WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
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Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
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
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
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Nice version of the Dylan. Thanks.
Was blessed to see the first concert above at the Highland Park United Methodist Church.
And met the conductor at our hotel. That night Dallas received it’s first tornado in many years and we spent 30+ minutes in the hotel stairwell – damage is still evident now driving by several months later.
We must still give thanks for all that we are given.
Thanks for the reminder in these” fake” dark days of all that is good.
The beauty of God will go on,as will we.
This darkness will pass and we will be stronger . Time.
Sleep well my friend.
An additional note: Before being corralled into the stair well, we stood outside, to see and hear the dramatic lightning and thunder storm (in the right temporal order) – against a darkening and cloudy Texas sky – truely a display of nature’s majesty.
Beautiful. Thanks.
Forgot to add Rosalind Russell was a real beauty.
Thanks for putting up, now of all times, that Rutter piece, so beautiful and transparent and so true.
Chris Tietze, the organist and music director, schedules that to be sung by his children’s choir several times a year. The kids sing the treble parts and 5 or 6 men sing the bass and tenor, in the cavern of the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption, seat of the Archbishop of San Francisco. It’s thrilling to a guy who cries at parades, I’ll tell you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! “The Weight” finally got Gal Gadot’s ”Imagine” out of my head.
I know it’s off topic, and I’ve said it elsewhere, but it bears repeating. Chuck Schumer is a heaping pile of cow excrement. Thanks for reminding us of the beauty of life Gerard.
The Good, the True, and the Beautiful will abide.
Keep the Faith
JWM
I’m already missing the March ritual of counting down to Opening Day. However, as spring is officially here according to the astronomers, here’s the Milwaukee Symphony’s version of the national anthem of the American pastime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkNugqGg9kk&ab_channel=MilwaukeeSymphonyOrchestra
More seriously, but still joyfully: in honor of Bach’s birthday tomorrow, here is a virtuoso’s rendition of BWV 577, the Fugue in G Major, also known as the Jig Fugue. Should get your feet a-tappin’ and a smile on your face; I imagine Bach enjoyed writing it as much as we enjoy hearing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOP_0YRHbZo&ab_channel=E.PowerBiggs-Topic
Great pix, Gerard!
Fender shreds, but Gibson c o n t r o l s.
I always seem to end up with dust in my eyes when I listen to these:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=36&v=wWImXdnxznE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we8tzKNbfEQ
Most excellent. Thank you.