Stories of the Gone World
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
Comments on this entry are closed.
Great story. Thanks for one more wonderful, Gerard.
Excellent!
Nice story. A reveal that Moore is/was a classy gent.
Are there any celebrity types that would do that kind of thing today?
They all seem so full themselves.
A classic English gentleman. Sir Roger played Bond with a more humorous tone than the others;I suspect it came quite naturally to him.
What a lovely story,thanks Mr V.
Another one to file under They Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To.
By the time Moore took on the Bond role the appeal of Bond films had begun to pale for me, but I shall always love his work in The Saint TV series, which I enjoyed as a teen, perhaps in some measure because it aired late, after prime time, and I was the only one of my family still awake so that I felt quite grown-up to watch the program with the lights out and only the shifting glow of the TV tube to cast the living room into a chiaroscuro that seemed to deepen each episode’s appeal.
It wasn’t just Moore’s portrayal of Simon Templar that entertained, it was also the series’ variety of character actors who came and went, sometimes more than twice in different roles, during the series’ run that I found delightful – and not always because they were all good at their craft, but because some of them were so awful that they contributed unintentioned amusement, such as English actors putting on thick Italian, Spanish, or Greek accents, and the thoroughly English Percy Herbert doing his level best to make me believe he was a New York City mob tough guy. The series for me is a gift that keeps on giving as, from time to time, I now have lots of fun reading on IMDb the biographies of its character players.
G: what a delightful story—why we keep coming back, every day.
Sir Roger Moore caught my attention first as Ivanhoe. He was young then and, as always, a beautiful man. He had, as always, the twinkle in his eye as Ivanhoe, Simon Templar and James Bond.
This is a great story to tell and to hold.
My mother was one of his greatest fans.
All the actors made their own impression on the James Bond character and Roger Moor made James Bond very much a continuation of his earlier ‘The Saint’ series. You can watch the series just to see all the Saint extras and co-stars who would play other and similar roles in James Bond movies later. My favorite is the Saint episode “Luella” from 1964. Roger Moore stars with David Hedison – who would play Felix Leiter in Roger Moore’s first James Bond outing “Live and Let Die” (1973). Even back in 1964, the writers inserted a story line where the Saint pretends to be James Bond to get some information out of a recalcitrant matron – almost a decade before he actually becomes James Bond. Fourth wall stuff even back then.