The Small World Scrapbook: Easter Sunday, 2020
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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
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
— BY THEODORE ROETHKE
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.
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
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Happy Easter, Gerard! Don’t you love a black cat in sunshine? Especially those smooth, damp places just washed? She’s loving her Easter sunshine.
Just got back from walking five and a half rigorous miles on this cool gray Easter. Got home, flopped in the red chair, and Buddy the Cat jumped right up into my lap to join me. My wife is doing her exercises in her den. It’s quiet here, and we’re OK. Much to be grateful for.
A blessed Easter to all who stop by.
JWM
I go to a tiny Baptist Church two blocks away. The last three weeks, there have been five worshippers including the pastor and his wife. She plays the piano and live-streams his sermons on Facebook, for the others of the congregation who stay home. The pastor doesn’t want to preach to an empty church, so three of us listen to his sermon. There is a sign about a block from the church that tells us we can be arrested, jailed and fined $1000 for nonessential travel. It’s shocking! I can’t help feeling the Deep State is continuing on with its coup attempt by exploiting this shutdown.
Happy Easter, Gerard! Nothing like a happy cat in a basket in the sunshine… What a wonderful world, indeed.
It’s shocking! I can’t help feeling the Deep State is continuing on with its coup attempt by exploiting this shutdown.
It helps me to remember that the Powers That Were set a guard at the door of Christ’s tomb after His burial, and a fat lot of good that did them. The Lord is risen, He is risen indeed!
And yes, I like to think there was a little black cat walking in the garden on the first Easter, and that He stopped to pet and bless her. On this Easter, Olive is a picture of sunlit contentment, with the deep pink flower complementing her red collar and heart tag.
Easter greetings to both of you.
Begs the question, Margot, what would be their penalty for running their sign over and flattening it. Literally anything, presumably, considering they have already abandoned their sworn oath with contempt.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Of late I’ve been wondering what that stout fellow who cleared the temple in Jerusalem of money-changers would do under our present situation.
As the Babylon Bee advises, “Romans investigating Jesus for violating Stay-At-Tomb order.”
Happy Easter, Gerard and AD readers!
Happy Easter, Gerard! And to you, too, Miss Olive! And to y’all!
“I know that my Redeemer liveth” – Job 19:25
P.S. – Did I tell you we adopted a black kitty last November? We named her Pepper.
Now you hafta adopt a white male and name him Salt.