POETRY—FROST VS ELIOT—LES

This commentary is about what I think is a major difference between two of our best poets: T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost. One poet faces the crucial moment in his poetry; one poet tends not to face that moment. What led me to these thoughts was a Podcast wherein Randy Reno of the journal First Things interviews the contemporary poet Dana Gioia on an essay he wrote and published in First Things on poetry and Christianity wherein Gioia cited Frost’s Nothing Gold Can Stay as one of his favorite poems (I think; since it’s a Podcast—favorite, best? I’m not certain and can’t stop to find the reference; in any case Gioia really liked it.) Gioia’s choice of this poem struck me as a bit odd since it is another near perfect Frost poem; nevertheless, the poem also reveals to me a problem at the heart of Frost’s poetry: his tendency (as an excellent critic once said) “to hang fire” rather than explode. In other words he turns away from the ontological confrontation possible in the subject matter of the poem. In Woods the ontological confrontation is the being of the narrator with the being of the lovely, dark and deep woods [they are].

The summary and the three critical commentaries that follow [I deleted them and copied them on to a separate page] are clever in their discussion and somewhat helpful in pointing to details in the poem that should be noticed. The website where I found them is litcharts.com. The problem with the information on “litcharts.com” is that it almost totally bypasses the mind of the reader. In other words, take our shortcut and you won’t have to think about the poem at all. The site even offers a line by line analysis of the poem which you must sign up for in order to read. I didn’t. In Eliot’s poetry, or in any highly allusive poetry, a reference that reveals the meaning of obscure allusions could be helpful if it turned the reader back to the poem. The ontological confrontation between reader and poem [literary work] ought to be central. Does it help in Woods to know that the darkest evening of the year might be a reference to the Winter Solstice or does that reference knock the reader out of the poem so that he or she is now looking at the poem rather than from it. In my experience of the poem the superlative [darkest] accomplishes that task. The narrator is thinking about his situation the “betweenness” that at least one of the critics noticed.

The only things moving in the poem are the horse, the wind and the snow. People who insist on seeing the woods as oppressive miss, I think, the ontological nature and significance of the narrator’s insight. Something made him stop. The something that made him stop is the being of the woods, lovely, dark and deep, something the horse as animal could never appreciate but that any human might. Loveliness, beauty, can transform our lives. If the darkness of the woods is oppressive then the reader is caught between two “oppressives,” so to speak: perhaps the thought of eventual death on the one hand and those oppressive “duties and responsibilities” on the other, that critics are so eager to explain. So knuckle down, crack the whip, and get on with it. That’s not, however, the ontological experience from inside. It’s the loveliness that stops us; that’s where the mystery in life resides. We would follow the loveliness, see where it takes us, see what it means. Beauty is truth, truth beauty, /that is all ye know on earth /and all ye need to know. Keats saw it in the Ode; he entered the urn-life to confront what that work of art revealed. All breathing human passion far above. Then he emerged, like Coleridge’s Mariner, a sadder and a wiser man. Frost’s narrator doesn’t risk it. What does the experience of transcendental beauty mean in human life. That line in the poem catches us, makes us stop, almost transforms the poem. For a moment the poem leads us to glimpse the woods as Martin Buber’s THOU, as in I-Thou. The woods in this poem are not an IT. In the future is a world of I-IT, duties and responsibilities, but as long as life contains the possibility of such loveliness life will truly be worth living. But unlike Keats or Coleridge or Buber, the narrator avoids any further confrontation.

I think the same thing is true about Gold. The narrator simply hangs fire, he has the experience reflect back on himself rather than press forward to see what such beauty and transitoriness, such mutability, really mean. Look at the last three lines: Then leaf subsides to leaf. / So Eden sank to grief, / So dawn goes down to day. / Nothing gold can stay. Life is a diminution: subsides/sank/goes down; all here is in decline, emphasized by the last line which is one syllable short of the established trimeter pattern. In our past, as one of our theologians said, man, the human race, experienced an ontological tragedy. Eden sinking to grief is on the ontological level with everything else in the poem and that misses, really misses, the ontological nature of our being human, facing the Shadow of Death that falls across all human lives. Frost is exceedingly memorable—Nothing gold can stay / The woods are lovely dark and deep / Good fences make good neighbors! Ha! The narrator’s neighbor in that last line is seen for a moment like an old-stone savage armed—not Thou; however, if it weren’t for the neighbor [think of the obvious Biblical reference here] these two neighbors would not get together at all, presumably. Art is / ought to be transformational. Where are we at the end of a Frost poem, wonderful and memorable as his lines may be?

Then think about an Eliot poem such as Prufrock, or Ash Wednesday, or The Four Quartets, or The Hollow Men, or The Conversation Gallant or The Hippopotamus, etc.

Prufrock starts out in the world of I-IT and yet Prufrock’s cry of despair in the beginning and throughout is transformed into a lovely lyric at the end of the poem [Eric Thompson], and we just might understand why Prufrock can say that he has heard the mermaids singing, but they won’t sing to him. The rich, imaginative, mythic and real world of love is like the ocean; we live in it, it surrounds us, Thou is always possible if we are willing to take the chance, the risk, to seize the moment—I should have been a pair of ragged claws!

Or, For thine is / Life is / For thine is the: This is the way the world ends, / Not with a bang but a whimper. The Hollow Men live in an I-IT world and focus finally what it is that causes their dissociated sensibilities, but they see by the end of their confrontation with their condition the exact nature of the transformation that needs to take place in their lives in order for them to become real human beings, no longer scarecrows, nor Guy Fawkes’ effigies. In Frost we do not really leave the everydayness that frequently characterizes our lives. The buffered self prevails. With Eliot we begin in the world of the buffered self, but we do more than just catch a glimpse of the way out. As in The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock we actually get to experience the transformation.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Robert Frost

Mending Wall

SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing: 5

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made, 10

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go. 15

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them. 20

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

He is all pine and I am apple-orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. 25

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. 30

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down!" I could say "Elves" to him, 35

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there,

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me, 40

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock

[the narrator’s moment of recognition of who and what he really is, and his wonderful lyric song at the end]

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old … 120

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me. 125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

WRATH plus HAIKU - LES

The Temple’s desecration

Provoked our Lord to Wrath;

He snatched a whip and drove them out—

They took an evil path.

Into outer darkness,

Their backs a rich bloodbath,

Our Lord sent them, crying,

“Who’ll save us from His wrath?”

Two thousand years have come and gone—

Christ’s wrath must make us pause

To understand the principle:

Save wrath for a just cause!

Now for the seven deadly sins:

Pride, envy, anger—wrath!

Sloth, gluttony and avarice—

Save us, hot lust, for last!

HAIKU

Her shape says woman;

Her dark eyes, holy mystery—

Mary, full of Grace!

I crossed an old bridge;

Ancient Troll sleeping soundly.

Sunlight on grey stone.

Young man with camera

Traps setting sun in City—

Clouds in sky stay free!

[O Ian, what hast Thou wrought?]

An old silent pond…

Into the pond jumps a frog.

Splash! Silence again.

[Matsuo Basho. Quoted by Someone]

Blue sky above me.

White cumulus cloud drifts by.

The sun hides his face.

Out my window I

See green leaves, grey bark, blue patch.

Night falls. All is dark.

Schuster under my bed,

Hiding from Ghosts or Demons.

Growling softly, low.

Pilgrim, King, Monarch—

Black and orange butterfly rests.

Mexico is far.

The lightning bugs blink.

High in the dark sky, the tree

Incandescent glows.

Night! Each firefly blinks.

The dark meadow, streaming lights,

Rising to touch stars.

FAIRYTALE: CHAPTER 1 - LES

Chapter 1

The Prince, the Bird, and the Magic Mirror

“What are you doing?” Asked the Voice from the shadow in the corner of the room.

“Writing a story,” answered the Prince, who was surprised at the Voice since there was no one else in his room. He pushed his chair back from the table and turned his head to look at the shadow in the corner of the room. There was nothing there but the shadow and a little dust where the corner of the room had not been properly swept.

“What kind of story?“ said the shadow.

“Well, a fairytale, if you must know. Is there Someone here?”

“Not yet,” said the Voice. “Have you begun the story with Once upon a time?”

“No, I haven’t. Not all fairytales begin that way.”

“Do you have a Dragon to slay? A Princess to rescue? A Hero to rescue her?” The Voice persisted.

“I’m working on the characters. This story will have a small golden Dragon who will be a help to the Hero, not something to kill! This Dragon breathes fire but is a good Dragon. His name is Pontiffax.”

“Okay, but there must be an Evil of some sort or there can’t be a story.”

“I know that,” said the Prince. “The Evil in this story is Nothing, a shadowy absence of being, an emptiness where there ought to something. A hole in existence, so to speak.”

The Voice remained silent for a short while. The Prince turned back to his desk and picked up his pen. The paper on top of his desk was blank. He put the pen back down for Nothing came to him.

The corner of the room laughed. “That’s funny,” said the Voice. “Perhaps you should write a comedy. You seem to be stuck already with your fairytale. Is your story perhaps about you and this Princess?”

“It might be,” muttered the Prince.

“So.” Said the Voice. “You aren’t really writing a story. You are a character in someone else’s story? In fact, we both are, aren’t we?”

“That could be, for I just found myself at this table with pen and paper, sort of. And there you were behind me, a disembodied Voice coming from a shadow in the corner of this odd room.”

“Why odd?”

“Haven’t you noticed? There are no doors, only a trapdoor in the floor. The room is a box, high in a castle tower, with three windows, one in each of the north, south, and west walls. The east wall contains a mirror. Usually, in this kind of story, the mirror is the way either in or out.” The Prince walked over to the long mirror. “So far it only reflects myself and this room.” As the Prince gazed at the mirror, his image faded and was replaced by a scene of blue sky with white clouds. The Prince touched the mirror’s surface. It was solid. Then the scene changed to a meadow of green grass and yellow flowers. He touched the bottom of the mirror with his foot. Still solid. That image faded and became that of a young woman in a room similar to his own.

The woman had raven black hair down over her shoulders and intense green eyes that were looking at him. Her face was a lovely, classic beauty, with high cheekbones, that slightly tapered down to a gently rounded chin. The Prince touched the mirror and his hand disappeared. He tried his foot and this time it too disappeared into the mirror’s reality. “Can you hear me?” Asked the Prince of the young woman of the intense blue eyes and lovely face. “May I join you?”

The woman smiled and answered “yes.” The Prince stepped into the mirror and into the room where the young woman stood. “Wait for me,” said the shadow Voice and something dark fluttered through the mirror after the Prince. The Voice was now coming from a crow that landed in the woman’s room on the floor next to the Prince.

The woman yelped and stepped back. “Are you a sorcerer?” She asked. “And is that your familiar?”

“No. Just your humble servant, Godric, my lady. The bird seems to be my companion, though in my room he was just a talking shadow in a corner. A disembodied Voice.”

The bird hopped onto a table in the woman’s room, cocked his head to look at the Prince and the woman. “Do you two know one another?” he asked. “If not, shouldn’t we get acquainted, introduce ourselves, so to speak. My name’s Philip. And I was wondering, did your eyes just change color, from green to blue?”

The woman looked at the crow. “I’m Elesandra, a Princess in this land of Ardor. And my eyes, that happens sometimes. When I get angry, they turn red, sometimes. My father is King here, King Andor. And very strict. Especially when it comes to visits by young men who come as suitors. Perhaps you two should return to your room before he finds you here.”

“But we have just met,” said the Prince. “I haven’t even given you my name yet. It’s Godric, incidentally. My father is King Bolt of Nodd. Might I qualify as a suitor, my Princess?” Her eyes flashed back to green as she considered. She did not seem amazed by the talking crow.

