The occasion falls today. Hurrah etc., let joy be unconfined.
And here is the initial post of Dark Speech upon the Harp, which was called Tenebrae back in 2002 -- the post is of a poem by Theodore Roethke. Enjoy!
Saturday, October 08, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
Msgr Massimo Camisasca
Even the weight of your sins would lead you back to me, God says. The whole of Christian wisdom is summed up in this sentence. For in becoming man, God chose to communicate himself, not only in spite of fragility, but "through" it. If we agree to this divine method without reservation, we can stop looking at our limitations as a reason for discouragement or frustration, and so as something to forget, to censor, and can start looking at them as stones to build with. The whole of our lives, with all their lights and shadows, exists in order to manifest the glory of Christ (Jn 9:3). If we refuse this logic, life will always be a burden that sooner or later we will find unbearable.
We are frequently tempted to censor difficulties, to hide them even from ourselves. When we do that, we are diverging radically from the way that God acts with us: every detail is a matter of importance for him. This kind of censorship is a diabolical act, which is often born of a fear of another's judgment, of the fear of losing the positive image that others have of us. But our stature before Christ has nothing to do with his image, nor can it be measured in terms of the mistakes that we may make or avoid making. Rather, it is decided by Christ himself and by our belonging to him. So to hide your own limits, your own problems, really doesn't make any sense. You do not find freedom from your own miseries by censoring them, but by handing them over to Christ, which is to say, by letting him embrace them. This embrace is like the one with which the mother enfolds her child in her arms, with which the lover takes the beloved into his. Indeed, it is infinitely more affectionate than these other gestures. Within this embrace, everything is taken up and directed to the one goal that makes life exciting: the glory of Christ on earth.
(via Magnificat, September 2011, meditation for the day, Sunday the 25th)
We are frequently tempted to censor difficulties, to hide them even from ourselves. When we do that, we are diverging radically from the way that God acts with us: every detail is a matter of importance for him. This kind of censorship is a diabolical act, which is often born of a fear of another's judgment, of the fear of losing the positive image that others have of us. But our stature before Christ has nothing to do with his image, nor can it be measured in terms of the mistakes that we may make or avoid making. Rather, it is decided by Christ himself and by our belonging to him. So to hide your own limits, your own problems, really doesn't make any sense. You do not find freedom from your own miseries by censoring them, but by handing them over to Christ, which is to say, by letting him embrace them. This embrace is like the one with which the mother enfolds her child in her arms, with which the lover takes the beloved into his. Indeed, it is infinitely more affectionate than these other gestures. Within this embrace, everything is taken up and directed to the one goal that makes life exciting: the glory of Christ on earth.
(via Magnificat, September 2011, meditation for the day, Sunday the 25th)
Friday, September 23, 2011
Thursday, September 22, 2011
To a Pet Cobra
To
A Pet Cobra
by Roy Campbell (1901-57)
With breath indrawn and every nerve alert,
As at the brink of some profound abyss,
I love on my bare arm, capricious flirt,
To feel the chilly and incisive kiss
Of your lithe tongue that forks its swift caress
Between the folded slumber of your fangs,
And half reveals the nacreous recess
Where death upon those dainty hinges hangs.
Our lonely lives in every chance agreeing,
It is no common friendship that you bring,
It was the desert starved us into being,
The hate of men that sharpened us to sting:
Sired by starvation, suckled by neglect,
Hate was the surly tutor of our youth:
I too can hiss the hair of men erect
Because my lips are venomous with truth.
Where the hard rock is barren, scorched the spring,
Shrivelled the grass, and the hot wind of death
Hornets the crag with whirred metallic wing --
We drew the fatal secret of our breath:
By whirlwinds bugled forth, whose funneled suction
Scrolls the spun sand into a golden spire,
Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction,
Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire.
Dainty one, deadly one, whose folds are panthered
With stars, my slender Kalihari flower,
Whose lips with fangs are delicately anthered,
Whose coils are volted with electric power,
I love to think how men of my dull nation
Might spurn your sleep with inadvertent heel
To kindle up the lithe retaliation
And caper to the slash of sudden steel.
There is no sea so wide, no waste so steril
But holds a rapture for the sons of strife:
There shines upon the topmost peak of peril
A throne for spirits that abound in life:
There is no joy like theirs who fight alone,
Whom lust or gluttony have never tied,
Who in their purity have built a throne,
And in their solitude a tower of pride.
