trouble gruel. “…like rams…” from the Book of Enoch
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NO FIAT
What I know could fill no cartons, packed away attic like. Only the lone mouse might use them, his warmth slight. Like the house, I tried, but every scratch wears us still. Mayhap, already spleen, the local boot ferries cross a mud flat: drudge shape, that weeks ago passed same spot on this same ribbon.
Race intuits very little; a supply of packaged goods goes for far less, and the way I once ate breakfast has drawn its last paycheck.
Honesty might be poets wish. That she has no specific accoutrement in mind proves she views from pining’s observation deck, and my buddy runs his last track.
Though once, out of sheer lack I may have had to, I tell you I’ll observer and killer no more. No fiat for war any more ever, And let that soothe the beast.
At history’s glass - no crying mother said, but the seminary? could not! This became good deed since only bright-cell, scholar-coat velleity.
As if rising over scenes, he knows what it takes. Thinks, yeah! gained in loss. After no cloister: book and flute; boredom - a conceit not worth having.
Careful the many mastodons of un-finish while too anxious to be of use to be of none, he creates his twelve American dances and Saturday never comes.
You have to keep going. When it hits, stay with. When day ripe for creation, it has you? Up! Sprawl! Out on the floor, crawl!
Yes! through hoke and coel of civilization you want to read the stuff, read what went down on the page: after dinner, lunch, (hope dresses hope, that like a flower you may open) but it has to be written first, okay?
Voila! Bon début! Then quick, trance no longer has him; bite pulls, shadow slinks and night with brim fall.
He tries. Her all laps at the pool. The call slacks, she falls. But not before capturing something. That’s all.
Most white boys, don’t know how to act around black men, so stumble, retreat; so bark or bite. And you in the ranks, who have you hated? Think of it; we can none of us face each other; but to end when the falls just start, when some water old restorative downs its mountain, we’d not were sane about, but gracious the bounty with numerous liquid else.
Among these happy, if chance medley, none need accept that insipid nor bend pavid bow; just spread equal want to the each and every self.
And we must, must we not, agree: faith can stand no questioning nor belief be etched on any wonder-board `cept the present `n after, there to sprout and be.
Midday, ignore hard, bright signs that hovers a cease, believe all yet is creation, and just because a thing has never, its growth from zero could.
Source makes diversions, creation controls! She willed He’ll sit and watch; it had not come to ruin. Glued how a hero saves, dies and survives in us and like novitiate’s joy in possibility – just intention, instruct those who hear what belief and spit can do for discovery but who say ‘we can’t stomp with natives’, to append this honored route.
Foundations are more than filled holes. Surprises on white-paper? Bouquets on gird, and in all the square-rigging deception tries to tie the long weekend into knots.
Still, in created realm, like tardy geese worried by close dark, but who are flying-out anyway: faith; and bell shaped head curve no more.
Friends, tireless in laying low: sure mistress never lags, outstretched in welcome, prophet obsessed; an inspection of deception: still living wish for man’s life-watching-lives.
Eye out, null nurse feeds munch cow, that tripped wire getting back. Renewal - a flash, excites party’s boast – ‘we may not have NASA, but ideally we’ve these Burt Rutan, these Giovanni who too seek horizon!’
There’s a copy of Bell’s `The Irish Troubles’ stacked; barely allures from Snoopy kind: a manifest of broken rims and shattered boards, toolery till the end!
You’d not expect that to satisfy till at depth energizes so flowing serotonin exeunts, smiles grow the deed good, sharp pushes back the chair, recites as linger a doce en doses and lands um: toe replacing thumb’s grip appendage even mute court the after-effect, so days later, like David, try our quizzical saturnine anyway on.
In these tall it’s heyday ardor; all rough, in the sage, where quail are scratching day-beds and manzanita plumly welcome lark.