The bird coughed, cleared his throat and laughed. “We better try to get back, Prince of Nodd. If her father finds you here you’re likely to be fish bait,” he added knowingly.

“All right,” said the Prince. “You are a wise bird, or something, I suppose.” He turned to the Princess. “You never answered me, my Lady. May I find you and call as a suitor?”

“Yes,” she said, after more hesitation. “But leave now, if you can. I hear footsteps on the stairs.”

He smiled, took her hand and kissed it. He turned, saw his room in her mirror and stepped back through, followed by Philip. When he turned to look, Elesandra and room had vanished. All he saw in the mirror was his own reflection. The Voice however had stayed in the bird.

“So, Philip, are you going to help me find the land of Ardor and the lovely Princess?” the Prince jokingly asked.

“Of course, your Royalness, if you think I can help. That’s what wise creatures do in fairytales, but how do we get out of this room? There’s no door.”

“We use the magic mirror or we use the trapdoor in the floor. How do you think I got up here?”

Philip cocked his head and looked up at the Prince. “You said you just found yourself here. Nevertheless! Let’s use the mirror, if we are able. I don’t like trapdoors!”

Godric looked into the mirror, saw himself in his leather jacket and wavy dark hair looking back at his face, square jawed and ruggedly handsome. Again the scene shifted to the blue sky and the green flowery meadow. In the distance he saw a dark woods. “There always has to be a dark woods,” he said to Philip. “I would have thought of that for my story.”

“Can’t have a fairytale without them, apparently. See if we can get out that way.”

They could and did.

THE UNICORN: PART 2–LES

1. The Woman

In the green meadow with the bright yellow flowers, I met the young woman, and I followed her toward the gleaming white City in the distance. Around her neck, I had noticed, she wore a silver pendant shaped like a six-pointed star, a Star of David, I thought. I wondered if she were Jewish. I caught up with her so that we could walk side by side. I also noticed that we were following a path of sorts that kept us from trodding on the lovely flowers. I looked over at her and asked her what her name was. Rachel, she replied, smiling.

He walked through the meadow

On a sultry summer’s day,

With a dark-haired Jewish woman,

Custodian of the Way.

2. The Flower

“Do the flowers also have a name?” I asked since I had never seen yellow flowers like these before. My experience was mostly with daffodils in the spring time and chrysanthemums in the fall.

“They do,” she replied. “They are called amaranthus, that’s the genus, I think. The single flower is an amaranth.” She reached down and picked one of the flowers, held it close to my face where I could experience its fragrance, then put it in her dark hair where it seemed to take on a life of its own. With the flower in her hair and her in the western sunlight, she looked as if she had acquired a halo. “The leaves are actually edible,” she added, looking down at the path.

She picked a golden blossom

And fixed it in her hair;

He saw her as an Angel,

Ethereal and rare.

3. The Unicorn

As we neared the small City of shining splendor, she took my hand. I thought I felt an electric spark between us as our hands touched, but it was probably just wishful thinking on my part. Or maybe not. I was hopeful.

She looked over at me; she was about an inch or so shorter than my five foot ten, putting us on equal footing, more or less, I chuckled to myself. At this point in my life, I had no real idea how I had gotten into the woods or what I was doing in this meadow with this lovely woman. “What City is this?” I asked Rachel. “And what might I expect there? You also knew there was a Unicorn in the woods. I thought unicorns were nonexistent mythological beasts or at least extinct since they were supposed to have missed the Ark.” I let my last comment slide into a question.

“Well, Jacob, you are a little mistaken. There is only one Unicorn and you were fortunate to have seen him. Not many do.”

Unicorns are magical creatures,

But only one is known to be.

Some say he’s the incarnation

Of the Holy One and Three.

4. The Man

“How do you know my name?” I asked. “I don’t remember telling you.”

“No, you haven’t told me, though I might say that it’s written on your forehead and broadcast in your smile. And everyone who knows you calls you Jake. As for the City it’s called Dominion. After the Angel that protects it.”

Angels and Unicorns—

A town called Dominion:

Next we’ll seek the Wizard,

But that’s just my fool opinion!

5. The City

We had reached the outskirts of Dominion when Rachel stopped and turned toward me, an unreadable expression on her face and kindness in her lovely green eyes. Her blue dress rustled slightly about her legs in the gentle breeze blowing through the City. There were shops of various kinds lining each side of the main street, offering for sale anything a traveler might need. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “I must leave you for a time and a time and a half. Stay on the central way, down the main street. Buy what you need.” Here she handed me a wallet containing five or six bills of curious denomination. “When you reach the white building at the end of the street, climb the steps and enter. You will know what to do when you are in there.”

Why must you leave, I started to ask when there was an electric charge and a light shimmering in the air around her and she just vanished, disappeared in the blink of an eye, was consumed by the light that hurt my eyes as I watched, astonished.

Supernatural excitement abounds,

The lady in blue was whisked away;

The man in the street felt lost and alone,

Deserted, bereft, heartsick, on the Way.

6. The Creature

While I suffered the loss of Rachel, I understood that the only thing to do was follow her instructions. At least, I thought, there shouldn’t be any wild beasts here. That was when I saw down the alleyway between two shops on my left, a large grey Creature that looked too much like a wolf for comfort. Stay on the main street, she said, and I shall prosper. Well, she didn’t say that exactly and so far I hadn’t seen an Angel. I saw the beast disappear behind the nearest shop on the left. I hoped it wasn’t stalking me, for I had had enough of that today, and besides, night was coming on, I thought, as I saw the sun sinking lower in the west toward the roofs of the shops. I need to get to the building at the end of the street. Then I smelled a delicious aroma of grilled meat coming from the nearest building on the left. Home cooking, the sign in the window said.

Unless there’s a wolf deep in the shadows,

Life in the City proceeds at a pace;

Keep a lookout for the beast who is hungry,

Running for dear life is not a disgrace.

7. The Restaurant

I entered the little restaurant of the great smells, sat down in a booth on the far wall to the right. A large woman with red hair and wearing a brown apron over her dress, with her name stitched over her heart, approached me with a menu and notepad in her hand. She gave me the menu and asked if I needed a moment. I glanced at the menu, saw that it was an list of various kinds of omelets. “Ah,“ I said looking up at her. “I’ll have the large, five-egg cheese and sautéed onion omelet with home fries and ketchup, a large rasher of crispy bacon, a large orange juice and a tall glass of water.” The name, stitched on her apron, said “Grace.” She smiled down at me, a twinkle in her eyes, and said, “Coming up. I’ll bring the drinks directly.”

“Thank you,” I replied, as she turned to go; “you’re welcome,” floated back over her moving shoulders.

I hadn’t eaten anything all day and I was hungry. The medium omelet was made with three eggs but I went large, hoping I had enough currency to pay for all the food. I could always wash dishes, I thought, as Grace returned with the two drinks.

Good food will nourish a fine healthy body,

As well as nourish a right-centered soul;

Pleasure ignored in the act of eating

Will in the long run exact a grim toll.

8. The Knife

The omelet was excellent, I thought, as I rose to pay the check; I didn’t miss the steak I had smelled before entering the cozy restaurant. I handed the red-haired waitress the three bills required for the food and gave her an extra bill for her good and pleasant service.

“Thank you,” she said, as I made for the door, and then she added a hearty, “Stay safe,” as I walked out into the street. I turned right and headed toward the white building about a half a block farther. I passed a shoe shop, a dress shop, something that looked like a hardware store, only that one of its many tools seemed to be weapons. I entered the shop, thinking that I would see if my one remaining bill could get me a knife of some sort. I found a case filled with knives of varying sizes and shapes. A young man of indiscernible age, dressed in black slacks and a green pullover shirt with a chest pocket, came from the back of the store and asked if he could help me. I pointed to a five inch, black-handled knife with a flip-out blade and asked him how much it cost. When he said five credits, I inwardly groaned, but I thought in good faith I ought to check the wallet Rachel had given me. When I pulled it from a back pocket and opened it, I found that there were exactly five bills there, presumably, just as when Rachel had given it to me. I handed the young man the bills and took the knife. It was beautiful.

Weapons are willful, they’re cutting edge tools,

Sharp and effective, especially when thrown;

Best keep it folded and hidden away,

Lest you discover it’s discord you’ve sown.

9. The Street

Back on the City street, I passed a bakery. Through the window I saw slightly tilted shelves containing savory-looking loaves of fresh bread, as well as a variety of sweet rolls, some with frostings of varying colors and textures. Though I was no longer hungry, I was tempted to enter, since the smells coming from the shop were almost magically enticing. Nevertheless, I hurried on past, and past a print shop this side of the white building, a temple or church, I decided, though there were no signs outside to indicate which. In any case I started up the three steps leading to the heavy church doors. As I put my foot on the first step, I heard a deep growl, coming from my left side. I glanced over and saw the coming towards me. I started to reach for the knife as I dashed up the two remaining steps; instead, I grabbed the metal door handle and pulled. Thankfully, it opened just as the large wolf leaped for my back.

Every City has a church, some have two or three;

If, as many people say, there’s only One true God,

Why would a City have so many churches?

You’d think City people might find that real odd.

10. The Church

As I stumbled inside the dark of the Church, I was surprised to discover that the claws of the Wolf had raked my back. The pain was for the moment so intense that I immediately sank to the carpeted floor of the Church and passed out.

When I awoke my back burned from the claws of the Wolf, but there was intense sunlight streaming through the stained glass at the front of the Church. I seemed to have been unconscious the entire night.

The light at the front was a rich array of myriad colors surrounding a central image of a large white Unicorn, much like the one I had glimpsed in the woods. I struggled to my feet. Rachel was coming down the central aisle. She was wearing a red dress this time that fell just below her knees. She was no longer wearing the silver six-pointed Star of David. Instead she had on a golden chain with a circular gold pendant. The image on it was that of a Unicorn.

“Good morning, Jake” she greeted me with a broad smile. She no longer had the yellow flower in her dark hair but there was still a luminescence about her as if she were herself an angelic being. “I’m sorry you were hurt getting here, but I can heal you if you will take my hand,” she continued, offering me her hand.

“I believe you,” I said taking her hand in mine. Immediately the pain in my back disappeared and a fantastic series of images began to play out in my mind. The last was that of a bright Golden Gate with an intense, shining white light behind it. Still holding her hand I stepped through.

Images in the mind are real sometimes,

Sometimes again they are not.

Gates are made to open and close,

A truth some might have forgot.

ZEN: TEA ANYONE?

[Consider these a gift: especially #6 and #8 and Seymour Glass, I think, knew the sound of one hand clapping.]

From: Zen Flesh and Zen Bones: 101 ZEN STORIES Transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps.

“THESE stories were transcribed into English from a book called the Shaseki-shu (Collection of Stone and Sand), written late in the thirteenth century by the Japanese Zen teacher Muju (the “non-dweller”), and from anecdotes of Zen monks taken from various books published in Japan around the turn of the present century.

For Orientals, more interested in being than in busyness, the self-discovered man has been the most worthy of respect. Such a man proposes to open his consciousness just as the Buddha did.

These are stories about such self-discoveries.“

1. A Cup of Tea

NAN-IN, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!” “Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

2. Is That So?

THE ZEN MASTER Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin. In great anger the parents went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.

A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth—that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket. The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again. Hakuin was willing.

In yielding the child, all he said was: “Is that so?” (3)

3. Obedience

THE MASTER Bankei’s talks were attended not only by Zen students but by persons of all ranks and sects. He never quoted sutras nor indulged in scholastic dissertations. Instead, his words were spoken directly from his heart to the hearts of his listeners.

