posted on 11.03.12 Ovid in Tears

Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
They asked him what he meant by garden.
He explained about gardens. “In the cities,”
he said, “there are places walled off where color
and decorum are magnified into a civilization.
Like a beautiful woman,” he said. How like
a woman, they asked. He remembered their wives
and said garden was just a figure of speech,
then called for drinks all around. Two rounds
later he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne
couldn’t read but still made a world. About Hagia
Sophia and putting a round dome on a square
base after nine hundred years of failure.
The hand holding him slipped and he fell.
“White stone in the white sunlight,” he said
as they picked him up. “Not the great fires
built on the edge of the world.” His voice grew
fainter as they carried him away. “Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.”

-Jack Gilbert

posted on 25.12.11 Shepards, why this jubilee?

Immensity, cloister’d in thy dear womb,
Now leaves His well-beloved imprisonment.
There he hath made himself to his intent
Weak enough, now into our world to come.
But O ! for thee, for Him, hath th’ inn no room ?
Yet lay Him in this stall, and from th’ orient,
Stars, and wise men will travel to prevent
The effects of Herod’s jealous general doom.
See’st thou, my soul, with thy faith’s eye, how He
Which fills all place, yet none holds Him, doth lie ?
Was not His pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee ?
Kiss Him, and with Him into Egypt go,
With His kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

-John Donne

_________________________

The Savior must have been

A docile Gentleman—

To come so far so cold a Day

For little Fellowmen—

The Road to Bethlehem

Since He and I were Boys

Was leveled, but for that ‘twould be

A rugged Billion Miles—

-Emily Dickinson

______________________

posted on 01.03.11 Happy Is England

Happy is England! I could be content
    To see no other verdure than its own;
    To feel no other breezes than are blown
Through its tall woods with high romances blent;
Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment
    For skies Italian, and an inward groan
    To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,
And half forget what world or worldling meant.
Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters:
    Enough their simple loveliness for me,
       Enough their whitest arms in silence clinging:
    Yet do I often warmly burn to see
       Beauties of deeper glance, and hear their singing,
And float with them about the summer waters.

-John Keats

posted on 08.11.10

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window;at the gold

of november sunset

(and feeling:that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

-E. E. Cummings

SPRING AND DEATH I had a dream. A wondrous thing: It seem’d an evening in the Spring; – A little sickness in the air From too much fragrance everywhere: – As I walk’d a stilly wood, Sudden, Death before me stood: In a hollow lush and damp, He seem’d a dismal murky stamp On the flowers that were seen His charnelhouse-grate ribs between, And with coffin-black he barr’d the green. “Death,” said I, “what do you here At this Spring season of the year?” “I mark the flowers ere the prime Which I may tell at Autumn-time.” Ere I had further question made Death was vanished from the glade. Then I saw that he had bound Many trees and flowers round With a subtle web of black, And that such a sable track, Lay along the grasses green From the spot where he had been. But the Spring-tide pass’d the same; Summer was as full of flame; Autumn-time no earlier came. And the flowers that he had tied, As I mark’d not always died Sooner than their mates; and yet Their fall was fuller of regret:It seem’d so hard and dismal thing, Death, to mark them in the Spring.
-Hopkins

The image above is by Cezanne. And why a poem about Spring in the middle of fall? Because it is a poem about fall. A poem about “sister death” as St. Francis of Assisi called her — about what she does, what we think she does, and what she can actually do.

posted on 15.10.10

SPRING AND DEATH

I had a dream. A wondrous thing:
It seem’d an evening in the Spring;
– A little sickness in the air
From too much fragrance everywhere: –
As I walk’d a stilly wood,
Sudden, Death before me stood:
In a hollow lush and damp,
He seem’d a dismal murky stamp
    On the flowers that were seen
His charnelhouse-grate ribs between,
    And with coffin-black he barr’d the green.
“Death,” said I, “what do you here
At this Spring season of the year?”
“I mark the flowers ere the prime
Which I may tell at Autumn-time.”
Ere I had further question made
Death was vanished from the glade.
Then I saw that he had bound
Many trees and flowers round
With a subtle web of black,
And that such a sable track,
Lay along the grasses green
From the spot where he had been.
     But the Spring-tide pass’d the same;
     Summer was as full of flame;
     Autumn-time no earlier came.
And the flowers that he had tied,
As I mark’d not always died
Sooner than their mates; and yet
Their fall was fuller of regret:
It seem’d so hard and dismal thing,
Death, to mark them in the Spring.

