From 1a2b8a1671f247c51cfcf1a3f3053aa475005a01 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Thomas Morris Date: Wed, 8 May 2024 22:00:52 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] update poems --- README.rst | 2 +- poems/objects.py | 6 +- poems/poems.json | 463 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++------ 3 files changed, 411 insertions(+), 60 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst index a58a0e5..c721c1e 100644 --- a/README.rst +++ b/README.rst @@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ poems ----- -All of the poems in here are good, or interesting. There are currently 7,781 poems by 529 poets. \ No newline at end of file +All of the poems in here are good, or interesting. There are currently 7,790 poems by 531 poets. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/poems/objects.py b/poems/objects.py index 3bde339..2893fe7 100644 --- a/poems/objects.py +++ b/poems/objects.py @@ -161,15 +161,15 @@ def pretty_date(self): @property def spacetime(self): parts = [] - if "location" in self.metadata: - parts.append(self.metadata["location"]) if self.pretty_date: parts.append(self.pretty_date) + if "location" in self.metadata: + parts.append(self.metadata["location"]) return ". ".join(parts) or "" @property def test_email_subject(self): - return f"TEST ({self.pretty_date}): {self.title_by_author} {self.keywords}" + return f"TEST ({self.context.pretty_date}): {self.title_by_author} {self.keywords}" @property def daily_email_subject(self): diff --git a/poems/poems.json b/poems/poems.json index d3492c9..a56d470 100644 --- a/poems/poems.json +++ b/poems/poems.json @@ -5739,7 +5739,7 @@ "tags": [ "american" ], - "n_poems": 67 + "n_poems": 69 }, "poems": { "anaphora": { @@ -5758,6 +5758,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "summer" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1979 } } }, @@ -5772,6 +5775,21 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "liturgy": "advent" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1979 + } + } + }, + "behind-stowe": { + "title": "“Behind Stowe”", + "body": "I heard an elf go whistling by,\nA whistle sleek as moonlit grass,\nThat drew me like a silver string\nTo where the dusty, pale moths fly,\nAnd make a magic as they pass;\nAnd there I heard a cricket sing.\n\nHis singing echoed through and through\nThe dark under a windy tree\nWhere glinted little insects’ wings.\nHis singing split the sky in two.\nThe halves fell either side of me,\nAnd I stood straight, bright with moon-rings.", + "metadata": { + "keywords": { + "season": "spring" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1927 } } }, @@ -5846,7 +5864,11 @@ "filling-station": { "title": "“Filling Station”", "body": "Oh, but it is dirty!\n--this little filling station,\noil-soaked, oil-permeated\nto a disturbing, over-all\nblack translucency.\nBe careful with that match!\n\nFather wears a dirty,\noil-soaked monkey suit\nthat cuts him under the arms,\nand several quick and saucy\nand greasy sons assist him\n(it’s a family filling station),\nall quite thoroughly dirty.\n\nDo they live in the station?\nIt has a cement porch\nbehind the pumps, and on it\na set of crushed and grease-\nimpregnated wickerwork;\non the wicker sofa\na dirty dog, quite comfy.\n\nSome comic books provide\nthe only note of color-\nof certain color. They lie\nupon a big dim doily\ndraping a taboret\n(part of the set), beside\na big hirsute begonia.\n\nWhy the extraneous plant?\nWhy the taboret?\nWhy, oh why, the doily?\n(Embroidered in daisy stitch\nwith marguerites, I think,\nand heavy with gray crochet.)\n\nSomebody embroidered the doily.\nSomebody waters the plant,\nor oils it, maybe. Somebody\narranges the rows of cans\nso that they softly say:\nESSO--SO--SO--SO\nto high-strung automobiles.\nSomebody loves us all.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1979 + } + } }, "first-death-in-nova-scotia": { "title": "“First Death in Nova Scotia”", @@ -5861,7 +5883,11 @@ "five-flights-up": { "title": "“Five Flights Up”", "body": "Still dark.\nThe unknown bird sits on his usual branch.\nThe little dog next door barks in his sleep\ninquiringly, just once.\nPerhaps in his sleep, too, the bird inquires\nonce or twice, quavering.\nQuestions--if that is what they are--\nanswered directly, simply,\nby day itself.\n\nEnormous morning, ponderous, meticulous;\ngray light streaking each bare branch,\neach single twig, along one side,\nmaking another tree, of glassy veins …\nThe bird still sits there. Now he seems to yawn.\n\nThe little black dog runs in his yard.\nHis owner’s voice arises, stern,\n“You ought to be ashamed!”\nWhat has he done?\nHe bounces cheerfully up and down;\nhe rushes in circles in the fallen leaves.\n\nObviously, he has no sense of shame.\nHe and the bird know everything is answered,\nall taken care of,\nno need to ask again.\n--Yesterday brought to today so lightly!\n(A yesterday I find almost impossible to lift.)", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1974 + } + } }, "florida": { "title": "“Florida”", @@ -5904,6 +5930,9 @@ "keywords": { "month": "february", "day": "05" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1979 } } }, @@ -5974,7 +6003,11 @@ "the-moose": { "title": "“The Moose”", "body": "From narrow provinces\nof fish and bread and tea,\nhome of the long tides\nwhere the bay leaves the sea\ntwice a day and takes\nthe herrings long rides,\n\nwhere if the river\nenters or retreats\nin a wall of brown foam\ndepends on if it meets\nthe bay coming in,\nthe bay not at home;\n\nwhere, silted red,\nsometimes the sun sets\nfacing a red sea,\nand others, veins the flats’\nlavender, rich mud\nin burning rivulets;\n\non red, gravelly roads,\ndown rows of sugar maples,\npast clapboard farmhouses\nand neat, clapboard churches,\nbleached, ridged as clamshells,\npast twin silver birches,\n\nthrough late afternoon\na bus journeys west,\nthe windshield flashing pink,\npink glancing off of metal,\nbrushing the dented flank\nof blue, beat-up enamel;\n\ndown hollows, up rises,\nand waits, patient, while\na lone traveller gives\nkisses and embraces\nto seven relatives\nand a collie supervises.\n\nGoodbye to the elms,\nto the farm, to the dog.\nThe bus starts. The light\ngrows richer; the fog,\nshifting, salty, thin,\ncomes closing in.\n\nIts cold, round crystals\nform and slide and settle\nin the white hens’ feathers,\nin gray glazed cabbages,\non the cabbage roses\nand lupins like apostles;\n\nthe sweet peas cling\nto their wet white string\non the whitewashed fences;\nbumblebees creep\ninside the foxgloves,\nand evening commences.\n\nOne stop at Bass River.\nThen the Economies--\nLower, Middle, Upper;\nFive Islands, Five Houses,\nwhere a woman shakes a tablecloth\nout after supper.\n\nA pale flickering. Gone.\nThe Tantramar marshes\nand the smell of salt hay.\nAn iron bridge trembles\nand a loose plank rattles\nbut doesn’t give way.\n\nOn the left, a red light\nswims through the dark:\na ship’s port lantern.\nTwo rubber boots show,\nilluminated, solemn.\nA dog gives one bark.\n\nA woman climbs in\nwith two market bags,\nbrisk, freckled, elderly.\n“A grand night. Yes, sir,\nall the way to Boston.”\nShe regards us amicably.\n\nMoonlight as we enter\nthe New Brunswick woods,\nhairy, scratchy, splintery;\nmoonlight and mist\ncaught in them like lamb’s wool\non bushes in a pasture.\n\nThe passengers lie back.\nSnores. Some long sighs.\nA dreamy divagation\nbegins in the night,\na gentle, auditory,\nslow hallucination …\n\nIn the creakings and noises,\nan old conversation\n--not concerning us,\nbut recognizable, somewhere,\nback in the bus:\nGrandparents’ voices\n\nuninterruptedly\ntalking, in Eternity:\nnames being mentioned,\nthings cleared up finally;\nwhat he said, what she said,\nwho got pensioned;\n\ndeaths, deaths and sicknesses;\nthe year he remarried;\nthe year (something) happened.\nShe died in childbirth.\nThat was the son lost\nwhen the schooner foundered.\n\nHe took to drink. Yes.\nShe went to the bad.\nWhen Amos began to pray\neven in the store and\nfinally the family had\nto put him away.\n\n“Yes …” that peculiar\naffirmative. “Yes …”\nA sharp, indrawn breath,\nhalf groan, half acceptance,\nthat means “Life’s like that.\nWe know it (also death).”\n\nTalking the way they talked\nin the old featherbed,\npeacefully, on and on,\ndim lamplight in the hall,\ndown in the kitchen, the dog\ntucked in her shawl.\n\nNow, it’s all right now\neven to fall asleep\njust as on all those nights.\n--Suddenly the bus driver\nstops with a jolt,\nturns off his lights.\n\nA moose has come out of\nthe impenetrable wood\nand stands there, looms, rather,\nin the middle of the road.\nIt approaches; it sniffs at\nthe bus’s hot hood.\n\nTowering, antlerless,\nhigh as a church,\nhomely as a house\n(or, safe as houses).\nA man’s voice assures us\n“Perfectly harmless …”\n\nSome of the passengers\nexclaim in whispers,\nchildishly, softly,\n“Sure are big creatures.”\n“It’s awful plain.”\n“Look! It’s a she!”\n\nTaking her time,\nshe looks the bus over,\ngrand, otherworldly.\nWhy, why do we feel\n(we all feel) this sweet\nsensation of joy?\n\n“Curious creatures,”\nsays our quiet driver,\nrolling his r’s.\n“Look at that, would you.”\nThen he shifts gears.\nFor a moment longer,\n\nby craning backward,\nthe moose can be seen\non the moonlit macadam;\nthen there’s a dim\nsmell of moose, an acrid\nsmell of gasoline.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1979 + } + } }, "the-mountain": { "title": "“The Mountain”", @@ -5998,7 +6031,11 @@ "one-art": { "title": "“One Art”", "body": "The art of losing isn’t hard to master;\nso many things seem filled with the intent\nto be lost that their loss is no disaster.\n\nLose something every day. Accept the fluster\nof lost door keys, the hour badly spent.\nThe art of losing isn’t hard to master.\n\nThen practice losing farther, losing faster:\nplaces, and names, and where it was you meant\nto travel. None of these will bring disaster.\n\nI lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or\nnext-to-last, of three loved houses went.\nThe art of losing isn’t hard to master.\n\nI lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,\nsome realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.\nI miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.\n\n--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture\nI love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident\nthe art of losing’s not too hard to master\nthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1979 + } + } }, "paris-7-am": { "title": "“Paris, 7 A.M.”", @@ -6101,6 +6138,15 @@ "body": "This is not my home. How did I get so far from water? It must\nbe over that way somewhere.\n I am the color of wine, of tinta. The inside of my powerful\nright claw is saffron-yellow. See, I see it now; I wave it like a\nflag. I am dapper and elegant; I move with great precision,\ncleverly managing all my smaller yellow claws. I believe in the\noblique, the indirect approach, and I keep my feelings to myself.\n But on this strange, smooth surface I am making too much\nnoise. I wasn’t meant for this. If I maneuver a bit and keep a\nsharp lookout, I shall find my pool again. Watch out for my right\nclaw, all passersby! This place is too hard. The rain has stopped,\nand it is damp, but still not wet enough to please me.\n My eyes are good, though small; my shell is tough and tight.\nIn my own pool are many small gray fish. I see right through\nthem. Only their large eyes are opaque, and twitch at me. They\nare hard to catch but I, I catch them quickly in my arms and\neat them up.\n What is that big soft monster, like a yellow cloud, stifling\nand warm? What is it doing? It pats my back. Out, claw. There,\nI have frightened it away. It’s sitting down, pretending nothing’s\nhappened. I’ll skirt it. It’s still pretending not to see me. Out of\nmy way, O monster. I own a pool, all the little fish that swim in it,\nand all the skittering waterbugs that smell like rotten apples.\n Cheer up, O grievous snail. I tap your shell, encouragingly,\nnot that you will ever know about it.\n And I want nothing to do with you, either, sulking toad.\nImagine, at least four times my size and yet so vulnerable … I\ncould open your belly with my claw. You glare and bulge, a\nwatchdog near my pool; you make a loud and hollow noise. I\ndo not care for such stupidity. I admire compression, lightness,\nand agility, all rare in this loose world.", "metadata": {} }, + "suicide-of-a-moderate-dictator": { + "title": "“Suicide of a Moderate Dictator”", + "body": "This is a day when truths will out, perhaps;\nleak from the dangling telephone earphones\nsapping the festooned switchboards’ strength;\nfall from the windows, blow from off the sills,\n--the vague, slight unremarkable contents\nof emptying ash-trays; rub off on our fingers\nlike ink from the un-proof-read newspapers,\ncrocking the way the unfocused photographs\nof crooked faces do that soil our coats,\nour tropical-weight coats, like slapped-at moths.\n\nToday’s a day when those who work\nare idling. Those who played must work\nand hurry, too, to get it done,\nwith little dignity or none.\nThe newspapers are sold; the kiosk shutters\ncrash down. But anyway, in the night\nthe headlines wrote themselves, see, on the streets\nand sidewalks everywhere; a sediment’s splashed\neven to the first floors of apartment houses.\n\nThis is a day that’s beautiful as well,\nand warm and clear. At seven o’clock I saw\nthe dogs being walked along the famous beach\nas usual, in a shiny gray-green dawn,\nleaving their paw prints draining in the wet.\nThe line of breakers was steady and the pinkish,\nsegmented rainbow steadily hung above it.\nAt eight two little boys were flying kites.", + "metadata": { + "keywords": { + "season": "spring" + } + } + }, "trouvee": { "title": "“Trouvée”", "body": "Oh, why should a hen\nhave been run over\non West 4th Street\nin the middle of summer?\n\nShe was a white hen\n--red-and-white now, of course.\nHow did she get there?\nWhere was she going?\n\nHer wing feathers spread\nflat, flat in the tar,\nall dirtied, and thin\nas tissue paper.\n\nA pigeon, yes,\nor an English sparrow,\nmight meet such a fate,\nbut not that poor fowl.\n\nJust now I went back\nto look again.\nI hadn’t dreamed it:\nthere is a hen\n\nturned into a quaint\nold country saying\nscribbled in chalk\n(except for the beak).", @@ -6123,7 +6169,11 @@ "visits-to-st-elizabeths": { "title": "“Visits to St. Elizabeths”", "body": "This is the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is the man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is the time\nof the tragic man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is a wristwatch\ntelling the time\nof the talkative man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is a sailor\nwearing the watch\nthat tells the time\nof the honored man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is the roadstead all of board\nreached by the sailor\nwearing the watch\nthat tells the time\nof the old, brave man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThese are the years and the walls of the ward,\nthe winds and clouds of the sea of board\nsailed by the sailor\nwearing the watch\nthat tells the time\nof the cranky man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is a Jew in a newspaper hat\nthat dances weeping down the ward\nover the creaking sea of board\nbeyond the sailor\nwinding his watch\nthat tells the time\nof the cruel man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is a world of books gone flat.\nThis is a Jew in a newspaper hat\nthat dances weeping down the ward\nover the creaking sea of board\nof the batty sailor\nthat winds his watch\nthat tells the time\nof the busy man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is a boy that pats the floor\nto see if the world is there, is flat,\nfor the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat\nthat dances weeping down the ward\nwaltzing the length of a weaving board\nby the silent sailor\nthat hears his watch\nthat ticks the time\nof the tedious man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThese are the years and the walls and the door\nthat shut on a boy that pats the floor\nto feel if the world is there and flat.\nThis is a Jew in a newspaper hat\nthat dances joyfully down the ward\ninto the parting seas of board\npast the staring sailor\nthat shakes his watch\nthat tells the time\nof the poet, the man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.\n\nThis is the soldier home from the war.\nThese are the years and the walls and the door\nthat shut on a boy that pats the floor\nto see if the world is round or flat.\nThis is a Jew in a newspaper hat\nthat dances carefully down the ward,\nwalking the plank of a coffin board\nwith the crazy sailor\nthat shows his watch\nthat tells the time\nof the wretched man\nthat lies in the house of Bedlam.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1979 + } + } }, "the-weed": { "title": "“The Weed”", @@ -14902,7 +14952,7 @@ }, "we-wear-the-mask-that-grins-and-lies": { "title": "“We wear the mask that grins and lies …”", - "body": "We wear the mask that grins and lies,\nIt hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--\nThis debt we pay to human guile;\nWith torn and bleeding hearts we smile,\nAnd mouth with myriad subtleties.\n\nWhy should the world be over-wise,\nIn counting all our tears and sighs?\nNay, let them only see us, while\n We wear the mask.\n\nWe smile, but, O great Christ, our cries\nTo thee from tortured souls arise.\nWe sing, but oh the clay is vile\nBeneath our feet, and long the mile;\nBut let the world dream otherwise,\n We wear the mask! ", + "body": "We wear the mask that grins and lies,\nIt hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--\nThis debt we pay to human guile;\nWith torn and bleeding hearts we smile,\nAnd mouth with myriad subtleties.\n\nWhy should the world be over-wise,\nIn counting all our tears and sighs?\nNay, let them only see us, while\n We wear the mask.\n\nWe smile, but, O great Christ, our cries\nTo thee from tortured souls arise.\nWe sing, but oh the clay is vile\nBeneath our feet, and long the mile;\nBut let the world dream otherwise,\n We wear the mask!", "metadata": {} } } @@ -14926,7 +14976,7 @@ "poems": { "often-i-am-permitted-to-return-to-a-meadow": { "title": "“Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow”", - "body": "as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, \nthat is not mine, but is a made place,\n\nthat is mine, it is so near to the heart, \nan eternal pasture folded in all thought \nso that there is a hall therein\n\nthat is a made place, created by light \nwherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.\n\nWherefrom fall all architectures I am\nI say are likenesses of the First Beloved \nwhose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.\n\nShe it is Queen Under The Hill\nwhose hosts are a disturbance of words within words \nthat is a field folded.\n\nIt is only a dream of the grass blowing \neast against the source of the sun\nin an hour before the sun’s going down\n\nwhose secret we see in a children’s game \nof ring a round of roses told.\n\nOften I am permitted to return to a meadow \nas if it were a given property of the mind \nthat certain bounds hold against chaos,\n\nthat is a place of first permission, \neverlasting omen of what is.", + "body": "as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,\nthat is not mine, but is a made place,\n\nthat is mine, it is so near to the heart,\nan eternal pasture folded in all thought\nso that there is a hall therein\n\nthat is a made place, created by light\nwherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.\n\nWherefrom fall all architectures I am\nI say are likenesses of the First Beloved\nwhose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.\n\nShe it is Queen Under The Hill\nwhose hosts are a disturbance of words within words\nthat is a field folded.\n\nIt is only a dream of the grass blowing\neast against the source of the sun\nin an hour before the sun’s going down\n\nwhose secret we see in a children’s game\nof ring a round of roses told.\n\nOften I am permitted to return to a meadow\nas if it were a given property of the mind\nthat certain bounds hold against chaos,\n\nthat is a place of first permission,\neverlasting omen of what is.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "summer" @@ -15904,6 +15954,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "autumn" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1929 } } }, @@ -15913,6 +15966,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "ash_wednesday" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1930 } } }, @@ -15927,18 +15983,29 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "spring" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1908 } } }, "the-boston-evening-transcript": { "title": "“The Boston Evening Transcript”", "body": "The readers of the Boston Evening Transcript\nSway in the wind like a field of ripe corn.\nWhen evening quickens faintly in the street,\nWakening the appetites of life in some\nAnd to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,\nI mount the steps and ring the bell, turning\nWearily, as one would turn to nod good-bye to Rochefoucauld,\nIf the street were time and he at the end of the street,\nAnd I say, “Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1917 + } + } }, "burbank-with-a-baedeker-bleistein-with-a-cigar": { "title": "“Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar”", - "body": " _Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire--nil nisi divinum stabile\n est; caetera fumus--the gondola stopped, the old\n palace was there, how charming its grey and pink--\n goats and monkeys, with such hair too!--so the\n countess passed on until she came through the\n little park, where Niobe presented her with a\n cabinet, and so departed._\n\n\nBurbank crossed a little bridge\nDescending at a small hotel;\nPrincess Volupine arrived,\nThey were together, and he fell.\n\nDefunctive music under sea\nPassed seaward with the passing bell\nSlowly: the God Hercules\nHad left him, that had loved him well.\n\nThe horses, under the axletree\nBeat up the dawn from Istria\nWith even feet. Her shuttered barge\nBurned on the water all the day.\n\nBut this or such was Bleistein’s way:\nA saggy bending of the knees\nAnd elbows, with the palms turned out,\nChicago Semite Viennese.\n\nA lustreless protrusive eye\nStares from the protozoic slime\nAt a perspective of Canaletto.\nThe smoky candle end of time\n\nDeclines. On the Rialto once.\nThe rats are underneath the piles.\nThe jew is underneath the lot.\nMoney in furs. The boatman smiles,\n\nPrincess Volupine extends\nA meagre, blue-nailed, phthisic hand\nTo climb the waterstair. Lights, lights,\nShe entertains Sir Ferdinand\n\nKlein. Who clipped the lion’s wings\nAnd flea’d his rump and pared his claws?\nThought Burbank, meditating on\nTime’s ruins, and the seven laws.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "_Tra-la-la-la-la-la-laire--nil nisi divinum stabile\nest; caetera fumus--the gondola stopped, the old\npalace was there, how charming its grey and pink--\ngoats and monkeys, with such hair too!--so the\ncountess passed on until she came through the\nlittle park, where Niobe presented her with a\ncabinet, and so departed._\n\n\nBurbank crossed a little bridge\nDescending at a small hotel;\nPrincess Volupine arrived,\nThey were together, and he fell.\n\nDefunctive music under sea\nPassed seaward with the passing bell\nSlowly: the God Hercules\nHad left him, that had loved him well.\n\nThe horses, under the axletree\nBeat up the dawn from Istria\nWith even feet. Her shuttered barge\nBurned on the water all the day.\n\nBut this or such was Bleistein’s way:\nA saggy bending of the knees\nAnd elbows, with the palms turned out,\nChicago Semite Viennese.\n\nA lustreless protrusive eye\nStares from the protozoic slime\nAt a perspective of Canaletto.\nThe smoky candle end of time\n\nDeclines. On the Rialto once.\nThe rats are underneath the piles.\nThe jew is underneath the lot.\nMoney in furs. The boatman smiles,\n\nPrincess Volupine extends\nA meagre, blue-nailed, phthisic hand\nTo climb the waterstair. Lights, lights,\nShe entertains Sir Ferdinand\n\nKlein. Who clipped the lion’s wings\nAnd flea’d his rump and pared his claws?\nThought Burbank, meditating on\nTime’s ruins, and the seven laws.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1920 + } + } }, "burnt-norton": { "title": "“Burnt Norton”", @@ -15946,23 +16013,38 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "autumn" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1945 } } }, "choruses-from-the-rock": { "title": "Choruses from “The Rock”", "body": "# I.\n\nThe Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,\nThe Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.\nO perpetual revolution of configured stars,\nO perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,\nO world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!\nThe endless cycle of idea and action,\nEndless invention, endless experiment,\nBrings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;\nKnowledge of speech, but not of silence;\nKnowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.\nAll our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,\nAll our ignorance brings us nearer to death,\nBut nearness to death no nearer to God.\nWhere is the Life we have lost in living?\nWhere is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?\nWhere is the knowledge we have lost in information?\nThe cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries\nBring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.\n\nI journeyed to London, to the timekept City,\nWhere the River flows, with foreign flotations.\nThere I was told: we have too many churches,\nAnd too few chop-houses. There I was told:\nLet the vicars retire. Men do not need the Church\nIn the place where they work, but where they spend their Sundays.\nIn the City, we need no bells:\nLet them waken the suburbs.\nI journeyed to the suburbs, and there I was told:\nWe toil for six days, on the seventh we must motor\nTo Hindhead, or Maidenhead.\nIf the weather is foul we stay at home and read the papers.\nIn industrial districts, there I was told\nOf economic laws.\nIn the pleasant countryside, there it seemed\nThat the country now is only fit for picnics.\nAnd the Church does not seem to be wanted\nIn country or in suburb; and in the town\nOnly for important weddings.\n\n> _CHORUS LEADER:_\nSilence! and preserve respectful distance.\nFor I perceive approaching\nThe Rock. Who will perhaps answer our doubtings.\nThe Rock. The Watcher. The Stranger.\nHe who has seen what has happened\nAnd who sees what is to happen.\nThe Witness. The Critic. The Stranger.\nThe God-shaken, in whom is the truth inborn.\n\n> _Enter the ROCK, led by a BOY:_\n\n> _THE ROCK:_\nThe lot of man is ceaseless labour,\nOr ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,\nOr irregular labour, which is not pleasant.