His large audiences angered a priest of the Nichiren sect because the adherents had left to hear about Zen. The self-centered Nichiren priest came to the temple, determined to debate with Bankei. “Hey, Zen teacher!” he called out. “Wait a minute. Whoever respects you will obey what you say, but a man like myself does not respect you. Can you make me obey you?”

“Come up beside me and I will show you,” said Bankei. Proudly the priest pushed his way through the crowd to the teacher. Bankei smiled. “Come over to my left side.” The priest obeyed. “No,” said Bankei, “we may talk better if you are on the right side. Step over here.” The priest proudly stepped over to the right. “You see,” observed Bankei, “you are obeying me and I think you are a very gentle person. Now sit down and listen.” (4)

4. No Loving-Kindness

THERE WAS an old woman in China who had supported a monk for over twenty years. She had built a little hut for him and fed him while he was meditating. Finally she wondered just what progress he had made in all this time. To find out, she obtained the help of a girl rich in desire. “Go and embrace him,” she told her, “and then ask him suddenly: ‘What now?’”

The girl called upon the monk and without much ado caressed him, asking him what he was going to do about it.

“An old tree grows on a cold rock in winter,” replied the monk somewhat poetically. “Nowhere is there any warmth.” The girl returned and related what he had said.

“To think I fed that fellow for twenty years!” exclaimed the old woman in anger. “He showed no consideration for your need, no disposition to explain your condition. He need not have responded to passion, but at least he should have evidenced some compassion.” She at once went to the hut of the monk and burned it down. (6)

5. The Moon Cannot Be Stolen

RYOKAN, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal. Ryokan returned and caught him. “You may have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.”

The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. Ryokan sat naked, watching the moon. “Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could give him this beautiful moon.” (9)

6. Muddy Road

TANZAN AND EKIDO were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection. “Come on, girl,” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud.

Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?

” “I left the girl there,” said Tanzan. “Are you still carrying her?” (14)

7. Not Far from Buddhahood

A UNIVERSITY STUDENT while visiting Gasan asked him: “Have you ever read the Christian Bible?” “No, read it to me,” said Gasan. The student opened the Bible and read from St. Matthew: “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin, and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these....Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.”

Gasan said: “Whoever uttered those words I consider an enlightened man.” The student continued reading: “Ask and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.”

Gasan remarked: “That is excellent. Whoever said that is not far from Buddha-hood.” (16)

8. A Parable BUDDHA TOLD a parable in a sutra: A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted! (18)

9. The Sound of One Hand

THE MASTER of Kennin temple was Mokurai, Silent Thunder. He had a little protege named Toyo who was only twelve years old. Toyo saw the older disciples visit the master’s room each morning and evening to receive instruction in sanzen or personal guidance in which they were given koans to stop mind-wandering.

Toyo wished to do sanzen also. “Wait a while,” said Mokurai. “You are too young.” But the child insisted, so the teacher finally consented. In the evening little Toyo went at the proper time to the threshold of Mokurai’s sanzen room. He struck the gong to announce his presence, bowed respectfully three times outside the door, and went to sit before the master in respectful silence.

“You can hear the sound of two hands when they clap together,” said Mokurai. “Now show me the sound of one hand.”

Toyo bowed and went to his room to consider this problem. From his window he could hear the music of the geishas. “Ah, I have it!” he proclaimed. The next evening, when his teacher asked him to illustrate the sound of one hand, Toyo began to play the music of the geishas.

“No, no,” said Mokurai. “That will never do. That is not the sound of one hand. You’ve not got it at all.”

Thinking that such music might interrupt, Toyo moved his abode to a quiet place. He meditated again. “What can the sound of one hand be?” He happened to hear some water dripping. “I have it,” imagined Toyo. When he next appeared before his teacher, Toyo imitated dripping water.

“What is that?” asked Mokurai. “That is the sound of dripping water, but not the sound of one hand. Try again.” In vain Toyo meditated to hear the sound of one hand. He heard the sighing of the wind. But the sound was rejected. He heard the cry of an owl. This also was refused. The sound of one hand was not the locusts. For more than ten times Toyo visited Mokurai with different sounds. All were wrong.

For almost a year he pondered what the sound of one hand might be. At last little Toyo entered true meditation and transcended all sounds. “I could collect no more,” he explained later, “so I reached the soundless sound.”

Toyo had realized the sound of one hand. (21)

10. Reciting Sutras

A FARMER requested a Tendai priest to recite sutras for his wife, who had died. After the recitation was over the farmer asked: “Do you think my wife will gain merit from this?”

“Not only your wife, but all sentient beings will benefit from the recitation of sutras,” answered the priest.

“If you say all sentient beings will benefit,” said the farmer, “my wife may be very weak and others will take advantage of her, getting the benefit she should have. So please recite sutras just for her.”

The priest explained that it was the desire of a Buddhist to offer blessings and wish merit for every living being.

“That is a fine teaching,” concluded the farmer, “but please make one exception. I have a neighbor who is rough and mean to me. Just exclude him from all those sentient beings.” (24)

11. 25. Three Days More

SUIWO THE DISCIPLE of Hakuin, was a good teacher. During one summer seclusion period, a pupil came to him from a southern island of Japan. Suiwo gave him the problem: “Hear the sound of one hand.” The pupil remained three years but could not pass this test.

One night he came in tears to Suiwo. “I must return south in shame and embarrassment,” he said, “for I cannot solve my problem.” “Wait one week more and meditate constantly,” advised Suiwo. Still no enlightenment came to the pupil.

“Try for another week,” said Suiwo. The pupil obeyed, but in vain. “Still another week.” Yet this was of no avail. In despair the student begged to be released, but Suiwo requested another meditation of five days. They were without result.

Then he said: “Meditate for three days longer, then if you fail to attain enlightenment, you had better kill yourself.” On the second day the pupil was enlightened. (25)

12. Trading Dialogue for Lodging

PROVIDED HE MAKES and wins an argument about Buddhism with those who live there, any wandering monk can remain in a Zen temple. If he is defeated, he has to move on.

In a temple in the northern part of Japan two brother monks were dwelling together. The elder one was learned, but the younger one was stupid and had but one eye.

A wandering monk came and asked for lodging, properly challenging them to a debate about the sublime teaching. The elder brother, tired that day from much studying, told the younger one to take his place. “Go and request the dialogue in silence,” he cautioned. So the young monk and the stranger went to the shrine and sat down.

Shortly afterwards the traveler rose and went in to the elder brother and said: “Your young brother is a wonderful fellow. He defeated me.”

“Relate the dialogue to me,” said the elder one.

“Well,” explained the traveler, “first I held up one finger, representing Buddha, the enlightened one. So he held up two fingers, signifying Buddha and his teaching. I held up three fingers, representing Buddha, his teaching, and his followers, living the harmonious life. Then he shook his clenched fist in my face, indicating that all three come from one realization. Thus he won and so I have no right to remain here.” With this, the traveler left.

“Where is that fellow?” asked the younger one, running in to his elder brother.

“I understand you won the debate.” “Won nothing. I’m going to beat him up.” “Tell me the subject of the debate,” asked the elder one. “Why, the minute he saw me he held up one finger, insulting me by insinuating that I have only one eye. Since he was a stranger I thought I would be polite to him, so I held up two fingers, congratulating him that he has two eyes. Then the impolite wretch held up three fingers, suggesting that between us we only have three eyes. So I got mad and started to punch him, but he ran out and that ended it!” (26)

13. The Voice of Happiness

AFTER BANKEI had passed away, a blind man who lived near the master’s temple told a friend: “Since I am blind, I cannot watch a person’s face, so I must judge his character by the sound of his voice. Ordinarily when I hear someone congratulate another upon his happiness or success, I also hear a secret tone of envy. When condolence is expressed for the misfortune of another, I hear pleasure and satisfaction, as if the one condoling was really glad there was something left to gain in his own world.

“In all my experience, however, Bankei’s voice was always sincere. Whenever he expressed happiness, I heard nothing but happiness, and whenever he expressed sorrow, sorrow was all I heard.” (27)

14. Open Your Own Treasure House

DAIJU VISITED the master Baso in China. Baso asked: “What do you seek?” “Enlightenment,” replied Daiju. “You have your own treasure house. Why do you search outside?” Baso asked. Daiju inquired: “Where is my treasure house?” Baso answered: “What you are asking is your treasure house.” Daiju was enlightened! Ever after he urged his friends: “Open your own treasure house and use those treasures.” (28)

15. No Water, No Moon WHEN THE NUN Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time. At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was set free! In commemoration, she wrote a poem: In this way and that I tried to save the old pail Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break Until at last the bottom fell out. No more water in the pail! No more moon in the water! (29)

16. Calling Card KEICHU, THE GREAT Zen teacher of the Meiji era, was the head of Tofuku, a cathedral in Kyoto. One day the governor of Kyoto called upon him for the first time. His attendant presented the card of the governor, which read: Kitagaki, Governor of Kyoto. “I have no business with such a fellow,” said Keichu to his attendant. “Tell him to get out of here.” The attendant carried the card back with apologies. “That was my error,” said the governor, and with a pencil he scratched out the words Governor of Kyoto. “Ask your teacher again.” “Oh, is that Kitagaki?” exclaimed the teacher when he saw the card. “I want to see that fellow.” (30)

17. Everything Is Best

WHEN BANZAN was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer. “Give me the best piece of meat you have,” said the customer. “Everything in my shop is the best,” replied the butcher. “You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best.” At these words Banzan became enlightened. (31)

18. Inch Time Foot Gem

A LORD ASKED Takuan, a Zen teacher, to suggest how he might pass the time. He felt his days very long attending his office and sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others. Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man:

Not twice this day

Inch time foot gem.

This day will not come again.

Each minute is worth a priceless gem. (32)

19. In Dreamland

“OUR SCHOOLMASTER used to take a nap every afternoon,” related a disciple of Soyen Shaku. “We children asked him why he did it and he told us: ‘I go to dreamland to meet the old sages just as Confucius did.’ When Confucius slept, he would dream of ancient sages and later tell his followers about them.

“It was extremely hot one day so some of us took a nap. Our schoolmaster scolded us. ‘We went to dream-land to meet the ancient sages the same as Confucius did,’ we explained. ‘What was the message from those sages?’ our schoolmaster demanded.

One of us replied: ‘We went to dreamland and met the sages and asked them if our schoolmaster came there every afternoon, but they said they had never seen any such fellow.’”  (40)

20. Joshes Zen

JOSHU BEGAN the study of Zen when he was sixty years old and continued until he was eighty, when he realized Zen. He taught from the age of eighty until he was one hundred and twenty. A student once asked him: “If I haven’t anything in my mind, what shall I do?” Joshu replied: “Throw it out.” “But if I haven’t anything, how can I throw it out?” continued the questioner. “Well,” said Joshu, “then carry it out.”  (41)

21. The Dead Man’s Answer

WHEN MAMIYA, who later became a well-known preacher, went to a teacher for personal guidance, he was asked to explain the sound of one hand. Mamiya concentrated upon what the sound of one hand might be.

“You are not working hard enough,” his teacher told him. “You are too attached to food, wealth, things, and that sound. It would be better if you died. That would solve the problem.”

The next time Mamiya appeared before his teacher he was again asked what he had to show regarding the sound of one hand. Mamiya at once fell over as if he were dead. “You are dead all right,” observed the teacher. “But how about that sound?” “I haven’t solved that yet,” replied Mamiya, looking up.