Re-generation be the switch in this garden. What creature of earth-stuff poet the raveling? Old, fallen, batten as lay, oak of kindness is no scrub and all the sliding silica does not a rock misjudge. Lost of purpose these ken gird; seed-bounty pinőn op’s stores, elfin saplings endure and pageant death promises detail on folded arms.
But millet concerns like: will these not of their making and they themselves keep? Or how an, “…in all of history!” can be judged by the reference-less will sink with the top layer in a few hundred years. One bolder’d say, Do what intrinsic scolds, go where remiss visit and this heaven love.
Yeah yew, I quess if you were to pronounce for the world
you'd say in some wind rush like a whisper,
forces have more girth than a man,
that even hats won't work
Small concerns under this lid - she slips in a rush job and some waiting; we have two nice evenings; “I had thought” to invent a double happiness, but could not find the parts.
Another day, every tool and material assembled for the heavy-breathing of love gained, of space in the house, but were taking pictures of the soon thrown out: an art project.
Saw you and yours taking pictures; as last chance up on the lanes where strained adjustments ledgered as winds effect only;
hearts steady-step here where need is gallop. Fault with age, could be fault with emperors?
Fine, those who’ve tried history for us; very consciousness slows. Well! the aril of your ‘fruitless’ will mix and his steps not stones in a rumored further walks under yews.
In that brio for life we finally learned to take it back – excuse me, we’re sorry! but we weren’t. Apologize for breathing? No! For being seen.
At this late hour, did anticipate running into Whitman’s ‘baboon’ remark, Bennett’s abortion tricks or as prelude to these Voltaire’s reveal?
Close in the life, writing and off-hand remark are the brickbats and hurled misjudge. I’m not stuck! All here in the hearing and sight of racism:
“the white man’s disease” to quote a hero; not new to siblings and “eye” would have gone round via the street like others, but the cop and hot rodders wouldn’t have it
So maneuver the one foot pipe stretched like taunt across a canal your only way back if back you ever gain; a thirteen, an eleven and a nine year old –that’s fair accurate! a Dad’s whole tribe at the time.
That’s when; going to McDonald’s was a dangerous act.
It’s twelve or it’s seven, but it’s not five; let’s not awe at his or her right actions in life, standings up; surprised we are but let’s emulate and certainly not get in the way. What one did in life for the billions of let’s copy it, appreciate in the only best - Do the work giant. Expose, forgive - to actual best practice.
You wade or holding on are out of mind at so much water. I cry for you, ‘you are too much with water. There is no water! Left to disaster, these tears will not add to that flow’; your need - everywhere mine.
In times less harried I claimed the world rested on these shoulders, but it like you is neither mendicant nor host with full basket; will not support further bruises.
A warning has gone out every day for the last two-hundred and fifty-thousand years, too few have heard the blast or if hearing, are closing ears and shaking head.
Now, I hail a rescue? I curse not the water less cursing curse self, empty bins of supposed riches for healing, a new horizon. Helicopter sustenance, avoid the fire and make a further moratorium on indifference to hold a neighbor by.
You’re hopeful of retreating to less ambition. Hear tell you seek your own way, outside this glitter with no backing. “The king and the people have no clothes!” They want you to call the 800 number for details. “Stay where you are!” “You could already be a winner, it’s free!”
If nothing else as individuals, we should read and understand the falsities. Truths will find us easily, when open, but falsities will take more to avoid.
“Fill-in the form, answer all the questions, then we will see if you qualify for our lending program!” “Your application is with the acceptance committee!” “No sir! I can’t help you with that!” “Press any key to continue!” “I’m sorry, that was an incorrect response, please try again!” “All of our operators are currently busy!”
