Upsoaring wings: In favour with the stars

We’re honoring Will Shakespeare today—since it’s presumed that this was his birthday in 1564. (We don’t know for certain, but he was baptized on the 26^th, and as he died on 23 April 1616, why not just split the difference and call it a thing?)

I have to say that Will spends right much time in his sonnets talking about the ravages of age; after a while a body can get a little tired of it. So I’ve chosen “Sonnet XXV”, which takes a different approach to life. The toffs, he says, may have the blessings of fortune (both luck and riches), but what they hold is more mutable than the wealth of love.

“Sonnet XXV”

Let those who are in favour with their stars

Of public honour and proud titles boast,

Whilst I, whom fortune of such triumph bars

Unlook'd for joy in that I honour most.

Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread

But as the marigold at the sun's eye,

And in themselves their pride lies buried,

For at a frown they in their glory die.

The painful warrior famoused for fight,

After a thousand victories once foiled,

Is from the book of honour razed quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled:

Then happy I, that love and am beloved,

  Where I may not remove nor be removed.

Upsoaring wings: the ears of my ears awake

We’ve not had anything from e.e. cummings yet in this National Poetry Month. So here’s something suitable for Gratitude Monday.

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and love and wings and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any-lifted from the no

of all nothing-human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Gratitude Monday: sudden storm

A tornado touched down in the People’s Republic Friday night. Trees were tossed around like matchsticks and there was what looked like serious property damage, but no reports of injuries or worse.

It was maybe about a mile and a half from my place, but I didn’t find out about it until I saw the story in WaPo the next day. We got a lot of twigs and some branches down, but no power outage and no roads blocked. So for me the weekend was walking over to the first farmers market of the season and laying in a stock of the only decent bread I’ve been able to find in Northern Virginia. (I also bought a bunch of radishes, which I worked out cost $0.35 apiece.)

Here’s a clip I shot on my way home earlier in the week; not a tornado, but still pretty brisk:

Today I’m grateful that the only aftermath to Friday’s winds for me was picking up smallish branches and sweeping my patio.

Upsoaring wings: All people

In addition to co-founding (with Martin Niemoeller and Karl Barth) the German Confessing Church, pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a passionate anti-Nazi, who worked tirelessly against the Hitler regime from its ascension to power in 1933 until his execution in April 1945. His protests against the euthanasia program and against antisemitism as state policy provoked the Nazis to ban his church, and he basically went underground to operate “seminaries on the run”, training the ministers of the future; he believed wholeheartedly that the post-war world would need Christians to rebuild.

Even after he was arrested in 1943 for his work helping Jews escape, Bonhoeffer continued his ministry in prison. He was linked to the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and was moved to Buchenwald and then Flossenbürg to be executed by hanging.

Here are a few things Bonhoeffer believed, which I’m pretty sure will not be echoed in evangelical churches these days:

“Silence in the face of evil is evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”

“Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”

“The first service one owes in a community involves listening to them. Just as our love for God begins with listening to God’s word, the beginning of love for others is listening to them…We do God’s work for our brothers and sisters when we learn to listen to them.”

Today being Easter, my National Poetry Month entry is Bonhoeffer’s “Christians and Pagans”, which he wrote in July 1944, when he’d been in prison for more than a year. Its point—that God serves all, not just those calling themselves Christians—is also not something you’ll hear in evangelical churches these days.

“Christians and Pagans”

People turn to God when they’re in need,

plead for help, contentment, and for bread,

for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death.

They all do so, both Christian and pagan.

People turn to God in God’s own need,

and find God poor, degraded, without roof or bread,

see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death.

Christians stand with God to share God’s pain.

God turns to all people in their need,

nourishes body and soul with God’s own bread,

takes up the cross for Christians and pagans, both,

and in forgiving both, is slain.

Upsoaring wings: He stands his ground

English poet Wendy Cope published “He Tells Her” as one of her “Differences of Opinion” in 2006. But it’s one of the best examples of mansplaining around, and apparently went viral a couple of years ago because of that.

What do you think?

“He Tells Her”

He tells her that the earth is flat —

He knows the facts, and that is that.