“Dead men do not speak,” said the teacher. “Get out!” (42)

 22. The Thief Who Became a Disciple

ONE EVENING as Shichiri Kojun was reciting sutras a thief with a sharp sword entered, demanding either his money or his life. Shichiri told him: “Do not disturb me. You can find the money in that drawer.” Then he resumed his recitation.

A little while afterwards he stopped and called: “Don’t take it all. I need some to pay taxes with tomorrow.” The intruder gathered up most of the money and started to leave. “Thank a person when you receive a gift,” Shichiri added. The man thanked him and made off.

A few days afterwards the fellow was caught and confessed, among others, the offence against Shichiri. When Shichiri was called as a witness he said: “This man is no thief, at least as far as I am concerned. I gave him the money and he thanked me for it.” After he had finished his prison term, the man went to Shichiri and became his disciple.  (44)

23. Right & Wrong

WHEN BANKEI held his seclusion-weeks of meditation, pupils from many parts of Japan came to attend. During one of these gatherings a pupil was caught stealing. The matter was reported to Bankei with the request that the culprit be expelled. Bankei ignored the case.

Later the pupil was caught in a similar act, and again Bankei disregarded the matter. This angered the other pupils, who drew up a petition asking for the dismissal of the thief, stating that otherwise they would leave in a body.

When Bankei had read the petition he called everyone before him. “You are wise brothers,” he told them. “You know what is right and what is not right. You may go somewhere else to study if you wish, but this poor brother does not even know right from wrong. Who will teach him if I do not? I am going to keep him here even if all the rest of you leave.”

A torrent of tears cleansed the face of the brother who had stolen. All desire to steal had vanished. (45)

24. Black-Nosed Buddha

A NUN WHO was searching for enlightenment made a statue of Buddha and covered it with gold leaf. Wherever she went she carried this golden Buddha with her. Years passed and, still carrying her Buddha, the nun came to live in a small temple in a country where there were many Buddhas, each one with its own particular shrine.

The nun wished to burn incense before her golden Buddha. Not liking the idea of the perfume straying to the others, she devised a funnel through which the smoke would ascend only to her statue. This blackened the nose of the golden Buddha, making it especially ugly. (49)

25. (57) The Gates of Paradise

A SOLDIER NAMED Nobushige came to Hakuin, and asked: “Is there really a paradise and a hell?” “Who are you?” inquired Hakuin. “I am a samurai,” the warrior replied. “You, a soldier!” exclaimed Hakuin. “What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar.” Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued: “So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head.” As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: “Here open the gates of hell!” At these words the samurai, perceiving the master’s discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed. “Here open the gates of paradise,” said Hakuin. 

26. (58). Arresting the Stone Buddha

A MERCHANT bearing fifty rolls of cotton goods on his shoulders stopped to rest from the heat of the day beneath a shelter where a large stone Buddha was standing. There he fell asleep, and when he awoke his goods had disappeared. He immediately reported the matter to the police. A judge named O-oka opened court to investigate. “That stone Buddha must have stolen the goods,” concluded the judge. “He is supposed to care for the welfare of the people, but he has failed to perform his holy duty. Arrest him.” The police arrested the stone Buddha and carried it into the court. A noisy crowd followed the statue, curious to learn what kind of a sentence the judge was about to impose. When O-oka appeared on the bench he rebuked the boisterous audience. “What right have you people to appear before the court laughing and joking in this manner? You are in contempt of court and subject to a fine and imprisonment.” The people hastened to apologize. “I shall have to impose a fine on you,” said the judge, “but I will remit it provided each one of you brings one roll of cotton goods to the court within three days. Anyone failing to do this will be arrested.” One of the rolls of cloth that the people brought was quickly recognized by the merchant as his own, and thus the thief was easily discovered. The merchant recovered his goods, and the cotton rolls were returned to the people.

 27. (62). In the Hands of Destiny A GREAT JAPANESE warrior named Nobunaga decided to attack the enemy although he had only one-tenth the number of men the opposition commanded. He knew that he would win, but his soldiers were in doubt. On the way he stopped at a Shinto shrine and told his men: “After I visit the shrine I will toss a coin. If heads comes, we will win; if tails, we will lose. Destiny holds us in her hand.” Nobunaga entered the shrine and offered a silent prayer. He came forth and tossed a coin. Heads appeared. His soldiers were so eager to fight that they won their battle easily. “No one can change the hand of destiny,” his attendant told him after the battle. “Indeed not,” said Nobunaga, showing a coin that had been doubled, with heads facing either way.

 28. (71). Learning To Be Silent

THE PUPILS of the Tendai school used to study meditation before Zen entered Japan. Four of them who were intimate friends promised one another to observe seven days of silence. On the first day all were silent. Their meditation had begun auspiciously, but when night came and the oil lamps were growing dim one of the pupils could not help exclaiming to a servant: “Fix those lamps.” The second pupil was surprised to hear the first one talk. “We are not supposed to say a word,” he remarked. “You two are stupid. Why did you talk?” asked the third. “I am the only one who has not talked,” concluded the fourth pupil.

29. (72). The Blockhead Lord

TWO ZEN TEACHERS, Daigu and Gudo, were invited to visit a lord. Upon arriving, Gudo said to the lord: “You are wise by nature and have an inborn ability to learn Zen.” “Nonsense,” said Daigu. “Why do you flatter this blockhead? He may be a lord, but he doesn’t know anything of Zen.” So, instead of building a temple for Gudo, the lord built it for Daigu and studied Zen with him.

30.  (76) The Stone Mind

HOGEN, A CHINESE Zen teacher, lived alone in a small temple in the country. One day four traveling monks appeared and asked if they might make a fire in his yard to warm themselves. While they were building the fire, Hogen heard them arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and said: “There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?” One of the monks replied: “From the Buddhist viewpoint everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind.” “Your head must feel very heavy,” observed Hogen, “if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind.”

31.  (82). Nothing Exists

YAMAOKA TESSHU, AS a young student of Zen, visited one master after another. He called upon Dokuon of Shokoku. Desiring to show his attainment, he said: “The mind, Buddha, and sentient beings, after all, do not exist. The true nature of phenomena is emptiness. There is no realization, no delusion, no sage, no mediocrity. There is no giving and nothing to be received.”

Dokuon, who was smoking quietly, said nothing. Suddenly he whacked Yamaoka with his bamboo pipe. This made the youth quite angry. “If nothing exists,” inquired Dokuon, “where did this anger come from?”

32.  (88). How To Write a Chinese Poem

A WELL-KNOWN Japanese poet was asked how to compose a Chinese poem. “The usual Chinese poem is four lines,” he explained. “The first line contains the initial phase; the second line, the continuation of that phase; the third line turns from this subject and begins a new one; and the fourth line brings the first three lines together. A popular Japanese song illustrates this: Two daughters of a silk merchant live in Kyoto. The elder is twenty, the younger, eighteen. A soldier may kill with his sword, But these girls slay men with their eyes.”

33.  (97) Teaching the Ultimate IN EARLY TIMES in Japan, bamboo-and-paper lanterns were used with candles inside. A blind man, visiting a friend one night, was offered a lantern to carry home with him. “I do not need a lantern,” he said. “Darkness or light is all the same to me.” “I know you do not need a lantern to find your way,” his friend replied,” but if you don’t have one, someone else may run into you. So you must take it.” The blind man started off with the lantern and before he had walked very far someone ran squarely into him. “Look out where you are going!” he exclaimed to the stranger. “Can’t you see this lantern?” “Your candle has burned out, brother,” replied the stranger.

From: Zen Flesh and Zen Bones: 101 ZEN STORIES Transcribed by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps.

THE UNICORN: PART 1 - LES

1. Lost

Like Dante I had entered the dark woods unaware. I was hungry, tired and thirsty, and I searched for a stream or a path or even a bit of a clearing. It was difficult to see in the woods, but I kept moving. At last I found a path, an animal trail probably. I decided to follow it, though I didn’t know what animals had made the trail.

Follow the trail you have stumbled upon,

Until you understand the way;

What do seek in the dark woods?

If all seems lost try to pray.

2. A Clearing

As I stumbled along the animal trail, I discovered a little clearing ahead. There was a large boulder on one side, a perfect place for resting, I thought. The boulder was waist high with a flat surface on one side. I walked over to it and sat down. The rock felt cold through my trousers, though I stayed on it and looked around.

Once you have found a clearing,

Rest, but don’t take your ease.

The woods are dark, night is falling;

Listen for the wind in the trees.

3. Signs

As I sat on the rock and surveyed the clearing, I saw a set of animal prints on the grass off to the side. The prints looked as though they were made by a four-footed animal, something like a horse perhaps as the prints were deep and wide. A horse in the woods? I thought. How very unlikely. Suddenly, however, I was aware of a light breeze soughing through the leaves of the trees around me. It sounded almost like a person sighing.

Wind in the trees, a soft gentle sighing,

Like a person was present somehow.

Think not of past or future happenings;

Attend to the moment that’s now.

4. A Glimpse

I looked around rather wildly, feeling frightened and terribly alone. At that exact moment, as I looked into the trees where the trail and animal prints seemed to lead, and perhaps disappear, I saw movement and a flash of white. Some kind of animal, but moving away from me. Whatever it was stopped among the trees and appeared to be waiting for something. I got up and stood in front of the boulder.

Not for nothing we glimpse it,

Not for nothing we see;

Follow the hints you’ve been given,

Into the dark woods, through the old trees.

5. A Decision

Since the creature seemed to be waiting for me, I thought that following it was probably my best option. If there was purpose in my present situation, I thought, perhaps life was not just one random thing after another. I crossed myself and vowed to go to church if I ever got safely out of these woods. Superstitious, I guess. Surely not! The animal, barely visible now in the dim forest light, seemed to be waiting at the edge of reality.

An insight is possible daily,

If one is determined to see;

Light is better than darkness,

Honey is sweet, not the bee.

6. The Creature

The white beast whose rump and tail were mostly visible, swung its horse-like head around to look back at me, apparently. I paused, nonplussed, for in the middle of its white forehead was a gleamingly pointed, large spiraling silver horn. Smaller than a mature riding horse, but still built like a horse, the creature whickered, turned its head to the front and started into the forest wildness before us.

Life is a tangled up jumble

Of emotions, choices and threat.

Use your mind and think clearly;

Avoid waking up in a sweat!

7. The Fork in the Road

I hurried after the creature, surely, unbelievably, a unicorn, who was some distance ahead, but walking slowly enough for me to keep up. When he came to a place where the path diverged into a fork, he chose the one that veered off to the right, of course he did, and when I got there, I followed suit. I looked down to examine the trail more closely; when I looked up again, the unicorn had vanished. What to do?

To follow a unicorn who may not exist

Is a puzzle perplexing at least;

Given the form and the function so far,

You know I will opt for the beast.

8. Chased

Of course, I chose to follow the way the unicorn appeared to have gone, hoping right was right. In the dim forest light I could just make out the trail, though there were no more tracks. I hurried along as best as I could when I heard snarling and roaring somewhere in the distance behind me. Terrified, I ran. As fast as I was, the sounds behind me kept getting closer and closer. I stopped to catch my breath, my heart pounding. I looked back, saw something large and orange in the distance and ran for my life.

It’s not just the lions and tigers that hunt us,

Bears and lynxes and wolves are there too.

I’d fall to my knees and pray for God’s help;

Though running would help more, I knew.

