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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Going to war with Russia in the winter. Like that has never been tried before.
Who needs winter uniforms when you have hairy legs? Wait until Brandon can remember Corn Pops telephone number and Putin will be toast. Anyways, it would be nice if we can stop history repeating while we are still in the farce phase and not go back to the tragedy phase.
Well, as you know yourself, those were Russians in the defense, and they owned, with some difficulty, their enemies (Napoleonic France and Hitler’s Germany). OTOH, when they sallied forth into little Finland, they were shamed. Such is the difference between the offense and the defense.
Stalin eventually got Finland to do his bidding after his errors before and during the Winter War. Thus the term, “Finlandization”. The 1940 Moscow Peace Treaty gave Stalin more than he had demanded before the war. Finland joined Nazi Germany in alliance against the Soviets (1941 – 1944), but then switched sides against Germany (1944 – 1945). The Allies classified Finland as an ally of Germany, thus forcing her to pay war reparations and cede to Russia even more of her territory after the war.
Finland had her time in the sun—all was not heroic, but she did what she did to survive. Since the war she has kept her head down, stayed out of the news, and disappeared from History.
Margaret is speaking in a Mid-Atlantic accent, I believe.
In one of their films the pair are doing a back and forth and Margaret cracks, it’s left in the scene.
Ukraine? Election ‘fixed’, interfered with, by the CIA. News organs guilty of wrongthink shut down. Gas pipeline blown up. Nightly shelling of Ukrainians by Ukrainians. Paying a million bucks a year to Hunter Biden (10% -50% off the top to his dad.). Tippacanoe, Tyler too and no Russian gas in Germany!
Putin doesn’t want missiles on his doorstep (Cuban missile crisis anyone?).
I’ve a problem seeing Vad as the bad guy here.
I’ve a problem seeing Vad as the bad guy here.***
I know, right? Say what you will about Putin, he’s a fierce patriot and clearly reveres his country.
The treasonous, illegitimate, titular head of the USA? Not at all. Just a life-long grifter, who’ll get lots of other parents’ kids killed, in yet another ill-advised war.
Unfortunately, it seems difficult lessons have to be relearned every other generation or so.
As I’m checking the Market at 2:11 CST, it’s not liking it a bit, either.
Oh, yeah, I always loved Margret Dumont in her various roles in the Marx Bros movies. She was perfect.
It was the Brandon administration that forced Putin’s hand. It could not believe that in Putin there was a man who actually did what he said he was going to do. The elites in Washington DC have no such integrity. They think everyone on earth is just as they are: degenerate, treasonous, dishonorable and mendacious. This entire Ukraine issue could have been resolved with vodka and negotiations, but Brandon rolled the dice and lost. If he ups the ante—a common trait among the human debris who run Washington DC—things could get…spicy. As Casey wrote, watch the Mediterranean. If Brandon moves a carrier or two into the Black Sea—assuming the Turks allow this—what then?
Usually a military defeat can be covered up to some extent so as to avoid too many negative domestic repercussions. But not this time. Brandon and his handlers blew up the “Ukraine crisis” into a precursor to World War III. Backing down from such silly braggadocio will be extremely difficult.
Leave it to the Marx Brothers to make fun of any situation. Good humor. Way too much is being made of not a lot. Like James Oneil says, I don’t really see Vlad as being the bad guy here. Follow the money, the trail that tells no lies. Who is to benefit over this circus? It damn sure aint gonna be the Merkan people, they’re the ones gonna be paying for it, along with the sons & daughters of Russian and Ukraine and whoever else gets dragged onto the coliseum arena.
You do realize don’t you that it’s gommermints that start wars for their benefit, it’s not the actual people in the combat arena. Let the gommermints slug it out & piss in each others Wheaties, the combatants would rather share a pint, talk about sports & girls, and hoot & holler about most anything else and be left in peace.
I’ve seen the clip many times, and I always get reminded of what a complex undertaking it was to choreograph and film. And the references to white-as-black which at the time was prevalent. Interesting.
-then this:
Way too much is being made of not a lot.
I would agree, and generally, too, to the remainder of your comment.
+1
Yep. And if the mainstream media are pushing Russia and Ukraine there is gonna be a war story, and they are in spades, you know it’s a lie and the purpose of the propaganda is meant to draw your attention away or keep you in fear.
To bolster my argument in regards to the propaganda being spewed about Russia, Russia, Russia going to war with the Ukraine, and America, you know when they invoke President Donald Trump into the equation for praising Putin, as the mainstream media is, well, believe the propaganda if you are so inclined. See here.
And on a related note surrounding the Trump deranged and their unceasing efforts to decrease his stature in individuals’ eyes, two top prosecutors on the case resigned. Wonder what’s going on that we cannot see. Two top prosecutors in probe of Trump Org resign from Manhattan DA’s office.
“two top prosecutors on the case resigned. Wonder what’s going on that we cannot see”
It’s not even an hour’s work anymore to find dirt in a democrat’s closet.
“the purpose of the propaganda is meant to draw your attention away or keep you in fear.”
Precisely!
The Biden clown-show is so desperate to distract from the debacle of rising inflation caused by printing paper currency to cover the mess made by the ruling class going all the way back to the 2008 financial debacle and then accelerated over the past year with “free” money not to work. Also to distract from the unraveling in Democrat controlled city after city and ongoing crime spree. And their failure of the C-19 response which is now being shown to be a big-pharma take over of the CDC.
Massive crimes have been committed and they know they have been found out…..so, Russia, Russia, Russia again.
Why should American blood and treasure be spilled 12 times zones away, when the real threat is flooding over the southern border?
Finally, China is the problem.
Please note that nowhere in my comment did I say that Putin was a good guy.
John all one can do is smile and say quietly, “ I told ya so”. The shit show called Biden needs this war badly, need to refocus on his his henchmens other deeds.
It’s irrelevant how damaged his mind is, even he recognizes he’s a stooge at this point.
While I never cared for him as a human, even less as a politician, what he’s being put thru is straight up elder abuse. Nobody deserves this, not even politicians.
Dirk
What he is being put through is a rare example of evil actually paying for its deeds while yet on earth. If he does not deserve this, then no one deserves any punishment for anything whatsoever. The word “schadenfreude” exists for a reason. So does this axiom:
“Whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad.”
The Greek tragedians understood this better than anyone. Always they represented Hubris as followed inevitably by Nemesis. No one could possibly escape such earthly justice. We are seeing it play out right in front of our eyes, yet we have no Sophocles to record it.