With animation’s touted helpfulness? Up to here! With Cayman accounts and the safe Swiss? The people can not bear! Their cup over runs with these. Three eyes explode where there were two. Any peace and quiet would do.
cross the waters a-peer in mode less ’xtravagant measure fall truancy. Right as conqueror to clash ship’s bell if capturing. To guide binary digit supposed about the mall, to allay fears of men-at-arms was why dread lowered us to ask, “Where are we tracking?” Pain of lost mystique, shots not seeking us or our children in latest dream wend into a hale, a canabinal, upon a pie-shaped wedge sits a-boated bile; we monkey with the Greeks, cut out dolls for Gaia, show Apollo again where Phaeton came down, do marvelous fixing of light on dusky objects. But as the sun sets our careless eye sees the referent and relatum capacity, the reinforced concrete in frowns discern and we wallop in diversity “we just can’t stand the garden”: wanky, wrests mottos, allows ‘no cudgel’. Then luxuries appear offense where growth under breast and cap are meant. Could a new theogony?
Rows an unused boat on lake of crystal dews and gets thoughts her stare: eyes like clear pools after a rain, that shot meaning; how she vitaled his human.
Going for an anti-beer, he discovers: “Truth, be a heart widened emptied this time for the wife and fishes! I will: nothing to forestall, hers in fancy, flagon entire drained; whole craft put to edge that ever welcomes her!”
Ill-timed; his orbs and the vermiculate sea tell of bonds baffled, how all slipped easily, unnoticed out of hands.
“Do not travel alone!” was warned our build wish. The country, unstable, safety could not be confirmed, but off on a site-visit, to breathe the country miles, hour and a half on the road with interpreter and driver I gamble my pile.
She, lithe blond of the smiling eyes is guide on arrival, newly changed Ministry, its wood floors, paneling and drape coveted cigarette smoke of a century. Director hurried, proved diffident. Then to our business tour turned lunch; we became the ancient little restaurant itself: snuggled into rock below the boulevard cozy, comfy, one with booth. Melt anxiety! Time rest near!
But conditioned with the old reception: what if kept wary eye and stayed just aft happy; soon the Black Earth entrusted to Slavs humanizes and city’s lunch-hour streets, riparian views, feminine company do much to calm, the whole gained.
Can say lunch was a rush of Russian dishes: borsch, fresh fish, the ready samovar I and that best Russian Stolichnayan of conversation. “You like Russian girls?” “Like a bear that enjoys all the berries!” cool in rest.
When travel, do the earnest prepare their empathy noting how every slight or realization at ‘home’ can clothe for that prized world-citizenship which returns persona non grata with sir-patience up-close and by dunk, are living to promise? Should!
The broth of life, the crest of legacy are but a few this monody of you, water. Let men, calculated, see each patch over the years and believably garner clue. Make it, despite caution, when next waterside eyes rises, there be rescue and relief for each. Also, you water-privilege, stay with populations, not borne away in commodity’s trucks. Those conscious are not fools; in places, she’s like to let, he may not and fools are they have love transpositive, it is not.
Everywhere hear: “there’s nothing I’d hide personally, can’t speak for the government, though should; and its draughts mine.”
Perhaps need - longer bowed and shorter greed will sweep smear-adaptations, microbial illusions which seem not bold in any forward sense; and know: Earth-kin need you now.
Fuller documents defend democracy, and no saddling by richest: this, fuller document that currently isn’t full of hold-your-indigent. Show don’t tell? So sink two wells for Madeleine! and remind all nationals’ crimes done in their name, like glass broken by unsupervised, will have to be paid for.
"Meet us under these cypresses, which turn their solemn tops to heaven;
visit us among those espaliers where the citrons and pomegranates bloom
beside us, where the graceful myrtle stretches out its flowers to us;
and then venture to disturb us with your dreary, paltry nets which men
have spun!" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship'
T. Carlyle trans.
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"Perhaps your family and friends
Knew a merry flash cracking the gloom
We see in pictures but I prefer
And will keep the darker legend.
For I have seen how
Half a millennium of alien rape
And murder can stamp a smile
On the vacant face of the fool,
The sinister grin of Africa's idiot-kings
Who oversee in obscene palaces of gold
The butchery of their people..." - Chinua Achebe
-------------------------------------------------- "Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children." Ancient Indian Proverb
“....I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation. We do not want riches but we do want to train our children right. Riches would do us no good. We could not take them with us to the other world. We do not want riches. We want peace and love.”