9. Out of the Woods

• Just as I thought I was done for, I saw a light ahead of me that moved me to put on more speed. (There’s a pun there, I think; emotion recollected in tranquility leads to snarky insights). Suddenly I burst out of the woods into an open meadow of bright green grass and shining yellow flowers. I tried to look over my shoulder to see how close the pack was, but only heard a bleating kind of yelp, a scream of pain and then silence. I stopped running and glanced behind me; all I saw was a brief flash of white that disappeared into the dark interior of the woods. Prudently, I kept moving away from the woods.

God works in mysterious ways,

Secondary causes prevail.

Exercise love, faith and hope in your life,

And trust that your faith will not fail.

10. The Woman

Looking around past the flowery meadow, at the far edge before me, I saw a young woman coming towards me and some distance behind her, I saw a gleaming white city. The closer she came, the more that I could tell she was exceedingly beautiful. She was wearing a lovely silken blue dress. When she reached me, she gave me her hand and I took it. She had luminous green eyes and a deep summer’s tan.

“Hello,” I said, somewhat shyly.

“Hello,” she said. Her lips were full and red and her ready smile deepened.

“You’ve come to meet me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, lightly laughing.

“Do you know that there is a Unicorn in those woods?” I suddenly asked.

She continued to smile, but she also looked very serious. She thought for a moment as if thinking about nature of my question and the reason for it. Then she answered:

“Yes.”

For every Adam there’s an Eve,

That’s the nature of the plan;

In a City filled with people,

A man might learn to be a man.

ESOLEN: AQUINAS’ HYMN

[The only way to have Esolen’s essay available to reread was to copy it here; therefore, that’s what I have done. I love the hymn by one of my favorite saints; I love the insights, the heart of faith in both authors. LES]

What Is This I Behold?

Anthony Esolen

It is late in the year 1273, in the priory of Naples, near to Aquino, where Brother Thomas was born. He has retired to his small cell to pray. Unbeknownst to him, one of his younger fellows, Dominic, is watching, and the great Dominican theologian, a man of ample girth, is lifted from the ground while he holds a crucifix before his eyes.

“Thomas,” says a voice from the crucifix, “you have written well of me. What do you desire for a reward?”

“Thee alone,” says Thomas.

The hidden God

We know Thomas Aquinas for his immense learning and his mighty and clear-eyed intellect, sharpened by tools that most academic philosophers know little of: humility, piety, and the revelation of Christ. But he was also a mystic and poet who sang in praise of the Eucharist. His hymn Adoro te ought to be cherished by every Catholic, as it says with all the power of intense concentration and the sweetness of poetry what we believe about the bread of life we receive.

I would like to meditate upon four of the poem’s themes—four that we find also in that scene above. The first is that God is not directly present to our senses. Thomas did not see God in his cell just as he saw the crucifix in his hands. And Thomas always insisted that man derives his knowledge first through the senses. First; not both first and last, and not solely. Even our faith comes first by hearing—we hear the lessons of the preacher, we hear the words of holy Scripture. The Creator is made manifest in his creatures, which all cry out, “We did not make ourselves!” But who he is, and what he is—that is not so clear.

So Thomas calls upon the latens Deitas, the hidden God:

Adoro te devote, latens Deitas,
quae sub his figuris vere latitas:
tibi se cor meum totum subicit,
quia te contemplans totum deficit.

Humbly I adore you, hidden God, who have concealed yourself truly beneath these forms: my heart wholly surrenders itself to you, because in gazing upon you it is wholly at a loss.

Those are no words of embarrassment. How, after all, can the ineffable God ever be known by a creature as fully as he knows himself? The more we see of God, the more profoundly are we struck by the mystery, and what can we say? Thomas himself, shortly after he heard the voice of God in his cell, was so struck by the glory of the Eucharist as he was celebrating Mass that he said to his secretary, Brother Reginald, that he would write no more, because all he had written seemed as straw compared with what he had now beheld.

But why should we believe at all, if things are hidden? The second stanza takes up the challenge:

Visus, tactus, gustus, in te fallitur;
sed auditu solo tuto creditur.
Credo quidquid dixit Dei filius:
nihil hoc Verbo veritatis verius.

Sight, touch, and taste are deceived in you; hearing alone may safely be believed. I believe whatever the Son of God has said: nothing is truer than the very Word of truth.

One of the common names the Church Fathers gave to Christ was simply “Truth”: not this truth or that truth, not just truth about how we should live, but Truth, absolutely, without qualification or reservation. Christ is the Way, the Life, and the Truth. He is present fully in the Eucharist, body, blood, soul, and divinity. We cannot see or taste or touch it, but we can hear: if the Truth has said it, we believe it. Why should we hesitate? If we believe in the resurrection of the flesh because Jesus has revealed it to us in his words and in his person, is not the miracle of the Eucharist an earnest of that wedding feast to come?

Trust in the wounds

But why should we trust Jesus? Think of the crucifix. The man on that cross gave the ultimate witness to the truth: he suffered and died for it, for us. There too he was both hidden and manifest:

In cruce latebat sola deitas;
at hic latet simul et humanitas.
Ambo tamen credens atque confitens,
peto quod petivit latro poenitens.

Deity alone was hidden upon the cross; but here humanity is hidden too. Yet believing and confessing both, I seek what the thief in his repentance sought.

That is an astonishing stanza. Here is no strutting. Thomas places himself at the foot of the cross, not as clean, but as guilty—as the thief who with his last repentant breath stole Paradise. When we receive the Lord, we receive him as the sole sacrifice wholly pleasing to the Father. If we should ever waver in our faith, that steadfast cross calls us: stand with the man upon the cross and surrender to him all the more readily as the world denies him and mocks him and will not hear the truth.

But the same Christ who died rose from the grave, and now our saint considers his namesake, the apostle who relied upon his senses:

Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor;
Deum tamen meum te confiteor.
Fac me tibi semper magis credere,
in te spem habere, te diligere.

I cannot behold the wounds as Thomas did, but still I confess you to be my God. Make me ever more fully believe in you, have hope in you, and love you.

Will it not be glorious to behold the hands and the feet of Christ, for those who believe in him? “Blessed are they who do not see,” said Jesus to Thomas, after he had fallen to his knees and adored him, “and who yet believe.” They have those three things that Saint Paul says will remain, after all earthly things have passed away like shadows: faith confirmed, hope fulfilled, and love—the greatest of these.

Love that sees

How was Thomas raised from the ground, with all that weight of his? But it is as Saint Augustine says, “My love is my weight”—love is the force that draws us on. I think also of what Richard of Saint Victor says, that where there is love, there is an eye that sees. Christ died for love and rose again, and Thomas loves him and begs him to give lasting strength to that love, to give it increase:

O memoriale mortis Domini,
panis vivus vitam praestans homini,
praesta meae menti de te vivere,
et te illi semper dulce sapere.

O memorial of the death of the Lord, living bread that grants life to man, grant to my mind that it may live from you, and to taste your sweetness ever.

“Taste and see how sweet the Lord is,” says the Psalmist. Thomas is thinking of that experience of the Eucharist, and so he plays on the Latin sapere, meaning to taste (think of our word savor), but also to know (think of our word sapience).

How can we put the two together? Even in human matters, there are things that only the lover sees, and when it comes to the divine, how can we even begin to raise our minds from the things of earth, unless they are made open to love? God here is not an idea. Thomas does not want to be persuaded of some notion about God. He longs as a lover does.

So should all men, for Christ died for all:

Pie pellicane, Iesu Domine,
me immundum munda tuo sanguine,
cuius una stilla salvum facere
totum mundum quit ab omni scelere.

Merciful pelican, Lord Jesus, cleanse me the unclean by your blood, one drop of which can save the whole world from every wickedness.

Europeans in Thomas’ time believed that the pelican fed its young from its own substance, stabbing itself in the breast. A single drop of the blood of Christ would suffice to heal all the world. That is the miraculous work of his love, and Thomas calls upon all mankind to see it, to taste it, to be touched and permeated by that blood, so that their minds may clear, and they may be made whole.

Thee alone

People who do not know our faith suppose that we long for an eternity of clouds and harps, or a garden with flowers and fruit and running streams; an Elysium or happy hunting grounds with a Christian coloring. They haven’t read the New Testament. Saint John says that we do not know what glory awaits us, but we do know that we will be like God, because we will see him as he is, and Saint Paul says that we will see him not dimly, as in a glass, but face to face. “Seek my face,” says God to the Psalmist. We long to behold the Lord, the source and end of all goodness and truth and beauty.

Hence Thomas’s final stanza:

Iesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,
oro fiat illud quod tam sitio;
ut te revelata cernens facie
visu sim beatus tuae gloriae. Amen.

Jesus, now veiled as I look upon you, I pray that what I so desire should come to pass; that, discerning you with your face unveiled, I may be blessed in beholding your glory. Amen.

It is as when the pilgrim Dante beholds, at the end of the Paradise, the mystery of the incarnate Christ, that central “Love that moves the sun and the other stars.”

There is no more to say. Let it be so, O Lord, let it be so.

Anthony Esolen is professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in N.H., translator and editor of Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House), and author of two volumes of essays, How the Church Changed the World.

FOR THE BIRDS!

ESOLEN: JP

The Poetry of Praise

A Prayer in Quiet

Anthony Esolen

Jesus was on his way from the oasis of Jericho up to Jerusalem, along that dangerous road cutting across mountains and pitched beside deep ravines. It was the road he used in his parable of the man who was beaten and robbed and left for dead. Still, it was well-traveled, and as he went his way—for the final time in the flesh—he and the crowd that followed him heard a man crying, Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me! (Mk 4:47).

I am sure that the crowd was not hushed on its journey; that’s not the way crowds are. But they wanted this man to shut up, and that certainly is the way crowds are—the way we are, when the call for God is too near. But the man cried all the louder, “Son of David, have pity on me!” Then Jesus, moved with pity, told his followers to call him over.

What do you want me to do for you? Jesus asked him.

Master, said the man, called Bartimaeus, Son of the Honorable, I want to see.

Go your way, said Jesus. Your faith has saved you. And his eyes were opened, and he followed Jesus along the road.

The noisy and the still

It’s baffling to consider how little the people around Jesus understood him, but then, with the advantage of two thousand years of learning and worship, what can we ourselves say? We are silent when we should speak, and we chatter when we should be silent.

Jesus once warned the noisy with the parable of the Pharisee and the flunky for the Romans—for that is what the tax-farmers were. The two men were in the temple, and the Pharisee prayed in this manner, mainly to himself: O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice in a week, and pay tithes on my whole income (Lk 18:11-12). I do this, I do that; while the wretched flunky stood in the back of the temple and dared not raise his eyes to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, O God, be merciful to me a sinner! That poor man went home justified, said Jesus, and the other did not.

The Pharisee had clothed himself in his deeds and in the outward works of the law, where he was at home, like a spider in its web. Jesus does not deny the goodness of fasting and tithing. He does not deny the beauty of the law. But the publican stood as if naked before God. That is the essential condition of man. Let’s be honest. It is said that Saint Philip Neri remarked, as he watched a man led off to execution, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

Hence the power of those quiet and honest words, the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

All in a Holy Name

What’s in a name? When it comes to Jesus, everything.

The Son of God humbled himself and became man, and was obedient unto death, even the terrible death upon a cross. And therefore, says Saint Paul, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth (Phil 2:9-10). It is idle to suppose that our Lord might have been named Simon or Samuel or Judah. His is the name like no other: it means the Lord saves. We do not pray the Simon prayer or the Samuel prayer, as fine as those names are. “Lord,” we cry, “O Lord who shall save, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

But I shouldn’t translate the Holy Name of Jesus out of the world! He had a name, as everyone does. He is the Lord, and he is Jesus, that man who walked the earth, the man whom the blind son of Timaeus called out to on the Jericho road. When we say, “Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me,” we place ourselves with that blind man, or with the suffering woman who wanted to touch the hem of his robe, or with the thief who was crucified beside him on Calvary. Names do not vanish in eternity. “Come, Lord Jesus!” cries the apostle who had revealed him to us as the Word and who saw him transfigured upon the mountain. He has a face, and we long to look upon it. He has hands, imprinted with the marks of our sin and his love, and we long to see them and to touch them. And sometimes, when times are dark, all that seems left to us is to look at the man Jesus on the cross, and say, “Wherever others may go, let me stand here beside you, Jesus.”

