Greater Love

by Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

Red lips are not so red
      As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
      When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
      Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
      Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,—
      Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,—
Your dear voice is not dear,
Gentle, and evening clear,
As theirs whom none now hear
      Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot,
      Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;
And though your hand be pale,
Paler are all which trail
Your cross through flame and hail:
      Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

War Is Kind

by Stephen Crane (1871-1900)

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

      Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment
      Little souls who thirst for fight,
      These men were born to drill and die
      The unexplained glory flies above them
      Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom--
      A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe, for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

      Swift, blazing flag of the regiment
      Eagle with crest of red and gold,
      These men were born to drill and die
      Point for them the virtue of slaughter
      Make plain to them the excellence of killing
      And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

November 11, 2008

St Martin of Tours.

Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain

I've combed the archives, and selected thirty-odd poems of mine (emphasis on the odd) to be placed under the label of "thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain" (the line is Anne Bradstreet's, describing one of her books). So, by clicking on the label of this post, if you're a glutton for punishment, you can read some of what I've produced since 1985.

Aphorism

Great art is never born at room temperature.

José Garcia Villa (1908-97)

November 10, 2008

Memorial of St Leo the Great, pope and doctor of the church.

Tracy Chapman's newest single

I've removed the YouTube embed because, for some strange reason, it was messing up my blog. So here's the link to the YouTube ...

The whole album is quite good. The best five songs are probably "Sing for You," "Save Us All," "Thinking of You," "A Theory," and "Conditional."

"A Theory" contains the happy rhyme of "I will postulate" and "ask you out on a date"!

55 years

Today is the anniversary of the death of Dylan Thomas (1914-53). To commemorate the occasion, here is the famous villanelle.

Psalm 146. Lauda, anima mea.

1 Praise the LORD, O my soul: while I live, will I praise the LORD; * yea, as long as I have any being, I will sing praises unto my God.

2 O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man; * for there is no help in them.

3 For when the breath of man goeth forth, he shall turn again to his earth, * and then all his thoughts perish.

4 Blessed is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, * and whose hope is in the LORD his God:

5 Who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that therein is; * who keepeth his promise for ever;

6 Who helpeth them to right that suffer wrong; * who feedeth the hungry.

7 The LORD looseth men out of prison; * the LORD giveth sight to the blind.

8 The LORD helpeth them that are fallen; * the LORD careth for the righteous.

9 The LORD careth for the strangers; he defendeth the fatherless and widow: * as for the way of the ungodly, he turneth it upside down.

10 The LORD thy God, O Sion, shall be King for evermore, * and throughout all generations.

Dante Alighieri

From section 2 of La Vita Nuova, when Dante sees Beatrice for the first time.

Sonnet IX

by Pablo Neruda (1904-73)

Al golpe de la ola contra la piedra indócil
la claridad estalla y establece su rosa
y el círculo del mar se reduce a un racimo,
a una sola gota de sal azul que cae.

Oh radiante magnolia desatada en la espuma,
magnética viajera cuya muerte florece
y eternamente vuelve a ser y a no ser nada:
sal rota, deslumbrante movimiento marino.

Juntos tú y yo, amor mío, sellamos el silencio,
mientras destruye el mar sus constantes estatuas
y derrumba sus torres de arrebato y blancura,

porque en la trama de estos tejidos invisibles
del agua desbocada, de la incesante arena,
sostenemos la única y acosada ternura.

*

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks
the clear light bursts and enacts its rose,
and the sea-circle shrinks to a cluster of buds,
to one drop of blue salt, falling.

O bright magnolia bursting in the foam,
magnetic transient whose death blooms
and vanishes--being, nothingness--forever:
broken salt, dazzling lurch of the sea.

You and I, Love, together we ratify the silence,
while the sea destroys its perpetual statues,
collapses its towers of wild speed and whiteness:

because in the weavings of those invisible fabrics,
galloping water, incessant sand,
we make the only permanent tenderness.

(trans. S. Tapscott)

November 9, 2008

Sunday brings the feast of the Dedication of St John Lateran, omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput.

An in-dwelling

A small poem that owes much to Cummings. Written twelve years ago.

Sonnet LXIX

by Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

Tal vez no ser es ser sin que tú seas,
sin que vayas cortando el mediodía
como una flor azul, sin que camines
más tarde por la niebla y los ladrillos,

sin esa luz que llevas en la mano
que tal vez otros no verán dorada,
que tal vez nadie supo que crecía
como el origen rojo de la rosa,

sin que seas, en fin, sin que vinieras
brusca, incitante, a conocer mi vida,
ráfaga de rosal, trigo del viento,

y desde entonces soy porque tú eres,
y desde entonces eres, soy y somos,
y por amor seré, serás, seremos.