Red Cloud (Makhpiya-luta) , April, 1870 --------------------------------------------------
DEREK WALCOTT - From : 'The Star-Apple Kingdom', 'The Schooner Flight' "...As I worked, watching the rotting waves come past the bow that scissor the sea like milk, I swear to you all, by my mother's milk, by the stars that shall fly from tonight's furnace, that I loved them, my children, my wife, my home; I loved them as poets love the poetry that kills them, as drowned sailors the sea.
You ever look up from some lonely beach and see a far schooner? Well, when I write this poem, each phrase go be soaked in salt; I go draw and knot every line as tight as ropes in this rigging; in simple speech my common language go be the wind, my pages the sails of the schooner Flight. But let me tell you how this business begin... " ---------------------------------
DU FU tr. David Lunde Chinese text
Meeting Li GuiNian in the South At the home of the Prince of Qi I have often seen you, and in the hall of Cui Jiu, I have heard you sing. Truly these southlands boast unrivalled scenery- to see you once again when the flowers are falling.
___________________________ Chinese text
From: tr. Mike O'connor Dreaming of Li Bai (2)
You say your return is always harrowing; your coming, a hard coming; Rivers, lakes, so many waves; in your boat you fear overturning.
Going out the door, you scratch your white head as if the purpose of your whole life was ruined, The rich and high positioned fill the Capital, while you, alone, are careworn and dejected.
Who says the net of heaven is cast wide? Growing older, you only grow more preyed upon. One thousand autumns, ten thousand years of fame, are nothing after death.
------------------------------------------------------ "Clearheart girth abode alluring. . . Slow accretion year by year advancing mass, tree-home penultimate dream In child-heart bower. Benevolence giant! Sequoia presence. I thought perhaps some glimpse to steal of spirit tutelar within --
Imagined hamadryad, sylvan nymph; intelligence not faun. Took more than thought. I stared and stared Till vexed the glaring nothing! I revealed. Others had described it, persuaded one the charm. . . Why then not I? Imagination? Oh I see. Foolish to be angry. . . just love the tree, instead.
Came then softly the miraculous: Was loving me the tree and was its spirit! Found! Bedraggled Lily of the Roadside: Trumpeter Datura Derelitta. Think on it. Her blossom is so very pure. . .
Rank the stalk; and prickle leaf already claw gone thistle. Thorn-apple Spikings come no surprise. Lethal. Fell. Is witch-wood entered here! Choose carefully your gait." -From: James Joyce 'Striding the Bones of the Coastal Range', an excerpt from 'Growing Pains': The Early Poems by James Joyce, published by Ladan Reserve Press (c) 2003 James Joyce
Withstanding his use & dereliction of that use of the 'n' word (Yeah I know- "the times") Here, some James Joyce quotes from his 'Ulysses'
"Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that originality, though producing its own reward, does not invariably conduce to success? His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be seated engaged in writing."
"People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep." "I don't want to indulge in any...because you know the standard works on the subject, and then, orthodox as you are...But in the economic, not touching religion, domain, the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead America. Turks, it's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better - at least, so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p.'s raise the wind on false pretense."
They characterize their lives, and I fill up with mine. Fill up with what I have, with what I see (or need. I make no distinction. As blind men cannot love too quiet beauty.
These philosophers rein up Their boats. Bring their gifts, weapons to my door. As if that, in itself, was courage, or counting science. The story is a long one. Why I am here like this. Why you should listen, now, so late, and weary at the night. Its heavy rain pushing the grass flat.
It is here somewhere. It grows here. Answers. Questions. Noise stiff as silence... LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka)
We must look after our health, use moderate exercise, take just enough food and drink to recruit, but not to overload, our strength. Nor is it the body alone that must be supported, but the intellect and soul much more."
