SEPTEMBER 1, 1939 by Auden
Next post: 10 Marines Dead: A question for the man with a skull full of backed-up rotted sewage…
Previous post: Charlie
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
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
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.
Comments on this entry are closed.
It appears History does repeat itself.
How many are sitting in a “dive” or at “home” not really enjoying their libation, realizing yet still denying that the entire world must suffer great violence, trauma and loss before over an inestimable number of years – until almost all become exhausted, without further energy to be angry or act out. … G-d forgive us for what will be necessary in order to restore order and a world of communities living in relative peace.
The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of “Men who wanted to be left Alone”.
They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love.
They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it.
They know, that the moment they fight back, the lives as they have lived them, are over.
The moment the “Men who wanted to be left Alone” are forced to fight back, it is a small form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. . . .
Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these “Men who wanted to be left Alone”, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives. They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. TRUE TERROR will arrive at the Left’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy . . . . but it will fall upon deaf ears.
TOM o’ BEDLAM
Being exists in essence as Potential, for not in Being but Becoming lies The Way.
I am Tom, and so say without saying,
The one and the many’s the same,
When you’ve learned No Knowledge of Nothing
And your kingdom hasn’t a name.
Golden threads tie and bind me,
For I love the glitter of gold;
But what I wear is worn threadbare,
And poor Tom’s ever a-cold.
Tailor my mantel of Sky,
Cobble my boots of black Earth–
For my purse holds riches in dreams,
And I pay in good coin with my mirth.
I have danced in the Eye of a Tiger,
Respect I owe to the Bear.
Wouldst set me aright, sir? A Copper
Will serve as a Sovereign– beware!
Tom as first comes a-begging
Has neither to go nor to stay;
But what all winter’s winds won’t accomplish,
Kind words will wreak in a day.
JPB, 1972
With an host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air,
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows,
I summoned am to a tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end:
Methinks it is no journey.
Yet I will sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Perhaps the Greatest Anonymous Poem in English: “Tom O’Bedlam” | Big Two-Hearted River