievably low prices and Bogar takes opportunity of the journey’s pause to investigate the bargains. His attention is first brought to a piece of the venerated wood of the true cross, brought here by the vendor himself after he had gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and secretly excavated the hill of the Holy Sepulcher at night whilst a cathedral was being built over it. Bogar parts with some valuable coins and buys a worthless piece of wood.
He also purchases a nail from that same cross. It is still incrusted with Christ’s blood. He buys also a portion of the actual crown of thorns, a shredded part of the tablecloth used at the last supper, a bone from St. Peter’s arm, a piece of the manger, some drops of the Virgins own milk sealed forever in a glass vial, and a tin cup used by Joseph of Aramithea to catch the blood of Jesus on that first Good Friday.
Having spent all of his riches, he is about to return when he spots a golden box with a crystal lid, containing a purple cushion on which lays a piece of rusted iron, triangular in shape with a long sharp point.
“This,” said the vendor, “is the tip of the spear that pierced the side of the Saviour!”
After much consultation with Hargrave, Bogar obtains a loan and makes the final purchase. The riding junk-pile returns and Percevale examines the haul with horror.
“Throw all of this rattling junk away!” the King insists.
“But most of this is from the true and holy cross, sire!”
“Squires,” replies Percevale, “I’ve seen enough pieces of the true cross to construct twenty fine sailing sloops of war and still have enough wood left over to build a bridge over the Usk river. What is that cup? Good God, we’ve found the Grail again! Fling it to that beggar by the creek who is sipping water with his hands!”
The squires quail at the King’s rage and let their treasures fall to the ground, but the King is laughing on the inside at the squires’ folly and soon they all break into hearty laughter. But the laughing stops abruptly as they all notice that the box containing the spear tip is now quite full of blood.
“Keep the spear tip,” replies Percevale with haste, remembering the words of the first witch, “and attach it to a fine and sturdy stick, for the Crimson Spear has been returned to me when I need it most.”
…
The Curse of the Death-Crone
As Percevale approaches the witch’s land, he sees the shield and helmets of those who came and died before him. He clutches the Crimson Spear close and continues his approach. “Now, Bogar, you wait here and if I do not come out within two days, then come in after me.”
Percevale feels the watch of gloom as he enters the territory of the witch. Knowing that he is being watched, he does not turn around to alert the watcher, but slides quickly and unbeknownst into the woods at the next turn. Taliesin glides noiselessly, silent and invisible in Percevale’s mind!
Percevale peers in a window and sees a pitiful sight. The witch’s slaves are from the world of the deformed and misshapen—those who are most easily enslaved, plus a Giant. Next, plans are made and a good night’s sleep is taken.
In the morning a huge menacing giant blocks Percevale’s path, but there is something very human and caring, yet guarded, in the giant’s eyes. To test this theory, Percevale aims an arrow at the Giant’s dog, and the Giant pleads with Percevale not to shoot it. Apparently the giant is too large to fully feel the effect of the witch’s controlling drug, and Percevale speaks to the giant softly: “You could easily escape this witch’s spell and be free!”
The Giant replies: “You are correct; I stay only to protect my misshapen friends from further harm, and indeed I will help you kill the witch if you will but insure the safety of my friends!”
“I am King of Britain and the safety of all my subjects concerns me. Just keep your bewitched friends in check while I do battle with the witch and soon you shall all be free or I’ll die trying.” Such sincere words were very well understood by the giant.
Now Percevale faces the witch, but not alone, for Taliesin has joined with him in mind, and the bleeding spear is at hand.
“’Tis the accursed Crimson Spear for Avalon!” she cries. “Take it from my sight, I can not bear to look!”
But Percevale holds it all the more firmly as she tries to wrench it from his grasp with the powers of her mind. She fills his minds eye with evil sights of monsters, but ever still does he hold the red shaft; it is now bleeding profusely and its blood is pooling on the ground. For a day and a night, the battle of the minds continues, Percevale and Taliesin barely holding their own and growing evermore weary, and feeling at each instant that they cannot last another moment.
Meanwhile, no potions are being dispensed to the enslaved; they drink but the purest of water and so they are slowly regaining control over their lives. Towards morning, the battle draws to its climax as Avalon’s grandson is assaulted with every trick known to sorcery by Avalon’s daughter gone astray; but Taliesin has studied under the master Merlyn and Percevale has the strength of ten because his heart is pure.
