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stranger
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stranger
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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stranger
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stranger
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The one you posted - Thomas Hardy:
I can see, hear and feel what he writes there.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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An offering from one of my favorite poets, perhaps even more timely now. I especially love the final two lines:
FOR THE ONE WHO WOULD TAKE MAN'S LIFE IN HIS HANDS
by Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)
Tiger Christ unsheathed his sword,
Threw it down, became a lamb.
Swift spat upon the species, but
Took two women to his heart.
Samson who was strong as death
Paid his strength to kiss a slut.
Othello that stiff warrior
Was broken by a woman's heart.
Troy burned for a sea-tax, also for
Possession of a charming whore.
What do all examples show?
What must the finished murderer know?
You cannot sit on bayonets,
Nor can you eat among the dead.
When all are killed, you are alone,
A vacuum comes where hate has fed.
Murder's fruit is silent stone,
The gun increases poverty.
With what do these examples shine?
The soldier turned to girls and wine.
Love is the tact of every good,
The only warmth, the only peace.
"What have I said?" asked Socrates,
"Affirmed extremes, cried yes and no,
Taken all parts, denied myself,
Praised the caress, extolled the blow,
Soldier and lover quite deranged
Until their motions are exchanged.
--What do all examples show?
What can any actor know?
The contradiction in every act,
The infinite task of the human heart."
(c) 1954 by Delmore Schwartz
"A vacuum comes where hate has fed." rings increasingly poignant for me, especially in light of current events.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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journeyman
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journeyman
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 96 |
I thought this might be appropriate,with it being remembrance sunday on the 11th
DUCE ET DECORUM EST
bent double, like old beggars under sacks
knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue;deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone was still crying out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.-
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon we threw him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devils sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer , bitter as the cud
Of vile , incurable sores on innocent tongues, -
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori
WILFRED OWEN
killed in action 1918
the Duncster ( lethal bones)
the Duncster
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
by Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
--1827
(note: the italics are the author's)
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Lines Composed Above Tintern Abbey
William Wordsworth
(These are some excerpted lines from the Lines:)
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, 60
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man 70
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.--I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love, 80
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.--That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes 90
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels 100
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 110
Of all my moral being.
This is a great credo...
WW
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