sometimes the price of freedom

                    Love-Letter-Burning










The archivist in us shudders at such cold-
blooded destruction of the word, but since
we're only human, we commit our sins
to the flames. Sauve qui peut; fear makes us bold.




Tanka was bolder: when the weather turned
from fair to frigid, he saw his way clear
to build a sacrificial fire
in which a priceless temple Buddha burned.




(The pretext? Simple: what he sought
was legendary Essence in the ash.
But if it shows up only in the flesh—?
He grinned and said, Let's burn the lot!)




Believers in the afterlife perform
this purifying rite. At last
a match is struck: it's done. The past
will shed some light, but never keep us warm.




                                      Daniel Hall


















......

a day's trouble sufficient unto itself

             A CHILD'S PRAYER












For Morn, my dome of blue,
For Meadows, green and gay,
And Birds who love the twilight of the leaves,
Let Jesus keep me joyful when I pray.







For the big Bees that hum
And hide in bells of flowers;
For the winding roads that come
To Evening’s holy door,
May Jesus bring me grateful to his arms,
And guard my innocence for evermore.   














                       Siegfried    Sassoon      




















....                

a sabbath trajectory

Some keep the Sabbath going to the Church --
 I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --



 Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice --
I just wear my Wings --
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.



 God preaches, a noted Clergyman --
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last --
I’m going, all along.








                                   Emily Dickinson
















......

fate calls sadly

                       










                       Notes Toward a 25th Reunion

















“And what do you do?” Mrs. Appoplex,
Fat dam of some dim Story Street savant
In baggy Marimekko muumuu and
Barbaric Inca necklet, asks my wife
At some dream sherry party packed with ham-
Strung academics swaying gently in
The wind of Babel. “Why, just cook and fuck,”
My wife does not, so sweetly, tender in
Reply, although I wish like hell she would.
Whose world is real, for Christ’s sake, anyway?
Their sculpture gallery of images
That move mechanically in circumscribed
Tangents and – this is a recording – talk
In selfsame selfsongs all the livelong day?
(I must say I have just enough of a
Foot in that world to see its tiny point
Flash in the haystack of irrelevance.)
Or my free-form theatre of absurd,
Unaugurable happenstance, in which -
For gain, my lads, for gain – we businessmen
Risk all upon a nutty and divine
Idea of weal and on our con-man’s skill
To sell it to each other, I’ll back that
Frail matchstick pyramid of barest will,
On which to balance, one exposes all
To the black, hithering eye of the abyss,
As realer than the static autoclave
Of academe, full of blunt instruments
Becoming sterile as they sit and steam.
And yet, when I return in steaming June
To my Reunion in the pullulant
Hive of the Yard, I’ll look with shuttering
Eyes on my unknown classmates, businessmen
Who have no business with me, and greet
The likes of Mrs. Appoplex and her
Effete levée with a glad, homing cry.
The question is, what kind of fool am I?






                                                L.E.  Sissman

contemplate a chilly dark

song 21


Snows' night's winds on the window rattling
Would seem to leap out of the bed-spring

What prevents a feat like that occurring
Reason-but the more actual bedding

Springs of steel mercurial spirallings
making a body's night a changeable singing

The winged boots of the frozen seek of it! sheltering
Safety from the window's pommelling












                                     Louis Zukofsky        
























...








                  

a somewhat anonymous heist

another haiku






lake mist dissolves
     dissipates in morning sun
         shimmering seagulls












......

Stanza V of Burnt Norton

     








                      V












Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern,
Can words or music reach
The stillness, as a Chinese jar still
Moves perpetually in its stillness.
Not the stillness of the violin, while the note lasts,
Not that only, but the co-existence,
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still. Shrieking voices
Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,
Always assail them. The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always -
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.






                        thomas stearns eliot