And then it is over. As the witch crumples to the ground, defeated at last, she finds those last ounces of strength that comes at the time of dying and uses it to place the curse of the Death-Crone upon our hero: “Percevale, from death’s doorstep, I, the Death-Crone, curse you with my last breath; I curse you with the worst misfortune that may befall a man: that you will never find love or be loved ever again—until rocks flow like water, until the day comes that the sun does not rise, until the new moon is seen with the naked eye, until the planet Mercury is seen at high noon, until fire is seen in water, until it snows in Cisalpine Gaul on a summer day, until all of the above events happen on the same day within a month from this very day! In other words, you will never ever find love or be loved!
“So then, when these events do not happen, for they cannot happen and be seen by you, you will not only be unloved nor able to give love, but you will also find the world to be filled with hate towards you, and you will soon die and forever wear the foolscap of eternal shade, for no man can live for long without love!”
The witch dies, the King is cursed, but the enslaved are free!
No Hope for the Hopeless
Bogar, forever dedicated, takes what is left of his master back to Camelot. Bogar notes the King’s despair and so Percevale tells him the tale of the witch’s curse. “I shall never succeed, Bogar, for most of the witch’s challenges are impossible; that’s the joke of it, I guess. She just threw in one easy one, ‘when rocks flow like water’ to give me false hope, for I do know of a place where rocks flow like water.
“But no one has ever seen the new moon. Of course, the full moon is easily seen because it is completely lit on the side facing us and rises when the sun sets and is therefore up all night, but the new moon is just the opposite: it rises in the morning, is up all day, sets at evening, and is lit only on the side away from us. It has never been seen, Bogar!
“Oh, we have seen the slivers of the very young and the very old moons, but the new moon gives no light at all, so, even if we see but a thin crescent moon, then by definition, it is not the new moon. Even if we knew where to look for it in the sky, which we do not, there would be the glare of the sun to contend with. Even the stars, which do give off light, cannot be seen in the daytime, even in areas of the sky not near to the sun.
“And Mercury, being so close to the sun, can only be seen just before sunrise or just after sunset, but never at high noon! As for snow in late June or July in Southern Gaul, it is not likely and has never occurred.
“And I have not yet known a day when the sun did not rise. Even on cloudy days we know that the sun has risen, for there is light behind the clouds. And fire in water! It cannot be. Water conquers fire, they cannot coexist. For any of the above to happen is impossible. For all of them to happen on the same day within a month is beyond impossible, yet, I will not give up hope for I know from Avalon’s Lady that all curses have an escape.”
Percevale spends the day in the archives of Camelot with Taliesin. Then they spend all night in the Merlyn Tower Room, where they pore over old manuscripts full of diagrams But only this much becomes known: The new moon is to appear in two weeks—this fixes the day; and there is only one place where rocks are flowing like water—this fixes the place! There is hardly time to get there, so the King immediately leaves for Iceland.
The Ice Maiden
The chronicles covering the journey have not survived the ravages of time, so we find ourselves already close to Iceland. The sea is glorious and the air is fresh and pure. We do know that during the journey north, the twilight lasted longer and longer each day.
There is not a moment to waste, but Percevale spots a vessel in distress behind him, and for a moment he wonders if he should take the time to come to its aid. But, there is no real choice, so he turns back and although her ship goes under, he manages to pull her from the depths and spends over an hour reviving her. And, even when revived, her lips will not part from his, for they have tasted each other and found it to be sweet.
“I am cursed, you cannot love me,” says the Ice Maiden finally, who was named Dheryle. “I am sent to remind you of that which is forbidden to you! I have no choice; the spell overwhelms! You should have let me drown; then you would have had some peace. From now on, everyone you touch will catch the curse until the world fills with hate and destroys itself.”
“So this is how it is going to be,” laments Percevale. “How I shall hate to give up life’s wonders when I am gone!”
The Greatest Day on Earth
But, this is to be the day of the new moon; at least there is a chance, thinks Percevale. They arrive on the shore of Iceland, and on this day, as on every day for a month either way in this northern land, the sun does not rise, for it did not set the day before, since it stays aloft all day during these two months of daylight! Just before noon, strange bands of shadows begin to rapidly cross the land and Percevale feels that perhaps the end is near.
