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Through the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales
For the disrobed faceless forms of no position
Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts
All down in taken-for-granted situations
Tolling for the deaf an’ blind, tolling for the mute
Tolling for the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute
For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an’ cheated by pursuit
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
An’ the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting
Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones
Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting
Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail
For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale
An’ for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
— Bob Dylan
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.
The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-torture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man’s forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.
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
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.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Many variations on that theme, all constructed of reality bricks.
The counter is the oft-whipped “Myth of the Noble Savage” which is really getting long in the tooth.
Voltaire quite accurately warned of the inevitability of the French Revolution considerably prior to the reality. The “men” in American society are not to be taken lightly. Anything at hand can and will be a deadly weapon in their hands.
“The “men” in American society are not to be taken lightly.”
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Make that *some* men.
Probably less than half of those out there.
The other half have been *feminized* in various ways.
Had to look up who Ernst Jünger was, and I cannot imagine any living European writer I’ve heard of uttering its like today. It was sort of a brief glimpse of the Europe that was, a place fading away now. Some of those Wrath of Gnon quotes make me melancholy every now and again, messages from a lost world. The World Wars destroyed it, we’re witnessing the death throes every day in the news.
Although Jerry Pournelle would remind us that despair is a sin.
My non-scientific self- consensus is that most/many of the common posters are in the 60+ age group. Personally I am following somewhat closely behind, but by a decade. I started somewhat late in my life and have an 11 and 12 year old. We train in ground combat and firearms regularly. Hopefully if/when the time comes they will know what to do. Fighting for our free way of life is justifiable.
You will fight like you train.
I love that headline… “When the First Amendment fails the Second Amendment becomes the First Amendment.” Did you dream that up, Gerard?
Monty, for Europeans currently sounding the alarm about the quicksanding of old western Europe, try the books, articles, speeches, interviews (YouTube) of Douglas Murray and Geert Wilders. From the Muslim world, Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan. The nature of the threat is no secret; most of those threatened are in denial or in deep sleep or coma.
Well said, GVDL.
Upcoming masthead in heavy rotation at WRSA.