- Cicero
O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting
fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee
, has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty, how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods... e.e.cummings
MITHRIDATES
I cannot spare water or wine, Tobacco-leaf, or poppy, or rose; From the earth-poles to the Line, All between that works or grows, Every thing is kin of mine...
"If gardens be thy food of love, Then we love thee more, Clydesdale on Te puke, Something Brown for sure. Thou hast not seen botanical, If you view not Brown’s garden, Perchance the perfect place, A challenge, I beg thee pardon. How beauteous, finite care, Doth it reason perfection?..."
(c) Copyright the Poet - Paolo
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"If love is an awkward, scriptless scene To be played out between two people, I cannot write it: I am a pattern Of breath and sleep that city will outlive.
And if poetry is a bond between Two hearts, it is a bond too frail: That night words failed, I too, was lost-- To whiskey, memory, a photograph."
I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest.
For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the world. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and mountaintops I store her pillow with singing.
Upon her hair I write the looking of the heavens at early morning. -- Away from this kingdom, from this last undefiled place, I would keep our governments, our civilization, and all other spirit-forsaken and corrupt institutions...
"That which we leave unspoken is like the hail from last night's storm Still clustered and white in the shadowy tall grass, as yet unreached by the sun. Like unuttered words, they disappear One by one in the light, crystal and golden for an instant, then nothing at all. Like everything else not done or not chosen. Like all that's liguid and overlooked, what we don't give, what we don't take.... I daydream about a pierced medieval vision, a supperation of wounds, a spurting of blood, One ladle, two quick and endless gulps. St Catherine of Siena, drink something from me..."
'From Talk Alone You Don't Get a Poem' Charles Bernstein
"It's your turn, Roger. The whole world's not nuts! You earn your eye and the vastness vanishes under the brick of an oily blanket, only the doodles don't dare crack the count- ing houses. Setting in motion something like actuarial imbrication (hor- tatory lamentation), as if bal- looning bulbs. Say slither in the case of presumptive hitherance you know, the tuck around the tootle, mickey mousing with the last brass lunge. There are barbells in the pantry, second shelf above the sag..."
"A baying and clouds! Into bracken they're riding their madness! Like fishermen cast their nets into vapour and will-o'-the-wisp! They sling a rope round the crests and invite us to dance! And wash the horns in the wellspring - so learning the lure-call.
What you chose for your cloak, is it dense, can it harbour the radiance? They creep round the trunks like sleep, as though offering dream. High up they hurl hearts, the mossy globes of dementia: O water-coloured fleece, our one flag on the tower!"
"See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet, The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering!
See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back; These were the "Wing'd-with-Awe," Inviolable.
Gods of the wingčd shoe! With them the silver hounds, sniffing the trace of air!
...Slow on the leash, pallid the leash-men!"
[("The Return") Personae] Copyright (c) 1926, 1935, 1971 Ezra Pound - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - O Little Root of a Dream, Paul Celan Translated by Heather McHugh and Nikolai Popov "0 little root of a dream you hold me here undermined by blood, no longer visible to anyone, property of death.
Curve a face that there may be speech, of earth, of ardor, of things with eyes, even here, where you read me blind..."
Please Look for these books of poetry; `DRAGON CONVERSATION'(Also available in E-Book form from 1st Books Library on the Web at http://www.authorhouse.com). Also first and second Books; `I BEGIN: (Poems, Essay's, Thoughts and Observations)', and `OFFERING' by Joe Duvernay. Available on the Web thru Barnes & Noble.com, Amazon.com Borders.com, Abebooks and more or please ask for them at your local bookstore.
"If I were to compare action of a higher strain with a life of contemplation, I should not venture to pronounce with much confidence in favor of the former. Mankind have such a deep stake in inward illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in defence of his life of thought and prayer. A certain partiality, a headiness and loss of balance, is the tax which all action must pay. Act, if you like, - but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his aspirations in some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form and lose the aspiration." - Emerson
"Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain."
"Can I my reason to my faith compel, And shall my sight, and touch, and taste rebel Superior faculties are set aside, Shall their subservient organs be my guide?