The ground begins to shake and heave for a few moments and then all is silent, so very silent as to strike one dumb. Something terrible seems to be happening. Grazing animals look for shade trees and lie down to sleep. Then, about noontime, the shadow of darkest night covers the land as the moon begins to kiss the sun and cover it—it is a solar eclipse! Merlyn’s old notes in the archive were accurate! Thank the gods for the old wizard!
During the seven minutes of total darkness, Percevale sees a black disk in the sky, surrounded by faint wisps of flame—it is, of course the new moon in all her black glory; indeed, the new moon can only be seen during a solar eclipse, and never at any other time. There near the sun is a bright “star” that does not twinkle!
It can only be the planet Mercury! Yes, there it is, in plain sight, at high noon. And farther out, Venus can be seen!
Now the ground begins to really shake, and Percevale hurries to his ship with the Ice Maiden. They leave Iceland but see the volcano erupt; rocks are flowing to the sea like water! But, the water puts out the fiery flow and so they do not see fire in water, just a lot of steam.
Then a tremendous plume of smoke and debris is sent up into the sky and is carried south by the unusual winds born of the marriage of summer warmth and ice cold air brought on by the blockage of the sun’s rays by the dense volcanic ash. The spontaneous cold front sweeps south to Gaul on the reversed upper winds, bringing the darkness of the ashen sky with it. As no sunlight can penetrate, the air below grows colder and colder, and what would have been rain now turns to snow over Cisalpine Gaul for a brief time before westerly winds can disperse the volcanic cloud around the earth.
That evening the sun sinks low, but does not set. On the water is the glitter path of that fiery ball—and so we have fire in water!
The sun has kissed the moon, and Percevale gathers the Ice Maiden, Dheryle, into his arms and kisses her, his capacity for love far from dead, but growing stronger every minute of this glorious day as both of their curses fall by the wayside.
…
Back in Britain, at the shore:
“There, Dheryle, over those hills, is the former abode of the witch. I must go there to see that all is well, so as to complete my quest that brought us together in the first place.”
“Well bless her wretched soul! Come Percivale, let us walk the grounds on this late afternoon.”
Moving through the glittering fields of daylight fireflies, they walk along the lake path, without words. Though still weary from sea travel, love’s energy carries them on its eagles’ wings, as being near to one’s life partner is contentment enough for anyone on a night in the Age of Darkness in the mid-summer.
There is a strange chill in the air as the woods compel them to enter and share in its secrets on this day of magic.
Church bells knell the toll of six o’clock from the nearby town. The sounds are muffled and distant because the air has suddenly grown heavy.
“I think that we are not alone Percivale.”
“Yes, the forest has many eyes and I have come to love them—and tonight I feel as if the air is filled with the magic, hopes, and dreams of all of the souls which have come before us since the dawn of time.”
“There is a similar night in my country, during which these feelings of old, sealed in our souls, become known, and float in the air so that we might know of our dim and animal past. Hark! I see movement ahead, and in the trees!”
They run to the spot, but the impish form is gone; however, the grass is yet bent and marks the small man-creature’s passing.
“Hold me close, Percevale.”
“I know this feeling! It is but the witch’s soul on its way to its final and eternal resting spot in hell’s heart. It’s gone now—I again feel the beauty and goodness of man—and only this can ensure the victory of wisdom!”
The Giant appears.
…
The Last Curse on Earth
Percivale sits down to hear the Giant’s tale and the Giant begins: “The witch placed a curse on me as well. I will forever roam the earth in sadness if I do not accomplish the following by the end of this day: I must see the sun set three times in one day, and, I must, during daylight, create a dark space behind me that never ends. What will I do? I cannot stop the sun and raise it up again, nor can I cause the absence of light behind me and into the infinite depths of space!”
Day is nearly done and the horizon is rising to meet the bloodshot eye of day. Percivale, having studied under the poet-astronomer, Taliesin, quickly leads the giant to the shore where a small piece of low hilly land juts out into the sea. They face to the west and view the setting sun, now a symbol of the sad giant’s dying hopes. The sun drops though some clouds and is bright again, but half of it is already below the horizon!
“Look at your shadow, giant! How long is your shadow at sunset or sunrise? What is shortest at noon grows longer as the afternoon wears on, until finally, it stretches forever behind you, since you are directly between the sun and that which is behind you.”
“That is fine Percivale, but the sun is nearly set and will certainly not rise again until the morrow. I must still see three sunsets!”