*

Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without you moving, slicing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,

without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.

In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:

since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we'll be.

(trans. Stephen Tapscott)

Cummings

if(touched by love's own secret)we,like homing
through welcoming sweet miracles of air
(and joyfully all truths of wing resuming)
selves,into infinite tomorrow steer

--souls under whom flow(mountain valley forest)
a million wheres which never may become
one(wholly strange;familiar wholly)dearest
more than reality of more than dream--

how should contented fools of fact envision
the mystery of freedom?yet,among
their loud exactitudes of imprecision,
you'll(silently alighting)and i'll sing

while at us very deafly a most stares
colossal hoax of clocks and calendars

Quotation of note

Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

President-elect Barack Obama, November 4, 2008

---------------

Yes, but can we resist the temptation to describe our political opponents as petty, poisonous and immature?

Just wondering.

November 8, 2008

Optional memorial of Blessed John Duns Scotus.

To hell with terza rima!

The Guardian blog (UK) has a poetry challenge which is, to coin a plagiarism, above my pay grade.

(Hat tip: Poetry Foundation.)

Tracy Chapman

Her newest album, Our Bright Future, to be released Tuesday. Huzzah!

Encumbrances

Shortly after the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, the illustrious conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr. was asked if he was in a despairing mood. Buckley noted that despair is a mortal sin, but went on to add, "I am not confident that the president-elect will be able to transcend his encumbrances."

Yes, that's about the size of it -- although "encumbrance" is perhaps a too polite word for "advocacy of a policy that promotes intrinsic evil."

November 7, 2008

Friday, and a meditation on the Souls in Purgatory.

The never-ending saga of the cough

OK, so it's day 17, and I still have the cough, a little, a dry tickle in the throat, but no violent chest pain or head pain, and the ears don't seem all blocked up anymore. Saw my doctor today and he prescribed something called Tessalon Pearls (perles?) for the cough, but didn't offer any clue as to how I got this thing. He also recommended sleeping near a humidifier or a vaporizer.

The long and the short of it is: I'm 90-95% better. Thanks to all of you who sent kind thoughts heavenward on my behalf.

From the archives

A small poem called your name. Written eleven years ago.

Post-election beverages

MCNS of Irish Elk asked his readers to provide the name of their Election Night potent potable. Alas, I regret to report that I was stone cold sober for the election and its immediate aftermath. But right now, it's Christian Brothers brandy.

On the direction of this blog

Well, I don't know where it's going, to be honest. Much of my blogging energy is currently going into an unpublic three-person collaborative effort. All the good stuff, you might say, is going there. (Well, maybe not good stuff, but the opinions about politics and other ephemera.)

There will probably continue to be poetry hereabouts, but I'm going through a slow patch -- not only in terms of writing poetry (for all intents and purposes, I've stopped) but in terms of finding poetry to post and share with the faithful readers of this page.

I'm currently reading an anthology recommended by a longtime visitor to this spot. Flowers of Heaven: One Thousand Years of Christian Verse (Ignatius Press), edited by Joseph Pearce, who has written fine books on Lewis, Tolkien, Wilde, etc. There seem to be quite a few gems in this volume, even if the 20th century is a bit underrepresented.

I've heard about another anthology called Place of Passage, described in a subtitle as an anthology of "Contemporary Catholic Poetry." Have not investigated that one yet. But it may compensate for the deficit that I perceive in Mr Pearce's otherwise excellent compilation.

So. Be on the lookout for some poetry -- eventually! I don't know when. And maybe I'll see if I can cause some of my political posts at the other blog to "bilocate" -- there and here. But you have my sincerest apologies if the pace here has gotten a little too slow.

November 6, 2008

Thursday brings a meditation on praying for the dead.

November 5, 2008

Wednesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time. And at catholicculture.org, a meditation on death.

November 4, 2008

Memorial of St Charles Borromeo, bishop.

November 3, 2008

Today's memorial: St Martin de Porres. (Old calendar: St Hubert of Liège.)

Brain-dead left-wing communist morons

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's what I think of the people behind this idea in (not so) Great Britain.

(Spotted here.)

November 2, 2008

All Souls' Day, the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed.