In altercations fierce and long

She tries her best to prove him wrong.

But he has learned to argue well.

He calls her arguments unsound

And often asks her not to yell.

She cannot win. He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round.

Upsoaring wings: I want my sins back

We’ve got two holy days going today: for Western Christians, it’s Good Friday, the day Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. And at sundown tonight, Pesach begins for Jews, honoring the Exodus from Egypt. Because it’s generally accepted that the Last Supper was a Seder, it seems appropriate that I offer a poem to commemorate each, and I’ve chosen entries from two contemporary poets.

Maria Melendez Kolson teaches literature and writing at Pueblo Community College, in Pueblo, Colorado. She herself writes of the Latinx experience in America. Her “Good Friday” is intimate as she confesses her shortcomings (reminding me a little of Saint Augustine’s “Lord, grant me chastity and continence. But not yet.”). I like it a lot.

“Good Friday”

Jesus, I want my sins back.

My prattle, pride, and private prices — 

climbing, clinching, clocking — 

I might loan you a few for the evening,

so you don’t show up at your own crucifixion

naked of all purpose.

But for God’s sake, don’t spill any

redemption on them! They’re my

signature looks. Body by Envy.

Make up & wardrobe provided by Avarice. Lord,

if you take away my inordinate cravings,

what the hell’s left? Do you know

how much I paid for my best rages?

I want them all back if they’re

so To Die For. Else shred my palms,

wash my face with spit, let the whip

unlace my flesh and free the naked blood,

let me be tumbled to immortality

with the stew of flood debris

that is my life.

Likewise, the focus of South African-born poet Bracha Meschaninov’s “Pesach” is personal and honest. She lives in New York, with her husband and six children, so this feels authentic.

“Pesach”

House cleaned

more or less

kitchen surfaces covered

more or less

food ready

more or less

an experience of redemption

more or less

Upsoaring wings: On the place of tombs

We’ve got another all-round player for today’s National Poetry Month entry. Gilbert Keith Chesterton trained at the Slade School to be an illustrator, but found his real gift in words—as a journalist, novelist, playwright, essayist and poet. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1923, age 48, and was renowned for his theological writings. (C.S. Lewis attributed his own conversion to Christianity to Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man.)

Most people know him best for his Father Brown series of detective stories (published between 1910 and 1935)—which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the appallingly bad BBC television series currently blotting the PBS landscape. (Seriously—plots, dialogue, acting—every aspect of this thing is utterly cringeworthy. It’s a testament to the sad fact that people will do anything for a regular paycheck.)

I first ran into Chesterton, though, in high school, when I was doing a paper on the Anglo-Irish hostility. Unusually, for an Englishman, he had great sympathy for the Irish, and he deplored British policy towards them. Somewhere I found this excerpt from his “The White Horse”:

The great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad,

For all their wars are merry, and all their songs are sad.

He lived long enough—to 1936—to see and deplore the rise of fascism, as well.

In 1922 he published a collection of poetry that included “For a War Memorial”. The 20s was perhaps the a acme of post-WWI activities with respect to honoring the war dead. (It was also the time when the British government did its best to cram the survivors back into the poverty and servitude they’d emerged from in 1914 to defend imperial policies. But that’s another discussion.) Memorials listing the names of the fallen were built in just about every school and every town and village in Britain, which are still there today. Of course, they didn’t realize they’d have to add more names from the 1939-1945 war to the plaques.

Chesterton suggests here a more truthful, if less palatable, inscription for such constructions.

“For a War Memorial”

(SUGGESTED INSCRIPTION PROBABLY NOT SUGGESTED BY THE COMMITTEE)

The hucksters haggle in the mart

The cars and carts go by;

Senates and schools go droning on;

For dead things cannot die.

A storm stooped on the place of tombs

With bolts to blast and rive;

But these be names of many men

The lightning found alive.

If usurers rule and rights decay

And visions view once more

Great Carthage like a golden shell

Gape hollow on the shore,

Still to the last of crumbling time

Upon this stone be read

How many men of England died

To prove they were not dead.