\nI have trodden the winepress alone, and I know\nThat it is hard to be really useful, resigning\nThe things that men count for happiness, seeking\nThe good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting\nWith equal face those that bring ignominy,\nThe applause of all or the love of none.\nAll men are ready to invest their money\nBut most expect dividends.\nI say to you: Make perfect your will.\nI say: take no thought of the harvest,\nBut only of proper sowing.\n\nThe world turns and the world changes,\nBut one thing does not change.\nIn all of my years, one thing does not change.\nHowever you disguise it, this thing does not change:\nThe perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.\nForgetful, you neglect your shrines and churches;\nThe men you are in these times deride\nWhat has been done of good, you find explanations\nTo satisfy the rational and enlightened mind.\nSecond, you neglect and belittle the desert.\nThe desert is not remote in southern tropics,\nThe desert is not only around the corner,\nThe desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,\nThe desert is in the heart of your brother.\nThe good man is the builder, if he build what is good.\nI will show you the things that are now being done,\nAnd some of the things that were long ago done,\nThat you may take heart. Make perfect your will.\nLet me show you the work of the humble. Listen.\n\n_The lights fade; in the semi-darkness the voices of WORKMEN are heard chanting._\n\nIn the vacant places\nWe will build with new bricks\nThere are hands and machines\nAnd clay for new brick\nAnd lime for new mortar\nWhere the bricks are fallen\nWe will build with new stone\nWhere the beams are rotten\nWe will build with new timbers\nWhere the word is unspoken\nWe will build with new speech\nThere is work together\nA Church for all\nAnd a job for each\nEvery man to his work.\n\n_Now a group of WORKMEN is silhouetted against the dim sky. From farther away, they are answered by voices of the UNEMPLOYED._\n\nNo man has hired us\nWith pocketed hands\nAnd lowered faces\nWe stand about in open places\nAnd shiver in unlit rooms.\nOnly the wind moves\nOver empty fields, untilled\nWhere the plough rests, at an angle\nTo the furrow. In this land\nThere shall be one cigarette to two men,\nTo two women one half pint of bitter\nAle. In this land\nNo man has hired us.\nOur life is unwelcome, our death\nUnmentioned in “The Times”.\n\n_Chant of WORKMEN again._\n\nThe river flows, the seasons turn\nThe sparrow and starling have no time to waste.\nIf men do not build\nHow shall they live?\nWhen the field is tilled\nAnd the wheat is bread\nThey shall not die in a shortened bed\nAnd a narrow sheet. In this street\nThere is no beginning, no movement, no peace and no end\nBut noise without speech, food without taste.\nWithout delay, without haste\nWe would build the beginning and the end of this street.\nWe build the meaning:\nA Church for all\nAnd a job for each\nEach man to his work.\n\n\n# II.\n\nThus your fathers were made\nFellow citizens of the saints, of the household of GOD, being built upon the foundation\nOf apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself the chief cornerstone.\nBut you, have you built well, that you now sit helpless in a ruined house?\nWhere many are born to idleness, to frittered lives and squalid deaths, embittered scorn in honeyless hives,\nAnd those who would build and restore turn out the palms of their hands, or look in vain towards foreign lands for alms to be more or the urn to be filled.\nYour building not fitly framed together, you sit ashamed and wonder whether and how you may be builded together for a habitation of GOD in the Spirit, the Spirit which moved on the face of the waters like a lantern set on the back of a tortoise.\nAnd some say: “How can we love our neighbour? For love must be made real in act, as desire unites with desired; we have only our labour to give and our labour is not required.\nWe wait on corners, with nothing to bring but the songs we can sing which nobody wants to hear sung;\nWaiting to be flung in the end, on a heap less useful than dung”.\n\nYou, have you built well, have you forgotten the cornerstone?\nTalking of right relations of men, but not of relations of men to GOD.\n“Our citizenship is in Heaven”; yes, but that is the model and type for your citizenship upon earth.\nWhen your fathers fixed the place of GOD,\nAnd settled all the inconvenient saints,\nApostles, martyrs, in a kind of Whipsnade,\nThen they could set about imperial expansion\nAccompanied by industrial development.\nExporting iron, coal and cotton goods\nAnd intellectual enlightenment\nAnd everything, including capital\nAnd several versions of the Word of GOD:\nThe British race assured of a mission\nPerformed it, but left much at home unsure.\n\nOf all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit, either rotten or ripe.\nAnd the Church must be forever building, and always decaying, and always being restored.\nFor every ill deed in the past we suffer the consequence:\nFor sloth, for avarice, gluttony, neglect of the Word of GOD,\nFor pride, for lechery, treachery, for every act of sin.\nAnd of all that was done that was good, you have the inheritance.\nFor good and ill deeds belong to a man alone, when he stands alone on the other side of death,\nBut here upon earth you have the reward of the good and ill that was done by those who have gone before you.\nAnd all that is ill you may repair if you walk together in humble repentance, expiating the sins of your fathers;\nAnd all that was good you must fight to keep with hearts as devoted as those of your fathers who fought to gain it.\nThe Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without;\nFor this is the law of life; and you must remember that while there is time of prosperity\nThe people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity they will decry it.\n\nWhat life have you if you have not life together?\nThere is no life that is not in community,\nAnd no community not lived in praise of GOD.\nEven the anchorite who meditates alone,\nFor whom the days and nights repeat the praise of GOD,\nPrays for the Church, the Body of Christ incarnate.\nAnd now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,\nAnd no man knows or cares who is his neighbour\nUnless his neighbour makes too much disturbance,\nBut all dash to and fro in motor cars,\nFamiliar with the roads and settled nowhere.\nNor does the family even move about together,\nBut every son would have his motor cycle,\nAnd daughters ride away on casual pillions.\n\nMuch to cast down, much to build, much to restore;\nLet the work not delay, time and the arm not waste;\nLet the clay be dug from the pit, let the saw cut the stone,\nLet the fire not be quenched in the forge.\n\n\n# III.\n\nThe Word of the LORD came unto me, saying:\nO miserable cities of designing men,\nO wretched generation of enlightened men,\nBetrayed in the mazes of your ingenuities,\nSold by the proceeds of your proper inventions:\nI have given you hands which you turn from worship,\nI have given you speech, for endless palaver,\nI have given you my Law, and you set up commissions,\nI have given you lips, to express friendly sentiments,\nI have given you hearts, for reciprocal distrust.\nI have given you power of choice, and you only alternate\nBetween futile speculation and unconsidered action.\nMany are engaged in writing books and printing them,\nMany desire to see their names in print,\nMany read nothing but the race reports.\nMuch is your reading, but not the Word of GOD,\nMuch is your building, but not the House of GOD.\nWill you build me a house of plaster, with corrugated roofing,\nTo be filled with a litter of Sunday newspapers?\n\n\n> _1ST MALE VOICE:_\nA Cry from the East:\nWhat shall be done to the shore of smoky ships?\nWill you leave my people forgetful and forgotten\nTo idleness, labour, and delirious stupor?\nThere shall be left the broken chimney,\nThe peeled hull, a pile of rusty iron,\nIn a street of scattered brick where the goat climbs,\nWhere My Word is unspoken.\n\n\n> _2ND MALE VOICE:_\nA Cry from the North, from the West and from the South\nWhence thousands travel daily to the timekept City;\nWhere My Word is unspoken,\nIn the land of lobelias and tennis flannels\nThe rabbit shall burrow and the thorn revisit,\nThe nettle shall flourish on the gravel court,\nAnd the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:\nTheir only monument the asphalt road\nAnd a thousand lost golf balls”.\n\n\n> _CHORUS:_\nWe build in vain unless the LORD build with us.\nCan you keep the City that the LORD keeps not with you?\nA thousand policemen directing the traffic\nCannot tell you why you come or where you go.\nA colony of cavies or a horde of active marmots\nBuild better than they that build without the LORD.\nShall we lift up our feet among perpetual ruins?\nI have loved the beauty of Thy House, the peace of Thy sanctuary\nI have swept the floors and garnished the altars.\nWhere there is no temple there shall be no homes,\nThough you have shelters and institutions,\nPrecarious lodgings while the rent is paid,\nSubsiding basements where the rat breeds\nOr sanitary dwellings with numbered doors\nOr a house a little better than your neighbour’s;\nWhen the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city?\nDo you huddle close together because you love each other?”\nWhat will you answer? “We all dwell together\nTo make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?\nAnd the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.\nO my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,\nBe prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.\n\nO weariness of men who turn from GOD\nTo the grandeur of your mind and the glory of your action,\nTo arts and inventions and daring enterprises,\nTo schemes of human greatness thoroughly discredited,\nBinding the earth and the water to your service,\nExploiting the seas and developing the mountains,\nDividing the stars into common and preferred,\nEngaged in devising the perfect refrigerator,\nEngaged in working out a rational morality,\nEngaged in printing as many books as possible,\nPlotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles,\nTurning from your vacancy to fevered enthusiasm\nFor nation or race or what you call humanity;\nThough you forget the way to the Temple,\nThere is one who remembers the way to your door:\nLife you may evade, but Death you shall not.\nYou shall not deny the Stranger.\n\n\n# V.\n\nThere are those who would build the Temple,\nAnd those who prefer that the Temple should not be built.\nIn the days of Nehemiah the Prophet\nThere was no exception to the general rule.\nIn Shushan the palace, in the month Nisan,\nHe served the wine to the king Artaxerxes,\nAnd he grieved for the broken city, Jerusalem;\nAnd the King gave him leave to depart\nThat he might rebuild the city.\nSo he went, with a few, to Jerusalem,\nAnd there, by the dragon’s well, by the dung gate,\nBy the fountain gate, by the king’s pool,\nJerusalem lay waste, consumed with fire;\nNo place for a beast to pass.\nThere were enemies without to destroy him,\nAnd spies and self-seekers within,\nWhen he and his men laid their hands to rebuilding the wall\nSo they built as men must build\nWith the sword in one hand and the trowel in the other.\n\n\n# V.\n\nO Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.\nSanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite and Geshem the Arabian: were doubtless men of public spirit and zeal.\nPreserve me from the enemy who has something to gain: and from the friend who has something to lose.\nRemembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: “The trowel in hand, and the gun rather loose in the holster.”\nThose who sit in a house of which the use is forgotten: are like snakes that lie on mouldering stairs, content in the sun light.\nAnd the others run about like dogs, full of enterprise, sniffing and barking: they say, “This house is a nest of serpents, let us destroy it,\nAnd have done with these abominations, the turpitudes of the Christians.” And these are not justified, nor the others.\nAnd they write innumerable books; being too vain and distracted for silence: seeking every one after his own elevation, and dodging his emptiness.\nIf humility and purity be not in the heart, they are not in the home: and if they are not in the home, they are not in the City.\nThe man who has builded during the day would return to his hearth at nightfall: to be blessed with the gift of silence, and doze before he sleeps.\nBut we are encompassed with snakes and dogs: therefore some must labour, and others must hold the spears.\n\n\n# VI.\n\nIt is hard for those who have never known persecution,\nAnd who have never known a Christian,\nTo believe these tales of Christian persecution.\nIt is hard for those who live near a Bank\nTo doubt the security of their money.\nIt is hard for those who live near a Police Station\nTo believe in the triumph of violence.\nDo you think that the Faith has conquered the World\nAnd that lions no longer need keepers?\nDo you need to be told that whatever has been, can still be?\nDo you need to be told that even such modest attainments\nAs you can boast in the way of polite society\nWill hardly survive the Faith to which they owe their significance?\nMen! polish your teeth on rising and retiring;\nWomen! polish your fingernails:\nYou polish the tooth of the dog and the talon of the cat.\nWhy should men love the Church? Why should they love her laws?\nShe tells them of Life and Death, and of all that they would forget.\nShe is tender where they would be hard, and hard where they like to be soft.\nShe tells them of Evil and Sin, and other unpleasant facts.\nThey constantly try to escape\nFrom the darkness outside and within\nBy dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.\nBut the man that is will shadow\nThe man that pretends to be.\nAnd the Son of Man was not crucified once for all,\nThe blood of the martyrs not shed once for all,\nThe lives of the Saints not given once for all:\nBut the Son of Man is crucified always\nAnd there shall be Martyrs and Saints.\nAnd if blood of Martyrs is to flow on the steps\nWe must first build the steps;\nAnd if the Temple is to be cast down\nWe must first build the Temple.\n\n\n# VII.\n\nIn the beginning GOD created the world. Waste and void. Waste and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep.\nAnd when there were men, in their various ways, they struggled in torment towards GOD\nBlindly and vainly, for man is a vain thing, and man without GOD is a seed upon the wind: driven this way and that, and finding no place of lodgement and germination.\nThey followed the light and the shadow, and the light led them forward to light and the shadow led them to darkness,\nWorshipping snakes or trees, worshipping devils rather than nothing: crying for life beyond life, for ecstasy not of the flesh.\nWaste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.\nAnd the Spirit moved upon the face of the water.\nAnd men who turned towards the light and were known of the light\nInvented the Higher Religions; and the Higher Religions were good\nAnd led men from light to light, to knowledge of Good and Evil.\nBut their light was ever surrounded and shot with darkness\nAs the air of temperate seas is pierced by the still dead breath of the Arctic Current;\nAnd they came to an end, a dead end stirred with a flicker of life,\nAnd they came to the withered ancient look of a child that has died of starvation.\nPrayer wheels, worship of the dead, denial of this world, affirmation of rites with forgotten meanings\nIn the restless wind-whipped sand, or the hills where the wind will not let the snow rest.\nWaste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.\n\nThen came, at a predetermined moment, a moment in time and of time,\nA moment not out of time, but in time, in what we call history: transecting, bisecting the world of time, a moment in time but not like a moment of time,\nA moment in time but time was made through that moment: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.\nThen it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,\nThrough the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;\nBestial as always before, carnal, self-seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before,\nYet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;\nOften halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.\n\nBut it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.\nMen have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no god; and this has never happened before\nThat men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,\nAnd then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.\nThe Church disowned, the tower overthrown, the bells upturned, what have we to do\nBut stand with empty hands and palms turned upwards\nIn an age which advances progressively backwards?\n\n> _VOICE OF THE UNEMPLOYED (afar off):_\nIn this land\nThere shall be one cigarette to two men,\nTo two women one half pint of bitter\nAle …\n\n> _CHORUS:_\nWhat does the world say, does the whole world stray in high-powered cars on a by-pass way?\n\n> _VOICE OF THE UNEMPLOYED (more faintly):_\nIn this land\nNo man has hired us …\n\n> _CHORUS:_\nWaste and void. Waste and void. And darkness on the face of the deep.\nHas the Church failed mankind, or has mankind failed the Church?\nWhen the Church is no longer regarded, not even opposed, and men have forgotten\nAll gods except Usury, Lust and Power.\n\n\n# VIII.\n\nO Father we welcome your words,\nAnd we will take heart for the future,\nRemembering the past.\n\nThe heathen are come into thine inheritance,\nAnd thy temple have they defiled.\n\nWho is this that cometh from Edom?\n\nHe has trodden the wine-press alone.\n\nThere came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem\nAnd the holy places defiled;\nPeter the Hermit, scourging with words.\nAnd among his hearers were a few good men,\nMany who were evil,\nAnd most who were neither.\nLike all men in all places,\n\nSome went from love of glory,\nSome went who were restless and curious,\nSome were rapacious and lustful.\nMany left their bodies to the kites of Syria\nOr sea-strewn along the routes;\nMany left their souls in Syria,\nLiving on, sunken in moral corruption;\nMany came back well broken,\nDiseased and beggared, finding\nA stranger at the door in possession:\nCame home cracked by the sun of the East\nAnd the seven deadly sins in Syria.\nBut our King did well at Acre.\nAnd in spite of all the dishonour,\nThe broken standards, the broken lives,\nThe broken faith in one place or another,\nThere was something left that was more than the tales\nOf old men on winter evenings.\nOnly the faith could have done what was good of it;\nWhole faith of a few,\nPart faith of many.\nNot avarice, lechery, treachery,\nEnvy, sloth, gluttony, jealousy, pride:\nIt was not these that made the Crusades,\nBut these that unmade them.\n\nRemember the faith that took men from home\nAt the call of a wandering preacher.\nOur age is an age of moderate virtue\nAnd of moderate vice\nWhen men will not lay down the Cross\nBecause they will never assume it.\nYet nothing is impossible, nothing,\nTo men of faith and conviction.\nLet us therefore make perfect our will.\nO GOD, help us.\n\n\n# IX.\n\nSon of Man, behold with thine eyes, and hear with thine ears\nAnd set thine heart upon all that I show thee.\nWho is this that has said: the House of GOD is a House of Sorrow;\nWe must walk in black and go sadly, with longdrawn faces,\nWe must go between empty walls, quavering lowly, whispering faintly,\nAmong a few flickering scattered lights?\nThey would put upon GOD their own sorrow, the grief they should feel\nFor their sins and faults as they go about their daily occasions.\nYet they walk in the street proudnecked, like thoroughbreds ready for races,\nAdorning themselves, and busy in the market, the forum,\nAnd all other secular meetings.\nThinking good of themselves, ready for any festivity,\nDoing themselves very well.\nLet us mourn in a private chamber, learning the way of penitence,\nAnd then let us learn the joyful communion of saints.\n\nThe soul of Man must quicken to creation.\nOut of the formless stone, when the artist united himself with stone,\nSpring always new forms of life, from the soul of man that is joined to the soul of stone;\nOut of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless\nJoined with the artist’s eye, new life, new form, new colour.\nOut of the sea of sound the life of music,\nOut of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal imprecisions,\nApproximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the place of thoughts and feelings,\nThere spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.\n\nLORD, shall we not bring these gifts to Your service?\nShall we not bring to Your service all our powers\nFor life, for dignity, grace and order,\nAnd intellectual pleasures of the senses?\nThe LORD who created must wish us to create\nAnd employ our creation again in His service\nWhich is already His service in creating.\nFor Man is joined spirit and body,\nAnd therefore must serve as spirit and body.\nVisible and invisible, two worlds meet in Man;\nVisible and invisible must meet in His Temple;\nYou must not deny the body.\n\nNow you shall see the Temple completed:\nAfter much striving, after many obstacles;\nFor the work of creation is never without travail;\nThe formed stone, the visible crucifix,\nThe dressed altar, the lifting light,\n\nLight\n\nLight\n\nThe visible reminder of Invisible Light.\n\n\n# X.\n\nYou have seen the house built, you have seen it adorned\nBy one who came in the night, it is now dedicated to GOD.\nIt is now a visible church, one more light set on a hill\nIn a world confused and dark and disturbed by portents of fear.\nAnd what shall we say of the future? Is one church all we can build?\nOr shall the Visible Church go on to conquer the World?\n\nThe great snake lies ever half awake, at the bottom of the pit of the world, curled\nIn folds of himself until he awakens in hunger and moving his head to right and to left prepares for his hour to devour.\nBut the Mystery of Iniquity is a pit too deep for mortal eyes to plumb. Come\nYe out from among those who prize the serpent’s golden eyes,\nThe worshippers, self-given sacrifice of the snake. Take\nYour way and be ye separate.\nBe not too curious of Good and Evil;\nSeek not to count the future waves of Time;\nBut be ye satisfied that you have light\nEnough to take your step and find your foothold.\n\nO Light Invisible, we praise Thee!\nToo bright for mortal vision.\nO Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;\nThe eastern light our spires touch at morning,\nThe light that slants upon our western doors at evening,\nThe twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,\nMoon light and star light, owl and moth light,\nGlow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.\nO Light Invisible, we worship Thee!\n\nWe thank Thee for the lights that we have kindled,\nThe light of altar and of sanctuary;\nSmall lights of those who meditate at midnight\nAnd lights directed through the coloured panes of windows\nAnd light reflected from the polished stone,\nThe gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.\nOur gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward\nAnd see the light that fractures through unquiet water.\nWe see the light but see not whence it comes.\nO Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!\n\nIn our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too much pain.\nWe are children quickly tired: children who are up in the night and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day is long for work or play.\nWe tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad to sleep,\nControlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the night and the seasons.\nAnd we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and relight it;\nForever must quench, forever relight the flame.\nTherefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow.\nWe thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes.\nAnd when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.\nAnd we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.\nO Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thy great glory!", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1934 + } + } }, "circes-palace": { "title": "“Circe’s Palace”", "body": "Around her fountain which flows\nWith the voice of men in pain,\nAre flowers that no man knows.\nTheir petals are fanged and red\nWith hideous streak and stain.\nThey sprang from the limbs of the dead.--\nWe shall not come here again.\n\nPanthers rise from their lairs\nIn the forest which thickens below,\nAlong the garden stairs\nThe sluggish python lies;\nThe peacock’s walk, stately and slow\nAnd they look at us with the eyes\nOf men whom we knew long ago.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1908 + } + } }, "conversation-galante": { "title": "“Conversation Galante”", "body": "I observe: “Our sentimental friend the moon!\nOr possibly (fantastic, I confess)\nIt may be Prester John’s balloon\nOr an old battered lantern hung aloft\nTo light poor travellers to their distress.”\nShe then: “How you digress!”\n\nAnd I then: “Some one frames upon the keys\nThat exquisite nocturne, with which we explain\nThe night and moonshine; music which we seize\nTo body forth our vacuity.”\nShe then: “Does this refer to me?”\n“Oh no, it is I who am inane.”\n\n“You, madam, are the eternal humorist,\nThe eternal enemy of the absolute,\nGiving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!\nWith your air indifferent and imperious\nAt a stroke our mad poetics to confute--”\nAnd--“Are we then so serious?”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1917 + } + } }, "a-cooking-egg": { "title": "“A Cooking Egg”", @@ -15970,6 +16052,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1920 } } }, @@ -15979,6 +16064,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1917 } } }, @@ -15988,13 +16076,20 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "liturgy": "christmastide" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1954 } } }, "the-death-of-saint-narcissus": { "title": "“The Death of Saint Narcissus”", "body": "Come under the shadow of this gray rock--\nCome in under the shadow of this gray rock,\nAnd I will show you something different from either\nYour shadow sprawling over the sand at daybreak, or\nYour shadow leaping behind the fire against the red rock:\nI will show you his bloody cloth and limbs\nAnd the gray shadow on his lips.\n\nHe walked once between the sea and the high cliffs\nWhen the wind made him aware of his limbs smoothly passing each other\nAnd of his arms crossed over his breast.\nWhen he walked over the meadows\nHe was stifled and soothed by his own rhythm.\nBy the river\nHis eyes were aware of the pointed corners of his eyes\nAnd his hands aware of the pointed tips of his fingers.