|
Post by Nalkarj on Mar 25, 2024 16:24:34 GMT
Teaching a Child the Art of Confession by David Shumate
It is best not to begin with Adam and Eve. Original Sin is baffling, even for the most sophisticated minds. Besides, children are frightened of naked people and apples. Instead, start with the talking snake. Children like to hear what animals have to say. Let him hiss for a while and tell his own tale. They’ll figure him out in the end. Describe sin simply as those acts which cause suffering and leave it at that. Steer clear of musty confessionals. Children associate them with outhouses. Leave Hell out of the discussion. They’ll be able to describe it on their own soon enough. If they feel the need to apologize for some transgression, tell them that one of the offices of the moon is to forgive. As for the priest, let him slumber a while more.
|
|
|
Post by mikef6 on Mar 26, 2024 18:40:47 GMT
Epilogue by Charles Baudelaire (trans. by Arthur Symons)
With heart at rest I climbed the citadel’s Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells
Where evil comes up softly like a flower. Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;
But like an old sad faithful lecher, fain To drink delight of that enormous trull Whose hellish beauty makes me young again.
Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full; Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,
I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and Hunted have pleasures of their own to give, The vulgar herd can never understand.
Prose Poem by Baudelaire (trans. by Arthur Symons)
Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually. Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken. And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star, or of the bird, or of the clock ,of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.”
|
|
|
Post by spiderwort on Mar 31, 2024 13:43:03 GMT
My Easter Dove by Henrietta Cordelia Ray (1852 – 1916)
There came a dove, an Easter dove, When morning stars grew dim; It fluttered round my lattice bars, To chant a matin hymn.
It brought a lily in its beak, Aglow with dewy sheen; I caught the strain, the incense breathed, And uttered praise between.
It brought a shrine of holy thoughts To calm my soul that day; I caught the meaning of the note, Why did it fly away?
Come peaceful dove, sweet Easter dove! Above earth’s storm and strife, Sing of the joy of Easter-tide, Of light and hope and life.
|
|
|
Post by mikef6 on Mar 31, 2024 14:29:04 GMT
The Donkey by G.K. Chesterton
When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born.
With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things.
The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.
Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Apr 5, 2024 16:27:02 GMT
Aftershocks by A.E. Stallings
We are not in the same place after all. The only evidence of the disaster, Mapping out across the bedroom wall, Tiny cracks still fissuring the plaster— A new cartography for us to master, In whose legend we read where we are bound: Terra infirma, a stranger land, and vaster. Or have we always stood on shaky ground? The moment keeps on happening: a sound. The floor beneath us swings, a pendulum That clocks the heart, the heart so tightly wound, We fall mute, as when two lovers come To the brink of the apology, and halt, Each standing on the wrong side of the fault.
|
|
sam
Nick Nack
Posts: 235
|
Post by sam on Apr 9, 2024 7:43:00 GMT
Loveliest of Trees by A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. ~ Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. ~ And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Apr 10, 2024 16:57:56 GMT
Tennyson, Anyone? by E.Y. Harburg
In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. And in summer, and in autumn, and in winter — See above.
|
|
|
Post by spiderwort on Apr 11, 2024 16:30:08 GMT
Excerpt from "Little Gidding" (The Four Quartets) by T.S. Eliot
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Apr 11, 2024 16:32:27 GMT
Excerpt from "Little Gidding" ( The Four Quartets) by T.S. Eliot We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one. So funny, I’ve been thinking of those stanzas from “Little Gidding” for weeks now, especially those wonderful lines (from Julian of Norwich) “all shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well.” It caused me to take out the Eliot collection I bought in college, reminding me again just how great Eliot was.
|
|
|
Post by theravenking on Apr 12, 2024 14:16:20 GMT
A Night In Stoer Lighthouse by Ian McDonough
Here a hungry man could chew up the Atlantic and still feel need of salt.
Can you smell the sun go down? Extend a surreptitious hand to touch the moon’s deep cavities? A fox surrounds the lighthouse with its bark.
Your body sprouts tattoos of whaling ships: the eiderdown is see-haar, bedposts timbers decked in weeds.
I reach under green sheets to dredge a bucketful of sailors, drowned as drowned can be. A prowling moth flaps round the lightbulb in a breeze, traversing all the open oceans of our dreams.
Blood atmospheres return, the walls recalled by seagull tides of dawn. The fox is earthed: the sun erects its peepshow in a fragrant void.
|
|
|
Post by Nalkarj on Apr 12, 2024 14:38:47 GMT
A Night In Stoer Lighthouseby Ian McDonough Here a hungry man could chew up the Atlantic and still feel need of salt. Can you smell the sun go down? Extend a surreptitious hand to touch the moon’s deep cavities? A fox surrounds the lighthouse with its bark. Your body sprouts tattoos of whaling ships: the eiderdown is see-haar, bedposts timbers decked in weeds. I reach under green sheets to dredge a bucketful of sailors, drowned as drowned can be. A prowling moth flaps round the lightbulb in a breeze, traversing all the open oceans of our dreams. Blood atmospheres return, the walls recalled by seagull tides of dawn. The fox is earthed: the sun erects its peepshow in a fragrant void. Excellent. My brain is filled with images of gulls and brine and blood. To quote a poem with a very different style and a generally similar theme:
|
|
|
Post by spiderwort on Apr 12, 2024 15:10:20 GMT
Traveling through the Dark By William E. Stafford
Traveling through the dark I found a deer dead on the edge of the Wilson River road. It is usually best to roll them into the canyon: that road is narrow; to swerve might make more dead.
By glow of the tail-light I stumbled back of the car and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing; she had stiffened already, almost cold. I dragged her off; she was large in the belly.
My fingers touching her side brought me the reason— her side was warm; her fawn lay there waiting, alive, still, never to be born. Beside that mountain road I hesitated.
The car aimed ahead its lowered parking lights; under the hood purred the steady engine. I stood in the glare of the warm exhaust turning red; around our group I could hear the wilderness listen.
I thought hard for us all—my only swerving—, then pushed her over the edge into the river.
|
|
|
Post by spiderwort on Apr 14, 2024 12:52:41 GMT
Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death— He kindly stopped for me— The Carriage held but just Ourselves— And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility—
We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess—in the Ring— We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain— We passed the Setting Sun—
Or rather—He passed us— The Dews drew quivering and chill— For only Gossamer, my Gown— My Tippet—only Tulle—
We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground— The Roof was scarcely visible— The Cornice—in the Ground—
Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity—
|
|
|
Post by spiderwort on Apr 18, 2024 20:23:09 GMT
The Snakes of September by Stanley Kunitz
All summer I heard them rustling in the shrubbery, outracing me from tier to tier in my garden, a whisper among the viburnums, a signal flashed from the hedgerow, a shadow pulsing in the barberry thicket. Now that the nights are chill and the annuals spent, I should have thought them gone, in a torpor of blood slipped to the nether world before the sickle frost. Not so. In the deceptive balm of noon, as if defiant of the curse that spoiled another garden, these two appear on show through a narrow slit in the dense green brocade of a north-country spruce, dangling head-down, entwined in a brazen love-knot. I put out my hand and stroke the fine, dry grit of their skins. After all, we are partners in this land, co-signers of a covenant. At my touch the wild braid of creation trembles.
|
|
|
Post by spiderwort on Apr 20, 2024 21:50:18 GMT
Love This Miraculous World by Wendell Berry
Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence. Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, “the least of these my brethren.” Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is a gift to us.
|
|