November

by Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849)

The mellow year is hasting to its close;
The little birds have almost sung their last,
Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast --
That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows;
The patient beauty of the scentless rose,
Oft with the morn's hoar crystal quaintly glassed,
Hangs, a pale mourner for the summer past,
And makes a little summer where it grows.
In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day
The dusky waters shudder as they shine;
The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way
Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define;
And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array,
Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy-twine.

November 1, 2008

All Saints' Day.

Catherine de Hueck Doherty

from the "Spring" section of I Live on an Island (Ave Maria Press, 1979):

A priest to me is Christ wishing to be present in our midst in and through this man he has called to be his priest. It doesn't seem to affect me at all if priests are sinful or holy, or anything in between. I understand that they are men. But frankly, if I am in need of one of them and know that he is living a sinful life, I would still crawl to him to get absolution for my sins, or to receive Viaticum if I were in danger of death.

---------------

These words, first posted here five and a half years ago, came to my mind this evening for some ineffable reason.

Sonnet sequence

Thirteen sonnets by Geoffrey Hill (b. 1932), "An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England."

Read slowly, and enjoy.

The title

... of this book (which I saw today for the first time at the Harvard Coop) makes me think, for some reason, of this blogger.

La santé: an update

Still not 100%. Still have this hacking cough, now accompanied by discomfort in the left side of the chest. This is day eleven. The most recent doctor I saw recommended cough syrup. The cough syrup made for a most unpleasant night. (The label on the bottle says, not for coughs that last longer than 7 days.)

Oh, and both doctors I've seen say that my lungs are as clear as a bell. I don't have pneumonia, as far as they know.

Pray, if you will, that the cure for what ails me is apparent to the next doctor I see.

To Sleep

by John Keats (1795-1821)

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

____________________


John Keats was born on this date in 1795.

October 31, 2008

A meditation for All Hallows' Eve.

October 30, 2008

Thursday of the 30th Week of Ordinary Time. A meditation on the Rosary.

Ballygunnian

The only boy, almost, who "played" (but not at games) was our Irish earl. But then he was an exception to all rules; not because of his earldom but because he was an untamable Irishman, anarch in grain, whom no society could iron out. He smoked a pipe in his first term. He went off by night on strange expeditions to a neighboring city; not, I believe, for women, but for harmless rowdyism, low life, and adventure. He always carried a revolver. I remember it well, for he had a habit of loading one chamber only, rushing into your study, and then firing off (if that is the right word) all the others at you, so that your life depended on his counting accurately. I felt at the time, and I feel still, that this (unlike the fagging) was the sort of thing no sensible boy could object to. It was done in defiance both of masters and Bloods, it was wholly useless, and there was no malice in it. I liked Ballygunnian; he, too, was killed in France.

C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (Harcourt, Brace), pp. 98 & 99

October 29, 2008

Today is Wednesday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, and at catholicculture.org there is a meditation on the Rosary and the Liturgy.

October 28, 2008

Today's observance: Sts Simon and Jude.

October 27, 2008

Monday of the 30th week in Ordinary Time. At catholicculture.org, a meditation on the rosary.

Born this day in 1914

Prologue
by Dylan Thomas (1914-53)

This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and sails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark : I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill! Look:
I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms

To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
In the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise,
Who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan
Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood!).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist! in hogsback woods! The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbours, finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work ark and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone, and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks! Across
The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move,
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my prowed dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.

Cummings

so many selves(so many fiends and gods
each greedier than every)is a man
(so easily one in another hides;
yet man can,being all,escape from none)

so huge a tumult is the simplest wish:
so pitiless a massacre the hope
most innocent(so deep's the mind of flesh
and so awake what waking calls asleep)

so never is most lonely man alone
(his briefest breathing lives some planet's year,
his longest life's a heartbeat of some sun;
his least unmotion roams the youngest star)

--how should a fool that calls him "I" presume
to comprehend not numerable whom?

Drat!

The sun came out at about eleven, while I was at Mass. Wish it had stayed cloudy and gray. I must have ancestors from some cool and gloomy climes.

Still, only about 61 degrees. Could be much worse.

Did I mention that autumn rocks?

October 26, 2008

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

Trousered Ape

On the ruler of the Pope's Navee.

October 25, 2008

Saturday of the 29th Week of Ordinary Time. Old calendar: Sts Chrysanthus and Daria, Sts Crispin and Crispinian.

Leafing through old Magnificats ...

Why must we be always feeling the pain of loss?

If we did not, we should not realize that our idols are not God, are not Christ.

Bad as they are, they match our limitations; and if they could content us, we should never know the real beauty of Christ: we should not become whole.