Then let the moon usurp the rule of day, And winking tapers show the sun his way. For what my senses can themselves perceive, I need no revelation to believe."
From: 'THE HIND AND THE PANTHER' Part I (excerpts) John Dryden
"It is a doctrine of war not to assume the enemy will not come, but rather to rely on one's readiness to meet him: not to presume that he will not attack, but rather to make ones's self invincible. Ho Yen-hsi...The 'Strategies of Wu' says:'When the world is at peace, a gentleman keeps his sword by his side.'" 'Be not Reckless, cowardly or quick-tempered' - Comment/question --- Is hope a fool then?
-From: Sun Tzu, 'THE ART OF WAR'
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"Heaven could not hold Love, it was so heavy in itself. But when it had eaten its fill of earth, and taken flesh and blood, then it was lighter than a leaf on a linden-tree, more subtle and piercing than the point of a needle. The strongest armour was not proof against it, the tallest ramparts could not keep it out."
- From, 'PIERS THE PLOUGHMAN', by William Langland
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"It is called clouded when petals dust its surface - that stream that becomes a mirror for plum blossoms year after departing year."
-From: PLUM MIRROR from TWO POEMS ON PLUM TREES' by Lady Ise
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Oh! may I curse my blackness that makes me feel hungry When the land is full of gold and diamond When the land is green Like the frog blanket May I wait then
-From: 'MAY I WAIT' by Simion R. Nkanunu
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"What of seasons, when for ages All the sky my lake engages: What of years ill or good, When the sap mounts in the wood; What of years or ill, When the Danube rolls on still. Only man is always changing, O'er the world forever ranging; We each do our place retain, As we were, so we remain; Oceans, rivers, mountains high And the stars that light the sky, Saturn with its whirling rings, And the forest with its springs."
-From 'RETURN' by Mihai Eminescu
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Crossing the Lonely Sea. Delving in the Book of Change, I rose through hardship great, And desperately fought the foe for four long years; Like willow catkin, the war-torn land looks desolate, I sink or swim as duckweed in the rain appears. For perils on Perilous Beach, I heaved and sighed, On Lonely Sea now, I feel dreary and lonely; Since olden days, which man has lived and not died? I'll leave a loyalist name in history!
-(tr. Xu YuanZhong) - Wen TianZiang
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From O Sensei - "Soft controls hard Hard cuts soft If pulled, push If pushed, turn."
"Here learn ye Mountains more unjust, Which to abrupter greatness thrust, That do with your hook-shoulder'd height The earth deform and Heaven fright. For whose excrescence ill design'd, Nature must a new Center find, Learn here those humble steps to tread, Which to secure Glory lead.
See what a soft access and wide Lyes open to its grassy side; Nor with the rugged path deterrs The feet of breathless Travelers. See then how courteous it ascends, And all the way it rises bends: Nor for it self the height does gain, But only strives to raise the Plain. - From: 'Upon the Hill and Grove at Bill-borow. To The Lord Fairfax.' by Andrew Marvell
1A:1 Mencius went to King Hui of Lang. The King said: "My good man, since you haven't thought one thousand li too far to come and see me, may I presume that you have something with which I can profit my kingdom?" Mencius said:"Why must you speak of profit? What I have for you is jen (the human mind, humanity, doing, intending, being good, etc.) and Righteousness, and that's all. If you always say `how can I profit my kingdom?' your top officers will ask, `how can we profit our clans?' The shih (influencers) and the common people will ask: `how can we profit ourselves?' Superiors and inferiors will struggle against each other for profit, and the country will be in chaos." "In a kingdom of ten thousand chariots, the murderer of the sovereign is usually from a clan of one thousand chariots. In a thousand-chariot kingdom, the murderer of the sovereign is usually from a clan of one hundred chariots. Now, to have a thousand in ten thousand, or one hundred in a thousand is not really all that much. But if you put Righteousness last and profit first, no one will be satisfied unless they can grab something."