\n\nStruck down by such knowledge\nHe could not live men’s ways, but became a dancer before God.\nIf he walked in city streets\nHe seemed to tread on faces, convulsive thighs and knees.\nSo he came out under the rock.\n\nFirst he was sure that he had been a tree,\nTwisting its branches among each other\nAnd tangling its roots among each other.\n\nThen he knew that he had been a fish\nWith slippery white belly held tight in his own fingers,\nWrithing in his own clutch, his ancient beauty\nCaught fast in the pink tips of his new beauty.\n\nThen he had been a young girl\nCaught in the woods by a drunken old man\nKnowing at the end the taste of his own whiteness,\nThe horror of his own smoothness,\nAnd he felt drunken and old.\n\nSo he became a dancer to God,\nBecause his flesh was in love with the burning arrows\nHe danced on the hot sand\nUntil the arrows came.\nAs he embraced them his white skin surrendered itself to the redness of blood, and satisfied him.\nNow he is green, dry and stained\nWith the shadow in his mouth.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1915 + } + } }, "a-dedication-to-my-wife": { "title": "“A Dedication to My Wife”", @@ -16004,7 +16099,11 @@ "the-difficulties-of-a-statesman-from-coriolan": { "title": "“The Difficulties of a Statesman from Coriolan”", "body": "Cry what shall I cry?\nAll flesh is grass: comprehending\nThe Companions of the Bath, the Knights of the British Empire, the Cavaliers,\nO Cavaliers! of the Legion of Honour,\nThe Order of the Black Eagle (1st and 2nd class),\nAnd the Order of the Rising Sun.\nCry cry what shall I cry?\nThe first thing to do is to form the committees:\nThe consultative councils, the standing committees committees and sub-committees\nOne secretary will do for several committees.\nWhat shall I cry?\n\nArthur Edward Cyril Parker is appointed telephone operator\nAt a salary of one pound ten a week rising by annual increments of fiveshillings\nTo two pounds ten a week; with a bonus of thirty shillings at Christmas\nAnd one week’s leave a year.\nA committee has been appointed to nominate a commission of engineers\nTo consider the Water Supply.\nA commission is appointed\nFor Public Works, chiefly the question of rebuilding the fortifications.\nA commission is appointed\nTo confer with a Volscian commission\nAbout perpetual peace: the fletchers and javelin-makers and smiths\nHave appointed a joint committee to protest against the reduction of orders.\nMeanwhile the guards shake dice on the marches\nAnd the frogs (O Mantuan) croak in the marshes.\nFireflies flare against the faint sheet lightning\nWhat shall I cry?\nMother mother\nHere is the row of family portraits, dingy busts, all looking remarkably Roman,\nRemarkably like each other, lit up successively by the flare\nOf a sweaty torchbearer, yawning.\n\nO hidden under the … Hidden under the … Where the dove’s foot rested and locked for a moment,\nA still moment, repose of noon, set under the upper branches of noon’s widest tree\nUnder the breast feather stirred by the small wind after noon\nThere the cyclamen spreads its wings, there the clematis droops over the lintel,\nO mother (not among these busts, all correctly inscribed)\nI a tired head among these heads\nNecks strong to bear them\nNoses strong to break the wind\nMother\nMay we not be some time, almost now, together,\nIf the mactations, immolations, oblations, impetrations,\nAre now observed\nMay we not be\nO hidden\nHidden in the stillness of noon, in the silent croaking night.\nCome with the sweep of the little bat’s wing, with the small flare of thefirefly or lightning bug,\n‘Rising and falling, crowned with dust’, the small creatures,\nThe small creatures chirp thinly through the dust, through the night.\nO mother\nWhat shall I cry?\nWe demand a committee, a representative committee, a committee of investigation\nRESIGN RESIGN RESIGN", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1931 + } + } }, "the-dry-savages": { "title": "“The Dry Savages”", @@ -16012,6 +16111,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "autumn" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1945 } } }, @@ -16021,6 +16123,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "good_friday" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1945 } } }, @@ -16036,28 +16141,48 @@ }, "gerontion": { "title": "“Gerontion”", - "body": " Thou hast nor youth nor age\n But as it were an after dinner sleep\n Dreaming of both.\n\n\nHere I am an old man in a dry month\nBeing read to by a boy waiting for rain.\nI was neither at the hot gates\nNor fought in the warm rain\nNor knee deep in the salt marsh heaving a cutlass\nBitten by flies fought.\nMy house is a decayed house\nAnd the jew squats on the window sill the owner\nSpawned in some estaminet of Antwerp\nBlistered in Brussels patched and peeled in London.\nThe goat coughs at night in the field overhead;\nRocks moss stonecrop iron merds.\nThe woman keeps the kitchen makes tea\nSneezes at evening poking the peevish gutter.\n\n I an old man\nA dull head among windy spaces.\n\nSigns are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign”:\nThe word within a word unable to speak a word\nSwaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year\nCame Christ the tiger\n\nIn depraved May dogwood and chestnut flowering Judas\nTo be eaten to be divided to be drunk\nAmong whispers; by Mr. Silvero\nWith caressing hands at Limoges\nWho walked all night in the next room;\nBy Hakagawa bowing among the Titians;\nBy Madame de Tornquist in the dark room\nShifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp\nWho turned in the hall one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles\nWeave the wind. I have no ghosts\nAn old man in a draughty house\nUnder a windy knob.\n\nAfter such knowledge what forgiveness? Think now\nHistory has many cunning passages contrived corridors\nAnd issues deceives with whispering ambitions\nGuides us by vanities. Think now\nShe gives when our attention is distracted\nAnd what she gives gives with such supple confusions\nThat the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late\nWhat’s not believed in or if still believed\nIn memory only reconsidered passion. Gives too soon\nInto weak hands what’s thought can be dispensed with\nTill the refusal propagates a fear. Think\nNeither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices\nAre fathered by our heroism. Virtues\nAre forced upon us by our impudent crimes.\nThese tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.\n\nThe tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last\nWe have not reached conclusion when I\nStiffen in a rented house. Think at last\nI have not made this show purposelessly\nAnd it is not by any concitation\nOf the backward devils.\nI would meet you upon this honestly.\nI that was near your heart was removed therefrom\nTo lose beauty in terror terror in inquisition.\nI have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it\nSince what is kept must be adulterated?\nI have lost my sight smell hearing taste and touch:\nHow should I use it for your closer contact?\n\nThese with a thousand small deliberations\nProtract the profit of their chilled delirium\nExcite the membrane when the sense has cooled\nWith pungent sauces multiply variety\nIn a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do\nSuspend its operations will the weevil\nDelay? De Bailhache Fresca Mrs. Cammel whirled\nBeyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear\nIn fractured atoms. Gull against the wind in the windy straits\nOf Belle Isle or running on the Horn\nWhite feathers in the snow the Gulf claims\nAnd an old man driven by the Trades\nTo a sleepy corner.\n\n Tenants of the house\nThoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "_Thou hast nor youth nor age\nBut as it were an after dinner sleep\nDreaming of both._\n\n\nHere I am an old man in a dry month\nBeing read to by a boy waiting for rain.\nI was neither at the hot gates\nNor fought in the warm rain\nNor knee deep in the salt marsh heaving a cutlass\nBitten by flies fought.\nMy house is a decayed house\nAnd the jew squats on the window sill the owner\nSpawned in some estaminet of Antwerp\nBlistered in Brussels patched and peeled in London.\nThe goat coughs at night in the field overhead;\nRocks moss stonecrop iron merds.\nThe woman keeps the kitchen makes tea\nSneezes at evening poking the peevish gutter.\n\n I an old man\nA dull head among windy spaces.\n\nSigns are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign”:\nThe word within a word unable to speak a word\nSwaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year\nCame Christ the tiger\n\nIn depraved May dogwood and chestnut flowering Judas\nTo be eaten to be divided to be drunk\nAmong whispers; by Mr. Silvero\nWith caressing hands at Limoges\nWho walked all night in the next room;\nBy Hakagawa bowing among the Titians;\nBy Madame de Tornquist in the dark room\nShifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp\nWho turned in the hall one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles\nWeave the wind. I have no ghosts\nAn old man in a draughty house\nUnder a windy knob.\n\nAfter such knowledge what forgiveness? Think now\nHistory has many cunning passages contrived corridors\nAnd issues deceives with whispering ambitions\nGuides us by vanities. Think now\nShe gives when our attention is distracted\nAnd what she gives gives with such supple confusions\nThat the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late\nWhat’s not believed in or if still believed\nIn memory only reconsidered passion. Gives too soon\nInto weak hands what’s thought can be dispensed with\nTill the refusal propagates a fear. Think\nNeither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices\nAre fathered by our heroism. Virtues\nAre forced upon us by our impudent crimes.\nThese tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.\n\nThe tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last\nWe have not reached conclusion when I\nStiffen in a rented house. Think at last\nI have not made this show purposelessly\nAnd it is not by any concitation\nOf the backward devils.\nI would meet you upon this honestly.\nI that was near your heart was removed therefrom\nTo lose beauty in terror terror in inquisition.\nI have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it\nSince what is kept must be adulterated?\nI have lost my sight smell hearing taste and touch:\nHow should I use it for your closer contact?\n\nThese with a thousand small deliberations\nProtract the profit of their chilled delirium\nExcite the membrane when the sense has cooled\nWith pungent sauces multiply variety\nIn a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do\nSuspend its operations will the weevil\nDelay? De Bailhache Fresca Mrs. Cammel whirled\nBeyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear\nIn fractured atoms. Gull against the wind in the windy straits\nOf Belle Isle or running on the Horn\nWhite feathers in the snow the Gulf claims\nAnd an old man driven by the Trades\nTo a sleepy corner.\n\n Tenants of the house\nThoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1920 + } + } }, "the-hippopotamus": { "title": "“The Hippopotamus”", - "body": " _Similiter et omnes revereantur Diaconos ut\n mandatum Jesu Christi; et Episcopum ut Jesum\n Christum existentem filium Patris; Presbyteros\n autem ut concilium Dei et conjunctionem\n Apostolorum. Sine his Ecclesia non vocatur; de\n quibus suadeo vos sic habeo.\n\n S. IGNATII AD TRALLIANOS.\n\n And when this epistle is read among you cause\n that it be read also in the church of the\n Laodiceans._\n\n\nThe broad-backed hippopotamus\nRests on his belly in the mud;\nAlthough he seems so firm to us\nHe is merely flesh and blood.\n\nFlesh-and-blood is weak and frail\nSusceptible to nervous shock;\nWhile the True Church can never fail\nFor it is based upon a rock.\n\nThe hippo’s feeble steps may err\nIn compassing material ends\nWhile the True Church need never stir\nTo gather in its dividends.\n\nThe ’potamus can never reach\nThe mango on the mango-tree;\nBut fruits of pomegranate and peach\nRefresh the Church from over sea.\n\nAt mating time the hippo’s voice\nBetrays inflexions hoarse and odd\nBut every week we hear rejoice\nThe Church at being one with God.\n\nThe hippopotamus’s day\nIs passed in sleep; at night he hunts;\nGod works in a mysterious way--\nThe Church can sleep and feed at once.\n\nI saw the ’potamus take wing\nAscending from the damp savannas\nAnd quiring angels round him sing\nThe praise of God in loud hosannas.\n\nBlood of the Lamb shall wash him clean\nAnd him shall heavenly arms enfold\nAmong the saints he shall be seen\nPerforming on a harp of gold.\n\nHe shall be washed as white as snow\nBy all the martyr’d virgins kiss\nWhile the True Church remains below\nWrapt in the old miasmal mist.", - "metadata": {} + "body": "_Similiter et omnes revereantur Diaconos ut\nmandatum Jesu Christi; et Episcopum ut Jesum\nChristum existentem filium Patris; Presbyteros\nautem ut concilium Dei et conjunctionem\nApostolorum. Sine his Ecclesia non vocatur; de\nquibus suadeo vos sic habeo.\n\nS. IGNATII AD TRALLIANOS.\n\nAnd when this epistle is read among you cause\nthat it be read also in the church of the\nLaodiceans._\n\n\nThe broad-backed hippopotamus\nRests on his belly in the mud;\nAlthough he seems so firm to us\nHe is merely flesh and blood.\n\nFlesh-and-blood is weak and frail\nSusceptible to nervous shock;\nWhile the True Church can never fail\nFor it is based upon a rock.\n\nThe hippo’s feeble steps may err\nIn compassing material ends\nWhile the True Church need never stir\nTo gather in its dividends.\n\nThe ’potamus can never reach\nThe mango on the mango-tree;\nBut fruits of pomegranate and peach\nRefresh the Church from over sea.\n\nAt mating time the hippo’s voice\nBetrays inflexions hoarse and odd\nBut every week we hear rejoice\nThe Church at being one with God.\n\nThe hippopotamus’s day\nIs passed in sleep; at night he hunts;\nGod works in a mysterious way--\nThe Church can sleep and feed at once.\n\nI saw the ’potamus take wing\nAscending from the damp savannas\nAnd quiring angels round him sing\nThe praise of God in loud hosannas.\n\nBlood of the Lamb shall wash him clean\nAnd him shall heavenly arms enfold\nAmong the saints he shall be seen\nPerforming on a harp of gold.\n\nHe shall be washed as white as snow\nBy all the martyr’d virgins kiss\nWhile the True Church remains below\nWrapt in the old miasmal mist.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1920 + } + } }, "the-hollow-men": { "title": "“The Hollow Men”", "body": "# I.\n\n_Mistah Kurtz-he dead\n A penny for the Old Guy_\n\n\nWe are the hollow men\nWe are the stuffed men\nLeaning together\nHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!\nOur dried voices when\nWe whisper together\nAre quiet and meaningless\nAs wind in dry grass\nOr rats’ feet over broken glass\nIn our dry cellar\n\nShape without form shade without colour\nParalysed force gesture without motion;\n\nThose who have crossed\nWith direct eyes to death’s other Kingdom\nRemember us-if at all-not as lost\nViolent souls but only\nAs the hollow men\nThe stuffed men.\n\n\n# II.\n\nEyes I dare not meet in dreams\nIn death’s dream kingdom\nThese do not appear:\nThere the eyes are\nSunlight on a broken column\nThere is a tree swinging\nAnd voices are\nIn the wind’s singing\nMore distant and more solemn\nThan a fading star.\n\nLet me be no nearer\nIn death’s dream kingdom\nLet me also wear\nSuch deliberate disguises\nRat’s coat crowskin crossed staves\nIn a field\nBehaving as the wind behaves\nNo nearer-\n\nNot that final meeting\nIn the twilight kingdom\n\n\n# III.\n\nThis is the dead land\nThis is cactus land\nHere the stone images\nAre raised here they receive\nThe supplication of a dead man’s hand\nUnder the twinkle of a fading star.\n\nIs it like this\nIn death’s other kingdom\nWaking alone\nAt the hour when we are\nTrembling with tenderness\nLips that would kiss\nForm prayers to broken stone.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nThe eyes are not here\nThere are no eyes here\nIn this valley of dying stars\nIn this hollow valley\nThis broken jaw of our lost kingdoms\n\nIn this last of meeting places\nWe grope together\nAnd avoid speech\nGathered on this beach of the tumid river\n\nSightless unless\nThe eyes reappear\nAs the perpetual star\nMultifoliate rose\nOf death’s twilight kingdom\nThe hope only\nOf empty men.\n\n\n# V.\n\nHere we go round the prickly pear\nPrickly pear prickly pear\nHere we go round the prickly pear\nAt five o’clock in the morning.\n\nBetween the idea\nAnd the reality\nBetween the motion\nAnd the act\nFalls the Shadow\nFor Thine is the Kingdom\n\nBetween the conception\nAnd the creation\nBetween the emotion\nAnd the response\nFalls the Shadow\nLife is very long\n\nBetween the desire\nAnd the spasm\nBetween the potency\nAnd the existence\nBetween the essence\nAnd the descent\nFalls the Shadow\nFor Thine is the Kingdom\n\nFor Thine is\nLife is\nFor Thine is the\n\n_This is the way the world ends\nThis is the way the world ends\nThis is the way the world ends\nNot with a bang but a whimper._", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1925 + } + } }, "hysteria": { "title": "“Hysteria”", "body": "As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her\nlaughter and being part of it, until her teeth were\nonly accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I\nwas drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary\nrecovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her\nthroat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An\nelderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly\nspreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty\ngreen iron table, saying: “If the lady and gentleman\nwish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and\ngentleman wish to take their tea in the garden …” I\ndecided that if the shaking of her breasts could be\nstopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might\nbe collected, and I concentrated my attention with\ncareful subtlety to this end.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1917 + } + } }, "if-time-and-space-as-sages-say": { - "title": "“If Time and Space as Sages Say”", + "title": "“If Time and Space, as sages say …”", "body": "If Time and Space, as sages say,\nAre things which cannot be,\nThe sun which does not feel decay\nNo greater is then we.\nSo why, Love, should we ever pray\nto live a century?\nThe butterfly that lives a day\nHas lived eternity.\n\nThe flowers I gave thee when the dew\nWas trembling on the vine,\nWere withered ere the wild bee flew\nTo suck the eglentine.\nSo let us haste to pluck anew\nNor mourn to see them pine,\nAnd though our days of love be few\nYet let them be divine.\n\nIf Space and Time, as sages say,\nAre things which cannot be,\nThe fly that lives a single day\nHas lived as long as we.\nBut let us live while yet we may,\nWhile love and life are free,\nFor time is time, and runs away,\nThough sages disagree.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1907 + } + } }, "the-journey-of-the-magi": { "title": "“The Journey of the Magi”", @@ -16065,6 +16190,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "epiphany" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1927 } } }, @@ -16074,6 +16202,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "autumn" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1917 } } }, @@ -16083,6 +16214,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "january" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1945 } } }, @@ -16092,13 +16226,20 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "october" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1915 } } }, "morning-at-the-window": { "title": "“Morning at the Window”", "body": "They are rattling breakfast plates in basement kitchens,\nAnd along the trampled edges of the street\nI am aware of the damp souls of housemaids\nSprouting despondently at area gates.\nThe brown waves of fog toss up to me\nTwisted faces from the bottom of the street,\nAnd tear from a passer-by with muddy skirts\nAn aimless smile that hovers in the air\nAnd vanishes along the level of the roofs.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1917 + } + } }, "mr-apollinax": { "title": "“Mr. Apollinax”", @@ -16107,22 +16248,33 @@ }, "mr-eliots-sunday-morning-service": { "title": "“Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service”", - "body": " Look look master here comes two religious\n caterpillars.\n The Jew of Malta.\n\n\nPolyphiloprogenitive\nThe sapient sutlers of the Lord\nDrift across the window-panes.\nIn the beginning was the Word.\n\nIn the beginning was the Word.\nSuperfetation of Greek text inserted here\nAnd at the mensual turn of time\nProduced enervate Origen.\n\nA painter of the Umbrian school\nDesigned upon a gesso ground\nThe nimbus of the Baptized God.\nThe wilderness is cracked and browned\n\nBut through the water pale and thin\nStill shine the unoffending feet\nAnd there above the painter set\nThe Father and the Paraclete.\n\n\nThe sable presbyters approach\nThe avenue of penitence;\nThe young are red and pustular\nClutching piaculative pence.\n\nUnder the penitential gates\nSustained by staring Seraphim\nWhere the souls of the devout\nBurn invisible and dim.\n\nAlong the garden-wall the bees\nWith hairy bellies pass between\nThe staminate and pistilate\nBlest office of the epicene.\n\nSweeney shifts from ham to ham\nStirring the water in his bath.\nThe masters of the subtle schools\nAre controversial polymath.", + "body": "Look look master here comes two religious\ncaterpillars.\n The Jew of Malta.\n\n\nPolyphiloprogenitive\nThe sapient sutlers of the Lord\nDrift across the window-panes.\nIn the beginning was the Word.\n\nIn the beginning was the Word.\nSuperfetation of Greek text inserted here\nAnd at the mensual turn of time\nProduced enervate Origen.\n\nA painter of the Umbrian school\nDesigned upon a gesso ground\nThe nimbus of the Baptized God.\nThe wilderness is cracked and browned\n\nBut through the water pale and thin\nStill shine the unoffending feet\nAnd there above the painter set\nThe Father and the Paraclete.\n\n\nThe sable presbyters approach\nThe avenue of penitence;\nThe young are red and pustular\nClutching piaculative pence.\n\nUnder the penitential gates\nSustained by staring Seraphim\nWhere the souls of the devout\nBurn invisible and dim.\n\nAlong the garden-wall the bees\nWith hairy bellies pass between\nThe staminate and pistilate\nBlest office of the epicene.\n\nSweeney shifts from ham to ham\nStirring the water in his bath.\nThe masters of the subtle schools\nAre controversial polymath.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "weekday": "sunday" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1920 } } }, "the-naming-of-cats": { "title": "“The Naming of Cats”", "body": "The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,\n It isn’t just one of your holiday games;\nYou may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter\nWhen I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.\nFirst of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,\n Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,\nSuch as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey--\n All of them sensible everyday names.\nThere are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,\n Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:\nSuch as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter--\n But all of them sensible everyday names,\nBut I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,\n A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,\nElse how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,\n Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?\nOf names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,\n Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,\nSuch as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum--\n Names that never belong to more than one cat.\nBut above and beyond there’s still one name left over,\n And that is the name that you never will guess;\nThe name that no human research can discover--\n But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.\nWhen you notice a cat in profound meditation,\n The reason, I tell you, is always the same:\nHis mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation\n Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:\n His ineffable effable\n Effanineffable\nDeep and inscrutable singular name.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1939 + } + } }, "nocturne": { "title": "“Nocturne”", "body": "Romeo, _grand sérieux_, to importune\nGuitar and hat in hand, beside the gate\nWith Juliet, in the usual debate\nOf love, beneath a bored but courteous moon;\nThe conversation failing, strikes some tune\nBanal, and out of pity for their fate\nBehind the wall I have some servant wait,\nStab, and the lady sinks into a swoon.\n\nBlood looks effective on the moonlit ground--\nThe hero smiles; in my best mode oblique\nRolls toward the moon a frenzied eye profound,\n(No need of “Love forever?”--“Love next week?”)\nWhile female readers all in tears are drowned:--\n“The perfect climax all true lovers seek!”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1909 + } + } }, "o-light-invisible": { "title": "“O Light Invisible”", @@ -16135,6 +16287,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "october" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1917 } } }, @@ -16144,13 +16299,20 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1917 } } }, "rhapsody-on-a-windy-night": { "title": "“Rhapsody on a Windy Night”", "body": "Twelve o’clock.\nAlong the reaches of the street\nHeld in a lunar synthesis\nWhispering lunar incantations\nDisolve the floors of memory\nAnd all its clear relations\nIts divisions and precisions\nEvery street lamp that I pass\nBeats like a fatalistic drum\nAnd through the spaces of the dark\nMidnight shakes the memory\nAs a madman shakes a dead geranium.\n\nHalf-past one\nThe street lamp sputtered\nThe street lamp muttered\nThe street lamp said\n“Regard that woman\nWho hesitates toward you in the light of the door\nWhich opens on her like a grin.\nYou see the border of her dress\nIs torn and stained with sand\nAnd you see the corner of her eye\nTwists like a crooked pin.”\n\nThe memory throws up high and dry\nA crowd of twisted things;\nA twisted branch upon the beach\nEaten smooth and polished\nAs if the world gave up\nThe secret of its skeleton\nStiff and white.\nA broken spring in a factory yard\nRust that clings to the form that the strength has left\nHard and curled and ready to snap.\n\nHalf-past two\nThe street-lamp said\n“Remark the cat which flattens itself in the gutter\nSlips out its tongue\nAnd devours a morsel of rancid butter.”\nSo the hand of the child automatic\nSlipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along\nthe quay.\nI could see nothing behind that child’s eye.