“No time to explain now, giant. Quick! Lie down on the ground and see your first sunset today as the top sliver of the sun falls below, and is extinguished by, the horizon. See! There it goes. Now, quickly, stand up to your great height and what do you see?”
“I see the tip of the sun again!”
“And your second sunset of the day, giant?”
“Yes! I see it, and another green flash as well!”
“Now run up yonder hill and bring up the sun again so that it may set three times in a day!”
The gleeful giant runs up the hill in great leaps and turns to see the sun set three, four, even five more times, each sunset lasting a few seconds.[/hide]
Very nice, indeed. Thank you for sharing an intimate experience in such an erudite manner.
He died at 17 by poison. Keats at 25; Shelley at 29, leaving the great 'Triumph of Life' unfinished; Byron at 35, and more.
Yep, usually thought to be a suicide secondary to Chatterton's entrapment in poverty, though it has been hypothesized that he was taking a curative for syphilis containing arsenic, and accidentally overdosed himself.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
Yeah, romantically in Greece, fighting for Greek independence.
For the whole year:
For the romantic poets (and for Graveltty, whose banning I don't understand, and for all of us temporaries):
The Permanent and Its Temporaries
&
Unity in Multiplicity
&
The One and the Many
&
Change and the Changeless
&
Especially
The Constant Demise of the Mutables
(Inspired by Shelley and his style, using few verses)
Weep for the temporaries; they all fade,
Those transient bubbles blown and burst
Through their brief lives, of the Permanent made.
Oh, weep for the ephemeral dispersed,
Sad hours all, throughout the months and years,
To mourn their steady loss with flowing tears;
Teach them o’er the morrows thine own sorrow
For the yesterdays they could only borrow
From the One’s everlasting simplicity.
Oh, weep for the unsteady, born to flee!
For now, their light echoes and lights the path
Continued that they added to, onto more
Evanescences walking Time’s footpath,
Til Past has been forgotten by Future.
Oh, limited Mother, their tales best
Thine by far e’en in their impermanence,
But Thou can’t save them from their final rest,
For they are chained to time’s changing tense.
Thou cannot rekindle their faded breath,
Those melodies that hid coming death.
Like the flowers that mock the corpse beneath,
The Enduring cloaks their extinguished wreath.
With veiled eyes, newer moments weep despair,
While spreading forth their own emergences;
Dream not that the Eternal Deep can their air
Restore, for the makeshift must progress, spent.
The universe has to continue its race,
Unwinding, like a spring, at time’s fixed pace,
In which star-generations are born and perish,
Giving their lives for all we can cherish.
Energy’s Hunger stalks all creatures made,
Lying ever just ‘round the corner in the shade.
Death takes both humans and the beetle as one,
After their lives are spent from rolling some dung.
Living clouds wane, having outwept their rain;
The pale inconstants must e’er pass their reign.
Like mist’s pageantry on an autumnal night,
As a slowing pomp, all events made light
Decay: Desires, Adorations, Destinies,
Glooms, Splendours, Sighs, Hopes, Fears, and Phantasies.
Pleasure hails, blinded by tears and sorrow:
“You took from Death all that Life could borrow.”
Like our shades dance the walls of Plato’s cave,
We’re 3D shadows of 4D’s enclave…
It’s like a lamp lights up a paper shade—
We are as figures thereupon portrayed.
We are magic lanterns shining here;
Our spirits are the lights in there.
We’re the One’s Candled Magic Shadow-Show,
In which we Phantom Figures come and go.
Come, light your lantern and mine with good cheer;
We’re magic lamps; our spirits dance in here.
We are phenomena’s projected face,
Well-painted from noumena’s unseen base.
From what bright star came the gleam in your eyes?
From what distant sun came your smile, light-wise?
Our minds and senses interpret and dispense
The base reality into the colors and sensations
Of the phenomenal world from the noumenal;
We may become either rainbows or ugly stains!
Our beginnings and ends are of nowhere,
So, let’s radiate, since for now we’re here!
Ending by Shelley himself:
The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colour’d glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
What?? This is news to me...
I just checked under "Bannings", and saw nothing. Where did you hear this?
The Banning thread closed for comments a few months ago.
Saw it here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/614876
It's shocking; he was great!
Maybe
The silence
Of no applause
For the subway singer
Speaks louder than feigned
Appreciation, than fetishized fawning:
The standing ovation of the deaf sheep herd.
Maybe true feeling is only met with silence, the silence
Of no return to the question of why the silence brings a silent feeling.