I wish my life, O suave and silent sphinx,
Might flow like yours in some such strenuous line,
My days the scales, my years the bony links,
That chain the length of its resilient spine:
And when, at last, the moment comes to strike,
Such venom give my hilted fangs the power,
Like drilling roots the dirty soil that spike,
To sting these rotted wastes into a flower.
+ + + + + + + + + +
from The Atlantic Book of British and American Poetry, ed. Dame Edith Sitwell (Little, Brown, and Company, 1958), pp. 924-5.
by Roy Campbell (1901-57)
With breath indrawn and every nerve alert,
As at the brink of some profound abyss,
I love on my bare arm, capricious flirt,
To feel the chilly and incisive kiss
Of your lithe tongue that forks its swift caress
Between the folded slumber of your fangs,
And half reveals the nacreous recess
Where death upon those dainty hinges hangs.
Our lonely lives in every chance agreeing,
It is no common friendship that you bring,
It was the desert starved us into being,
The hate of men that sharpened us to sting:
Sired by starvation, suckled by neglect,
Hate was the surly tutor of our youth:
I too can hiss the hair of men erect
Because my lips are venomous with truth.
Where the hard rock is barren, scorched the spring,
Shrivelled the grass, and the hot wind of death
Hornets the crag with whirred metallic wing --
We drew the fatal secret of our breath:
By whirlwinds bugled forth, whose funneled suction
Scrolls the spun sand into a golden spire,
Our spirits leaped, hosannas of destruction,
Like desert lilies forked with tongues of fire.
Dainty one, deadly one, whose folds are panthered
With stars, my slender Kalihari flower,
Whose lips with fangs are delicately anthered,
Whose coils are volted with electric power,
I love to think how men of my dull nation
Might spurn your sleep with inadvertent heel
To kindle up the lithe retaliation
And caper to the slash of sudden steel.
There is no sea so wide, no waste so steril
But holds a rapture for the sons of strife:
There shines upon the topmost peak of peril
A throne for spirits that abound in life:
There is no joy like theirs who fight alone,
Whom lust or gluttony have never tied,
Who in their purity have built a throne,
And in their solitude a tower of pride.
I wish my life, O suave and silent sphinx,
Might flow like yours in some such strenuous line,
My days the scales, my years the bony links,
That chain the length of its resilient spine:
And when, at last, the moment comes to strike,
Such venom give my hilted fangs the power,
Like drilling roots the dirty soil that spike,
To sting these rotted wastes into a flower.
+ + + + + + + + + +
from The Atlantic Book of British and American Poetry, ed. Dame Edith Sitwell (Little, Brown, and Company, 1958), pp. 924-5.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Francisco de Quevedo
The blogger at Laudator Temporis Acti gives us a sonnet by the Spanish poet, translated by Willis Barnstone. A somewhat negative view of "The Ages of Man": not for the prudish!
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Jacques Maritain
"The human being down here in the darkness of his fleshly state is as mysterious as the saints in heaven in the light of their glory. There are in him inexhaustible treasures, constellations without end of sweetness and beauty which ask to be recognized and which usually escape completely the futility of our regard. Love brings a remedy for that. One must vanquish this futility and undertake seriously to recognize the innumerable universes that one's fellow being carries within him. This is the business of contemplative love and the sweetness of its regard."
Jacques Maritain, quoted in A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, ed. Jonathan Montaldo (HarperCollins, 2004), p. 273
Jacques Maritain, quoted in A Year With Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, ed. Jonathan Montaldo (HarperCollins, 2004), p. 273
Friday, September 16, 2011
Dame Edith Sitwell
"I have got a very nice new lunatic -- a lady in Dublin. She has written to tell me that all R.C. priests have lots of illegitimate children -- usually by their 15-year-old nieces. I am replying that I know they have. My own dear confessor often brings round his happy little brood of ten to have tea with me. Four are by his own niece, but he is sadly forgetful about who are the mothers of the rest. There were eleven, but unfortunately he ate one, in a fit of absent-mindedness, one Friday.
"Osbert says I must not write this, as it will be published, and people will say (A) that I have no moral sense, (B) that I am flippant; but I reply that it will not be the first, second, or third time that these charges have been brought against me."
Edith Sitwell, from Selected Letters 1919-1964, eds. John Lehmann and Derek Parker (Vanguard Press, 1970), p. 253
"Osbert says I must not write this, as it will be published, and people will say (A) that I have no moral sense, (B) that I am flippant; but I reply that it will not be the first, second, or third time that these charges have been brought against me."
Edith Sitwell, from Selected Letters 1919-1964, eds. John Lehmann and Derek Parker (Vanguard Press, 1970), p. 253
Monday, September 12, 2011
The Flying Bum
by William
Plomer (1903-73)
In the vegetarian guest-house
All was frolic, feast and fun,
Eager voices were enquiring
‘Are the nettle cutlets done?’