\nI have seen eyes in the street\nTrying to peer through lighted shutters\nAnd a crab one afternoon in a pool\nAn old crab with barnacles on his back\nGripped the end of a stick which I held him.\n\nHalf-past three\nThe lamp sputtered\nThe lamp muttered in the dark.\n\nThe lamp hummed:\n“Regard the moon\nLa lune ne garde aucune rancune\nShe winks a feeble eye\nShe smiles into corners.\nShe smooths the hair of the grass.\nThe moon has lost her memory.\nA washed-out smallpox cracks her face\nHer hand twists a paper rose\nThat smells of dust and old Cologne\nShe is alone With all the old nocturnal smells\nThat cross and cross across her brain.\nThe reminiscence comes\nOf sunless dry geraniums\nAnd dust in crevices\nSmells of chestnuts in the streets\nAnd female smells in shuttered rooms\nAnd cigarettes in corridors\nAnd cocktail smells in bars.”\n\nThe lamp said\n“Four o’clock\nHere is the number on the door.\nMemory!\nYou have the key\nThe little lamp spreads a ring on the stair\nMount.\nThe bed is open; the tooth-brush hangs on the wall\nPut your shoes at the door sleep prepare for life.”\n\nThe last twist of the knife.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1917 + } + } }, "a-silent-city": { "title": "“A Silent City”", @@ -16163,6 +16325,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "candlemas" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1928 } } }, @@ -16172,6 +16337,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "weekday": "sunday" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1910 } } }, @@ -16181,6 +16349,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1920 } } }, @@ -16190,13 +16361,20 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1920 } } }, "triumphal-march": { "title": "“Triumphal March”", "body": "Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses’ heels\nOver the paving.\nAnd the flags. And the trumpets. And so many eagles.\nHow many? Count them. And such a press of people.\nWe hardly knew ourselves that day, or knew the City.\nThis is the way to the temple, and we so many crowding the way.\nSo many waiting, how many waiting? what did it matter, on such a day?\nAre they coming? No, not yet. You can see some eagles.\nAnd hear the trumpets.\nHere they come. Is he coming?\nThe natural wakeful life of our Ego is a perceiving.\nWe can wait with our stools and our sausages.\nWhat comes first? Can you see? Tell us. It is\n\n5,800,000 rifles and carbines,\n102,000 machine guns,\n28,000 trench mortars,\n53,000 field and heavy guns,\nI cannot tell how many projectiles, mines and fuses,\n13,000 aeroplanes,\n24,000 aeroplane engines,\n50,000 ammunition waggons,\nnow 55,000 army waggons,\n11,000 field kitchens,\n1,150 field bakeries.\nWhat a time that took. Will it be he now? No,\nThose are the golf club Captains, these the Scouts,\nAnd now the societe gymnastique de Poissy\nAnd now come the Mayor and the Liverymen. Look\nThere he is now, look:\nThere is no interrogation in his eyes\nOr in the hands, quiet over the horse’s neck,\nAnd the eyes watchful, waiting, perceiving, indifferent.\nO hidden under the dove’s wing, hidden in the turtle’s breast,\nUnder the palmtree at noon, under the running water\nAt the still point of the turning world. O hidden.\n\nNow they go up to the temple. Then the sacrifice.\nNow come the virgins bearing urns, urns containing\nDust\nDust\nDust of dust, and now\nStone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oakleaves, horses’ heels\nOver the paving.\n\nThat is all we could see. But how many eagles! and how many trumpets!\n(And Easter Day, we didn’t get to the country,\nSo we took young Cyril to church. And they rang a bell\nAnd he said right out loud, crumpets.)\nDon’t throw away that sausage,\nIt’ll come in handy. He’s artful. Please, will you\nGive us a light?\nLight\nLight\nEt les soldats faisaient la haie? ILS LA FAISAIENT.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1931 + } + } }, "the-waste-land": { "title": "“The Waste Land”", @@ -16204,22 +16382,32 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "april" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1922 } } }, "when-we-came-home-across-the-hill": { - "title": "“When We Came Home across the Hill”", + "title": "“When we came home across the hill …”", "body": "When we came home across the hill\nNo leaves were fallen from the trees;\nThe gentle fingers of the breeze\nHad torn no quivering cobweb down.\n\nThe hedgerow bloomed with flowers still,\nNo withered petals lay beneath;\nBut the wild roses in your wreath\nWere faded, and the leaves were brown.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "summer" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1909 } } }, "whispers-of-immortality": { "title": "“Whispers of Immortality”", "body": "Webster was much possessed by death\nAnd saw the skull beneath the skin;\nAnd breastless creatures under ground\nLeaned backward with a lipless grin.\n\nDaffodil bulbs instead of balls\nStared from the sockets of the eyes!\nHe knew that thought clings round dead limbs\nTightening its lusts and luxuries.\n\nDonne I suppose was such another\nWho found no substitute for sense;\nTo seize and clutch and penetrate\nExpert beyond experience\n\nHe knew the anguish of the marrow\nThe ague of the skeleton;\nNo contact possible to flesh\nAllayed the fever of the bone.\n\n\nGrishkin is nice: her Russian eye\nIs underlined for emphasis;\nUncorseted her friendly bust\nGives promise of pneumatic bliss.\n\nThe couched Brazilian jaguar\nCompels the scampering marmoset\nWith subtle effluence of cat;\nGrishkin has a maisonette;\n\nThe sleek Brazilian jaguar\nDoes not in its arboreal gloom\nDistil so rank a feline smell\nAs Grishkin in a drawing-room.\n\nAnd even the Abstract Entities\nCircumambulate her charm;\nBut our lot crawls between dry ribs\nTo keep our metaphysics warm.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1919 + } + } } } }, @@ -16813,7 +17001,7 @@ "tags": [ "american" ], - "n_poems": 13 + "n_poems": 14 }, "poems": { "charles-river-nocturne": { @@ -16822,6 +17010,10 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1931, + "month": 8 } } }, @@ -16835,6 +17027,15 @@ } } }, + "counselors": { + "title": "Counselors", + "body": "# I.\n\nWhom should I consult? Philosophers\nAre happy in their homes and seminars.\nSee this one with the mischievous bright childlike\nGaze going out through walls and air,\nA tangent to the bent rays of the star.\nHear the chalk splutter, hear the groping voice:\nConceive the demiurge in his perpetual\nStrife with the chaos of the universe,\nThat humming equilibrium of creation\nPure and enormous, crossed by the constant\nLight of unimaginable combustion:\nTeems, how it teems. An elm tree sighs\nBeyond the dusty windowledge of June.\nAs in the mind the notes of a melody\nVibrate when vibration’s gone, a series\nGenerated by a decimal has no end;\nObserve it closely, though; it stops when it stops.\nThe frail spectacles are bedimmed with spring.\n\nBut whom should I consult? Well-seasoned men,\nRuddy with business or the salty summer,\nAutumnal in their woolens, gaze\nToward the quick plumes above the city.\nA frosty morning sun reddens the river.\nThis one is meditative and well-qualified:\nDecently shined, one heavy saddle-dark\nPerforated brogan swings from the swivel\nChair arm; leaning back, the head\nWell-cropped and grey, the experienced\nEyes quiet, with one highlighted pupil.\nA reader of Herodotus in the evening.\nThe road was in receivership, the mills\nWere in receivership, the bondholders\nSuitably informed would not dissent\nFrom an able plan of reorganization.\nEasy did it.\n And his beautiful daughters\nSink in a circle of white skirts like daisies,\nLaughing for the brash photographer.\nYears ago they sailed to the North Cape,\nMade out that flecked mass in the East\nWith Mother and the broad-shouldered boy from Cook’s\nOn deck in the dim summer on the grey\nSea. Often they saw the fishermen\nOff Cherbourg in the awe of morning hitting\nThe outside spanking seas: red sails in sea-light.\nFar away in the nursery a music box\nPlucks its icy Bavarian tune for them.\n\nThen whom? A thousand flashes from Long Island\nEnter the high room in the office building,\nA heliograph of cars turning toward sunset.\nWill he decipher them? The journalist\nSweats in his shirtsleeves, mutilates\nCigarettes in a smouldering tray, surveys\nMe and the world in a racket of teletypes,\nSick of it and excited, needing a drink.\nPositive copy sprouts from the typewriter,\nEach paragraph a piston stroke. The sun\nGlitters on Hackensack, sorrows on the land,\nGoes out like a pliant egg sucked down a bottle.\nUnder the shadowing azure a violet\nDusk consumes the sharp walls of the world.\nThe melancholy distributor of wit\nSnatches at straws amid the alien darkness,\nA whirl of dusty danger.\n For his retreat\nThe priest lifts up the monstrance, muttering\nAbstracted Latin to the tinkle behind him.\nPresently they will bawl the Stabat Mater.\nAnd all those years at seminary, reading\nSt. Basil and Jerome, girding his cassock\nFor handball in the gritty cement courtyard\nUnder the swooping smoke of the powerhouse;\nAnd ordination when the folks from Chicago\nWept before the bishop. Mortify\nThe flesh. Think on thy last end. Pray\nThe Holy Mother of God in her infinite mercy,\nAnd Him who rests in the dark chapel always,\nWhere the wick burns in wax, a cuddling flame:\nDeduced by Thomas from the tip of heaven.\n\nOr should I tumble to the recumbent\nConfessional, and the scientist of distress?\nFor any child the terror in the night,\nThe hating eyes by day may be\nDeath’s cunning orchestration: they prepare\nThe servant’s cry at last, absolute and lonely.\nSee this easy gentleman in tweeds,\nDeepchested, a swimmer to the farthest light,\nDiagnostician of the subaqueous\nFaces of dreams: with patience like a lover\nHe must all day sustain his authority,\nMust not be bored, merciful or amused.\n\nOr the anatomist and healer of bones?\nTrepanner, skilled in suturing, the masked\nAnd sterile hero in the cone of light;\nThere the sweet ether cone must be inhaled\nWith one, two pulses of the fiery spiral\nSinging into timeless speed or quiet:\nA mound under a sheet, a square of pale\nMortal flesh incised in a seeping line,\nSpreading its lips for pretty butchery.\n\nBlankets, hypodermics and high fever,\nRacing delirium in the ward; the tall screen\nEfficiently deployed at the bedside;\nIntravenous ministrations: charts: starch:\nAnd how is he today. Pretty good, doc.\nOr else the fly sits down on the dead face\nIn the dead sunny room.\n\n Shall I have speech\nWith those undone by the world’s great memory?\nMen translated by music, treasurers\nOf the French phrase, the childhood images,\nUnregarded announcers of prophecy;\nStaring blind at the stained wall paper\nIn their nightly rooms; their dreadful hearts\nBeating the beds where other hearts have slept\nLike birds under the night wind of time.\nSee this one whom the currents under earth\nIntoxicate, and the flosses of the sky:\nWeeping, weeping in vanity and grief\nHe walks toward remote dawn in the empty city,\nFacing the cold draft, fish-smell from the river,\nNecessitous of love. Masters of intricate\nFancy, libertines of intelligence,\nI. Until Jove let it be, no colonist\nMastered the wild earth; no land was marked,\nNone parceled out or shared; but everyone\nLooked for his living in the common wold.\n\nAnd Jove gave poison to the blacksnakes, and\nMade the wolves ravage, made the ocean roll,\nKnocked honey from the leaves, took fire away--\nSo man might beat out various inventions\nBy reasoning and art.\n First he chipped fire\nOut of the veins of flint where it was hidden;\nThen rivers felt his skiffs of the light alder;\nThen sailors counted up the stars and named them:\nPleiades, Hyades, and the Pole Star;\nThen were discovered ways to take wild things.\nIn snares, or hunt them with the circling pack;\nAnd how to whip a stream with casting nets,\nOr draw the deep-sea fisherman’s cordage up;\nAnd then the use of steel and the shrieking saw;\nThen various crafts. All things were overcome\nBy labor and by force of bitter need.\n\n# II.\n\nEven when your threshing floor is leveled\nBy the big roller, smoothed and packed by hand\nWith potter’s clay, so that it will not crack,\nThere are still nuisances. The tiny mouse\nLocates his house and granary underground,\nOr the blind mole tunnels his dark chamber;\nThe toad, too, and all monsters of the earth,\nBesides those plunderers of the grain, the weevil\nAnd frantic ant, scared of a poor old age.\n\nLet me speak then, too, of the farmer’s weapons:\nThe heavy oaken plow and the plowshare,\nThe slowly rolling carts of Demeter,\nThe threshing machine, the sledge, the weighted mattock,\nThe withe baskets, the cheap furniture,\nThe harrow and the magic winnowing fan--\nAll that your foresight makes provision of,\nIf you still favor the divine countryside.\n\n\n# III.\n\nMoreover, like men tempted by the straits\nIn ships borne homeward through the blowing sea,\nWe too must reckon on Arcturus star,\nThe days of luminous Draco and the Kids.\nWhen Libra makes the hours of sleep and daylight\nEqual, dividing the world, half light, half dark,\nThen drive the team, and sow the field with barley,\nEven under intractable winter’s rain.\nBut Spring is the time to sow your beans and clover,\nWhen shining Taurus opens the year with his golden\nHorns, and the Dog’s averted star declines;\nFor greater harvests of your wheat and spelt,\nLet first the Pleiades and Hyades be hid\nAnd Ariadne’s diadem go down.\nThe golden sun rules the great firmament\nThrough the twelve constellations, and the world\nIs measured out in certain parts, and heaven\nBy five great zones is taken up entire:\nOne glowing with sundazzle and fierce heat;\nAnd far away on either side the arctics,\nFrozen with ice and rain, cerulean;\nAnd, in between, two zones for sick mankind:\nThrough each of these a slanting path is cut\nWhere pass in line the zodiacal stars.\n\nNorthward the steep world rises to Scythia\nAnd south of Libya descends, where black\nStyx and the lowest of the dead look on.\nIn the north sky the Snake glides like a river\nWinding about the Great and Little Bear--\nThose stars that fear forever the touch of ocean;\nSouthward they say profound Night, mother of Furies,\nSits tight-lipped among the crowding shades,\nOr thence Aurora draws the daylight back;\nAnd where the East exhales the yellow morning,\nReddening evening lights her stars at last.\n\n\n# IV.\n\nAs for the winter, when the freezing rains\nConfine the farmer, he may employ himself\nIn preparations for serener seasons.\nThe plowman beats the plowshare on the forge,\nOr makes his vats of tree-trunks hollowed out,\nBrands his cattle, numbers his piles of grain,\nSharpens fence posts or pitchforks, prepares\nUmbrian trellises for the slow vine.\nThen you may weave the baskets of bramble twigs\nOr dip your bleating flock in the clean stream.\nOften the farmer loads his little mule\nWith olive oil or apples, and brings home\nA grindstone or a block of pitch from market.\n\nAnd some will stay up late beside the fire\nOn winter nights, whittling torches, while\nThe housewife runs the shuttle through the loom\nAnd comforts the long labor with her singing;\nOr at the stove she simmers the new wine,\nSkimming the froth with leaves. Oh idle time!\nIn that hale season, all their worries past,\nFarmers arrange convivialities--\nAs after laden ships have reached home port,\nThe happy sailors load the prow with garlands.\nThen is the time to gather acorns and\nLaurel berries and the bloodred myrtle,\nTo lay your traps for cranes and snares for buck,\nTo hit the fallow deer with twisted slingshots,\nAnd track the long-eared hare--\nWhen snow is deep, and ice is on the rivers.\n\n\n# V.\n\nWhat of the humors and the ways of Autumn?\n\nJust when the farmer wished to reap his yellow\nFields, and thresh his grain,\nI have often seen all the winds make war,\nFlattening the stout crops from the very roots;\nAnd in the black whirlwind\nCarrying off the ears and the light straw.\nAnd often mighty phalanxes of rain\nMarched out of heaven, as the clouds\nRolled up from the sea the detestable tempest;\nThen the steep aether thundered, and the deluge\nSoaked the crops, filled ditches, made the rivers\nRise and roar and seethe in their spuming beds.\n\nThe Father himself in the mid stormy night\nLets the lightning go, at whose downstroke\nEnormous earth quivers, wild things flee,\nAnd fear abases the prone hearts of men--\nAs Jove splits Athos with his firebolt\nOr Rhodope or the Ceraunian ridge.\nThe southwind wails in sheets of rain,\nAnd under that great wind the groves\nLament, and the long breast of the shore is shaken.\n\nIf you dislike to be so caught, mark well\nThe moon’s phases and the weather signs;\nNotice where Saturn’s frigid star retires,\nMercury’s wanderings over heaven; and revere\nEspecially, the gods. Offer to Ceres\nAnnual sacrifice and annual worship\nIn the first fair weather of the spring,\nSo may your sheep grow fat and your vines fruitful,\nYour sleep sweet and your mountains full of shade.\nLet all the country folk come to adore her,\nAnd offer her libations of milk and wine;\nConduct the sacrificial lamb three times\nAround the ripe field, in processional,\nWith all your chorus singing out to Ceres;\nAnd let no man lay scythe against his grain\nUnless he first bind oakleaves on his head\nAnd make his little dance, and sing to her.\n\n\n# VI.\n\nWhen shall we herd the cattle to the stables?\nThe wind, say, rises without intermission;\nThe sea gets choppy and the swell increases;\nThe dry crash of boughs is heard on hills;\nThe long sound of the surf becomes a tumult;\nThe gusts become more frequent in the grove;\nThe waves begin to fight against the keels;\nFrom far at sea the gulls fly shoreward crying;\nThe heron leaves his favorite marsh and soars\nOver the high cloud. Then you will see\nBeyond thin skimrack, shooting stars\nFalling, the long pale tracks behind them\nWhitening through the darkness of the night;\nAnd you’ll see straw and fallen leaves blowing.\nBut when it thunders in rough Boreas’ quarter,\nWhen east and west it thunders--every sailor\nFurls his dripping sail.\n\nA storm should never catch you unprepared.\nAerial cranes take flight before its rising,\nThe restless heifer with dilated nostrils\nSniffs the air; the squeaking hirondelle\nFlits round and round the lake, and frogs,\nInveterate in their mud, croak a chorale.\nAnd too the ant, more frantic in his gallery,\nTrundles his eggs out from their hiding place;\nThe rainbow, cloud imbiber, may be seen;\nAnd crows go cawing from the pasture\nIn a harsh throng of crepitating wings;\nThe jeering jay gives out his yell for rain\nAnd takes a walk by himself on the dry sand.\nStormwise, the various sea-fowl, and such birds\nAs grub the sweet Swan River in Asia,\nMay be observed dousing themselves and diving\nOr riding on the water, as if they wished--\nWhat odd exhilaration--to bathe themselves.\n\n\n# VII.\n\nAfter a storm, clear weather and continuing\nSunny days may likewise be foretold:\nBy the sharp twinkle of the stars, the moon\nRising to face her brother’s rays by day;\nNo tenuous fleeces blowing in the sky,\nNo halcyons, sea favorites, on the shore\nStretching out their wings in tepid sunlight;\nBut mists go lower and lie on the fields,\nThe owl, observing sundown from his perch,\nModulates his meaningless melancholy.\nAloft in crystal air the sparrow hawk\nChases his prey; and as she flits aside\nThe fierce hawk follows screaming on the wind,\nAnd as he swoops, she flits aside again.\nWith funereal contractions of the windpipe\nThe crows produce their caws, three at a time,\nAnd in their high nests, pleased at I know not what,\nNoise it among themselves: no doubt rejoicing\nTo see their little brood after the storm,\nBut not, I think, by reason of divine\nInsight or superior grasp of things.\n\n\n# VIII.\n\nBut if you carefully watch the rapid sun\nAnd the moon following, a fair night’s snare\nNever deceives you as to next day’s weather.\nWhen the new moon collects a rim of light,\nIf that bow be obscured with a dark vapor,\nThen a great tempest is in preparation;\nIf it be blushing like a virgin’s cheek,\nThere will be wind; wind makes Diana blush;\nIf on the fourth night (most significant)\nShe goes pure and unclouded through the sky,\nAll that day and the following days will be,\nFor one full month, exempt from rain and wind.\nThe sun, too, rising and setting in the waves,\nWill give you weather signs, trustworthy ones\nWhether at morning or when stars come out.\nA mackerel sky over the east at sunrise\nMeans look out for squalls, a gale is coming,\nUnfavorable to trees and plants and flocks.\nOr when through denser strata the sun’s rays\nBreak out dimly, or Aurora rises\nPale from Tithonus’ crocus-colored chamber,\nAlas, the vine-leaf will not shield the cluster\nIn the hubbub of roof-pattering bitter hail.\nIt will be well to notice sunset, too,\nFor the sun’s visage then has various colors;\nBluish and dark means rain; if it be fiery\nThat means an East wind; if it be dappled\nAnd mixed with red gold light, then you will see\nWind and rain in commotion everywhere.\nNobody can advise me, on that night,\nTo cast off hawsers and put out to sea.\nBut if the next day passes and the sunset\nThen be clear, you need not fear the weather:\nA bright Norther will sway the forest trees.\n\n\n# IX.\n\nLast, what the late dusk brings, and whence the fair\nClouds are blown, and secrets of the Southwind\nYou may learn from the sun, whose prophecies\nNo man denies, seeing black insurrections,\nTreacheries, and wars are told by him.\n\nWhen Caesar died, the great sun pitied Rome,\nSo veiling his bright head, the godless time\nTrembled in fear of everlasting night;\nAnd then were portents given of earth and ocean,\nVile dogs upon the roads, and hideous\nStrange birds, and Aetna quaking, and her fires\nBursting to overflow the Cyclops’ fields\nWith flames whirled in the air and melted stones.\nThunder of war was heard in Germany\nFrom south to north, shaking the granite Alps;\nAnd a voice also through the silent groves\nPiercing; and apparitions wondrous pale\nWere seen in dead of night. Then cattle spoke\n(O horror!), streams stood still, the earth cracked open\nAnd tears sprang even from the temple bronze.\nThe Po, monarch of rivers, on his back\nSpuming whole forests, raced through the lowland plains\nAnd bore off pens and herds; and then continually\nThe viscera of beasts were thick with evil,\nBlood trickled from the springs; tall towns at night\nRe-echoed to the wolf-pack’s shivering howl;\nAnd never from pure heaven have there fallen\nSo many fires, nor baleful comets burned.\nIt seemed that once again the Roman lines,\nAlike in arms, would fight at Philippi;\nAnd heaven permitted those Thessalian fields\nTo be enriched again with blood of ours.\nSome future day, perhaps, in that country,\nA farmer with his plow will turn the ground,\nAnd find the javelins eaten thin with rust,\nOr knock the empty helmets with his mattock\nAnd wonder, digging up those ancient bones.\n\nPaternal gods! Ancestors! Mother Vesta!\nYou that guard Tiber and the Palatine!\nNow that long century is overthrown,\nLet not this young man fail to give us peace!\nLong enough beneath your rule, O Caesar,\nHeaven has hated us and all those triumphs\nWhere justice was thrown down--so many wars,\nSo many kinds of wickedness! No honor\nRendered the plow, but the fields gone to ruin,\nThe country-folk made homeless, and their scythes\nBeaten to straight swords on the blowing forge!\nWar from the Euphrates to Germany;\nRuptured engagements, violence of nations,\nAnd impious Mars raging the whole world over--\nAs when a four horsed chariot rears away\nPlunging from the barrier, and runs wild,\nHeedless of the reins or the charioteer.\nTerrorizers of themselves, laughers in\nLanguage and priests of any mystery--\nNot by authority.\n\n What of the revered\nHistorian, the painstaking public man?\nHis dusty briefcase worn to a splitting bulge,\nThe scholar descending from the library\nSmiles at the doves, and at the glowing grass.\nLetters gone frail and yellow in their strings\nSpill fuzz and dust from the stuck folds:\nIt might be inferred from what the ambassador\nWrote to his daughter in Virginia\nThat others were privy to the situation.\nThese judges are gentle and well-cultivated\nHonorable stylists, penetrating men,\nMirrors of duplicity and bewilderment,\nMirrors of magnificent deep-rooted structural\nPolicy and implacable miscarriage.\nThe documents are all photostated, the files\nArranged. Let humane logic\nGuide them in the wilderness of the State.\nThe pallid husbandman grunts at his fields,\nSells his new lambs in the damp of March,\nThumbs the slick catalogue of the mail order\nHouse for ginghams for the girls of summer;\nChews with the county agent at the gate.\nHe will be ruddy as the sun goes over,\nThe clouds go over, the tractor shudders on\nThrough the high fields. The piling west will grow\nFractious with lightning, the wild branches bend,\nCurtains blow out like goodbye handkerchiefs\nHilarious in the gloomy wind. Autumn\nComes with marriages to the aging house,\nWinter comes with comforts and old death.\nStill the farmer’s dull hand holds the seed;\nThe low star glimmers on the dewy sill.", + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1969 + } + } + }, "for-the-others": { "title": "“For the Others”", "body": "They will come to my house, to the street’s end\nIn the tedious season,\nNaming the dry leaf, and the wind at morning\nBearing death.\n\nFrom the tastefully cut helms, the craftsmen’s speech,\nI shall turn clearly\nTo grip in daylight time’s still edge\nFinding my body, sight, touch, hearing, strange\nIdentity then with what mind in what place\nOf all that make the story?\n\n Birds\nSing in the dark trees at the world’s end\nIn the evening of time. The bearded men\nStand there among the horses. The lutes play.\nAnd there are valleys in the mountains\nAnd women cutting the hay, and carrying it\nIn under the hot rain.\n\n These we know.\n\nO father, father,\nThese many days and many harvests\nWe have endured, and the grey sea under mists,\nThe agony of our daughters, and\nOld men dying in candlelight\nAt the summer’s passage--\n\n remembering\n\nLandfalls, delay of autumn, grief among dreams.", @@ -16850,6 +17051,10 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "summer" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1934, + "month": 1 } } }, @@ -16859,6 +17064,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "autumn" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1969 } } }, @@ -16868,6 +17076,10 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "christ_the_king" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1957, + "month": 2 } } }, @@ -16877,6 +17089,10 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "july" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1931, + "month": 8 } } }, @@ -16886,6 +17102,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "september" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1969 } } }, @@ -16895,13 +17114,21 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "autumn" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1931, + "month": 8 } } }, "the-shore-of-life": { "title": "“The Shore of Life”", "body": "# I.