Upsoaring wings: Indefinable and one

The philosopher Laozi (Lao Tzu) may or may not be an actual historical figure, but the followers of Taoism, and place him somewhere in the Sixth Century BCE. He may have written the Tao Te Ching, or he may have compiled the writings; or he may not have existed at all. Nonetheless, there are poems ascribed to him, and we’ll have a couple today.

Perhaps because my own experiences have been so unbalanced, I find it hard to embrace the serene detachment of Taoism; I find Zen challenging, as is trying to meditate. I mean—grasping the intangible, and all. Viz:

“Look, It Cannot Be Seen”

Look, it cannot be seen - it is beyond form.

Listen, it cannot be heard - it is beyond sound.

Grasp, it cannot be held - it is intangible.

These three are indefinable, they are one.

From above it is not bright;

From below it is not dark:

Unbroken thread beyond description.

It returns to nothingness.

Form of the formless,

Image of the imageless,

It is called indefinable and beyond imagination.

Stand before it - there is no beginning.

Follow it and there is no end.

Stay with the Tao, Move with the present.

Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao.

Laozi was a proponent of small government, so anti-authoritarians and libertarians down the ages have espoused his principles, on left and right. I can’t say I agree with it, but it’s telling that his explanation for human poverty is still cogent more than two millennia on.

“Why Are People Starving?

Why are people starving?

Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.

Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?

Because the rulers interfere too much

. Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do people think so little of death?

Because the rulers demand too much of life.

Therefore the people take life lightly.

Having to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.

Upsoaring wings: Motionless and speechless

Haitian-American poet Hébert Logerie wrote “Violence on the Steps of Notre Dame of Paris” in response to an incident in June 2017, when police shot an attacker armed with knives and a hammer at the cathedral.

I’m sharing it today after being transfixed by appalling images of Nôtre Dame engulfed in flames. As of Monday afternoon, EDT, the roof and spire had collapsed and the wooden interior was gutted, although apparently the structure and artwork have been saved.

This is all I can say, because this is violence of another kind, and my heart is broken.

“Violence on the Steps of Notre Dame of Paris”

These days, even in the Holy Cathedral,

We are not safe. What a sad world!

At the shrine of the immaculate virgin of our soul,

We are not at peace. What a scandal!

The fools are everywhere, the criminals are everywhere.

Sometimes, we're motionless and speechless out there.

We can haphazardly measure our actions, our moves, and our steps.

Sadly, we're living where the villains know the ropes and the assets.

Violence is savageous, brutal, inhuman, and even bestial.

We are waiting for the Mighty God to perform many miracles.

The undesirables respect neither the altar nor the tabernacle.

Nevertheless, the pitiful morons will lose the final battle.

Upsoaring wings: Drop by drop upon the heart

We know Aeschylus as a tragedian and a poet, but he was also a soldier—veteran of the battles of Marathon (against Darius I) and Salamis (against Xerxes). So even when he wrote of mythical wars and warriors, he drew on his own experiences and knew what he was talking about.

The characters in Aeschylus’ plays are not, on the whole, happy. This is particularly true of the Oresteia trilogy, focusing on the family of King Agamemnon of Mycenae, one of the leaders in the Greek war against Troy. Not to put too fine a point upon it, everything we know about Agamemnon (starting with Homer’s Iliad) tells us that he’s a complete shit: arrogant, boastful, bullying, petty, inflexible and greedy. Yes, he came from an unhappy family (the House of Atreus), and there was that curse, but still—he really got up my nose when I was reading the classics.

Agamemnon is not the sort of guy who engages in introspection, and his ego prevents him from ever learning. This is a serious flaw, particularly in a head of state. And it leads to his violent murder, followed by the destruction of his family.

The observation about wisdom emerging from pain that Aeschylus makes in Agamemnon, the first play in the Oresteia, was not absorbed by the title character. Big cheeses typically don’t take instruction from poets. But these lines were chosen by Robert F. Kennedy in April, 1968, when he announced to the citizens of Indianapolis that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.

God, whose law it is

that he who learns must suffer.

And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart,

and in our own despite, against our will,

comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.

Here’s video of Kennedy's speech that day.

He barely outlived King by two months. We don’t learn.