Peals of vegetarian laughter,
Husky wholesome wholemeal bread,
Will the evening finish with a
Rush of cocoa to the head?
Yes, you’ve guessed; it’s Minnie’s birthday,
Hence the frolic, hence the feast.
Are there calories in custard?
There are vitamins in yeast.
Kate is here and Tom her hubby,
Ex-commissioner for oaths,
She is mad on Christian Science,
Parsnip flan he simply loathes.
And Mr Croaker, call him Arthur,
Such a keen philatelist,
Making sheep’s-eyes at Louisa
(After dinner there’ll be whist) –
Come, sit down, the soup is coming,
All of docks and darnels made,
Drinks a health to dear old Minnie
In synthetic lemonade.
Dentures champing juicy lettuce,
Champing macerated bran,
Oh the imitation rissoles!
Oh the food untouched by man!
Look, an imitation sausage
Made of monkey-nuts and spice,
Prunes tonight and semolina,
Wrinkled prunes, unpolished rice.
Yards of guts absorbing jellies,
Bellies filling up with nuts,
Carbohydrates jostling proteins
Out of intestinal ruts;
Peristalsis calls for roughage,
Haulms and fibers, husks and grit,
Nature’s way to open bowels,
Maybe – let them practise it.
‘Hark, I hear an air-raid warning!’
‘Take no notice, let em come.’
‘Who’ll say grace?’ ‘Another walnut?’
‘Listen, what’s that distant hum?’
‘Bomb or no bomb,’ stated Minnie,
‘Lips unsoiled by beef or beer
We shall use to greet our Maker
When he sounds the Great All-Clear.’
When the flying bomb exploded
Minnie’s wig flew off her pate,
Half a curtain, like a tippet,
Wrapped itself round bony Kate,
Plaster landed on Louisa,
Tom fell headlong on the floor,
And a spurt of lukewarm custard
Lathered Mr Croaker’s jaw.
All were spared by glass and splinters
But, the loud explosion past,
Greater was the shock impending
Even than the shock of blast –
Blast we veterans know as freakish
Gave this feast its final course,
Planted bang upon the table
A lightly roasted rump of horse.
In the vegetarian guest-house
All was frolic, feast and fun,
Eager voices were enquiring
‘Are the nettle cutlets done?’
Peals of vegetarian laughter,
Husky wholesome wholemeal bread,
Will the evening finish with a
Rush of cocoa to the head?
Yes, you’ve guessed; it’s Minnie’s birthday,
Hence the frolic, hence the feast.
Are there calories in custard?
There are vitamins in yeast.
Kate is here and Tom her hubby,
Ex-commissioner for oaths,
She is mad on Christian Science,
Parsnip flan he simply loathes.
And Mr Croaker, call him Arthur,
Such a keen philatelist,
Making sheep’s-eyes at Louisa
(After dinner there’ll be whist) –
Come, sit down, the soup is coming,
All of docks and darnels made,
Drinks a health to dear old Minnie
In synthetic lemonade.
Dentures champing juicy lettuce,
Champing macerated bran,
Oh the imitation rissoles!
Oh the food untouched by man!
Look, an imitation sausage
Made of monkey-nuts and spice,
Prunes tonight and semolina,
Wrinkled prunes, unpolished rice.
Yards of guts absorbing jellies,
Bellies filling up with nuts,
Carbohydrates jostling proteins
Out of intestinal ruts;
Peristalsis calls for roughage,
Haulms and fibers, husks and grit,
Nature’s way to open bowels,
Maybe – let them practise it.
‘Hark, I hear an air-raid warning!’
‘Take no notice, let em come.’
‘Who’ll say grace?’ ‘Another walnut?’
‘Listen, what’s that distant hum?’
‘Bomb or no bomb,’ stated Minnie,
‘Lips unsoiled by beef or beer
We shall use to greet our Maker
When he sounds the Great All-Clear.’
When the flying bomb exploded
Minnie’s wig flew off her pate,
Half a curtain, like a tippet,
Wrapped itself round bony Kate,
Plaster landed on Louisa,
Tom fell headlong on the floor,
And a spurt of lukewarm custard
Lathered Mr Croaker’s jaw.
All were spared by glass and splinters
But, the loud explosion past,
Greater was the shock impending
Even than the shock of blast –
Blast we veterans know as freakish
Gave this feast its final course,
Planted bang upon the table
A lightly roasted rump of horse.
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