\n\nI came then to the city of my brethren.\nNot Carthage, not Alexandria, not London.\n\nThe wide blue river cutting through the stone\nArrowy and cool lay down beside her,\nAnd the hazy and shining sea lay in the offing.\n\nFerries, pouring the foam before them, sliding\nInto her groaning timbers, rang and rang;\nAnd the chains tumbled taut in the winches.\n\nUpstream the matted tugs in the heavy water,\nTheir soiling smoke unwrapped by the salt wind,\nFooted with snowy trampling and snowy sound.\n\nOn tethers, pointing the way of the tide,\nThe crusted freighters swung with their sides gushing.\n\nOn evening’s ship pointing northward,\nA golden sailor at sunset stood at the bow,\nAs aloft in the strands a tramcar with tiny clanging\nSlowly soared over, far upward and humming still.\n\n\n# II.\n\nNot Athens, Alexandria, Vienna or London.\n\nAnd evening vast and clean above the city\nWashed the high storeys with sea-light, with a silken\nSky-tint on the planes and the embrasures:\nThe clump of crags and glitter sinking eastward\nWith the slow world, the shadow-lipping shores,\nPale after-conflagration of the air.\n\nOn terraces, by windows of tiredness,\nThe eyes dropped from that glow to the dusk atremble,\nAlive with its moving atomic monotone:\n\nThere the hot taxis at the pounding corner\nFitted their glossy flanks and shifted, waiting,\nAnd the girls went by with wavering tall walking,\nTheir combed heads nodding in the evening:\n\nThe hour of shops closing, the cocktail hour,\nLighting desire and cigarettes and lighting\nThe strange lamps on the streaming avenue.", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1969 + } + } }, "souls-lake": { "title": "“Souls Lake”", @@ -16909,6 +17136,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "may" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1980 } } }, @@ -16918,6 +17148,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1969 } } }, @@ -16927,6 +17160,10 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1931, + "month": 8 } } } @@ -19188,7 +19425,7 @@ }, "horses-at-midnight-without-a-moon": { "title": "“Horses at Midnight without a Moon”", - "body": "Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.\nOur dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.\nBut there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down\nbut the angel flies up again taking us with her.\nThe summer mornings begin inch by inch\nwhile we sleep, and walk with us later\nas long-legged beauty through\nthe dirty streets. It is no surprise \nthat danger and suffering surround us.\nWhat astonishes is the singing.\nWe know the horses are there in the dark\nmeadow because we can smell them,\ncan hear them breathing. \nOur spirit persists like a man struggling \nthrough the frozen valley\nwho suddenly smells flowers\nand realizes the snow is melting\nout of sight on top of the mountain,\nknows that spring has begun.", + "body": "Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.\nOur dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.\nBut there’s music in us. Hope is pushed down\nbut the angel flies up again taking us with her.\nThe summer mornings begin inch by inch\nwhile we sleep, and walk with us later\nas long-legged beauty through\nthe dirty streets. It is no surprise\nthat danger and suffering surround us.\nWhat astonishes is the singing.\nWe know the horses are there in the dark\nmeadow because we can smell them,\ncan hear them breathing.\nOur spirit persists like a man struggling\nthrough the frozen valley\nwho suddenly smells flowers\nand realizes the snow is melting\nout of sight on top of the mountain,\nknows that spring has begun.", "metadata": {} }, "i-imagine-the-gods": { @@ -20283,7 +20520,7 @@ }, "prayer-60": { "title": "Prayer 60", - "body": "_Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart:_\n\n# I.\n\nLong ago I learned that blessings\nshould not come from the mouth of a sinner,\ntherefore, how can I, even regretfully,\ncontinue saying Psalms in worship\nthat earn only scorn for me?\n\nHow shall I praise my injuries and build monuments\nto my disgrace while gathering thorns in my bare chest\ninstead of lilies?\n\nHow shall I dare to say with David:\n“You have broken the teeth of the ungodly.”\nOr “The wicked shall dwell before your eyes.”\nOr “Judge me, Lord, according to your righteousness,\naccording to the integrity that is in me.”\nOr “Let wickedness be visited upon the sinful.”\nOr “Break the arms of the sinner and wicked,”\nand all that follows.\nOr “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares,\nfire and brimstone.”\nOr “The Lord shall cut off flattering lips and the boasting\ntongue.”\nOr “You have tested my heart and found no iniquity.”\nOr the next verse, “My steps have held fast\nto your path.”\nOr “I shall behold thy face in righteousness.”\nOr “I was upright before him.”\nOr the next verse, “The Lord paid me according to my\nrighteousness and the cleanness of my hands.”\nOr how can I cover up my lies, yet say with the holy,\n“I wash my hands in innocence.”\nOr wallowing in baseness brag, “I do not consort\nwith the impious.”\nOr proudly put on a happy face, pathetic though I am,\nand say, “Vindicate me, Lord, for I have\nwalked in integrity.”\nOr I, the stranger to goodness, beg you,\nknower of secrets,\n“Do not count my soul among the wicked.”\nOr when cursing others although I deserve cursing,\nI dare say, “Requite them, Lord, according\nto their works.”\nAnd shall I dare continue?\n\n\n# II.\n\nIf I should add to the previous verses,\nmy grief would double, my bitterness multiply.\nMy tears dammed up within me, daily seek\nthe comfort of the familiar scolding voice of the Psalms,\naccusing me.\nIf I add the last part of Psalm fifty,\nwhich dooms me as abominable,\ngags my speech and exposes my guilty soul\nto the prosecuting voice of God,\nhope of life is lost.\n\nI am pelted from the ramparts by deadly missiles.\nIt is a misfortune to be cursed by others, but\nit is worse to curse oneself. And if it is hard to be\nreproached by friends, how much more chilling,\nalarming and tormenting to be exposed before\nthe one who sees all.\n\nBut if one surrenders to humiliation and lashes\none’s soul with the reproaches of one’s own tongue,\none earns the blessings of the glorious and all-powerful\nLord for expressing one’s return to him\nwithout covering the traces of the past,\nfor the sake of love he cut the root of our\ntransgressions, undeterred by nay-sayers.\nThe sheep of Christ’s flock have found\nthe cure, the balm for their inner wounds.\n\nYet amidst green pastures blooming\nwith life-giving counsel, intelligent beings\nirrationally and willfully choose\nto graze in poisonous fields of delusion.\n\n\n# III.\n\nAnd now, since this reprimand suits me exactly\nand describes the evil situation\nwhere I myself fuel the consuming fire\npoured from on high upon my head,\nthe organ of thought.\n\nWhat did I profit from the Psalms,\nwhen I remained fruitless despite my repeated chants,\nfailing to sing with my soul as instructed by Paul?\nHow shall I mix our Lord’s words with those\nof the Prophet?\nHow can I, the greatest of sinners, the pinnacle\nof neediness,\nsay with the Saint, “Get away, you workers\nof iniquity”?\nOr how shall I, who has not fulfilled any of the multitude\nof commandments relating to grace or the law,\ncry with the happy man who has practiced all he\npreached, saying,\n“For I, your servant, have kept these commandments”\nand the words that follow?\n\nHow shall I, who am devoid of life’s wisdom,\npraise the Lord with the God-fearing?\n\nAnd how shall I add my prayer to that of the great one,\nwho said, “I sought but one thing from the Lord,\nto behold his splendor and to serve in his temple”?\n\nHow shall I seek what I am deprived of,\nwhen I hear, “It is fitting to bless the upright”?\n\nHow shall I curse my soul with my own lips, saying,\namong other things, “The gaze of the Lord is\nupon evil doers, whose memory shall be wiped\nfrom the face of the earth”?\n\nOr again in another verse,\n“The evil soon shall perish”?\n\nOr as in my case,\n“The arms of the wicked shall be stricken”?\n\n\nOr how can I pray for my destruction,\n“Behold how the sinners perish”?\n\nHow shall I utter these blessed words with\nmy unruly tongue: “I shall guard my way so that\nI do not sin with my tongue”?\n\nHow shall I boast with the innocent when I choke\non thorns of sin: “But you have upheld me because of\nmy integrity”?\n\nHow shall I, a sinner deserving double punishment,\ncomplain: “Deliver me, O God, from deceitful and\nunjust men”?\n\n\n# IV.\n\nHow shall I dare say with David,\nas if I am not a hypocrite and idolator,\n“Have we forgotten the name of our God,\nor spread our hands in prayer to a strange god”?\nFor only one laid low in the baseness of sin,\nerects bestial statues and images,\ninciting infidelity and harlotry such as the statues to\nfemale Ashtoreth, Chemosh, the male Milcom, and\nthe vile Tharahad, with lewd, naked parts like donkeys.\n\nHow then shall I not be ashamed to pray with the martyr\nwho always held fast to the good:\n“For your sake we are slain all day long,”\nand the rest of this psalm?\n\nHow can I, the most foolish and perverse of humans,\nsay: “My mouth shall utter wisdom,\nand my heart, understanding”?\n\nHow can I, a flattering hypocrite, wish\nfor the bones of sycophants to be scattered?\n\nHow shall I recall the twice-repeated blessing\nof the Psalmist: “May I walk before God in\nthe land of the living”?\n\nHow shall I with my countless sins say:\n“I have no sin or transgressions,\nI walk without sin and am upright”?\n\nOr how shall I condemn myself by saying:\n“Spare none of those who treacherously plot evil”?\n\nHow shall I say: “Like candle wax melts in the fire,\nso sinners, before the face of God”?\n\n\n# V.\n\nHow shall I, who have indulged in mortal vices, utter:\n“I have humbled myself with fasting,”\nor in the similar, “When they were sick, I wore sackcloth,\nand bowed down as in mourning and grief”?\n\nHow shall I remain calm,\nwhen the punishment facing my ilk looms before me:\n“All wicked of the earth shall drink it\ndown to the dregs of God’s unceasing wrath,”\nand “He will cut off the horns of the wicked”?\n\nHow shall I mock Jacob’s ingratitude,\nwhen I myself embrace shadows as the truth\nand succumbing to their charms,\nforget Christ’s salvation through the divine\nmiracle of the cross, this being more condemnable\nthan failing to recognize the miraculous power of\nthe Moses’ rod,\ngiven us as assurance of divine providence?\n\nHow shall I point to the perils of attacking demons,\nas if they are foreign barbarians, saying:\n“They have given the bodies of the righteous among us\nas food to the birds,” that is, to the demons of the air?\n\nHow can I claim that the alliance of my will with evil\ncan be holy, when it is “like the seed of the word\nfallen by the wayside”?\n\nHow can I name those holy who pursue the hostile path\nof wickedness, namely the rebellious conflicts of my\ncamouflaged mind, in collaboration with the devices of\nthe Slanderer?\n\nAnd for these reasons I cannot pray, “God, be not silent,\ndo not hold your peace,” or “They have plotted against\nyour holy people and said . . .”?\n\nFor it is quite proper that through these words\nwe recognize the virulence of demons and their cohorts,\ncausing trouble at every turn.\n\n\n# VI.\n\nProtect us, Lord Christ, exalted son of great God.\nFortify and surround us with your heavenly host,\ndefend us from the gusting winds of the Deceiver\nwith your cross of light.\nFor although any number of offenses may be found\nin me, blasphemy is not among them.\nFor you were not gratified by\nthe destruction of the impious likes of me.\nRather with melancholy tenderness,\nyou are doubly aggrieved by the destruction\nof the iniquitous in the flood,\nconsidering their death intolerable and repugnant,\nand saying in your heart the amazing words:\n“I shall never again curse the earth because of the\ndeeds of man.”\nAnd you are greatly consoled and rejoice in\nthe deliverance of unclean men worthy of destruction,\nas in the parable of the plant that shaded Jonah,\nwhere you spared those deserving of destruction,\nO merciful Lord.\nAnd in another instance how greatly were you annoyed\nby the delay of the rain which would salvage those\nwho denied you.\nAnd in your last days you did great deeds\nbeyond telling, worthy of celebration,\ncommanding your disciples to spread your sweet\ngospel of peace to the Gentiles and all peoples far and\nwide.\nSprinkle upon me the dew of your compassionate\nfatherly love, living God, so I too may find salvation\nthrough the pardoning of my sins by your abundant\nmercy.\nAnd to you, with the Father through the Holy Spirit,\nglory forever.\nAmen.", + "body": "_Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart:_\n\n# I.\n\nLong ago I learned that blessings\nshould not come from the mouth of a sinner,\ntherefore, how can I, even regretfully,\ncontinue saying Psalms in worship\nthat earn only scorn for me?\n\nHow shall I praise my injuries and build monuments\nto my disgrace while gathering thorns in my bare chest\ninstead of lilies?\n\nHow shall I dare to say with David:\n“You have broken the teeth of the ungodly.”\nOr “The wicked shall dwell before your eyes.”\nOr “Judge me, Lord, according to your righteousness,\naccording to the integrity that is in me.”\nOr “Let wickedness be visited upon the sinful.”\nOr “Break the arms of the sinner and wicked,”\nand all that follows.\nOr “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares,\nfire and brimstone.”\nOr “The Lord shall cut off flattering lips and the boasting\ntongue.”\nOr “You have tested my heart and found no iniquity.”\nOr the next verse, “My steps have held fast\nto your path.”\nOr “I shall behold thy face in righteousness.”\nOr “I was upright before him.”\nOr the next verse, “The Lord paid me according to my\nrighteousness and the cleanness of my hands.”\nOr how can I cover up my lies, yet say with the holy,\n“I wash my hands in innocence.”\nOr wallowing in baseness brag, “I do not consort\nwith the impious.”\nOr proudly put on a happy face, pathetic though I am,\nand say, “Vindicate me, Lord, for I have\nwalked in integrity.”\nOr I, the stranger to goodness, beg you,\nknower of secrets,\n“Do not count my soul among the wicked.”\nOr when cursing others although I deserve cursing,\nI dare say, “Requite them, Lord, according\nto their works.”\nAnd shall I dare continue?\n\n\n# II.\n\nIf I should add to the previous verses,\nmy grief would double, my bitterness multiply.\nMy tears dammed up within me, daily seek\nthe comfort of the familiar scolding voice of the Psalms,\naccusing me.\nIf I add the last part of Psalm fifty,\nwhich dooms me as abominable,\ngags my speech and exposes my guilty soul\nto the prosecuting voice of God,\nhope of life is lost.\n\nI am pelted from the ramparts by deadly missiles.\nIt is a misfortune to be cursed by others, but\nit is worse to curse oneself. And if it is hard to be\nreproached by friends, how much more chilling,\nalarming and tormenting to be exposed before\nthe one who sees all.\n\nBut if one surrenders to humiliation and lashes\none’s soul with the reproaches of one’s own tongue,\none earns the blessings of the glorious and all-powerful\nLord for expressing one’s return to him\nwithout covering the traces of the past,\nfor the sake of love he cut the root of our\ntransgressions, undeterred by nay-sayers.\nThe sheep of Christ’s flock have found\nthe cure, the balm for their inner wounds.\n\nYet amidst green pastures blooming\nwith life-giving counsel, intelligent beings\nirrationally and willfully choose\nto graze in poisonous fields of delusion.\n\n\n# III.\n\nAnd now, since this reprimand suits me exactly\nand describes the evil situation\nwhere I myself fuel the consuming fire\npoured from on high upon my head,\nthe organ of thought.\n\nWhat did I profit from the Psalms,\nwhen I remained fruitless despite my repeated chants,\nfailing to sing with my soul as instructed by Paul?\nHow shall I mix our Lord’s words with those\nof the Prophet?\nHow can I, the greatest of sinners, the pinnacle\nof neediness,\nsay with the Saint, “Get away, you workers\nof iniquity”?\nOr how shall I, who has not fulfilled any of the multitude\nof commandments relating to grace or the law,\ncry with the happy man who has practiced all he\npreached, saying,\n“For I, your servant, have kept these commandments”\nand the words that follow?\n\nHow shall I, who am devoid of life’s wisdom,\npraise the Lord with the God-fearing?\n\nAnd how shall I add my prayer to that of the great one,\nwho said, “I sought but one thing from the Lord,\nto behold his splendor and to serve in his temple”?\n\nHow shall I seek what I am deprived of,\nwhen I hear, “It is fitting to bless the upright”?\n\nHow shall I curse my soul with my own lips, saying,\namong other things, “The gaze of the Lord is\nupon evil doers, whose memory shall be wiped\nfrom the face of the earth”?\n\nOr again in another verse,\n“The evil soon shall perish”?\n\nOr as in my case,\n“The arms of the wicked shall be stricken”?\n\n\nOr how can I pray for my destruction,\n“Behold how the sinners perish”?\n\nHow shall I utter these blessed words with\nmy unruly tongue: “I shall guard my way so that\nI do not sin with my tongue”?\n\nHow shall I boast with the innocent when I choke\non thorns of sin: “But you have upheld me because of\nmy integrity”?\n\nHow shall I, a sinner deserving double punishment,\ncomplain: “Deliver me, O God, from deceitful and\nunjust men”?\n\n\n# IV.\n\nHow shall I dare say with David,\nas if I am not a hypocrite and idolator,\n“Have we forgotten the name of our God,\nor spread our hands in prayer to a strange god”?\nFor only one laid low in the baseness of sin,\nerects bestial statues and images,\ninciting infidelity and harlotry such as the statues to\nfemale Ashtoreth, Chemosh, the male Milcom, and\nthe vile Tharahad, with lewd, naked parts like donkeys.\n\nHow then shall I not be ashamed to pray with the martyr\nwho always held fast to the good:\n“For your sake we are slain all day long,”\nand the rest of this psalm?\n\nHow can I, the most foolish and perverse of humans,\nsay: “My mouth shall utter wisdom,\nand my heart, understanding”?\n\nHow can I, a flattering hypocrite, wish\nfor the bones of sycophants to be scattered?\n\nHow shall I recall the twice-repeated blessing\nof the Psalmist: “May I walk before God in\nthe land of the living”?\n\nHow shall I with my countless sins say:\n“I have no sin or transgressions,\nI walk without sin and am upright”?\n\nOr how shall I condemn myself by saying:\n“Spare none of those who treacherously plot evil”?\n\nHow shall I say: “Like candle wax melts in the fire,\nso sinners, before the face of God”?\n\n\n# V.\n\nHow shall I, who have indulged in mortal vices, utter:\n“I have humbled myself with fasting,”\nor in the similar, “When they were sick, I wore sackcloth,\nand bowed down as in mourning and grief”?\n\nHow shall I remain calm,\nwhen the punishment facing my ilk looms before me:\n“All wicked of the earth shall drink it\ndown to the dregs of God’s unceasing wrath,”\nand “He will cut off the horns of the wicked”?\n\nHow shall I mock Jacob’s ingratitude,\nwhen I myself embrace shadows as the truth\nand succumbing to their charms,\nforget Christ’s salvation through the divine\nmiracle of the cross, this being more condemnable\nthan failing to recognize the miraculous power of\nthe Moses’ rod,\ngiven us as assurance of divine providence?\n\nHow shall I point to the perils of attacking demons,\nas if they are foreign barbarians, saying:\n“They have given the bodies of the righteous among us\nas food to the birds,” that is, to the demons of the air?\n\nHow can I claim that the alliance of my will with evil\ncan be holy, when it is “like the seed of the word\nfallen by the wayside”?\n\nHow can I name those holy who pursue the hostile path\nof wickedness, namely the rebellious conflicts of my\ncamouflaged mind, in collaboration with the devices of\nthe Slanderer?\n\nAnd for these reasons I cannot pray, “God, be not silent,\ndo not hold your peace,” or “They have plotted against\nyour holy people and said …”?\n\nFor it is quite proper that through these words\nwe recognize the virulence of demons and their cohorts,\ncausing trouble at every turn.\n\n\n# VI.\n\nProtect us, Lord Christ, exalted son of great God.\nFortify and surround us with your heavenly host,\ndefend us from the gusting winds of the Deceiver\nwith your cross of light.\nFor although any number of offenses may be found\nin me, blasphemy is not among them.\nFor you were not gratified by\nthe destruction of the impious likes of me.\nRather with melancholy tenderness,\nyou are doubly aggrieved by the destruction\nof the iniquitous in the flood,\nconsidering their death intolerable and repugnant,\nand saying in your heart the amazing words:\n“I shall never again curse the earth because of the\ndeeds of man.”\nAnd you are greatly consoled and rejoice in\nthe deliverance of unclean men worthy of destruction,\nas in the parable of the plant that shaded Jonah,\nwhere you spared those deserving of destruction,\nO merciful Lord.\nAnd in another instance how greatly were you annoyed\nby the delay of the rain which would salvage those\nwho denied you.\nAnd in your last days you did great deeds\nbeyond telling, worthy of celebration,\ncommanding your disciples to spread your sweet\ngospel of peace to the Gentiles and all peoples far and\nwide.\nSprinkle upon me the dew of your compassionate\nfatherly love, living God, so I too may find salvation\nthrough the pardoning of my sins by your abundant\nmercy.\nAnd to you, with the Father through the Holy Spirit,\nglory forever.\nAmen.", "metadata": { "translator": "Thomas J. Samuelian" } @@ -20297,7 +20534,7 @@ }, "prayer-62": { "title": "Prayer 62", - "body": "_Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart:_\n\n# I.\n\nNow, why should I not add to the Psalms I have quoted\npassages from the Prophets?\nBut what pleasure is there from nourishment\nif my sense of taste is numbed by pain as I eat?\nAnd what advantage can I derive from the Psalms\nif I cannot take them to heart?\nFor I curse myself with them, but I do not know it.\nI am cleansed, but I do not glisten.\nThe sun dawns, but I am not enlightened.\nI eat honey but am not sweetened.\nI am filled with balm but am not cured.\nI rise early for prayers each day and return\nempty handed.\nI am mocked endlessly but never learn.\nI am warned but do not come to my senses.\n\n\n# II.\n\nTruly, my sin and lawlessness dwell in me\nand I am worn away by them,\nas the Prophet said of the transgressors,\nand the Lord taught in the parable\nof the new wine in old casks.\nFor as Isaiah foretold,\n“Rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together.”\nAnd the same is in store for me, wretch that I am,\nfor I recite the psalm, “The Lord abundantly requites\nthose who act haughtily,”\nto which I link the prophecy,\n“The Lord has a day against all who are proud\nand haughty,” when I recite,\n“The wicked go astray from the womb . . .”\nand I add, “Let the wicked of the earth be destroyed”\nand “the haughty be wiped from the earth”\nand “the unjust shall be uprooted from the earth.”:\n\n\n# III.\n\nWeep for me when you read,\n“As the tongue of fire devours the dry grass,\nso shall sinners be consumed in the furious flames.”\nWeep for me also at the psalm, saying,\n“Let burning coals fall upon them.”\nAnd pray I might be pardoned from divine judgment,\nforetold by the Prophet, “If you refuse to heed me,\nyou shall be devoured by the sword.”\n\nWeep at this psalm:\n“Death shall be their shepherd.”\nPrepare salty tears mixed with the sighs of my heart,\nwhen the Lord on high says to me, along\nwith Israel, “My people did not listen to me.”\n\nSigh “alas!” for me, when another Prophet says the same:\n“Woe to them, for they have strayed from me!”\n\nTrumpet the words of the heart, heavy before crying,\nwhen God who sees all puts me to shame,\nreprimanding me with the insolent house of Jacob,\n“Look, you, wicked nations, and see; wonder and\nbe astounded.”:\n\n\n# IV.\n\nO great God, reconsider and withhold the terrible\nsword of your righteous anger,\nmenacingly raised over me.\nI am fear-stricken before you\nas you extend the bounteous care of\nyour right hand over me.\nBestow the anointing oil of life\nupon your supplicant. And glory to you\nin heaven on high, and from mortals\non earth below, throughout all the nations\nand reaches of the earth,\nforever,\nAmen.", + "body": "_Speaking with God from the Depths of the Heart:_\n\n# I.\n\nNow, why should I not add to the Psalms I have quoted\npassages from the Prophets?\nBut what pleasure is there from nourishment\nif my sense of taste is numbed by pain as I eat?\nAnd what advantage can I derive from the Psalms\nif I cannot take them to heart?\nFor I curse myself with them, but I do not know it.\nI am cleansed, but I do not glisten.\nThe sun dawns, but I am not enlightened.\nI eat honey but am not sweetened.\nI am filled with balm but am not cured.\nI rise early for prayers each day and return\nempty handed.\nI am mocked endlessly but never learn.\nI am warned but do not come to my senses.\n\n\n# II.\n\nTruly, my sin and lawlessness dwell in me\nand I am worn away by them,\nas the Prophet said of the transgressors,\nand the Lord taught in the parable\nof the new wine in old casks.\nFor as Isaiah foretold,\n“Rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together.”\nAnd the same is in store for me, wretch that I am,\nfor I recite the psalm, “The Lord abundantly requites\nthose who act haughtily,”\nto which I link the prophecy,\n“The Lord has a day against all who are proud\nand haughty,” when I recite,\n“The wicked go astray from the womb …”\nand I add, “Let the wicked of the earth be destroyed”\nand “the haughty be wiped from the earth”\nand “the unjust shall be uprooted from the earth.”:\n\n\n# III.\n\nWeep for me when you read,\n“As the tongue of fire devours the dry grass,\nso shall sinners be consumed in the furious flames.”\nWeep for me also at the psalm, saying,\n“Let burning coals fall upon them.”\nAnd pray I might be pardoned from divine judgment,\nforetold by the Prophet, “If you refuse to heed me,\nyou shall be devoured by the sword.”\n\nWeep at this psalm:\n“Death shall be their shepherd.”\nPrepare salty tears mixed with the sighs of my heart,\nwhen the Lord on high says to me, along\nwith Israel, “My people did not listen to me.”\n\nSigh “alas!” for me, when another Prophet says the same:\n“Woe to them, for they have strayed from me!”\n\nTrumpet the words of the heart, heavy before crying,\nwhen God who sees all puts me to shame,\nreprimanding me with the insolent house of Jacob,\n“Look, you, wicked nations, and see; wonder and\nbe astounded.”:\n\n\n# IV.