The prayer of solitude

I confess I have much to learn about the place of the Jesus Prayer in the spirituality of the Eastern Churches, where it figures prominently. Where did the prayer come from? Its ultimate source is the New Testament, as we’ve seen, but as to where people first cried out, as a recognized and common prayer, “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” that’s something of a mystery. We do know that the prayer is ancient, and it seems likely that the hermits in the deserts of the east were familiar with it.

People who understand neither our faith nor the monastic life suppose that they imply a rejection of the world, as a Buddhist seeks to free himself of the wheel of change, or as the ancient Epicureans, looking down upon the mass of men and their frantic and disappointing pursuit of love and wealth and power, turned their backs on them and sought the bland and modest pleasures of philosophical discourse. But to follow Jesus into the desert, into silence, is an adventure, binding the soul of the quiet man or woman more intimately with the souls of the rest of mankind.

Think of the scenes again. Bartimaeus pierces through the crowd with his cry. They seek to silence him, but he won’t be still. When he is healed, he doesn’t shrug and walk home. He joins the flock. The Pharisee has isolated himself behind a wall of noise, the noise he himself makes. He is so busy telling himself how good he is, he forgets to pray. He shows love for neither God nor man. But the publican, muttering in the back of the Temple, knows he is a sinner, and that means he is thinking of what he has done to his fellow men. To say, “I am a sinner,” and to mean it, is to say, “I have offended God and my neighbor.” That is no noise. It is the plain truth. We are weakling archers with skinny arms and trembling hands. We miss the mark again and again. We fail in love. At our most ordinary, we stand by and watch as wicked men nail our Savior to the cross. We hand them the hammer and the spikes. At our worst—but we shudder to think of that.

The desert hermits sought solitude after the pattern of Jesus, who went up a mountain to pray, or set off from the shore in a boat, or fell to his knees in the garden of Gethsemane. The wellspring of love for our brothers is our love for God, so it behooves us often to seek God in silence. At such times the simplest prayers can be the most powerful. The Jesus Prayer is such.

Have mercy on us

“I tremble to consider that God is just,” said the elderly Jefferson, looking back at so many years of American slavery. We should rejoice, and tremble too, to consider that God is merciful. Here I’d like to glance at the one place in the New Testament where we hear the plea Kyrie, eleison in precisely that form. Jesus has come down from the lonely mount of Transfiguration, and the crowds are making their usual noise, because of a man whose son the disciples could not heal (Mk 9:14-29).

The lad was moonstruck, said the father. Perhaps he was an epileptic. Perhaps he was simply mad. He sometimes pitched himself into the fire or the water. We might think of ourselves as that boy, or his father, or the helpless disciples, or the interfering crowds, or all of them together. We are spiritual cripples, and we do not know what we are doing, and sometimes we harm our souls in this way, sometimes in that way, and we have no cure. Even when we turn to Christ and say, “Lord, have mercy”—Kyrie, eleison—we are like that father, who says, I do believe, help my unbelief!

When Jesus saw the crowd, he commanded the dumb and deaf spirit to come out of the boy, and it did so with convulsions, and the boy fell to the earth like a corpse. Plenty of the bystanders, helpful as always, said, He is dead! He was not dead. Jesus took him by the hand, and he got up and went home with his father. This kind, said Jesus afterwards, can only come out through prayer and fasting.

That might suggest to us a heroic spiritual regimen, one we are not strong enough to endure. But again the Jesus Prayer comes to our assistance. It is the essential petition, and it is simple and quiet and strong. “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Say it when you can think of nothing else to say. The Holy Spirit will interpret it for you.

Anthony Esolen is professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in N.H., translator and editor of Dante’s Divine Comedy

DOGGEREL DITTIES. LES

Ora Pro Nobis

Good lady Chastity—

Virgin, Mother and Queen—

Matriarch, Lodestar of Heaven—

Woman, Bride, God-bearer supreme.

Pray for us—lost Sons of Adam!

Pray for us— fair Daughters of Eve!

For we would be Holy and Virtuous—

Our Sinful Lives, help us to leave.

Copperhead Spotted:

If I were bitten by that snake

He’d be in big trouble;

I’d track and kill that wayward beast—

Bury him in rubble!

Copperhead Replies:

If I had bitten that big man,

He’d be in no condition

To track and kill a garden slug—

He’d need a sound mortician!

Netflix

Now I’ve watched The Sandman,

Purveyor of meaningful dreams;

Even the nightmares he sends us

Change fright into loud, robust screams!

Whimsy

I do my whining with my dining

Every day at 4;

If I’m not served what I’ve deserved,

I take to bed and roar!

I do my dining with my whining

Every day at 8;

If I’m not fed my daily bread

I shall reciprocate!

I have such gas that I must pass

The pinto beans and rice;

Pinto beans and turnip greens

Never do play nice!

A man who’d spill blood for a thrill

Deserves a long life sentence;

Put him in jail without just bail

If there’s no true repentance!

I’ll go to sleep without a peep

When Mother’s in her fury!

I’ll rest my head when I am dead,

So what’s your bloody hurry?

Wonder

The world began in bright Wonder,

When God said, “Let Light be!”

Creatures emerged as from Thunder,

Lightning flashed brilliantly!

Gardens grew into palaces

Where water flowed in streams;

Fragrant flowers blossomed and bloomed—

Colors flourished in themes:

Roses in reds burnished brightly,

Day lilies orange may be:

White as the sunlight of summer,

Yellows glorious to see.

Azalea bushes in splendor,

Explode in hot pink reams;

Golden or purple plush bushes,

Fit companions in dreams.

Songbirds sitting on branches grey,

Opened their mouths to sing;

Others ascended fresh blue skies

Colors from grace to wing:

Golden Eagle, brown-feathered Hawk,

Jet black Raven and crow,

Cardinal and Red-breasted Robin,

Sea Gull whiter than snow.

Indigo Bunting, purple Swift,

Rufous-sided Towhee;

Blue Jay, green Jay, up in the air,

And Gold Finch flying free.

Cedar Waxwing, Mockingbird, Wren

Grey, brown and some yellow—

Purple Finch, Sparrow, black Vulture,

Not a friendly fellow!

We live in a World of Wonders,

Wheelbarrows, Rusty Rings,

Queens, Hearts, Humpty Dumpty, Croquet,

Old Cabbages and Kings.

We live in a World of Wonder,

Rainbows, Insects galore,

And creatures willing to eat them—

Thank God for that and much more!

The World may end in bright Wonder

With Jabberwoks going in style;

Nothing left at the very last,

Only the Cheshire Cat’s faint smile!

Doggerel ditties perplex us

Unless they make us grin;

This, as a coda, won’t hex us,

Nor lead us into sin.

Of course it might make us wonder;

Most things do that for me:

Why is there something not nothing?

Ask the next guy you see.

DEATH: IMAGES/STORY. LES

[As “Chaucer” said in The Sandman, rhyming is such fun! Well, he said something to that effect, even if I don’t have the exact quote! —les]

Verses about Principles, Virtues, Death / and a Story

On HBO there is a show:

Animation—“Primal.”

A caveman and a dinosaur

Struggle for survival.

In their violent green world

The usual color’s red;

Violence is the modus

While Blood means you are dead!

Raw Strength resides with the Lion,

Legs like pillars of steel;

His Claws, like knives made of iron,

His prey have no appeal!

Patience, a Virtue much needed,

When Silence is a sin;

Withhold the cutting rejoinder,

Keep the Devil within!

Blake named the place of the Tiger:

The Forests of the Night;

It lives in our sleep untroubled

By dreams of fire and blight!

Desire regards all women fair,

All gold a worthy goal;

Desire is always on the move,

Restless as new born foal.

Sweet Prudence is a careful wench,

A careful wench is she;

She has a mirror and a snake—

Reflective, wise and free!

Despair inhabits ruined towns,

Where broken sidewalks end;

She has no way to stop her life—

No dagger, rope nor friend!

DEATH: THE STORY

[In 21 rhyming stanzas]

[8/6/8/6]

Death prowls the untoward City streets,

The rat-infested slums;

Death stalks the drug-infected self,

Death even steals his crumbs!

Now Death sits on a chain link fence,

Whistling an eerie tune;

Beyond the fence a graveyard grim,

With stones grey like the moon.

A boy and girl meet at the gate,

Ignoring all the clues;

They enter through the wrought iron gate,

Their small dog enters too.

Death watches from his chain link perch—

One moment is enough—

To snatch a life from this dark place:

Extinguish! blow out! snuff!

The boy and girl are holding hands,

Pretending to be brave;

They whisper and tiptoe the path,

They find an open grave!

Little dog sees the darksome pit,

Smells the presence of Death;

He tucks his tail between his legs

Barks till he’s out of breath!

A graveyard is a loathsome place,

In the shadowy night;

The boy and girl turn from the grave,

Follow their dog in fright.

Death watches as they turn and flee,

Back to the wrought iron gate;

He grins a gleeful grin at them

And thinks, “It’s not your Fate!”

The boy and girl are safe beyond

The grave of Samuel Lee

Who died a dreadful Texas death,

Eighteen Seventy Three.

His Ghost still haunts this lonely place,

Intangible his touch;

He’s nothing but a chilly breeze—

At best that’s nothing much!

Yet boy and girl and little dog

Sense in the ruined air

That something lurks that is not right

Something beyond repair.

Never again in deep dark night

Will they their homes forsake

To tiptoe in a graveyard grim

Ruled by Death, Ghost and Fate.

No one knows the little dog’s thoughts,

No one knows what he dreams,

As he snuffs and puffs and whimpers

Pursuing doggy themes.

Now Death forsakes that chain link fence,

Leaves those graves to wander

Under bleak, dim City streetlights,

His own life to ponder.

“What could I be if not be me?”

Death whispers to the grass;

“I’d like to be a man for once,

To woo a lovely lass.

“But God made me to be this thing

That terrifies the dark,

That sits on fences whistling tunes,

And haunts each City park.

“Seeing it’s late I better go,

Mass shooting on the green;

Another idiot with a gun,

Another bloody scene.

“No human values Life as I,

No human understands

That Death is not the end of things,

But Life for Goodness planned!

“It’s been a pleasant graveyard shift,

With boy and dog and girl;

I envy them their one brief hour—

Time is a precious Pearl.

“Let now the final curtain fall

Signaling the ending;

No pious props are needed here—

That machine is pending.

“Well, Mortals, you have heard my voice—

Deus ex—I think not!

Though always* hidden in the wings,

He’s still One of our lot!”

*Okay! Almost always. Of course you see the problem! —les

Death Roams the Graveyard - Midjourney

DEBTS & DEBTORS—LES+/-

Thursday, 8/11/22

Lectionary Gospel reading for today: Matthew 18+

I have always read this somewhat unpleasant parable about money and the principles of debt and repayment, compassion, forgiveness and strict justice and put those principles into a closed mental box. I found the parable unpleasant because the notion of Someone turning another human being over to torturers, regardless of the crime, inhuman. However, there is Jesus telling this parable approvingly and presumably, I assume, seeing no fault in the master’s behavior in the end. The wise thing to do, humanly speaking, would have been to think about the parable a bit more; but why would a retired English teacher do that, look more deeply into the text, understand what the text—a parable after all—might truly be about, look beneath the surface, so to speak?

