A Poem For A Friend

June 9th, 2012

"Darkness" by Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came, and went and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires - and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings, the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye 
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forest were set on fire but hour by hour
They fell and faded and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremolous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless, they were slain for food:
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again; a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corpse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress, he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies;
They met beside 
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Wich was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and
Each other's aspects. saw, and shriek'd, and died, beheld
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless,
A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expired before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them. She was the universe.

A Poem For Memorial Day

May 27th, 2012

Shiloh: A Requiem
by Herman Melville

Skimming lightly, wheeling still, 
 The swallows fly low 
Over the field in clouded days, 
 The forest-field of Shiloh-- 
Over the field where April rain 
 Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain 
Through the pause of night 
That followed the Sunday fight 
 Around the church of Shiloh-- 
The church so lone, the log-built one, 
That echoed to many a parting groan 
 And natural prayer 
Of dying foemen mingled there-- 
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve-- 
 Fame or country least their care: 
(What like a bullet can undeceive!) 
 But now they lie low, 
While over them the swallows skim, 
 And all is hushed at Shiloh.

Banning Günter Grass

April 9th, 2012

Nobel Laureate Günter Grass has been declared persona non grata by the nation of Israel. The reason?

He wrote a poem.

Before going further, I suggest that you read it for yourselves HERE.

Personally, my only real criticism of the work is that (at the ripe age of 84) Mr Grass seems to have lost his artful touch. Perhaps its weakness lies in the translation.

As far as its substance is concerned, Grass has simply suggested that Israel's possession of an utterly opaque and never internationally inventoried nuclear arsenal "endangers an already fragile world peace." He has also decried the hypocrisy of their threatening an all-out war with Iran for maintaining the same refusal to allow transparency.

This is plainly rational. The response of Prime Minister Netanyahu's governing coalition is not. The Guardian reports:

"On Sunday, Israel's interior minister Eli Yishai used a law permitting a bar on entry to former Nazis to declare Grass persona non grata for his "attempt to fan the flames of hatred against the state of Israel and its people, and thus to advance the idea to which he publicly affiliated in his past donning of the SS uniform."

With all due respect, Mr. Grass was born on October 16th, 1927. When Germany invaded Poland he was eleven years old. The Nazi regime's desperate conscription of children as their fortunes of war turned is well documented. Indeed, the total of Grass' combat experience lasted from February to April of 1945.

Neither the ugly fact of Hitler's child victimization nor Grass' long support for Israel's right to exist has prevented some in the Netanyahu regime from painting a very different picture. The ultra-radical Yeshai went so far as to call for Grass' Nobel to "withdrawn."

The N.Y. Times reports on Grass' reaction:

"Two days after his poem appeared, Mr. Grass said in an interview that he had meant to focus his attack not so much on Israel as on the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"The man who damages Israel the most at the moment is in my opinion Netanyahu, and I should have included that in my poem," Mr. Grass said. "What is now an imminent threat is a risk without parallel — a preventive strike, a first strike against Iran, which would have terrible consequences."

The standard attack from Israel's American patrons on that country's critics is that 'they are the only free and Democratic nation in the Middle East.' How does barring the entry of a Nobel winner for the composition of a poem square with our supposed ideals?

Larry Durfner notes wryly:

"... in a way, he’s getting off easy; when ex-Mossad boss Meir Dagan started criticizing Netanyahu and Barak’s plan to bomb Iran, his diplomatic passport was revoked and some cabinet ministers demanded he be investigated for endangering national security.

So it doesn’t matter if Grass was in the Waffen SS (drafted at age 17 at the end of WWII). That makes him an easy target for Israel’s enforcers, but when you’re dealing with antiwar critics, any excuse will do: he’s a German, he’s a gentile, he’s a Jew who doesn’t live in Israel, he’s a fifth-column Jew living in Israel. Whatever. The point is to shut up criticism of Israel’s right to make war whenever and wherever it wants."

The American right is engaging in the same ugliness. Indeed, over at Pajamas Media, Benjamin Kerstein wrote recently that "all criticism of Israel not only can be but must be antisemitic." EMPHASIS HIS

And some wonder why I so rarely venture into this territory. 

A Poem For Easter

April 8th, 2012

Easter Week by Charles Kingsley

See the land, her Easter keeping,
Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices;
Fields and gardens hail the spring;
Shaughs and woodlands ring with voices,
While the wild birds build and sing.

You, to whom your Maker granted
Powers to those sweet birds unknown,
Use the craft by God implanted;
Use the reason not your own.
Here, while heaven and earth rejoices,
Each his Easter tribute bring–
Work of fingers, chant of voices,
Like the birds who build and sing.

A Poem For The Partisans

Jan 7th, 2012

"A Poison Tree" by William Blake 

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole.
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see,
My foe outstretchd beneath the tree.

A Poem For Sunday

Jan 1st, 2012

Lucy's Song
by Charles Dickens

How beautiful at eventide

To see the twilight shadows pale,
Steal o'er the landscape, far and wide,
O'er stream and meadow, mound and dale!

How soft is Nature's calm repose
When ev'ning skies their cool dews weep:
The gentlest wind more gently blows,
As if to soothe her in her sleep!

The gay morn breaks,
Mists roll away,
All Nature awakes
To glorious day.

In my breast alone
Dark shadows remain;
The peace it has known
It can never regain.

A Poem For Halloween

Oct 31st 2011

excerpted from "The Giaour"
by Lord Byron

But first, on earth as Vampire sent,

Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent:

Then ghastly haunt thy native place,

And suck the blood of all thy race:

There from thy daughter, sister, wife,

At midnight drain the stream of life;

Yet loathe the banquet 

By which perforce

Must feed thy livid living corpse:

Thy victims, ere they yet expire,

Shall know the demon for their sire,

As cursing thee, thou cursing them,

Thy flowers are wither'd on the stem...

Wet with thine own best blood shall drip

Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip;

Then stalking to thy sullen grave,

Go--and with Ghouls and Afrits rave;

Till these in horror shrink away

From spectre more accursed than they!

A Poem For Today

June 21st, 2011

It's great to work for nothing. Right? It's wonderful to hurt and watch your children not have enough. Right? You're lucky to struggle with buying food... or medicine. Right? It's great... once you get in.

It's Great When You Get In 

by Eugene O'Neill

"They told me the water was lovely,
That I ought to go for a swim,
The air was maybe a trifle cool,
"You won't mind it when you get in"
So I journeyed cheerfully beach-ward,
And nobody put me wise,
But everyone boosted my courage
With an earful of jovial lies.

"Anecdote For Fathers"

June 19th, 2011

Happy Father's Day. A poem to refelect upon by William Wordsworth.


Anecdote For Fathers (1798)

"I have a boy of five years old;
His face is fair and fresh to see;
His limbs are cast in beauty’s mould,
And dearly he loves me.