\n\nO great God, reconsider and withhold the terrible\nsword of your righteous anger,\nmenacingly raised over me.\nI am fear-stricken before you\nas you extend the bounteous care of\nyour right hand over me.\nBestow the anointing oil of life\nupon your supplicant. And glory to you\nin heaven on high, and from mortals\non earth below, throughout all the nations\nand reaches of the earth,\nforever,\nAmen.", "metadata": { "translator": "Thomas J. Samuelian" } @@ -21426,7 +21663,7 @@ }, "brightest-and-best": { "title": "“Brightest and Best”", - "body": "Brightest and best of the sons of the morning;\nDawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid;\nStar of the East, the horizon adorning,\nGuide where our infant Redeemer is laid.\n\nCold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining;\nLow lies His head with the beasts of the stall;\nAngels adore Him in slumber reclining,\nMaker and Monarch and Savior of all!\n\nSay, shall we yield Him, in costly devotion,\nOdors of Edom and offerings divine?\nGems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean,\nMyrrh from the forest, or gold from the mine?\n\nVainly we offer each ample oblation,\nVainly with gifts would His favor secure;\nRicher by far is the heart’s adoration,\nDearer to God are the prayers of the poor. ", + "body": "Brightest and best of the sons of the morning;\nDawn on our darkness and lend us thine aid;\nStar of the East, the horizon adorning,\nGuide where our infant Redeemer is laid.\n\nCold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining;\nLow lies His head with the beasts of the stall;\nAngels adore Him in slumber reclining,\nMaker and Monarch and Savior of all!\n\nSay, shall we yield Him, in costly devotion,\nOdors of Edom and offerings divine?\nGems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean,\nMyrrh from the forest, or gold from the mine?\n\nVainly we offer each ample oblation,\nVainly with gifts would His favor secure;\nRicher by far is the heart’s adoration,\nDearer to God are the prayers of the poor.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "epiphany" @@ -21718,7 +21955,7 @@ "poems": { "the-fig-tree": { "title": "“The Fig-Tree”", - "body": "Welcome, thou cool oriental evening, welcome! After the hot day thou art as a pitcher of water after a ride in the desert. Thou art as a pale young wife, who from the hill beckons home the sweating toiler of the fields. Thou art like the Tartar jeweler’s opal, for thy color shifts between the white of milk and the glowing red of wine in the same manner that thy joy shifts between healthful, strengthening repose and enkindling merriment.\n\nWith this apostrophe I saluted the evening and reined up my jenny in a small ravine which clambered up toward Jerusalem. The city lay on a height, with its surrounding wall and its cupola-ed white houses, like a four-cornered basket full of eggs. Before the city gate, white-clad widows were sitting motionless at the graves of their husbands, mirrored in a great, quiet, colorless pool.\n\nAll at once came the dusk. The road of the ravine became full of people--for the time of the Passover was drawing near.\n\nAt the door of a small cottage, where women were preparing supper, was seated Christ, the Brotherer. Although His face could not be wholly distinguished, because the light of an oil-lamp within the house fell upon his back, yet one could tell at once who He was. His dark hair hung in rough luxuriance down to His knees. His white prophet’s garment was frayed, His feet dusty. With His left hand He compressed the nozzle of a leather skin of wine. Whenever one of the friends who were sitting with crossed legs in a circle about him attempted to rise, He pressed him back to his place again and offered him drink. No cares, no thought of labor came to disturb the still evening joy.\n\nThen arose, unobserved, Judas, the Jew of Jews. His well-tended hands and feet were white as marble, and the nails carefully polished. He did not wipe the sweat from his forehead with a fold of his garment as did the other disciples, but drew out always a long Roman handkerchief. His clean-shaven, prosperous-looking face with its small, sedate, intelligent eyes was altogether that of the sober, discreet man of property.\n\nHe stole away softly behind the cottage on the road to Jerusalem, while his green head-cloth fluttered among the twisted black olive trees. He smote himself on the forehead and spoke half-aloud, and it was not difficult to divine his thoughts.\n\nWhat does it lead to, thought he, if one follow this man who forbids us to work and to think of the future, and upon whose head they have finally set a price? Have not I year by year and day by day saved coin after coin? There lack but thirty pieces of silver--but thirty!--and I shall be sitting under my own fig-tree.--\n\nInvoluntarily I reached for a stone. Then Christ, the Brotherer, arose in the lighted doorway.\n\n“Thou art still young,” he called out to me. “Thy first thought upon thine own fig-tree shall go forth and sell me.”\n\nMeanwhile the ravine became so dark that nothing could any longer be distinguished. All sank back into the Orient’s indescribable stillness, a stillness that has brought forth prophets. But from that evening I understood them who desire that no man shall possess an own fig-tree.", + "body": "Welcome, thou cool oriental evening, welcome! After the hot day thou art as a pitcher of water after a ride in the desert. Thou art as a pale young wife, who from the hill beckons home the sweating toiler of the fields. Thou art like the Tartar jeweler’s opal, for thy color shifts between the white of milk and the glowing red of wine in the same manner that thy joy shifts between healthful, strengthening repose and enkindling merriment.\n\nWith this apostrophe I saluted the evening and reined up my jenny in a small ravine which clambered up toward Jerusalem. The city lay on a height, with its surrounding wall and its cupola-ed white houses, like a four-cornered basket full of eggs. Before the city gate, white-clad widows were sitting motionless at the graves of their husbands, mirrored in a great, quiet, colorless pool.\n\nAll at once came the dusk. The road of the ravine became full of people--for the time of the Passover was drawing near.\n\nAt the door of a small cottage, where women were preparing supper, was seated Christ, the Brotherer. Although His face could not be wholly distinguished, because the light of an oil-lamp within the house fell upon his back, yet one could tell at once who He was. His dark hair hung in rough luxuriance down to His knees. His white prophet’s garment was frayed, His feet dusty. With His left hand He compressed the nozzle of a leather skin of wine. Whenever one of the friends who were sitting with crossed legs in a circle about him attempted to rise, He pressed him back to his place again and offered him drink. No cares, no thought of labor came to disturb the still evening joy.\n\nThen arose, unobserved, Judas, the Jew of Jews. His well-tended hands and feet were white as marble, and the nails carefully polished. He did not wipe the sweat from his forehead with a fold of his garment as did the other disciples, but drew out always a long Roman handkerchief. His clean-shaven, prosperous-looking face with its small, sedate, intelligent eyes was altogether that of the sober, discreet man of property.\n\nHe stole away softly behind the cottage on the road to Jerusalem, while his green head-cloth fluttered among the twisted black olive trees. He smote himself on the forehead and spoke half-aloud, and it was not difficult to divine his thoughts.\n\n_What does it lead to,_ thought he, _if one follow this man who forbids us to work and to think of the future, and upon whose head they have finally set a price? Have not I year by year and day by day saved coin after coin? There lack but thirty pieces of silver--but thirty!--and I shall be sitting under my own fig-tree._\n\nInvoluntarily I reached for a stone. Then Christ, the Brotherer, arose in the lighted doorway.\n\n“Thou art still young,” he called out to me. “Thy first thought upon thine own fig-tree shall go forth and sell me.”\n\nMeanwhile the ravine became so dark that nothing could any longer be distinguished. All sank back into the Orient’s indescribable stillness, a stillness that has brought forth prophets. But from that evening I understood them who desire that no man shall possess an own fig-tree.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "holy_thursday" @@ -26222,6 +26459,9 @@ "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "saint_agnes_eve" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1819 } } }, @@ -26232,29 +26472,45 @@ "keywords": { "month": "april", "month_epoch": "early" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1820 } } }, "la-belle-dame-sans-merci": { "title": "“La Belle Dame Sans Merci”", - "body": "O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,\nAlone and palely loitering?\nThe sedge has withered from the lake,\nAnd no birds sing.\n\nO what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,\nSo haggard and so woe-begone?\nThe squirrel’s granary is full,\nAnd the harvest’s done.\n\nI see a lily on thy brow,\nWith anguish moist and fever-dew,\nAnd on thy cheeks a fading rose\nFast withereth too.\n\nI met a lady in the meads,\nFull beautiful--a faery’s child,\nHer hair was long, her foot was light,\nAnd her eyes were wild.\n\nI made a garland for her head,\nAnd bracelets too, and fragrant zone;\nShe looked at me as she did love,\nAnd made sweet moan.", + "body": "O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,\n Alone and palely loitering?\nThe sedge has withered from the lake,\n And no birds sing.\n\nO what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,\n So haggard and so woe-begone?\nThe squirrel’s granary is full,\n And the harvest’s done.\n\nI see a lily on thy brow,\n With anguish moist and fever-dew,\nAnd on thy cheeks a fading rose\n Fast withereth too.\n\nI met a lady in the meads,\n Full beautiful--a faery’s child,\nHer hair was long, her foot was light,\n And her eyes were wild.\n\nI made a garland for her head,\n And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;\nShe looked at me as she did love,\n And made sweet moan\n\nI set her on my pacing steed,\n And nothing else saw all day long,\nFor sidelong would she bend, and sing\n A faery’s song.\n\nShe found me roots of relish sweet,\n And honey wild, and manna-dew,\nAnd sure in language strange she said--\n “I love thee true”.\n\nShe took me to her Elfin grot,\n And there she wept and sighed full sore,\nAnd there I shut her wild wild eyes\n With kisses four.\n\nAnd there she lullèd me asleep,\n And there I dreamed--Ah! woe betide!--\nThe latest dream I ever dreamt\n On the cold hill side.\n\nI saw pale kings and princes too,\n Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;\nThey cried--“La Belle Dame sans Merci\n Thee hath in thrall!”\n\nI saw their starved lips in the gloam,\n With horrid warning gapèd wide,\nAnd I awoke and found me here,\n On the cold hill’s side.\n\nAnd this is why I sojourn here,\n Alone and palely loitering,\nThough the sedge is withered from the lake,\n And no birds sing.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "spring" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1819 } } }, "ode-on-a-grecian-urn": { "title": "“Ode on a Grecian Urn”", "body": "Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,\n Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,\nSylvan historian, who canst thus express\n A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:\nWhat leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape\n Of deities or mortals, or of both,\n In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?\nWhat men or gods are these? What maidens loth?\n What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?\n What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?\n\nHeard melodies are sweet, but those unheard\n Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;\nNot to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,\n Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:\nFair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave\n Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;\n Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,\nThough winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;\n She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,\n For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!\n\nAh, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed\n Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;\nAnd, happy melodist, unwearied,\n For ever piping songs for ever new;\nMore happy love! more happy, happy love!\n For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,\n For ever panting, and for ever young;\nAll breathing human passion far above,\n That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,\n A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.\n\nWho are these coming to the sacrifice?\n To what green altar, O mysterious priest,\nLead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,\n And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?\nWhat little town by river or sea shore,\n Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,\n Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?\nAnd, little town, thy streets for evermore\n Will silent be; and not a soul to tell\n Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.\n\nO Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede\n Of marble men and maidens overwrought,\nWith forest branches and the trodden weed;\n Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought\nAs doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!\n When old age shall this generation waste,\n Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe\nThan ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,\n “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all\n Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”", - "metadata": {} + "metadata": { + "date": { + "year": 1819, + "month": 5 + } + } }, "to-autumn": { "title": "“To Autumn”", "body": "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,\nClose bosom-friend of the maturing sun;\nConspiring with him how to load and bless\nWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;\nTo bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,\nAnd fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;\nTo swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells\nWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,\nAnd still more, later flowers for the bees,\nUntil they think warm days will never cease,\nFor summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.\n\nWho hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?\nSometimes whoever seeks abroad may find\nThee sitting careless on a granary floor,\nThy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;\nOr on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,\nDrows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook\nSpares the next swath and all its twined flowers:\nAnd sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep\nSteady thy laden head across a brook;\nOr by a cyder-press, with patient look,\nThou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.\n\nWhere are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?\nThink not of them, thou hast thy music too,--\nWhile barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,\nAnd touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;\nThen in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn\nAmong the river sallows, borne aloft\nOr sinking as the light wind lives or dies;\nAnd full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;\nHedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft\nThe red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;\nAnd gathering swallows twitter in the skies.", "metadata": { "keywords": { - "season": "autumn" + "holiday": "autumn_equinox" + }, + "date": { + "year": 1819, + "month": 9, + "day": 19 } } } @@ -26996,7 +27252,7 @@ "poems": { "the-ape": { "title": "“The Ape”", - "body": "The heat was unbearable. The forests were burning.\nTime passed languorously. At the neighboring dacha\nA cock was crowing. I went outside the gate.\nThere, leaning upon the fence, an itinerant Serb,\nRail-thin and dark, was snoozing on the bench.\nA heavy silver cross hung suspended\nOn his half-exposed chest. Drops of sweat\nRolling down it. Above him, on the fence,\nDressed in a red skirt, sat a monkey,\nGreedily masticating the dusty leaves\nOf the lilac bush. A leather collar,\nPulled back by a heavy chain,\nThrottled its neck. The Serb, having heard me,\nCame to, wiped the sweat, and asked if I would give him\nSome water to drink. But having only lifted it to his lips--\nNot too cold--placed the little bowl\nOn the bench, and that very moment the ape,\nDipping its fingers in the water, grabbed\nThe bowl with both of its hands.\nShe drank, getting down on all fours,\nLeaning with her elbows on the bench.\nThe chin almost touching the boards,\nThe back arched severely above the animal’s\nBalding head. It must have been just so\nThat Darius did once upon a time fall to his knees\nTo drink from the roadside puddle, as he retreated\nBefore Alexander’s mighty phalanx.\nHaving drunk every drop of the water, the ape\nBrushed the bowl off the bench, raised itself\nAnd--will I ever forget this moment?--\nOffered me its black, calloused hand,\nStill cool with the moisture. . . .\nI had shaken the hands of beauties, poets,\nHeads of state--but never did a single hand\nEncompass in itself such graceful\nAspect! Nor ever did a hand\nTouch my hand in such a spirit of brotherhood!\nAnd, as God is my witness, no one gazed into my eyes\nWith such wisdom and to such depths,\nVerily--to the bottom of my soul.\nThe sweetest legends of deepest antiquity\nThat lowly beast did stir within my heart,\nAnd in that second my life appeared complete,\nAnd it seemed a choir of heavenly lights and sea waves,\nOf the winds and of the spheres, with organ music\nBurst into my ears, and thundered, as once upon a time\nIn other, immemorial days.\n\nAnd the Serb took his leave, thumping on a tambourine.\nHaving saddled his left shoulder,\nThe monkey rocked rhythmically,\nAs Indian maharajas do atop an elephant.\nThe huge crimson sun,\nDeprived of its rays,\nHung in the opalescent smoke. The relentless swelter\nPoured forth beyond the withered field of wheat.\n\nThat day, war was declared.", + "body": "The heat was unbearable. The forests were burning.\nTime passed languorously. At the neighboring dacha\nA cock was crowing. I went outside the gate.\nThere, leaning upon the fence, an itinerant Serb,\nRail-thin and dark, was snoozing on the bench.\nA heavy silver cross hung suspended\nOn his half-exposed chest. Drops of sweat\nRolling down it. Above him, on the fence,\nDressed in a red skirt, sat a monkey,\nGreedily masticating the dusty leaves\nOf the lilac bush. A leather collar,\nPulled back by a heavy chain,\nThrottled its neck. The Serb, having heard me,\nCame to, wiped the sweat, and asked if I would give him\nSome water to drink. But having only lifted it to his lips--\nNot too cold--placed the little bowl\nOn the bench, and that very moment the ape,\nDipping its fingers in the water, grabbed\nThe bowl with both of its hands.\nShe drank, getting down on all fours,\nLeaning with her elbows on the bench.\nThe chin almost touching the boards,\nThe back arched severely above the animal’s\nBalding head. It must have been just so\nThat Darius did once upon a time fall to his knees\nTo drink from the roadside puddle, as he retreated\nBefore Alexander’s mighty phalanx.\nHaving drunk every drop of the water, the ape\nBrushed the bowl off the bench, raised itself\nAnd--will I ever forget this moment?--\nOffered me its black, calloused hand,\nStill cool with the moisture …\nI had shaken the hands of beauties, poets,\nHeads of state--but never did a single hand\nEncompass in itself such graceful\nAspect! Nor ever did a hand\nTouch my hand in such a spirit of brotherhood!\nAnd, as God is my witness, no one gazed into my eyes\nWith such wisdom and to such depths,\nVerily--to the bottom of my soul.\nThe sweetest legends of deepest antiquity\nThat lowly beast did stir within my heart,\nAnd in that second my life appeared complete,\nAnd it seemed a choir of heavenly lights and sea waves,\nOf the winds and of the spheres, with organ music\nBurst into my ears, and thundered, as once upon a time\nIn other, immemorial days.\n\nAnd the Serb took his leave, thumping on a tambourine.\nHaving saddled his left shoulder,\nThe monkey rocked rhythmically,\nAs Indian maharajas do atop an elephant.\nThe huge crimson sun,\nDeprived of its rays,\nHung in the opalescent smoke. The relentless swelter\nPoured forth beyond the withered field of wheat.\n\nThat day, war was declared.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "summer" @@ -27011,7 +27267,7 @@ }, "the-ballad-of-the-one-armed-man-with-the-pregnant-wife": { "title": "“The Ballad of the One-Armed Man with the Pregnant Wife”", - "body": "What’s this? Am I in what they call a life?\nAre we in France or in Nineveh?\nA one-armed man with pregnant wife\nJust walked into the cinema.\n\nThe angels give me lyres to play,\nMy world’s pellucid, clear as glass;\nAnd, meanwhile, this guy gapes away,\nWhile Charlie Chaplin shows his ass.\n\nHow come this twerp with ravaged sleeve,\nA man of peace, of no small charm,\nCan trudge so calmly, unaggrieved\nThrough worlds that take away an arm?\n\nThis can’t be here; it’s Nineveh,\nIs what I think when with his wife\nThe unarmed leaves the cinema,\nAnd heads for home to live his life.\n\nThat’s when I shriek, my molars gnash,\nI take my leather belt in hand,\nMy angels’ backs I whip and lash;\nMy angels scatter, then disband,\n\nFly high into the city skies.\nReminds me of the way spooked doves,\nOn St. Mark’s Square did flutter-flies\nBeneath the feet of my best love.\n\nThen graciously I doffed my hat\nAnd walked up to the unarmed man;\nFirst touched his sleeve, tried brief chitchat,\nThen made this speech in trite deadpan:\n\n“Pardon, monsieur, when I’m in hell,\nFor my disgusting sins requited,\nWhile you, with spouse, in heaven dwell,\n(‘Tis true, my life is sore benighted),\n\nYou’ll be aloft, immured in grace,\nAn eye trained on the sins below,\nWith no vexations, not a trace,\nYour white wings wreathed in hallowed glow,\n\nThen from your perch on cloudlet blest\nPlease throw me down a feather light;\nOr, soothing to my scorched, burnt breast,\nLet one small snowflake land, alight.”\n\nThe man with one arm looked at me,\nA grin upon his phizog soft,\nDeparted then his wife and he;\nHis derby hat he left undoffed. ", + "body": "What’s this? Am I in what they call a life?\nAre we in France or in Nineveh?\nA one-armed man with pregnant wife\nJust walked into the cinema.\n\nThe angels give me lyres to play,\nMy world’s pellucid, clear as glass;\nAnd, meanwhile, this guy gapes away,\nWhile Charlie Chaplin shows his ass.\n\nHow come this twerp with ravaged sleeve,\nA man of peace, of no small charm,\nCan trudge so calmly, unaggrieved\nThrough worlds that take away an arm?\n\nThis can’t be here; it’s Nineveh,\nIs what I think when with his wife\nThe unarmed leaves the cinema,\nAnd heads for home to live his life.\n\nThat’s when I shriek, my molars gnash,\nI take my leather belt in hand,\nMy angels’ backs I whip and lash;\nMy angels scatter, then disband,\n\nFly high into the city skies.\nReminds me of the way spooked doves,\nOn St. Mark’s Square did flutter-flies\nBeneath the feet of my best love.\n\nThen graciously I doffed my hat\nAnd walked up to the unarmed man;\nFirst touched his sleeve, tried brief chitchat,\nThen made this speech in trite deadpan:\n\n“Pardon, monsieur, when I’m in hell,\nFor my disgusting sins requited,\nWhile you, with spouse, in heaven dwell,\n(‘Tis true, my life is sore benighted),\n\nYou’ll be aloft, immured in grace,\nAn eye trained on the sins below,\nWith no vexations, not a trace,\nYour white wings wreathed in hallowed glow,\n\nThen from your perch on cloudlet blest\nPlease throw me down a feather light;\nOr, soothing to my scorched, burnt breast,\nLet one small snowflake land, alight.”\n\nThe man with one arm looked at me,\nA grin upon his phizog soft,\nDeparted then his wife and he;\nHis derby hat he left undoffed.", "metadata": { "translator": "U. R. Bowie", "date": { @@ -27258,13 +27514,22 @@ "indian", "persian" ], - "n_poems": 1 + "n_poems": 2 }, "poems": { "couplet": { "title": "“Couplet”", "body": "Oh Khusrau, the river of love runs in strange directions.\nOne who jumps into it drowns, and one who drowns, gets across.", "metadata": {} + }, + "he-visits-my-town-once-a-year": { + "title": "“He visits my town once a year …”", + "body": "He visits my town once a year.\nHe fills my mouth with kisses and nectar.\nI spend all my money on him.\n_Who, girl, your man?_\nNo, a mango.", + "metadata": { + "keywords": { + "season": "summer" + } + } } } }, @@ -28247,6 +28512,36 @@ } } }, + "mikhail kuzmin": { + "metadata": { + "name": "Mikhail Kuzmin", + "birth": "1872", + "death": "1936", + "gender": "male", + "nationality": "russian", + "language": "russian", + "flag": "🇷🇺", + "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kuzmin", + "favorite": false, + "tags": [ + "russian" + ], + "n_poems": 1 + }, + "poems": { + "night-was-done": { + "title": "“Night was done …”", + "body": "Night was done. We rose and after\nWashing, dressing,--kissed with laughter,--\nAfter all the sweet night knows.\nLilac breakfast cups were clinking\nWhile we sat like brothers drinking\nTea,--and kept our dominoes.\n\nAnd our dominoes smiled greeting,\nAnd our eyes avoided meeting\nWith our dumb lips’ secrecy.\n“Faust” we sang, we played, denying\nNight’s strange memories, strangely dying,\nAs though night’s twain were not we.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Babette Deutsch & Avrahm Yarmolinsky", + "date": { + "year": 1906, + "month": 8 + } + } + } + } + }, "par-lagerkvist": { "metadata": { "name": "Pär Lagerkvist", @@ -29636,7 +29931,7 @@ "tags": [ "american" ], - "n_poems": 77 + "n_poems": 78 }, "poems": { "an-abandoned-factory-detroit": { @@ -29706,7 +30001,7 @@ }, "call-it-music": { "title": "“Call It Music”", - "body": "Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song\nin my own breath. I’m alone here\nin Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky\nabove the St. George Hotel clear, clear\nfor New York, that is. The radio playing\n“Bird Flight,” Parker in his California\ntragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering\n“Lover Man” just before he crashed into chaos.