It is one of God's great mercies that, although our vanity and our fear and other mean passions crave for satisfaction, when they are satisfied, we are not. There is an essential you, an essential me, who cannot be satisfied excepting by God: that is why the sense of loss saves us from complacency in our idols and drives us to go on seeking for the lost Child.

That is why people who seem to have got (and even to have got by their own efforts) all that life can give are so often aware of an inexplicable lack, a want in themselves.

Caryll Houselander (1901-54), via Magnificat November 2003, meditation for the 6th

Today's memorial

St Anthony Mary Claret, Bishop.

Under the weather

I've been a wee bit sick. Regular posting should resume shortly.

Today's liturgical observance

Tuesday of the 29th week of Ordinary Time; but, formerly, the memorial(s) of St Hilarion, abbot, and of St Ursula and companions.

Today's memorial.

Optional : St Paul of the Cross.

Yet again, from the archives

From six years ago, a light-hearted credo.

Against the smiling bureaucrat

Here is someone else who hasn't fallen prey to the blandishments of our latest would-be "messiah" -- the abbatial blogger at Word Incarnate.

Render unto, etc.

Q.: How do you cut the Roman Empire in two?

A.: With a pair of Cæsars.

On an unrelated note

the weather yesterday, and so far today, has been fabulously autumnal! 40 degrees in the metropolis right now, 30s in the burbs. Yesterday struggled to get above 50, and I was in short sleeves and no jacket. I might wear the jacket today.

And we still have some fall foliage!

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Today's Sunday observance occults the memorial of the Jesuit martyrs of North America.

Something else from the archives

A non-shepherd's calendar, 2000-something.

Also today

the feast of St Luke the Evangelist.

Am realizing that today

is the birthday of a friend from whom I have become estranged. But I can't believe how old she's going to be (me plus thirteen) ... eheu fugaces labuntur anni!

Chock-full of mavericky goodness™

If rumor be true, Gov. Sarah Palin will make an appearance on tonight's SNL.

Today's gospel

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, packed so close that they were trampling on one another, he began to speak first to his disciples: 'Be on your guard against the leaven of the Pharisees -- I mean their hypocrisy. There is nothing covered up that will not be uncovered, nothing hidden that will not be made known. Therefore everything you have said in the dark will be heard in broad daylight, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops.

'To you who are my friends I say: do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do. I will show you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Believe me, he is the one to fear.

'Are not five sparrows sold for twopence? Yet not one of them is overlooked by God. More than that, even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid; you are worth more than any number of sparrows.'

Luke 12:1-7 (Revised English Bible)

Hasten ye all to Meredith's ...

... and hear Dylan Thomas read "Poem In October" and other poems.

From the archives

Draft of a Poem Beginning with a Line by Wallace Stevens, 2003.

"The wheat of Christ, ground by the teeth of beasts"

Today is the memorial of St Ignatius of Antioch.

"This is no picnic for me either, Buster"

As someone I know was wondering:

What was little Barack doing the night before that he couldn't do his homework and his mother had to drag him out of bed at 4.30 the next morning?

The quadrennial folderol

Roaming the blogosphere, one finds thoughtful posts about the upcoming presidential election by Eve and by Clairity Daily.

My current position: undecided between McPalin and Bob Barr. (I've heard that Barr is not a libertarian purist. Well, neither am I.)

Definitions

Flaunt : to show off

Flout : to treat with contemptuous disregard

The occasion falls today

I did but touch the honey of romance --
And must I lose a soul's inheritance?

Today is the 154th anniversary of the birth of Oscar Wilde.

The sign in front of the Unitarian church ...

... announcing this coming Sunday's theme for the sermon reads:

WE ARE THE SAINTS.

Well.

That's what we're all supposed to be, or supposed to be striving toward, but isn't it a little, uhm, brash, to declare one's own sanctity as a fait accompli? A little lacking in humility?

This is the same church where the congregants are encouraged to forgive themselves, so I guess that self-canonization is the next logical step!

114th birthday of Cummings

true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;
despite what fear denies,what hope asserts,
what falsest both disprove by proving true

(all doubts,all certainties,as villains strive
and heroes through the mere mind's poor pretend
--grim comics of duration:only love
immortally occurs beyond the mind)

such a forever is love's any now
and her each here is such an everywhere,
even more true would truest lovers grow
if out of midnight dropped more suns than are

(yes;and if time should ask into his was
all shall,their eyes would never miss a yes)

James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.

And in her voice, the calling of the dove
Like music of a sweet melodious part.
And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
And all the gentle virtues in her heart.

And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.