Next post: Our long national nightmare is ______________ (Fill in the blank)
Previous post: “Fear is the little death…”
My head knocks against the stars.
My feet are on the hilltops.
My finger-tips are in the valleys and shores of
universal life.
Down in the sounding foam of primal things I
reach my hands and play with pebbles of
destiny.
I have been to hell and back many times.
I know all about heaven, for I have talked with God.
I dabble in the blood and guts of the terrible.
I know the passionate seizure of beauty
And the marvelous rebellion of man at all signs
reading “Keep Off.”
My name is Truth and I am the most elusive captive
in the universe.
Gerard Van der Leun
Comments on this entry are closed.
Before listening, I went and got my Yeats off the shelf so I could read and listen at the same time.
As usual for Yeats, he hammered out the form and format quite precisely; four stanzas, each eight lines of iambic pentameter, stuffed with concepts and constructs,, forcing the reader to pause and contemplate.
I was a bit shocked and startled being reminded of his old man thoughts and laments while in his early sixties but I must allow that when he wrote it, close to a hundred years ago, many, if not most, were old, quite old, in their sixties.
Though thinking back I most allow, that when I first read ‘Sailing to..’ in my late teens or early twenties, I absolutely knew that those in their sixties, those doddering tottering tatter coated sticks, were worn and rusted ancient fossils whose mere continued existence challenged belief.
Needless to say, as I contemplate firing up my chainsaw and cutting some brush after finishing this post, I find myself chuckling at my youthful naivety.