\nI would guess that outside the recording studio\nin Burbank the sun was high above the jacarandas,\nit was late March, the worst of yesterday’s rain\nhad come and gone, the sky washed blue. Bird\ncould have seen for miles if he’d looked, but what\nhe saw was so foreign he clenched his eyes,\nshook his head, and barked like a dog--just once--\nand then Howard McGhee took his arm and assured him\nhe’d be OK. I know this because Howard told me\nyears later that he thought Bird could\nlie down in the hotel room they shared, sleep\nfor an hour or more, and waken as himself.\nThe perfect sunlight angles into my little room\nabove Willow Street. I listen to my breath\ncome and go and try to catch its curious taste,\npart milk, part iron, part blood, as it passes\nfrom me into the world. This is not me,\nthis is automatic, this entering and exiting,\nmy body’s essential occupation without which\nI am a thing. The whole process has a name,\na word I don’t know, an elegant word not\nin English or Yiddish or Spanish, a word\nthat means nothing to me. Howard truly believed\nwhat he said that day when he steered\nParker into a cab and drove the silent miles\nbeside him while the bright world\nunfurled around them: filling stations, stands\nof fruits and vegetables, a kiosk selling trinkets\nfrom Mexico and the Philippines. It was all\nso actual and Western, it was a new creation\ncoming into being, like the music of Charlie Parker\nsomeone later called “glad,” though that day\nI would have said silent, “the silent music\nof Charlie Parker.” Howard said nothing.\nHe paid the driver and helped Bird up two flights\nto their room, got his boots off, and went out\nto let him sleep as the afternoon entered\nthe history of darkness. I’m not judging\nHoward, he did better than I could have\nnow or then. Then I was 19, working\non the loading docks at Railway Express\ncoming day by day into the damaged body\nof a man while I sang into the filthy air\nthe Yiddish drinking songs my Zadie taught me\nbefore his breath failed. Now Howard is gone,\neleven long years gone, the sweet voice silenced.\n“The subtle bridge between Eldridge and Navarro,”\nthey later wrote, all that rising passion\na footnote to others. I remember in ‘85\nwalking the halls of Cass Tech, the high school\nwhere he taught after his performing days,\nwhen suddenly he took my left hand in his\ntwo hands to tell me it all worked out\nfor the best. Maybe he’d gotten religion,\nmaybe he knew how little time was left,\nmaybe that day he was just worn down\nby my questions about Parker. To him Bird\nwas truly Charlie Parker, a man, a silent note\ngoing out forever on the breath of genius\nwhich now I hear soaring above my own breath\nas this bright morning fades into afternoon.\nMusic, I’ll call it music. It’s what we need\nas the sun staggers behind the low gray clouds\nblowing relentlessly in from that nameless ocean,\nthe calm and endless one I’ve still to cross.", + "body": "Some days I catch a rhythm, almost a song\nin my own breath. I’m alone here\nin Brooklyn Heights, late morning, the sky\nabove the St. George Hotel clear, clear\nfor New York, that is. The radio playing\n“Bird Flight,” Parker in his California\ntragic voice fifty years ago, his faltering\n“Lover Man” just before he crashed into chaos.\nI would guess that outside the recording studio\nin Burbank the sun was high above the jacarandas,\nit was late March, the worst of yesterday’s rain\nhad come and gone, the sky washed blue. Bird\ncould have seen for miles if he’d looked, but what\nhe saw was so foreign he clenched his eyes,\nshook his head, and barked like a dog--just once--\nand then Howard McGhee took his arm and assured him\nhe’d be OK. I know this because Howard told me\nyears later that he thought Bird could\nlie down in the hotel room they shared, sleep\nfor an hour or more, and waken as himself.\nThe perfect sunlight angles into my little room\nabove Willow Street. I listen to my breath\ncome and go and try to catch its curious taste,\npart milk, part iron, part blood, as it passes\nfrom me into the world. This is not me,\nthis is automatic, this entering and exiting,\nmy body’s essential occupation without which\nI am a thing. The whole process has a name,\na word I don’t know, an elegant word not\nin English or Yiddish or Spanish, a word\nthat means nothing to me. Howard truly believed\nwhat he said that day when he steered\nParker into a cab and drove the silent miles\nbeside him while the bright world\nunfurled around them: filling stations, stands\nof fruits and vegetables, a kiosk selling trinkets\nfrom Mexico and the Philippines. It was all\nso actual and Western, it was a new creation\ncoming into being, like the music of Charlie Parker\nsomeone later called “glad,” though that day\nI would have said silent, “the silent music\nof Charlie Parker.” Howard said nothing.\nHe paid the driver and helped Bird up two flights\nto their room, got his boots off, and went out\nto let him sleep as the afternoon entered\nthe history of darkness. I’m not judging\nHoward, he did better than I could have\nnow or then. Then I was 19, working\non the loading docks at Railway Express\ncoming day by day into the damaged body\nof a man while I sang into the filthy air\nthe Yiddish drinking songs my Zadie taught me\nbefore his breath failed. Now Howard is gone,\neleven long years gone, the sweet voice silenced.\n“The subtle bridge between Eldridge and Navarro,”\nthey later wrote, all that rising passion\na footnote to others. I remember in ’85\nwalking the halls of Cass Tech, the high school\nwhere he taught after his performing days,\nwhen suddenly he took my left hand in his\ntwo hands to tell me it all worked out\nfor the best. Maybe he’d gotten religion,\nmaybe he knew how little time was left,\nmaybe that day he was just worn down\nby my questions about Parker. To him Bird\nwas truly Charlie Parker, a man, a silent note\ngoing out forever on the breath of genius\nwhich now I hear soaring above my own breath\nas this bright morning fades into afternoon.\nMusic, I’ll call it music. It’s what we need\nas the sun staggers behind the low gray clouds\nblowing relentlessly in from that nameless ocean,\nthe calm and endless one I’ve still to cross.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "march", @@ -29716,7 +30011,7 @@ }, "clouds-above-the-sea": { "title": "“Clouds above the Sea”", - "body": "My father and mother, two tiny figures,\nside by side, facing the clouds that move\nin from the Atlantic. August, ‘33.\nThe whole weight of the rain to come, the weight\nof all that has fallen on their houses\ngathers for a last onslaught, and yet they\nhold, side by side, in the eye of memory.\nWhat was she wearing, you ask, what did he\nsay to make the riding clouds hold their breath?\nOur late August afternoons were chilly\nin America, so I shall drape her throat\nin a silken scarf above a black dress.\n\nI could give her a rope of genuine pearls\nas a gift for bearing my father’s sons,\nand let each pearl glow with a child’s fire.\nI could turn her toward you now with a smile\nso that we might joy in her constancy,\nI could bury the past in dust rising,\ndense rain falling, and the absence of sky\nso that you could turn this page and smile.\nMy father and mother, two tiny figures,\nside by side, facing the clouds that move\nin from the Atlantic. They are silent\nunder the whole weight of the rain to come.", + "body": "My father and mother, two tiny figures,\nside by side, facing the clouds that move\nin from the Atlantic. August, ’33.\nThe whole weight of the rain to come, the weight\nof all that has fallen on their houses\ngathers for a last onslaught, and yet they\nhold, side by side, in the eye of memory.\nWhat was she wearing, you ask, what did he\nsay to make the riding clouds hold their breath?\nOur late August afternoons were chilly\nin America, so I shall drape her throat\nin a silken scarf above a black dress.\n\nI could give her a rope of genuine pearls\nas a gift for bearing my father’s sons,\nand let each pearl glow with a child’s fire.\nI could turn her toward you now with a smile\nso that we might joy in her constancy,\nI could bury the past in dust rising,\ndense rain falling, and the absence of sky\nso that you could turn this page and smile.\nMy father and mother, two tiny figures,\nside by side, facing the clouds that move\nin from the Atlantic. They are silent\nunder the whole weight of the rain to come.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "august", @@ -29937,7 +30232,7 @@ }, "magpiety": { "title": "“Magpiety”", - "body": "You pull over to the shoulder\n of the two-lane\nroad and sit for a moment wondering\n where you were going\nin such a hurry. The valley is burned\n out, the oaks\ndream day and night of rain\n that never comes.\nAt noon or just before noon\n the short shadows\nare gray and hold what little\n life survives.\nIn the still heat the engine\n clicks, although\nthe real heat is hours ahead.\n You get out and step\ncautiously over a low wire\n fence and begin\nthe climb up the yellowed hill.\n A hundred feet\nahead the trunks of two\n fallen oaks\nrust; something passes over\n them, a lizard\nperhaps or a trick of sight.\n The next tree\nyou pass is unfamiliar,\n the trunk dark,\nas black as an olive’s; the low\n branches stab\nout, gnarled and dull: a carob\n or a Joshua tree.\nA sudden flaring-up ahead,\n a black-winged\nbird rises from nowhere,\n white patches\nunderneath its wings, and is gone.\n You hear your own\nbreath catching in your ears,\n a roaring, a sea\nsound that goes on and on\n until you lean\nforward to place both hands\n--fingers spread--\ninto the bleached grasses\n and let your knees\nslowly down. Your breath slows\n and you know\nyou’re back in central\n California\non your way to San Francisco\n or the coastal towns\nwith their damp sea breezes\n you haven’t\neven a hint of. But first\n you must cross\nthe Pacheco Pass. People\n expect you, and yet\nyou remain, still leaning forward\n into the grasses\nthat if you could hear them\n would tell you\nall you need to know about\n the life ahead.\n\nOut of a sense of modesty\n or to avoid the truth\nI’ve been writing in the second\n person, but in truth\nit was I, not you, who pulled\n the green Ford\nover to the side of the road\n and decided to get\nup that last hill to look\n back at the valley\nhe’d come to call home.\n I can’t believe\nthat man, only thirty-two,\n less than half\nmy age, could be the person\n fashioning these lines.\nThat was late July of ‘60.\n I had heard\nall about magpies, how they\n snooped and meddled\nin the affairs of others, not\n birds so much\nas people. If you dared\n to remove a wedding\nring as you washed away\n the stickiness of love\nor the cherished odors of another\n man or woman,\nas you turned away\n from the mirror\nhaving admired your new-found\n potency--humming\n“My Funny Valentine” or\n “Body and Soul”--\nto reach for a rough towel\n or some garment\non which to dry yourself,\n he would enter\nthe open window behind you\n that gave gratefully\nonto the fields and the roads\n bathed in dawn--\nhe, the magpie--and snatch\n up the ring\nin his hard beak and shoulder\n his way back\ninto the currents of the world\n on his way\nto the only person who could\n change your life:\na king or a bride or an old woman\n asleep on her porch.\n\nCan you believe the bird\n stood beside you\njust long enough, though far\n smaller than you\nbut fearless in a way\n a man or woman\ncould never be? An apparition\n with two dark\nand urgent eyes and motions\n so quick and precise\nthey were barely motions at all?\n When he was gone\nyou turned, alarmed by the rustling\n of oily feathers\nand the curious pungency,\n and were sure\nyou’d heard him say the words\n that could explain\nthe meaning of blond grasses\n burning on a hillside\nbeneath the hands of a man\n in the middle of\nhis life caught in the posture\n of prayer. I’d\nheard that a magpie could talk,\n so I waited\nfor the words, knowing without\n the least doubt\nwhat he’d do, for up ahead\n an old woman\nwaited on her wide front porch.\n My children\nbehind her house played\n in a silted pond\npoking sticks at the slow\n carp that flashed\nin the fallen sunlight. You\n are thirty-two\nonly once in your life, and though\n July comes\ntoo quickly, you pray for\n the overbearing\nheat to pass. It does, and\n the year turns\nbefore it holds still for\n even a moment.\nBeyond the last carob\n or Joshua tree\nthe magpie flashes his sudden\n wings; a second\nflames and vanishes into the pale\n blue air.\nJuly 23, 1960.\n I lean down\ncloser to hear the burned grasses\n whisper all I\nneed to know. The words rise\n around me, separate\nand finite. A yellow dust\n rises and stops\ncaught in the noon’s driving light.\n Three ants pass\nacross the back of my reddened\n right hand.\nEverything is speaking or singing.\n We’re still here.", + "body": "You pull over to the shoulder\n of the two-lane\nroad and sit for a moment wondering\n where you were going\nin such a hurry. The valley is burned\n out, the oaks\ndream day and night of rain\n that never comes.\nAt noon or just before noon\n the short shadows\nare gray and hold what little\n life survives.\nIn the still heat the engine\n clicks, although\nthe real heat is hours ahead.\n You get out and step\ncautiously over a low wire\n fence and begin\nthe climb up the yellowed hill.\n A hundred feet\nahead the trunks of two\n fallen oaks\nrust; something passes over\n them, a lizard\nperhaps or a trick of sight.\n The next tree\nyou pass is unfamiliar,\n the trunk dark,\nas black as an olive’s; the low\n branches stab\nout, gnarled and dull: a carob\n or a Joshua tree.\nA sudden flaring-up ahead,\n a black-winged\nbird rises from nowhere,\n white patches\nunderneath its wings, and is gone.\n You hear your own\nbreath catching in your ears,\n a roaring, a sea\nsound that goes on and on\n until you lean\nforward to place both hands\n--fingers spread--\ninto the bleached grasses\n and let your knees\nslowly down. Your breath slows\n and you know\nyou’re back in central\n California\non your way to San Francisco\n or the coastal towns\nwith their damp sea breezes\n you haven’t\neven a hint of. But first\n you must cross\nthe Pacheco Pass. People\n expect you, and yet\nyou remain, still leaning forward\n into the grasses\nthat if you could hear them\n would tell you\nall you need to know about\n the life ahead.\n\nOut of a sense of modesty\n or to avoid the truth\nI’ve been writing in the second\n person, but in truth\nit was I, not you, who pulled\n the green Ford\nover to the side of the road\n and decided to get\nup that last hill to look\n back at the valley\nhe’d come to call home.\n I can’t believe\nthat man, only thirty-two,\n less than half\nmy age, could be the person\n fashioning these lines.\nThat was late July of ’60.\n I had heard\nall about magpies, how they\n snooped and meddled\nin the affairs of others, not\n birds so much\nas people. If you dared\n to remove a wedding\nring as you washed away\n the stickiness of love\nor the cherished odors of another\n man or woman,\nas you turned away\n from the mirror\nhaving admired your new-found\n potency--humming\n“My Funny Valentine” or\n “Body and Soul”--\nto reach for a rough towel\n or some garment\non which to dry yourself,\n he would enter\nthe open window behind you\n that gave gratefully\nonto the fields and the roads\n bathed in dawn--\nhe, the magpie--and snatch\n up the ring\nin his hard beak and shoulder\n his way back\ninto the currents of the world\n on his way\nto the only person who could\n change your life:\na king or a bride or an old woman\n asleep on her porch.\n\nCan you believe the bird\n stood beside you\njust long enough, though far\n smaller than you\nbut fearless in a way\n a man or woman\ncould never be? An apparition\n with two dark\nand urgent eyes and motions\n so quick and precise\nthey were barely motions at all?\n When he was gone\nyou turned, alarmed by the rustling\n of oily feathers\nand the curious pungency,\n and were sure\nyou’d heard him say the words\n that could explain\nthe meaning of blond grasses\n burning on a hillside\nbeneath the hands of a man\n in the middle of\nhis life caught in the posture\n of prayer. I’d\nheard that a magpie could talk,\n so I waited\nfor the words, knowing without\n the least doubt\nwhat he’d do, for up ahead\n an old woman\nwaited on her wide front porch.\n My children\nbehind her house played\n in a silted pond\npoking sticks at the slow\n carp that flashed\nin the fallen sunlight. You\n are thirty-two\nonly once in your life, and though\n July comes\ntoo quickly, you pray for\n the overbearing\nheat to pass. It does, and\n the year turns\nbefore it holds still for\n even a moment.\nBeyond the last carob\n or Joshua tree\nthe magpie flashes his sudden\n wings; a second\nflames and vanishes into the pale\n blue air.\nJuly 23, 1960.\n I lean down\ncloser to hear the burned grasses\n whisper all I\nneed to know. The words rise\n around me, separate\nand finite. A yellow dust\n rises and stops\ncaught in the noon’s driving light.\n Three ants pass\nacross the back of my reddened\n right hand.\nEverything is speaking or singing.\n We’re still here.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "july", @@ -29980,7 +30275,7 @@ }, "my-fathers-the-baltic": { "title": "“My Fathers, the Baltic”", - "body": "Along the strand stones,\nbusted shells, wood scraps,\nbottle tops, dimpled\nand stainless beer cans.\nSomething began here\na century ago,\na nameless disaster,\nperhaps a voyage\nto the lost continent\nwhere I was born.\nNow the cold winds\nof March dimple\nthe gray, incoming\nwaves. I kneel\non the wet earth\nlooking for a sign,\nmaybe an old coin,\nan amulet\nagainst storms,\nand find my face\nblackened in a pool\nof oil and water.\nMy grandfather crossed\nthis sea in ‘04\nand never returned,\nso I’ve come alone\nto thank creation\nas he would never\nfor bringing him home\nto work, defeat,\nand death, those three\nblood brothers\nfaithful to the end.\nYusel Prishkulnick,\nI bless your laughter\nthrown in the wind’s face,\nyour gall, your rages,\nyour abiding love\nfor women and money\nand all that money\nnever bought,\nfor what the sea taught\nyou and you taught me:\nthat the waves go out\nand nothing comes back.", + "body": "Along the strand stones,\nbusted shells, wood scraps,\nbottle tops, dimpled\nand stainless beer cans.\nSomething began here\na century ago,\na nameless disaster,\nperhaps a voyage\nto the lost continent\nwhere I was born.\nNow the cold winds\nof March dimple\nthe gray, incoming\nwaves. I kneel\non the wet earth\nlooking for a sign,\nmaybe an old coin,\nan amulet\nagainst storms,\nand find my face\nblackened in a pool\nof oil and water.\nMy grandfather crossed\nthis sea in ’04\nand never returned,\nso I’ve come alone\nto thank creation\nas he would never\nfor bringing him home\nto work, defeat,\nand death, those three\nblood brothers\nfaithful to the end.\nYusel Prishkulnick,\nI bless your laughter\nthrown in the wind’s face,\nyour gall, your rages,\nyour abiding love\nfor women and money\nand all that money\nnever bought,\nfor what the sea taught\nyou and you taught me:\nthat the waves go out\nand nothing comes back.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "month": "march" @@ -30024,6 +30319,19 @@ } } }, + "our-valley": { + "title": "“Our Valley”", + "body": "We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August\nwhen the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay\nof this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard\nwhen suddenly the wind cools and for a moment\nyou get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost\nbelieve something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,\nsomething massive, irrational, and so powerful even\nthe mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.\n\nYou probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains\nhave no word for ocean, but if you live here\nyou begin to believe they know everything.\nThey maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,\na silence that grows in autumn when snow falls\nslowly between the pines and the wind dies\nto less than a whisper and you can barely catch\nyour breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.\n\nYou have to remember this isn’t your land.\nIt belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside\nand thought was yours. Remember the small boats\nthat bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men\nwho carved a living from it only to find themselves\ncarved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,\nso go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,\nwait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.", + "metadata": { + "keywords": { + "month": "august", + "month_epoch": "early" + }, + "date": { + "year": 2009 + } + } + }, "passing-out": { "title": "“Passing Out”", "body": "The doctor fingers my bruise.\n“Magnificent,” he says, “black\nat the edges and purple\ncored.” Seated, he spies for clues,\ngingerly probing the slack\nflesh, while I, standing, fazed, pull\n\nfor air, losing the battle.\nFaced by his aged diploma,\nthe heavy head of the X-\nray, and the iron saddle,\nI grow lonely. He finds my\nsecrets common and my sex\n\nneither objectionable\nnor lovely, though he is on\nthe hunt for significance.\nThe shelved cutlery twinkles\nbehind glass, and I am on\nthe way out, “an instance\n\nof the succumbed through extreme\nfantasy.” He is alarmed\nat last, and would raise me, but\nI am floorward in a dream\nof lowered trousers, unarmed\nand weakly fighting to shut\n\nthe window of my drawers.\nThere are others in the room,\nvoices of women above\nwhite oxfords; and the old floor,\nthe friendly linoleum,\ndeparts. I whisper, “my love,”\n\nand am safe, tabled, sniffing\nspirits of ammonia\nin the land of my fellows.\n“Open house!” my openings\nsing: pores, nose, anus let go\ntheir charges, a shameless flow\n\ninto the outer world;\nand the ceiling, equipped with\nintelligence, surveys my\nproduce. The doctor is thrilled\nby my display, for he is half\nthe slave of necessity;\n\nI, enormous in my need,\njustify his sciences.\n“We have alternatives,” he\nsays, “Removal …” (And my blood\nwhitens as on their dull trays\nthe tubes dance. I must study\n\nthe dark bellows of the gas\nmachine, the painless maker.)\n“… and learning to live with it.”\nOh, but I am learning fast\nto live with any pain, ache,\ngrowth to keep myself intact;\n\nand in imagination\nI hug my bruise like an old\nPooh Bear, already attuned\nto its moods. “Oh, my dark one,\ntell of the coming of cold\nand of Kings, ancient and ruined.”", @@ -31007,7 +31315,7 @@ }, "waking-in-the-blue": { "title": "“Waking in the Blue”", - "body": "The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,\nrouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy head\npropped on The Meaning of Meaning.\nHe catwalks down our corridor.\nAzure day\nmakes my agonized blue window bleaker.\nCrows maunder on the petrified fairway.\nAbsence! My hearts grows tense\nas though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.\n(This is the house for the “mentally ill.”)\n\nWhat use is my sense of humour?\nI grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,\nonce a Harvard all-American fullback,\n(if such were possible!)\nstill hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,\nas he soaks, a ramrod\nwith a muscle of a seal\nin his long tub,\nvaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.\nA kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap,\nworn all day, all night,\nhe thinks only of his figure,\nof slimming on sherbert and ginger ale--\nmore cut off from words than a seal.\nThis is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean’s;\nthe hooded night lights bring out “Bobbie,”\nPorcellian ‘29,\na replica of Louis XVI\nwithout the wig--\nredolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale,\nas he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit\nand horses at chairs.\n\nThese victorious figures of bravado ossified young.\n\nIn between the limits of day,\nhours and hours go by under the crew haircuts\nand slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle\nof the Roman Catholic attendants.\n(There are no Mayflower\nscrewballs in the Catholic Church.)\n\nAfter a hearty New England breakfast,\nI weigh two hundred pounds\nthis morning. Cock of the walk,\nI strut in my turtle-necked French sailor’s jersey\nbefore the metal shaving mirrors,\nand see the shaky future grow familiar\nin the pinched, indigenous faces\nof these thoroughbred mental cases,\ntwice my age and half my weight.\nWe are all old-timers,\neach of us holds a locked razor.", + "body": "The night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,\nrouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy head\npropped on The Meaning of Meaning.\nHe catwalks down our corridor.\nAzure day\nmakes my agonized blue window bleaker.\nCrows maunder on the petrified fairway.\nAbsence! My hearts grows tense\nas though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.\n(This is the house for the “mentally ill.”)\n\nWhat use is my sense of humour?\nI grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,\nonce a Harvard all-American fullback,\n(if such were possible!)\nstill hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,\nas he soaks, a ramrod\nwith a muscle of a seal\nin his long tub,\nvaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.\nA kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap,\nworn all day, all night,\nhe thinks only of his figure,\nof slimming on sherbert and ginger ale--\nmore cut off from words than a seal.\nThis is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean’s;\nthe hooded night lights bring out “Bobbie,”\nPorcellian ’29,\na replica of Louis XVI\nwithout the wig--\nredolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale,\nas he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit\nand horses at chairs.\n\nThese victorious figures of bravado ossified young.\n\nIn between the limits of day,\nhours and hours go by under the crew haircuts\nand slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle\nof the Roman Catholic attendants.\n(There are no Mayflower\nscrewballs in the Catholic Church.)\n\nAfter a hearty New England breakfast,\nI weigh two hundred pounds\nthis morning. Cock of the walk,\nI strut in my turtle-necked French sailor’s jersey\nbefore the metal shaving mirrors,\nand see the shaky future grow familiar\nin the pinched, indigenous faces\nof these thoroughbred mental cases,\ntwice my age and half my weight.\nWe are all old-timers,\neach of us holds a locked razor.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter" @@ -42974,7 +43282,7 @@ }, "psalm-80": { "title": "Psalm 80", - "body": "_For the Chief Musician, set to Shoshanim Eduth.. A Psalm of Asaph._\n\nGive ear, O Shepherd of Israel,\nThou that leadest Joseph like a flock;\nThou that sittest above the cherubim, shine forth.\nBefore Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up thy might,\nAnd come to save us.\nTurn us again, O God;\nAnd cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.\nO Jehovah God of hosts,\nHow long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?