Like when the inner flame of thought is quelled by the outer frame of discursive judgment; the embarrassing lisp of the inner infinite first feeling; the apologetic laugh, crafted to avert the penetration of an eye; coital fumbling blocked by the self-preservation of an unknown inner kingdom -
Nature springs from winter’s tomb,
The bloom already in the seed,
The trees within the acorns.
Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
Spring showers make the summer flower.
Summer wakes from spring’s dying kiss,
Blooming when the rose does,
Sunning after the spring’s running.
Summer reigns upon the land,
Eventually fading in the night.
Autumn falls as summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of spring.
The smile meets the tear—
Fall’s embers last through December.
Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.
Winter is life cooled over;
Melting snows feed spring waters.
I like this. It made me think a bit of a poet I like, Carl Dennis. A lot of his poetry has that same feeling of an ironic place between success and failure, of things not being what one might have hoped for, but still of value. Small victories in a life of gentle disappointment. Here's one:
Before dawn, while you’re still sleeping,
Playing the part of a dreamer whose house is an ark
Tossed about by a flood that will never subside,
Its dove doomed to return with no twig,
Your neighbor’s already up, pulling his boots on,
Playing the part of a fisherman,
Gathering gear and loading his truck
And driving to the river and wading in
As if fishing is all he’s ever wanted.
Three trout by the time you get up and wash
And come to breakfast served by a woman who smiles
As if you’re first on her short list of wonders,
And you greet her as if she’s first on yours.
Then you’re off to school to fulfill your promise
To lose yourself for once in your teaching
And forget the clock facing your desk. Time to behave
As if the sun’s standing still in a painted sky
And the day isn’t a page in a one-page notebook
To be filled by sundown or never filled,
First the lines and then the margins,
The words jammed in till no white shows.
And while you’re speaking as if everyone’s listening,
A mile from school, at the city hall,
The mayor is behaving as if it matters
That the blueprints drawn up for the low-rent housing
Include the extra windows he’s budgeted,
That the architects don’t transfer the funds
To shutters and grates as they did last year
But understand that brightness is no extravagance.
And when lunch interrupts him, it’s a business lunch
To plan the autumn parade, as if the fate of the nation
Hangs on keeping the floats of the poorer precincts
From looking skimpy and threadbare. The strollers out on the street today
Don’t have to believe all men are created equal,
All endowed by their creator with certain rights,
As long as they behave as if they do,
That the blueprints drawn up for the low-rent housing
Include the extra windows he’s budgeted,
That the architects don’t transfer the funds
To shutters and grates as they did last year
But understand that brightness is no extravagance.
And when lunch interrupts him, it’s a business lunch
To plan the autumn parade, as if the fate of the nation
Hangs on keeping the floats of the poorer precincts
From looking skimpy and threadbare.
The strollers out on the street today
Don’t have to believe all men are created equal,
All endowed by their creator with certain rights,
As long as they behave as if they do,
As if it’s wondering what the man is thinking,
Its gray eyes glinting like tin or glass.
Thanks, glad you liked it. It's also supposed to begin in relative "silence", one word, and grow and grow, as a way to emphasize the ideas in the poem.
I like the Carl Dennis above; I like the style. From that poem I get the theme of what I would describe as "social taboo" or something, or uncomfortable realities that no one wants to admit; I've never come up with the right phrase. Lines like this:
Quoting T Clark
I really like Dennis and I've tried to put into words what it is he does. I haven't to my satisfaction yet. I'm not really sure why your poem reminded me of it. Maybe they're both about what comes after disappointment.
Here are some bits from "The Garden of Proserpine" (Tilton's "Even This Shall Pass Away" ain't got nothin' on this). Proserpina (aka Persephone) -- goddess of fertility, wine and harvest, abducted by Hades. I'm not great with mythology so I don't think I quite get the reference.
POV: You are a graduate student.
You read right, "and all the flowers are crying" is a line in a motivational poem for children...
Translated: The flags
of the tiny theatre have been wet...
Spring rain.
Las banderas
del pequeño teatro se han mojado...
Lluvia de primavera.
I really love this haiku poem because it brings me some nostalgia about my childhood. I guess Masaoka is recording that period of time where you can make a lot of activities outside with your friends,family, etc... Despite the fact it has been raining, it is not bothering us because it is a spring rain where probably a rainbow would show up later on, pretty different from a winter/fall cold rainy day!