Though I’m not a Bee Gees fan, I must admit they could harmonize in a most pleasing way. And you’re right, Gerard, the lyrics do have a mysterious bent to them.
“We’re all breaking promises…” I’ve broken a few; no, that’s not quite right: I’ve broken many; still not good enough: Ok then, I’ve broken them all. Every single one. I have no excuses why, other than…I broke my promises. I wish I could come up with a good reason—something, anything—to explain why my words always came with an expiration date. But there is no reason good or otherwise. I broke my promises. That is all.
And I have found it a waste of time to blame this on someone else: “But you lied to me first!” No, that does not work. A broken promise lives by itself, and belongs only to its creator—me.
I want to believe that such things are all in the past. And perhaps they are. Looking at my track record, that is a good thing. And I promise to do better—no, I’ll try to do better.
Mike SeyleJanuary 11, 2022, 7:00 AM
Your students were fortunate to have sat in your classes, Mike Austin. Maybe they even know it by now.
And I was fortunate to have them, the best kids on earth. They made me laugh; they made me cry; they reminded me why I was the classroom in the first place. It was the best of times.
But I neither miss them nor do I miss the profession. Everyone must move on, must let go. I have moved on; I have let go.
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
TWAIN IN TESLA’S LABORATORY
from “Chimes of Freedom”
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
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
The painter stood Before her work She looked around every where She saw the pictures and she painted them She picked the colors from the air Green to green Red to red Yellow to yellow In the light Black to black When the evening comes Blue to blue In the night
To the Stonecutters
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
Search American Digest’s Back Pages
Contemplation of the Sword
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.
from Preludes
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
from Canto CXV BY EZRA POUND
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.
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Ferreya
ARTIST: GIBSON
Edwin Deakin, American
Hillegas
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
from “Chimes of Freedom”
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
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
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
Gerard Van der Leun
Even though a cloud’s white curtain in a far-off corner flashed
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
The scientists are in terror
Though I’m not a Bee Gees fan, I must admit they could harmonize in a most pleasing way. And you’re right, Gerard, the lyrics do have a mysterious bent to them.
“We’re all breaking promises…” I’ve broken a few; no, that’s not quite right: I’ve broken many; still not good enough: Ok then, I’ve broken them all. Every single one. I have no excuses why, other than…I broke my promises. I wish I could come up with a good reason—something, anything—to explain why my words always came with an expiration date. But there is no reason good or otherwise. I broke my promises. That is all.
And I have found it a waste of time to blame this on someone else: “But you lied to me first!” No, that does not work. A broken promise lives by itself, and belongs only to its creator—me.
I want to believe that such things are all in the past. And perhaps they are. Looking at my track record, that is a good thing. And I promise to do better—no, I’ll try to do better.
Your students were fortunate to have sat in your classes, Mike Austin. Maybe they even know it by now.
And I was fortunate to have them, the best kids on earth. They made me laugh; they made me cry; they reminded me why I was the classroom in the first place. It was the best of times.
But I neither miss them nor do I miss the profession. Everyone must move on, must let go. I have moved on; I have let go.
You were right, very different, but the same unearthly, effortless and perfect harmony.
Loved this, Gerard. Thank you for always posting
the lyrics too.