-Hopkins

The image above is by Cezanne. And why a poem about Spring in the middle of fall? Because it is a poem about fall. A poem about “sister death” as St. Francis of Assisi called her — about what she does, what we think she does, and what she can actually do.

posted on 08.03.10 Methinks I lied all winter…

Love’s Growth

-John Donne

I SCARCE believe my love to be so pure
As I had thought it was,
Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore
My love was infinite, if spring make it more.

But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not only be no quintessence,
But mix’d of all stuffs, paining soul, or sense,
And of the sun his working vigour borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use
To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.

And yet no greater, but more eminent,
Love by the spring is grown;
As in the firmament
Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown,
Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough,
From love’s awakened root do bud out now.

If, as in water stir’d more circles be
Produced by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheres but one heaven make,
For they are all concentric unto thee;
And though each spring do add to love new heat,
As princes do in times of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate the spring’s increase.

posted on 18.01.10 “We Must Risk Delight”

Any human with a beating heart will see tragedy such as this and understand its magnitude. Go to the Big Picture to see photos of the tragedy. There are so many places to donate. Often with tragedy comes (at least for Esteban) a creeping sense where your own joys feel burdensome or guilt laden. That may be sign that you should give something of your own to help, even if it’s only prayers, or thanks for your own blessings. But you probably already realized this, good person that you are. More difficult to compass is what comes later… the power of enjoying life and its blessings in the teeth of “the ruthless  furnace of this world.”

How can we be happy when the world is so terrible?

Jack Gilbert will try to explain…

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies  are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.  But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.  Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not  be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not  be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women  at the fountain are laughing together between  the suffering they have known and the awfulness  in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody  in the village is very sick. There is laughter  every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,  and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.  If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,  we lessen the importance of their deprivation.  We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,  but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have  the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless  furnace of this world. To make injustice the only  measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.  If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,  we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.  We must admit there will be music despite everything.  We stand at the prow again of a small ship  anchored late at night in the tiny port  looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront  is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.  To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat  comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth  all the years of sorrow that are to come.

-Jack Gilbert

posted on 24.10.09 Give Us Men!

Give us Men!
Strong and stalwart ones;
Men whom highest hope inspires,
Men whom purest honor fires,
Men who trample self beneath them,
Men who make their country wreath them
As her noble sons,
Worthy of their sires;
Men who never shame their mothers,
Men who never fail their brothers,
True, however false are others:
Give us Men-I say again,
Give us Men!

-Josiah Gilbert Holland

————————————

Only one stanza. See the whole post here.

Title

HANDSOME DROWNED MEN

About

I am Esteban, the handsomest drowned man in the world. In life I could draw fish out of the sea simply by calling their names and I put so much work into my land that springs burst forth from among the rocks, so that I was able to plant flowers on the cliffs.

Enjoy this. Click 'random' to get a new post, or check the archives. Leave a comment or an email at handsomedrownedmen [at] gmail to reach me among the deepest waves, where fish are blind and divers die of nostalgia.

Lo cierto es que la felicidad no es como dicen, que solo dura un instante y no se sabe que se tuvo sino cuando ya se acabó. La verdad es que dura mientras dure el amor, porque con amor hasta morirse es bueno

Photo

Do This

Sursum Corda!

Main

Handsome Drowned Men

Love’s Growth

-John Donne

HANDSOME DROWNED MEN