No! Too much to ask? Then I came to today’s Magnificat commentary on the lectionary readings for today [Ezekiel and Matthew] by Mother Angelica, never one of my favorite people after seeing her on EWTN television frequently. In fact once I downloaded a program where she recited the rosary; I immediately deleted it because I couldn’t stand to watch her and found it impossible to keep my thoughts centered on what is at the heart of the rosary. I am not a good enough person, unfortunately, to soldier on and benefit spiritually from the effort. I deleted it! Then I found another one, downloaded it and haven’t yet watched it once.

What I read and understood from “Mother” Angelica’s commentary on Christ’s love transformed my entire understanding of the parable. I shall copy her commentary below, I hope.

FIRST, the Gospel:

A reading from
the holy Gospel according to Matthew18:21–19:1

Peter approached Jesus and asked him, “Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times. That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, his children, and all his property, in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’ Moved with compassion the master of that servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, ‘Pay back what you owe.’ Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?’ Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives his brother from his heart.”

SECOND, the commentary:

Forgiven and Forgiving

Every day, my Jesus, I learn by some situation or experience of my great need for you. When I try to be patient on my own, my patience is forced and short-lived. It is obvious to everyone that I am desperately trying to be patient. When I raise my mind and heart to you, dear Jesus, and see you so serenely patient, my soul drinks in that spirit of patience like a cool breeze on a humid night. Your patience penetrates my being, and only then am I truly patient. It takes so long to learn that I can bear fruit only in you.

How very much you love me! Love is proven by sacrifice, and you have proven your love for me. This realization makes me feel small, for I am forced to admit that my love for you is very little. I run from sacrifice and am afraid of pain. Death at times seems like a dark tunnel to be traveled, and the future seems bleak. When I compare my attitude with yours, I realize that in myself I have nothing to offer you. The only claim I have is your love for me. When I think of that love, I feel a sudden surge of courage to face the future. Even death becomes merely the beautiful moment when the One who loves and the one who is loved meet face-to-face.

Lord Father, I enter into your compassionate Spirit and try to drink deeply of your merciful love. My memory smarts with the remembrance of past offenses, and my soul is pained by the anger of yesterdays—days in the past that bring tears and sadness. Every time I think they are gone, they return with renewed vigor, and I realize I have not grown in compassion and forgiveness. I put my memory into your compassionate mercy, and I ask you to cover its wounds with the healing balm of your mercy. Let my soul sink deep into that fathomless ocean of mercy and return to me renewed, healed, and refreshed with love for everyone and malice toward none.

Lord Father, heal my memory…. Sometimes an event that happened years ago suddenly looms up and the hurt returns, and with it anger and resentment. Jesus told us to be as compassionate and merciful as you are. I find this very hard, and yet why should I? Have I not been the recipient of your mercy and forgiveness? Is it not a greater thing for me to offend God than for a fellow creature to offend me? You forgive and forget so completely and so graciously. Let me bury all my unpleasant memories in your ocean of mercy and drown them forever in those peaceful waters. May the phantoms of yesterday never take up residence in today and destroy my tomorrow. Give me hope, Lord Father, to trust in your forgiveness, and let me always give my neighbor the benefit of the doubt so I may forgive him from my heart.

Mother Angelica of the Annunciation, p.c.p.a.

Mother Angelica († 2016) was a Poor Clare nun and founder of the Eternal Word Television Network. / From Praying with Mother Angelica: Meditations on the Rosary, the Way of the Cross, and Other Prayers. © 2016, EWTN Publishing, Inc. Distributed by Sophia Institute Press, Manchester, NH. Used with permission.

How ironic, “Meditations on the Rosary: of course it would be, and they say God doesn’t have a sense of humor and that Christ never laughed. I suspect that if God did laugh the cosmos would fall to pieces, absolutely crumble, and the joy would be overwhelming.

The first paragraph of her mediation starts with the kind of syrupy religious language that I find it difficult to relate to: “my Jesus,” etc. [I know, not that bad here]. I read on, and then I saw what her insight was and how profound it was, and why had I never seen it before?

It is the matter of compassion, love and forgiveness: God’s love and compassion are cosmic in scale; mine are very small. God forgives me of my very large debt; I turn around and hold a grudge against someone who has hurt me a little in some way. We see the hurts around us all the time and hold onto them. Meanwhile God continues to pour out his love and forgiveness on us, his compassion. Attitudes, principles! And I thought it was about money all this time!

Image: Edith Stein: St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila. Edith Stein was a young Jewish woman who was taken to Auschwitz with her people and died in a gas chamber there: 1942. She was 24 years old and a nun.

CHASTITY in VERSE—LES

Princess of Perfection

Goodness, she is so beautiful—

Like sunlight on fresh snow;

I’m blinded by her radiance—

Stunned by the truth I know!

There’s Heaven in her grey-green eyes,

Love In her flawless face;

Should she bestow a kiss on me—

Touch is the taste of grace.

Her beauty shows in springtime light,

Blooms like the rose in May;

Her beauty shines like stars at night—

Comfort for those who pray.

Chastity, her mystic name, she’s

Formed from the cosmic dust;

A burning star beats in her breast—

Virtue a man might trust!

Today she lives outside the wall,

Exiled and in disgrace;

The City has no room for her—

The human heart no place!

Pleasure, sadness, empty living,

Walk the darkened City streets;

While the lovely, modest maiden

Awaits His call in her retreat.

She needs the Other to fulfill

Her purpose in this merry life;

Chastity with God’s great goodness

Is comfort in this time of strife!

Image: cosmic dust and a burning star [also NGC 5189].

PUBLISHED 1974 LES

Balaam’s Ass

Then the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes

Lord, how long must I endure

This foolish beast, this simple ass?

Must I forever be turned aside

By this donkey’s desire for grass?

Lord, how long must I, blindly led

Through stinking ditch and soggy field,

Be subject to this foolish beast?

Lord, have mercy! Make him yield!

Crushed, I cursed this beast, lost

My temper, struck, strove for mastery,

Raged, shook with fury, cried aloud:

“Lord, in my need, extreme, I turn to Thee!

God! Grant me a sword, and I will

Smite him, strike, bleed him, teach him

To refuse the narrow place!

God! Grant me just one seraphim. . .”

L. Eugene Startzman

Published in Christianity and Literature

[XXIV 1 Fall 1974]

HORSE: COMMENTARY! LES

I enjoy this song, and frequently I cannot get the refrain out of my head. The problem is that when I look at the lyrics that are readily available, I find all sorts of problems that other listeners have also noticed. I copied and posted with the lyrics comments others have made, especially singling out the “heat is hot” clause, a marvelous tautology! Another factor regarding the lyrics is the comment that reveals the widespread popularity of the song on the one hand and apparently what passes as a witty rejoinder on the other: “Why didn’t he just name the horse?” There is a placard making the rounds on the internet along with a number of other placards and postings that asks just that, as if everyone would know or recognize the reference.

In lieu of the criticism of the lyrics qua lyrics, and my own sense that without the rather wonderful music there would be no lasting value to the lyrics as poetry, I thought it might be interesting to explore the lyrics to see from the inside, so to speak, what they revealed. Thus what follows is primarily a stanza by stanza commentary of sorts, starting with the first two, which seem to belong together. I would also like to rule out the consideration that the horse in question is heroin. While allegory is one of the legitimate levels of analysis or interpretation, I would not begin with that mode and would rather begin with the literal level and see what emerges from that perspective.

1 & 2

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings

The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound

I will refer to the “I” in the verse as the narrator, and, of course, the first thing revealed is that we have a traditional metaphor: the verses are going to deal with “the journey,” though we have no indication as of yet as to where or why; all we know is that the narrator in “the first part of the journey…was looking at all the life,” which consisted of “plants, birds, rocks” and the non-specific “things,” as if it were too difficult to find other things to name besides the topography of amorphous “sand,” as well as “hills,” and then the oddly included “rings,” which appear to have been selected primarily because it rhymes with “things.”

If this were a carefully constructed verse, which it doesn’t seem to be, the rings would be made more specific immediately: High school class rings? Wedding rings? Rings from a Crackerjack box? Engagement rings? The two things to notice thus far are that the narrator is speaking in the past tense—journey presumably completed; therefore, what might it mean? Does the narrator know or is he retelling in order to discover the meaning? And second, the details are remarkably subjective; if the narrator knows the specifics about the plants—daffodils, cactus, saguaro, roses, etc. ?—he isn’t telling; he is, so to speak, keeping it to himself [“he” seems more appropriate for the narrator than “she,” given that we know who wrote the lyrics—Dewey Bunnell; the narrative also feels masculine, not that a man couldn’t create a believable woman, or a woman a believable man.]

When something specific does enter into the telling, it is stated as though the details of the first stanza are almost irrelevant: “The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz / and…”. Before there were “things”; now he uses the very specific verb “met,” almost as if there were a metaphysical dimension to this encounter with the fly as in Buber’s “real life is meeting.” Here, however, the buzz, which is somewhat ambiguous, as in flies buzz when they fly, or buzz is a reaction you get from drinking a beer or taking a drug. This fly comes “with a buzz” which is immediately followed by “And,” so that we don’t linger on the fly but move on to the second thing he met, “the sky with no clouds.” Fly/sky are not only joined by the coordinate conjunction but also by the internal rhyme. Since I was an English teacher my mind holds a number of poetic quotes, images and references, such as Emily Dickinson’s short poem, “I heard a fly buzz when I died.” Clouds are rather wonderful but here there are no clouds in the sky, only the fly with its buzz. It is almost as if the narrator is reducing this world to its lowest common denominator in each case. There are no clouds in the sky, the “heat was hot,” yes, “and the ground was dry,” yes, that more or less follows from the hot heat, “but,” another coordinate conjunction, “But the air was full of sound.” Again, the narrator doesn’t tell us the nature of the sound—a rhyme with ground links the two though the conjunction suggests a contrast, as though the dryness of the ground stood over against the fullness of the sound in the air. Why? We don’t know because the narrator doesn’t tell us. We have moved from the “looking at” of the first stanza to the “meeting of” in the second. Since virtually everything in the verse at this point is subjective, it looks to me as though the verse itself is a celebration of the subjectivity inherent in our culture. There is no objective right or wrong; reality is whatever you choose it to be. The wonderful refrain clinches that interpretation:

3 & 4

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...

After two days in the desert sun
My skin began to turn red
And after three days in the desert fun
I was looking at a river bed
And the story it told of a river that flowed
Made me sad to think it was dead

Adam, the first human being, in the garden was given the task of naming the animals, thus cooperating with God in the process of creation. Presumably naming and essence go together so that Adam calls them what they are. Here, however, the point is just the opposite and in a purely subjective world the “horse” has already, in a sense, been named. It is “horse!” What the placard people appear to have missed is the nature of the tense: “I’ve been through the desert,” the wasteland, “on a horse with no name.” The experience is over; “when I was there riding him, he had no name, so I cannot honestly say now that he had a name; nor can I now give him a name. That time is over and done. The horse had no name, dammit!” The closest we get to objective reality in the verse is the fly, the empty sky, the hot heat, the dry ground and the horse.

In the subjective world of our inner self [another tautology] what is important is the way we feel about things: “It felt good to be out of the rain”; it was raining? Who knew? Not important; he knew. Besides, “In the desert you can’t remember your name”; in a subjective world, you don’t have to remember your name, for you have feelings that let you know you exist. No one else exists in the desert; in this subjective world Others are simply a source of pain. Others can hurt you by betraying you, by not returning your love, etc. La la la la la la! It’s as if the repetitious “la” is a way of stifling meaning, something a child or an immature adult might do; “I don’t want to hear your response! La la la la la! Or not.

