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Previous post: Strange Daze
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Just what we fuckin’ need…
JWM
I had a similar feeling as JWM.
I have nothing against people of other religions or ethnicities coming here if they wish to assimilate.
Having said that, it appears that two, possibly three of the new citizens are Muslim. If we scrutinize the teachings of Islam, it is clear that Muslims do not wish to assimilate to any nation which has allowed them entry. Muslims have a long history of killing not only, Jews and Christians, but also Buddhist, Hindus, Zoroasters, atheists and they even kill each other over differences in sect. In areas where they gain political power within our system they are advocating for Sharia law. I understand that politics is much about optics and the holy name of diversity is a selling point in the minds of many Americans, but do we really need more Muslims here?
ALL new foreign citizens should be required to have a bond in the amount of $10,000.00 for a period of 10 years and be banned from any sort of welfare during that period. If, after 10 years, they can prove they are an asset to the country, have commited no felonies, and know how to read, speak and write conversational english the bond will be returned to them. Otherwise you’ll just end up with “poor, tired, huddled masses” on every kind of welfare they can sink their claws into, kinda like what you have now.
Unfortunately that’s one thing with which I disagree with our President. We need a complete moratorium on immigration. Yesterday.
Now we’re gonn’a hate on legal immigrants…???
I’ll take most of them over than what is currently burning our cities right now.
Fine. They can all live on your street.
Fine. They can all live on your street.
I’ll take them on my street.
I doubt Gerard’s purpose in posting this was to invite half a dozen comments decrying legal immigration. If I was him, I’d be disappointed in all of you, but chalk it up to the fact that you can’t control who reads your site and as long as they maintain the barest hint of civility, a decent respect for the “energizing contest of freedom,” as Samuel Adams put it, means you don’t silence people even when they’re tactless and crass.
Honestly, if you watch a naturalization ceremony where people from all points of the globe choose to forsake their home country to become American citizens and you don’t get a little choked up, then you have lost something important. You have lost an essential American-ness. We natural-born citizens didn’t have to do what those people did. We didn’t have to take a test (that most high schoolers would probably fail), we didn’t have to jump through endless hoops, and most of all, we didn’t have to take an oath. Because we didn’t, we admire those who do. I do, anyway.
Tim,
I said nothing about hate. I asked a question. Perhaps you should do your own research about Islam – “the religion of peace”….and again, I ask, Do we really need more Muslims in our country?
Mitchell,
Pity your “disappointment” in the commentariat here. Perhaps you might answer the question.
Allow me to assist both of you with a link to begin your edification. https://www.billionbibles.org/sharia/america-sharia-law.html
On my street???!!
Hell, a few representatives of all of that diverse group already live IN MY APARTMENT COMPLEX. Had a taco supper with them last night. See them when I walk around and go to the pool.
If you become an American through the right channels as set down in law you are my equal as a citizen. In fact, considering what you go through to become a citizen, you are probably better than I am in many ways.