\nThou hast fed them with the bread of tears,\nAnd given them tears to drink in large measure.\nThou makest us a strife unto our neighbors;\nAnd our enemies laugh among themselves.\nTurn us again, O God of hosts;\nAnd cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.\n\nThou broughtest a vine out of Egypt:\nThou didst drive out the nations, and plantedst it.\nThou preparedst room before it,\nAnd it took deep root, and filled the land.\nThe mountains were covered with the shadow of it,\nAnd the boughs thereof were like cedars of God.\nIt sent out its branches unto the sea,\nAnd its shoots unto the River.\nWhy hast thou broken down its walls,\nSo that all they that pass by the way do pluck it?\nThe boar out of the wood doth ravage it,\nAnd the wild beasts of the field feed on it.\nTurn again, we beseech thee, O God of hosts:\nLook down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine,\nAnd the stock which thy right hand planted,\nAnd the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.\nIt is burned with fire, it is cut down:\nThey perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.\nLet thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand,\nUpon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.\nSo shall we not go back from thee:\nQuicken thou us, and we will call upon thy name.\nTurn us again, O Jehovah God of hosts;\nCause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.", + "body": "_For the Chief Musician, set to Shoshanim Eduth … A Psalm of Asaph._\n\nGive ear, O Shepherd of Israel,\nThou that leadest Joseph like a flock;\nThou that sittest above the cherubim, shine forth.\nBefore Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up thy might,\nAnd come to save us.\nTurn us again, O God;\nAnd cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.\nO Jehovah God of hosts,\nHow long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people?\nThou hast fed them with the bread of tears,\nAnd given them tears to drink in large measure.\nThou makest us a strife unto our neighbors;\nAnd our enemies laugh among themselves.\nTurn us again, O God of hosts;\nAnd cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.\n\nThou broughtest a vine out of Egypt:\nThou didst drive out the nations, and plantedst it.\nThou preparedst room before it,\nAnd it took deep root, and filled the land.\nThe mountains were covered with the shadow of it,\nAnd the boughs thereof were like cedars of God.\nIt sent out its branches unto the sea,\nAnd its shoots unto the River.\nWhy hast thou broken down its walls,\nSo that all they that pass by the way do pluck it?\nThe boar out of the wood doth ravage it,\nAnd the wild beasts of the field feed on it.\nTurn again, we beseech thee, O God of hosts:\nLook down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine,\nAnd the stock which thy right hand planted,\nAnd the branch that thou madest strong for thyself.\nIt is burned with fire, it is cut down:\nThey perish at the rebuke of thy countenance.\nLet thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand,\nUpon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself.\nSo shall we not go back from thee:\nQuicken thou us, and we will call upon thy name.\nTurn us again, O Jehovah God of hosts;\nCause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved.", "metadata": {} }, "psalm-81": { @@ -53530,6 +53838,49 @@ } } }, + "alexander-sumarokov": { + "metadata": { + "name": "Alexander Sumarokov", + "birth": "1717", + "death": "1777", + "gender": "male", + "nationality": "russian", + "language": "russian", + "flag": "🇷🇺", + "link": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Sumarokov", + "favorite": false, + "tags": [ + "russian" + ], + "n_poems": 3 + }, + "poems": { + "in-vain-i-hide-my-hearts-fierce-pain": { + "title": "“In vain I hide my heart’s fierce pain …”", + "body": "In vain I hide my heart’s fierce pain,\nIn vain pretend to inner calm.\nI can’t be calm a single hour,\nI can’t no matter how I try.\nMy heart by sighs, my eyes by tears,\nreveal the secret misery.\nYou make all my efforts vain,\nyou, who stole my liberty!\n\nBringing a savage fate to me,\nyou troubled my spirit’s peace,\nyou changed my freedom to a jail,\nyou turned my delight to sorrow.\nAnd secretly, to my bitterest hurt,\nperhaps you sigh for some other woman,\nperhaps devoured by a useless passion,\nas I for you, you suffer too for her.\n\nI long to see you: when I do I’m mad,\nanxious, lest my eyes give me away:\nI’m troubled in your presence, in your absence\nI’m sad that you can’t know how I love.\nShame tries to drive desire from my heart\nwhile love in turn tries to drive out shame.\nAnd in this fierce conflict thought is clouded,\nthe heart is torn, it suffers, and it burns.\n\nSo I fling myself from torment to torment.\nI want to show my heart, ashamed to do it,\nI don’t know what I want, oh, that’s true,\nwhat I do know is I’m filled with sorrow.\nI know my mind’s held prisoner by you,\nwherever I am it conjures your dear image:\nI know, consumed by the cruellest passion,\nthere’s no way to forget you on this earth.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Alec Vagapov" + } + }, + "my-fair-girl-dont-waist-your-time-for-nothing": { + "title": "“My fair girl, don’t waist your time for nothing …”", + "body": "My fair girl, don’t waist your time for nothing, easily,\nLove someone,--all is vanity without love,\nBe nice and good, don’t lose the charm you have,\nSo you might not regret you’ve lived a life of misery.\n\nLove while you’re young and while your heart is ardent:\nYou’ll change when youth is gone, I should presume.\nTwine wreaths while flowers in the garden bloom,\nTake walks in spring, in autumn you’ll be saddened.\n\nLook at the rosy flower, view it at the time\nWhen it has grown dim and faded, past its prime.\nLikewise, your charm will fade and disappear,\nso do not waste your time before you’ve seen your day\n\nRemember, nobody will ever look at you, my dear,\nWhen, like the rose, you fade and waste away.", + "metadata": { + "keywords": { + "season": "spring" + }, + "translator": "Alec Vagapov" + } + }, + "you-looked-for-me-but-now-that-time-is-gone-for-ever": { + "title": "“You looked for me but now that time is gone for ever …”", + "body": "You looked for me but now that time is gone for ever,\nAnd all the joy we shared is lost, as I can see.\nYou are unfaithful to me, and you lost my favour,\nYou’re quite different from what you used to be.\n\nMy moans and grieves are torments\nYou know how it can be.\nRecall the happy moments\nWhen you did care for me.\n\nLook at the places where you and I have dated\nThey’ll help us to recall the way it used to be.\nWhere are my joys? Where is your passion, fated?\nTheу’re gone and never ever will come back to me.\n\nAnother life is here;\nBut did I wait for it?\nGone are my life, so dear,\nMy hope, and dream, so sweet.\n\nI am unhappy to have met you, so elated,\nIt started with the painful torments that I feel,\nI was unhappy to be charmed by you and tempted\nAnd worst unhappy to adore and love you still.\n\nYou caused an inflammation\nAnd heated up my blood.\nWhy have you turned affection\nTo enmity, so hard?\n\nBut what’s the use of worrying and grieving\nWhen, having lost my freedom, my passion I retain.\nAnd what’s the use of blaming and revealing,\nYou do not love me--all my arguments are vain.\n\nYou’ve overwhelmed me, really,\nForgetting all at one:\nThe way you loved me dearly,\nThe time when we had fun.", + "metadata": { + "translator": "Alec Vagapov" + } + } + } + }, "algernon-charles-swinburne": { "metadata": { "name": "Algernon Charles Swinburne", @@ -56247,7 +56598,7 @@ }, "assumpta-maria": { "title": "“Assumpta Maria”", - "body": "Mortals, that behold a Woman,\nRising ’twixt the Moon and Sun;\nWho am I the heavens assume? an\nAll am I, and I am one.\n\nMultitudinous ascend I,\nDreadful as a battle arrayed,\nFor I bear you whither tend I;\nYe are I: be undismayed!\nI, the Ark that for the graven\nTables of the Law was made;\nMan’s own heart was one, one Heaven,\nBoth within my womb were laid.\nFor there Anteros with Eros\nHeaven with man conjoin-ed was,--\nTwin-stone of the Law, Ischyros,\nAgios Athanatos.\n\nI, the flesh-girt Paradises\nGardenered by the Adam new,\nDaintied o’er with sweet devices\nWhich He loveth, for He grew.\nI, the boundless strict savannah\nWhich God’s leaping feet go through;\nI, the heaven whence the Manna,\nWeary Israel, slid on you!\nHe the Anteros and Eros,\nI the body, He the Cross;\nHe upbeareth me, Ischyros,\nAgios Athanatos!\n\nI am Daniel’s mystic Mountain,\nWhence the mighty stone was rolled;\nI am the four Rivers’ fountain,\nWatering Paradise of old;\nCloud down-raining the Just One am,\nDanae of the Shower of Gold;\nI the Hostel of the Sun am;\nHe the Lamb, and I the Fold.\nHe the Anteros and Eros,\nI the body, He the Cross;\nHe is fast to me, Ischyros,\nAgios Athanatos!\n\nI, the presence-hall where Angels\nDo enwheel their plac-ed King--\nEven my thoughts which, without change else,\nCyclic burn and cyclic sing.\nTo the hollow of Heaven transplanted,\nI a breathing Eden spring,\nWhere with venom all outpanted\nLies the slimed Curse shrivelling.\nFor the brazen Serpent clear on\nThat old fang-ed knowledge shone;\nI to Wisdom rise, Ischyron,\nAgion Athanaton!\n\nSee in highest heaven pavilioned\nNow the maiden Heaven rest,\nThe many-breasted sky out-millioned\nBy the splendours of her vest.\nLo, the Ark this holy tide is\nThe un-handmade Temple’s guest,\nAnd the dark Egyptian bride is\nWhitely to the Spouse-Heart prest!\nHe the Anteros and Eros,\nNail me to Thee, sweetest Cross!\nHe is fast to me, Ischyros,\nAgios Athanatos!\n\n“Tell me, tell me, O Belov-ed,\nWhere Thou dost in mid-day feed!\nFor my wanderings are reprov-ed,\nAnd my heart is salt with need.”\n“Thine own self not spellest God in,\nNor the lisping papyrus reed?\nFollow where the flocks have trodden,\nFollow where the shepherds lead.”\nHe, the Anteros and Eros,\nMounts me in Aegyptic car,\nTwin-yoked; leading me, Ischyros,\nTrembling to the untempted Far.\n\n“Make me chainlets, silvern, golden,\nI that sow shall surely reap;\nWhile as yet my Spouse is holden\nLike a Lion in mountained sleep.”\n“Make her chainlets, silvern, golden,\nShe hath sown and she shall reap;\nLook up to the mountains olden,\nWhence help comes with lioned leap.”\nBy what gushed the bitter Spear on,\nPain, which sundered, maketh one;\nCrucified to Him, Ischyron,\nAgion Athanaton!\n\nThen commanded and spake to me\nHe who framed all things that be;\nAnd my Maker entered through me,\nIn my tent His rest took He.\nLo! He standeth, Spouse and Brother;\nI to Him, and He to me,\nWho upraised me where my mother\nFell, beneath the apple-tree.\nRisen ’twixt Anteros and Eros,\nBlood and Water, Moon and Sun,\nHe upbears me, He Ischyros,\nI bear Him, the Athanaton!\n\nWhere is laid the Lord arisen?\nIn the light we walk in gloom;\nThough the sun has burst his prison,\nWe know not his biding-room.\nTell us where the Lord sojourneth,\nFor we find an empty tomb.\n“Whence He sprung, there He returneth,\nMystic Sun,--the Virgin’s Womb.”\nHidden Sun, His beams so near us,\nCloud enpillared as He was\nFrom of old, there He, Ischyros,\nWaits our search, Athanatos.\n\nWho will give Him me for brother,\nCounted of my family,\nSucking the sweet breasts of my Mother?--\nI His flesh, and mine is He;\nTo my Bread myself the bread is,\nAnd my Wine doth drink me: see,\nHis left hand beneath my head is,\nHis right hand embraceth me!\nSweetest Anteros and Eros,\nLo, her arms He leans across;\nDead that we die not, stooped to rear us,\nThanatos Athanatos.\n\nWho is She, in candid vesture,\nRushing up from out the brine?\nTreading with resilient gesture\nAir, and with that Cup divine?\nShe in us and we in her are,\nBeating Godward: all that pine,\nLo, a wonder and a terror!\nThe Sun hath blushed the Sea to Wine!\nHe the Anteros and Eros,\nShe the Bride and Spirit; for\nNow the days of promise near us,\nAnd the Sea shall be no more.\n\nOpen wide thy gates, O Virgin,\nThat the King may enter thee!\nAt all gates the clangours gurge in,\nGod’s paludament lightens, see!\nCamp of Angels! Well we even\nOf this thing may doubtful be,--\nIf thou art assumed to Heaven,\nOr is Heaven assumed to thee!\nConsummatum. Christ the promised,\nThy maiden realm is won, O Strong!\nSince to such sweet Kingdom comest,\nRemember me, poor Thief of Song!\n\nCadent fails the stars along:--\nMortals, that behold a woman\nRising ’twixt the Moon and Sun;\nWho am I the heavens assume? an\nAll am I, and I am one.", + "body": "Mortals, that behold a Woman,\nRising ’twixt the Moon and Sun;\nWho am I the heavens assume? an\nAll am I, and I am one.\n\nMultitudinous ascend I,\nDreadful as a battle arrayed,\nFor I bear you whither tend I;\nYe are I: be undismayed!\nI, the Ark that for the graven\nTables of the Law was made;\nMan’s own heart was one, one Heaven,\nBoth within my womb were laid.\nFor there Anteros with Eros\nHeaven with man conjoinéd was,--\nTwin-stone of the Law, Ischyros,\nAgios Athanatos.\n\nI, the flesh-girt Paradises\nGardenered by the Adam new,\nDaintied o’er with sweet devices\nWhich He loveth, for He grew.\nI, the boundless strict savannah\nWhich God’s leaping feet go through;\nI, the heaven whence the Manna,\nWeary Israel, slid on you!\nHe the Anteros and Eros,\nI the body, He the Cross;\nHe upbeareth me, Ischyros,\nAgios Athanatos!\n\nI am Daniel’s mystic Mountain,\nWhence the mighty stone was rolled;\nI am the four Rivers’ fountain,\nWatering Paradise of old;\nCloud down-raining the Just One am,\nDanae of the Shower of Gold;\nI the Hostel of the Sun am;\nHe the Lamb, and I the Fold.\nHe the Anteros and Eros,\nI the body, He the Cross;\nHe is fast to me, Ischyros,\nAgios Athanatos!\n\nI, the presence-hall where Angels\nDo enwheel their placéd King--\nEven my thoughts which, without change else,\nCyclic burn and cyclic sing.\nTo the hollow of Heaven transplanted,\nI a breathing Eden spring,\nWhere with venom all outpanted\nLies the slimed Curse shrivelling.\nFor the brazen Serpent clear on\nThat old fangéd knowledge shone;\nI to Wisdom rise, Ischyron,\nAgion Athanaton!\n\nSee in highest heaven pavilioned\nNow the maiden Heaven rest,\nThe many-breasted sky out-millioned\nBy the splendours of her vest.\nLo, the Ark this holy tide is\nThe un-handmade Temple’s guest,\nAnd the dark Egyptian bride is\nWhitely to the Spouse-Heart prest!\nHe the Anteros and Eros,\nNail me to Thee, sweetest Cross!\nHe is fast to me, Ischyros,\nAgios Athanatos!\n\n“Tell me, tell me, O Belovéd,\nWhere Thou dost in mid-day feed!\nFor my wanderings are reprovéd,\nAnd my heart is salt with need.”\n“Thine own self not spellest God in,\nNor the lisping papyrus reed?\nFollow where the flocks have trodden,\nFollow where the shepherds lead.”\nHe, the Anteros and Eros,\nMounts me in Aegyptic car,\nTwin-yoked; leading me, Ischyros,\nTrembling to the untempted Far.\n\n“Make me chainlets, silvern, golden,\nI that sow shall surely reap;\nWhile as yet my Spouse is holden\nLike a Lion in mountained sleep.”\n“Make her chainlets, silvern, golden,\nShe hath sown and she shall reap;\nLook up to the mountains olden,\nWhence help comes with lioned leap.”\nBy what gushed the bitter Spear on,\nPain, which sundered, maketh one;\nCrucified to Him, Ischyron,\nAgion Athanaton!\n\nThen commanded and spake to me\nHe who framed all things that be;\nAnd my Maker entered through me,\nIn my tent His rest took He.\nLo! He standeth, Spouse and Brother;\nI to Him, and He to me,\nWho upraised me where my mother\nFell, beneath the apple-tree.\nRisen ’twixt Anteros and Eros,\nBlood and Water, Moon and Sun,\nHe upbears me, He Ischyros,\nI bear Him, the Athanaton!\n\nWhere is laid the Lord arisen?\nIn the light we walk in gloom;\nThough the sun has burst his prison,\nWe know not his biding-room.\nTell us where the Lord sojourneth,\nFor we find an empty tomb.\n“Whence He sprung, there He returneth,\nMystic Sun,--the Virgin’s Womb.”\nHidden Sun, His beams so near us,\nCloud enpillared as He was\nFrom of old, there He, Ischyros,\nWaits our search, Athanatos.\n\nWho will give Him me for brother,\nCounted of my family,\nSucking the sweet breasts of my Mother?--\nI His flesh, and mine is He;\nTo my Bread myself the bread is,\nAnd my Wine doth drink me: see,\nHis left hand beneath my head is,\nHis right hand embraceth me!\nSweetest Anteros and Eros,\nLo, her arms He leans across;\nDead that we die not, stooped to rear us,\nThanatos Athanatos.\n\nWho is She, in candid vesture,\nRushing up from out the brine?\nTreading with resilient gesture\nAir, and with that Cup divine?\nShe in us and we in her are,\nBeating Godward: all that pine,\nLo, a wonder and a terror!\nThe Sun hath blushed the Sea to Wine!\nHe the Anteros and Eros,\nShe the Bride and Spirit; for\nNow the days of promise near us,\nAnd the Sea shall be no more.\n\nOpen wide thy gates, O Virgin,\nThat the King may enter thee!\nAt all gates the clangours gurge in,\nGod’s paludament lightens, see!\nCamp of Angels! Well we even\nOf this thing may doubtful be,--\nIf thou art assumed to Heaven,\nOr is Heaven assumed to thee!\nConsummatum. Christ the promised,\nThy maiden realm is won, O Strong!\nSince to such sweet Kingdom comest,\nRemember me, poor Thief of Song!\n\nCadent fails the stars along:--\nMortals, that behold a woman\nRising ’twixt the Moon and Sun;\nWho am I the heavens assume? an\nAll am I, and I am one.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "holiday": "assumption" @@ -56279,7 +56630,7 @@ }, "a-dead-astronomer": { "title": "“A Dead Astronomer”", - "body": "Starry amorist, starward gone,\nThou art--what thou didst gaze upon!\nPassed through thy golden garden’s bars,\nThou seest the Gardener of the Stars.\n\nShe, about whose moon-ed brows\nSeven stars make seven glows,\nSeven lights for seven woes;\nShe, like thine own Galaxy,\nAll lustres in one purity:--\nWhat said’st thou, Astronomer,\nWhen thou did’st discover HER?\nWhen thy hand its tube let fall,\nThou found’st the fairest Star of all!", + "body": "Starry amorist, starward gone,\nThou art--what thou didst gaze upon!\nPassed through thy golden garden’s bars,\nThou seest the Gardener of the Stars.\n\nShe, about whose moonéd brows\nSeven stars make seven glows,\nSeven lights for seven woes;\nShe, like thine own Galaxy,\nAll lustres in one purity:--\nWhat said’st thou, Astronomer,\nWhen thou did’st discover HER?\nWhen thy hand its tube let fall,\nThou found’st the fairest Star of all!", "metadata": {} }, "dream-tryst": { @@ -56299,7 +56650,7 @@ }, "a-fallen-yew": { "title": "“A Fallen Yew”", - "body": "It seemed corrival of the world’s great prime,\nMade to un-edge the scythe of Time,\nAnd last with stateliest rhyme.\n\nNo tender Dryad ever did indue\nThat rigid chiton of rough yew,\nTo fret her white flesh through:\n\nBut some god like to those grim Asgard lords,\nWho walk the fables of the hordes\nFrom Scandinavian fjords,\n\nUpheaved its stubborn girth, and raised unriven,\nAgainst the whirl-blast and the levin,\nDefiant arms to Heaven.\n\nWhen doom puffed out the stars, we might have said,\nIt would decline its heavy head,\nAnd see the world to bed.\n\nFor this firm yew did from the vassal leas,\nAnd rain and air, its tributaries,\nIts revenues increase,\n\nAnd levy impost on the golden sun,\nTake the blind years as they might run,\nAnd no fate seek or shun.\n\nBut now our yew is strook, is fallen--yea\nHacked like dull wood of every day\nTo this and that, men say.\n\nNever!--To Hades’ shadowy shipyards gone,\nDim barge of Dis, down Acheron\nIt drops, or Lethe wan.\n\nStirred by its fall--poor destined bark of Dis!--\nAlong my soul a bruit there is\nOf echoing images,\n\nReverberations of mortality:\nSpelt backward from its death, to me\nIts life reads saddenedly.\n\nIts breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld;\nAnd boys, their creeping unbeheld,\nA laughing moment dwelled.\n\nYet they, within its very heart so crept,\nReached not the heart that courage kept\nWith winds and years beswept.\n\nAnd in its boughs did close and kindly nest\nThe birds, as they within its breast,\nBy all its leaves caressed.\n\nBut bird nor child might touch by any art\nEach other’s or the tree’s hid heart,\nA whole God’s breadth apart;\n\nThe breadth of God, he breadth of death and life!\nEven so, even so, in undreamed strife\nWith pulseless Law, the wife,--\n\nThe sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day,--\nTheir souls at grapple in mid-way,\nSweet to her sweet may say:\n\n“I take you to my inmost heart, my true!”\nAh, fool! but there is one heart you\nShall never take him to!\n\nThe hold that falls not when the town is got,\nThe heart’s heart, whose immurèd plot\nHath keys yourself keep not!\n\nIts ports you cannot burst--you are withstood--\nFor him that to your listening blood\nSends precepts as he would.\n\nIts gates are deaf to Love, high summoner;\nYea, Love’s great warrant runs not there:\nYou are your prisoner.\n\nYourself are with yourself the sole consortress\nIn that unleaguerable fortress;\nIt knows you not for portress\n\nIts keys are at the cincture hung of God;\nIts gates are trepidant to His nod;\nBy Him its floors are trod.\n\nAnd if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath,\nOr blest aspersion sleek His path,\nIs only choice it hath.\n\nYea, in that ultimate heart’s occult abode\nTo lie as in an oubliette of God,\nOr as a bower untrod,\n\nBuilt by a secret Lover for His Spouse;--\nSole choice is this your life allows,\nSad tree, whose perishing boughs\nSo few birds house!", + "body": "It seemed corrival of the world’s great prime,\nMade to unédge the scythe of Time,\nAnd last with stateliest rhyme.\n\nNo tender Dryad ever did indue\nThat rigid chiton of rough yew,\nTo fret her white flesh through:\n\nBut some god like to those grim Asgard lords,\nWho walk the fables of the hordes\nFrom Scandinavian fjords,\n\nUpheaved its stubborn girth, and raised unriven,\nAgainst the whirl-blast and the levin,\nDefiant arms to Heaven.\n\nWhen doom puffed out the stars, we might have said,\nIt would decline its heavy head,\nAnd see the world to bed.\n\nFor this firm yew did from the vassal leas,\nAnd rain and air, its tributaries,\nIts revenues increase,\n\nAnd levy impost on the golden sun,\nTake the blind years as they might run,\nAnd no fate seek or shun.\n\nBut now our yew is strook, is fallen--yea\nHacked like dull wood of every day\nTo this and that, men say.\n\nNever!--To Hades’ shadowy shipyards gone,\nDim barge of Dis, down Acheron\nIt drops, or Lethe wan.\n\nStirred by its fall--poor destined bark of Dis!--\nAlong my soul a bruit there is\nOf echoing images,\n\nReverberations of mortality:\nSpelt backward from its death, to me\nIts life reads saddenedly.\n\nIts breast was hollowed as the tooth of eld;\nAnd boys, their creeping unbeheld,\nA laughing moment dwelled.\n\nYet they, within its very heart so crept,\nReached not the heart that courage kept\nWith winds and years beswept.\n\nAnd in its boughs did close and kindly nest\nThe birds, as they within its breast,\nBy all its leaves caressed.\n\nBut bird nor child might touch by any art\nEach other’s or the tree’s hid heart,\nA whole God’s breadth apart;\n\nThe breadth of God, he breadth of death and life!\nEven so, even so, in undreamed strife\nWith pulseless Law, the wife,--\n\nThe sweetest wife on sweetest marriage-day,--\nTheir souls at grapple in mid-way,\nSweet to her sweet may say:\n\n“I take you to my inmost heart, my true!”\nAh, fool! but there is one heart you\nShall never take him to!\n\nThe hold that falls not when the town is got,\nThe heart’s heart, whose immurèd plot\nHath keys yourself keep not!\n\nIts ports you cannot burst--you are withstood--\nFor him that to your listening blood\nSends precepts as he would.\n\nIts gates are deaf to Love, high summoner;\nYea, Love’s great warrant runs not there:\nYou are your prisoner.\n\nYourself are with yourself the sole consortress\nIn that unleaguerable fortress;\nIt knows you not for portress\n\nIts keys are at the cincture hung of God;\nIts gates are trepidant to His nod;\nBy Him its floors are trod.\n\nAnd if His feet shall rock those floors in wrath,\nOr blest aspersion sleek His path,\nIs only choice it hath.\n\nYea, in that ultimate heart’s occult abode\nTo lie as in an oubliette of God,\nOr as a bower untrod,\n\nBuilt by a secret Lover for His Spouse;--\nSole choice is this your life allows,\nSad tree, whose perishing boughs\nSo few birds house!", "metadata": {} }, "a-holocaust": { @@ -57052,7 +57403,7 @@ }, "task-to-be-who-i-am": { "title": "“Task to Be Who I Am”", - "body": "I’m ordered out to a big hump of stone as if I were an aristocratic corpse from the iron age.\nThe rest are still back in the tent sleeping\nstretched out like spokes in a wheel.\nIn the tent the stove is boss,\nThe big snake that swallows a ball of fire and hisses.\nIt is silent out here in the spring night amongst the stones waiting for the dawn.\nIn the cold I start to fly like a shaman to her body, some places pale from her swimming suit\nthe sun shone right on us, the moss was hot\nI brush along the side of warm moments\nBut I can’t stay here long\nI am whistled back through space;\nI crawl among the stones\nBack to here and now.\nTask: to be where I am.\nEven when I am in this solemn and absurd role\nI am still the place where creation does a little work on itself.\nDawn comes, the sparse tree trunks take on color now\nThe frost-bitten forest flowers form a silent search party after something that\nhas disappeared in the dark\nBut to be where I am and to wait.\nI am full of anxiety, obstinate, confused\nThings not yet happened are here and now\nI feel that--they’re just out there--\nA murmuring mass outside the barrier\nThey can only slip in one by one.\nThey want to slip in.\nWhy?\nThey do one by one.\nI am the turnstile. ", + "body": "I’m ordered out to a big hump of stone as if I were an aristocratic corpse from the iron age.\nThe rest are still back in the tent sleeping\nstretched out like spokes in a wheel.\nIn the tent the stove is boss,\nThe big snake that swallows a ball of fire and hisses.\nIt is silent out here in the spring night amongst the stones waiting for the dawn.\nIn the cold I start to fly like a shaman to her body, some places pale from her swimming suit\nthe sun shone right on us, the moss was hot\nI brush along the side of warm moments\nBut I can’t stay here long\nI am whistled back through space;\nI crawl among the stones\nBack to here and now.\nTask: to be where I am.\nEven when I am in this solemn and absurd role\nI am still the place where creation does a little work on itself.\nDawn comes, the sparse tree trunks take on color now\nThe frost-bitten forest flowers form a silent search party after something that\nhas disappeared in the dark\nBut to be where I am and to wait.\nI am full of anxiety, obstinate, confused\nThings not yet happened are here and now\nI feel that--they’re just out there--\nA murmuring mass outside the barrier\nThey can only slip in one by one.\nThey want to slip in.\nWhy?\nThey do one by one.\nI am the turnstile.", "metadata": { "keywords": { "season": "winter"