However, no pain in the desert is not quite true, for after two days, his skin began to turn red, which must have hurt, though he chooses not to reveal that. Instead he tells that us “after three days in the desert fun”; his experience has been fun? This stanza rhymes throughout: sun/fun; told/flowed [assonance]; red/bed/dead. If the journey he had been on were a drug trip, it might have been fun, but the verses don’t say that nor even really suggest it. Instead we get another encounter that produces another emotional response: “And after three days in the desert fun/I was looking at a river bed/And the story it told of a river that flowed/Made me sad to think it was dead.” Other people are sources of pain, he was glad there were no people in the desert, but a dry river bed made him sad to think it was dead. If your subjective world is the only really real reality, so to speak, you can value whatever you choose and no one can say you are wrong, if everyone, like you, values only his or her subjective world. To say you are wrong means you have to appeal to a standard outside yourself. Where then did his journey next take him? Back to the foundational assertion that begins with a reminder: “You see” and then the delightful refrain:

You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...

From the reminder of where he’s been and what it means, more or less, we are told of a rather magical transformation:

After nine days I let the horse run free
'Cause the desert had turned to sea
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings

From the three day encounter with the dry riverbed, the horse was set free because everyone knows you can’t ride a horse under the sea. Reality is frustrating that way; we always bump up against something outside ourselves that is real and that makes our responses change. If the horse had had a name, the narrator might have developed a sentimental attachment to him after nine days and thus had been sad at having to set him free. But such is not the case here. The horse had no name. The horse was present, the narrator spent nine days with him; we might conclude that the horse was more important, ontologically speaking, than the fly. The horse was useful; the fly and the empty sky, not so much. Well on our way to 2022, the modern world, Mr Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby would well have understood the narrator’s evaluation of the horse as useful but nothing to grow attached to emotionally:

‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind.  ‘Your definition of a horse.’

‘Quadruped.  Graminivorous.  Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive.  Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too.  Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron.  Age known by marks in mouth.’  Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.  ‘You know what a horse is.’

[Charles Dickens, Hard Times]

The teacher, Thomas Gradgrind, has much to learn in this story, but we are well on our way to the subjectivism of the modern world found in our story, our journey, for there, our desert has changed into an ocean where, as I said, it would be impossible to ride a horse, named or not! Or has it, for the first thing we discover about the ocean is that it contained the same things as the desert: “There were plants and birds and rocks and things / There was sand and hills and rings.” This time we aren’t “looking at” them; they are just there. Either this identification is a profound metaphysical insight worthy of Andrew Marvell, or it is simply a reductio revealing that the narrator’s imagination is, for the moment, stymied. Or perhaps it is something else entirely that I simply fail to grasp, for I find that what comes next is the most arresting image in the entire set of verses; and at least worth noticing, perhaps. My critical faculty seems to have atrophied for the moment, and I can’t make up my mind about the image:

The ocean is a desert with its life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love

The first transformation is that the sea of the preceding stanza has become an ocean, but, second transformation, “the ocean is a desert”; b = a; the first ambiguity is that “its” life is underground. The “its” should refer to ocean, which makes sense on a literal level; the life of an ocean is under the surface; the “its” is ambiguous because it can also refer to desert, and much of desert life is also underground: snakes, lizards, rodents, etc. The first arresting ambiguity or the second ambiguity is the phrase, “And a perfect disguise above.” If we are following the grammar and the logic of ordinary syntax, the ocean would be the place or reality that contains “a perfect disguise above”; or if not the ocean then the desert must contain “a perfect disguise above.” Both the ocean and the desert are by definition wastelands; by any reasonable standard the “perfect disguise” then must be the city, any city, all cities. With the third line we get down, so to speak, to the narrator’s real, hidden concern in his verses: the human heart and its failure to love, for the human heart is made of “ground,” or dust or clay if we refer back to Genesis or refer simply to human experience. The music covers the ambiguities, rushes us past them, before we can think too much about them and returns us to the marvelous refrain which again begins with “You see,” as if that made everything here clear and understandable, especially given the final two lines:

You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...

If you have no name you have no real identity in an objective reality, though your body may be present there; the horse has no name and thus no real identity here, except for its usefulness perhaps; the narrator can’t remember his name and thus, finally, rather fades away into his subjective reality, void of other people, while we are left with some delightful music, the metaphysical image of cities as “the perfect disguise” for the unloving human heart and the haunting refrain of riding into the desert on a horse with no name, as well, of course, as—La la la la la la. For the moment that may suffice.

THE HORSE WITH NO NAME: LYRICS

SONG LYRICS

On the first part of the journey
I was looking at all the life
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings

The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz
And the sky with no clouds
The heat was hot and the ground was dry
But the air was full of sound

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...

After two days in the desert sun
My skin began to turn red
And after three days in the desert fun
I was looking at a river bed
And the story it told of a river that flowed
Made me sad to think it was dead

You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...

After nine days I let the horse run free
'Cause the desert had turned to sea
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
There was sand and hills and rings

The ocean is a desert with its life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love

You see I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
It felt good to be out of the rain
In the desert you can't remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain
La la la la la la...

Thank you all very much

Take care of yourselves, take care

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Bunnell Dewey

What is the meaning behind a horse with no name?

“Horse" is slang for heroin, leading to myriad rumors (denied by the band) that the song was about drugs.”

From Wikipedia article:

“The first two demos were recorded there, by Jeff Dexter and Dennis Elliott, and were intended to capture the feel of the hot, dry desert that had been depicted at the studio from a Salvador Dalí painting, and the strange horse that had ridden out of an M. C. Escher picture.

Writer Dewey Bunnell also says he remembered his childhood travels through the Arizona and New Mexico desert when his family lived at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Bunnell has explained that "A Horse with No Name" was "a metaphor for a vehicle to get away from life's confusion into a quiet, peaceful place”…

“The song has received criticism for its lyrics, including "The heat was hot"; "There were plants, and birds, and rocks, and things"; and "'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain." According to an anecdote from Robert Christgau, Randy Newmandismissed "A Horse With No Name" as a "song about a kid who thinks he’s taken acid".

“Penn Jillette asked the band about their lyrics, "there were plants, and birds, and rocks, and things" after a show in Atlantic City, where America opened for Penn & Teller. According to Jillette, their explanation for the lyrics was that they were intoxicated with cannabis while writing it. In a 2012 interview, Beckley disputed Jillette's story, saying, "I don't think Dew was stoned.”

Wikipedia article [les: I took out the footnote numbers; the entry is easily available on Wikipedia under the title “A Horse with No Name.”]

HUNTER AND HART! LES

Friends, Relatives—Fare Well!

Fare well, stay safe, take care, / my friends, goodbye—

I would shed tears, / but real men never cry!

Memory remember / what soon shall unfold,

More nonsense published, / as God once foretold—

Crude old reversals, / new verse impending,

Dullness the product, / Grub Street unending!

Too late for judgment, / for goodness or ill,

Slap down your paper, / make sharp your old quill!

Write the truth boldly, / or quick cut and run,

There’s never some news / new under the sun—

Courage, for counsel, / for Prudence won’t tell!

Ask Lester, ask Norah, / what’s that foul smell?

Odor of sanctity, / certainly not—

Everyone’s smoking / a fresh batch of pot!

Everyone knows our / evil mass shooter,

Everyone watches / young brazen looter—

Our culture bought / the whole hog with the farm;

Each soul demands / a big loaded firearm!

No elephant sits / in this drafty room,

Liken it not to / an Egyptian tomb!

Just a warm body, / face down in the street,

[Look at him, stranger, / fresh blood by his feet!]

Hit by a yellow car, / shot in the head—

What does it matter to him? / Dead is dead!

Few people read—nowadays—Forbidden!

Maybe the Truth / is that which is hidden?

Truth is whatever / I say it is now:

In that red pasture, / stands a large green cow,

Thinking of Christmas, / bright angels and snow!

Truth must be relative, / yes? maybe no?

The good, humble hart / dreams of fresh water,

Which cascading falls / on all antique strands—

Hunter approaches, / mind bent on slaughter!

The eager, brave hart / quenches its thirsting,

Expiring at last, / noble heart bursting,

As the real Hunter / reads out parish banns.

les

THE EYES HAVE IT—LES

Vision Perplexed

(to see or not to see)

There’s a Darkness in our being

That resists the fall of light;

There’s a blindness to our seeing

That refuses glory’s sight.

No Woman walking down the street

Can be transcendent in our age;

Scrap paper blows across her path,

While “litter not!” is all the rage.

Yet her walk demands attention;

Form and function not obscure:

She’s Beauty in a cotton dress,

Her image now is chaste, demure.

There’s Glory hidden in each curve,

If only I could learn to see

The truth beyond that lovely shape

That lives and moves so fetchingly.

AWKWARD VERSES—LES

Eden: The Far Country

Adam,

First:

Yearned to see the Woman,

His female counterpart,

Flesh of his flesh taken

from his silent lonely heart—

Adam,

Second:

Yearned to know the woman,

His female counterpart,

Bone of his bone taken,

He loved with all his heart—

Adam,

Last:

Chose to see the woman,

As idol from the start—

Took the gift she gave him

And fell from grace apart.

I Am

Standing on Death’s doorstep,

One foot in the grave,

Mary, Judy, Jesus,

Only One can save.

Open to me quickly,

I am Knocking at Death’s door,

Seeking there to ease my pain,

Hoping Death won’t prove a bore!

Idol or Muse?

God gave us one another

That we might in truth see through—

Icon of His presence

What must the Lover do?

Follow each love faithfully,

Each light that shines on earth

Until it turns to darkness, or,

To Everlasting Mirth?

My Card: the Fool

Jester of Fortune

Fool of the tarot

Watch Where you walk

(Small dog beside you)

Avoiding small talk.

One foot you’ve planted

One foot’s in space

Fool of the tarot

Christ deals in God’s grace.

Jester of Fortune

Fool of the pack

No burden to carry

One sack for a snack

No hand left untaken

No woman to marry

No Hearts left unshaken

Just Clubs to beat sinners

With Spades we can bury

While Diamonds trump winners.

What is your call?

Alas, A Grub Street Production

A product of Old Tired Minds Inc.

Sorry (another game altogether)!

Sigh!

TASTY MORSELS—LES

The Menu

(for the invalid)

#1. MARY

My Wife ate at the Dinner Bell,

Where She brought home a meal for me:

Salmon patties with savory sauce—

Such a sight to see!

Okra breaded and deep-fried,

Green beans in salty broth,

Creamy rich coleslaw at last—

Nowhere a pinch of sloth!

For all the portions of this meal

(From Sinai to the Outer Banks)

Which I consumed with honest zeal,

I give to God great thanks!

#2. SAMARA

Our neighbor, like an Angel true,

Constructed with corned beef, Swiss cheese,

Sauerkraut, rye bread and Love,

A hefty Reuben fit to please!

I ate it with herself in mind,

A lovely woman in her prime,

A neighbor in the truest sense—

If such thoughts be no crime.

I had no will to carry through,

Nor heart to be unkind—

But such a sandwich, taste and see,

Exquisite and Divine!

Image: found on a website somewhere under “Reuben,” a somewhat close approximation to an image of the real, wholly delightful sandwich that I have celebrated here! Incidentally, the last two lines of the verse should be savored appropriately! And with due reverence, of course. Amen.

LES