Mencius said: "The Superior Man concentrates on the cultivation of his own character. The common error of people is that they forget about their own garden and try to cultivate the other man's garden. They expect much from others and little from themselves."
Mencius said: "When someone told Tzu Lu about one of his faults, he was happy. When Yu heard words of goodness, he would bow in respect. The great Shun surpassed even these men. He regarded the goodness of others to be the same as his. He let go of his arbitrariness and followed others,happily learning from them in order to develop his goodness. From the time when he was a farmer, a potter and a fisherman, up until he became Emperor, he never stopped learning from others. " To learn from others to develop one's goodness is also to develop goodness together with others. Therefore, for the Superior Man, there is nothing greater than to develop goodness together with others."
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness: but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing..."
"Apart from the question of what rights are in themselves, or how human beings come to have them or to own them or to lose them, it may be asked: Why should philosophers have a special claim to the right to express themselves? Why they rather than artists or historians or scientists or ordinary men? Freedom of speech - or of expression by means other than words - may be an absolute end, needing no justification in terms of any other purpose, and worth fighting for, some would add dying for, for its own sake, independently of its value in making people happy or wise or strong. That is what I should wish to say myself. But this is a point of view which has seldom held the field in human affairs; more frequently there has been a tendency to believe in some single ideal - social or political or religious - to which everything was to be sacrificed, and among the first the freedom for individual self-expression, because it was, quite rightly, seen to constitute a grave danger to the kind of social conformity which uncritical service to a single ideal in the end requires." From:Philosophy And Government Repression, Studies in Ideas and Their History, THE SENSE OF REALITY, Isaiah Berlin (The supposed English Empire appologist)
The nights, the railway-arches, the bad sky, His horrible companions could not know it; But in that child the rhetorician's lie Burst like a pipe: the cold had made a poet.
Indeed a self imposed hard life he had! Thanks again!
"Come then to prayers And kneel upon the stone, For we have tried All courages on these despairs, And are required lastly to give up pride. And the last difficult pride in being humble." Phillip Larkin
"It was geography which was the cause - political geography. It was nothing else. Nations did not need to have the same kind of leader, any more than the puffins and the quillemonts did. They could keep their own civilizations, like the Esquimaux and Hottentots, if they would give each other freedom of trade and free passage and access to the world. Countries would have to become counties - but counties which could keep their own culture and local laws. The imaginary lines on the earth's surface only needed to be unimagined." From T.H.White's 'The Once And Future King'
"Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray, But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks Wants war, wants wounds: weary his times, his tasks; To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Rare patience roots in these, and, these away, Nowhere. Natural heart's ivy, Patience masks Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks Purple eyes and seas of liguid leaves all day.
We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills Of us we do bid God bend to him even so."
"Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind; that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit:" George Berkeley (1685-1753)
"He sang of life, serenely sweet, With, now and then, a deeper note. From some high peak, nigh yet remote, He voiced the world's absorbing beat." From Paul Laurence Dunbar's THE POET
"Why should this flower delay so long To show its tremulous plumes? Now is the time of plaintive Robin-song When flowers are in their tombs.
Through the slow summer, when the sun Called to each frond and whorl That all he could do for flowers was being done, Why did it not uncurl?
It must have felt that fervid call Although it took no heed, Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall, and saps all retrocede." From Thomas Hardy's THE LAST CHRYSATHEMUM
"My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled, Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, All felled, felled are all felled; Of a fresh & following folded rank Not spared, not one That dandled a sandalled Shadow that swam or sank On meadow & river & wind-wandering weed-winding bank. O if we but knew what we do When we delve or hue -- Hack & rack the growing green! Since country is so tender To touch, her being so slender, That, like this sleek & seeing ball But a prick will make no eye at all, Where we, even where we mean To mend her we end her, When we hew and delve: Aftercomers cannot guess the beauty been." From 'BINSEY POPLARS felled /(18)79' by Gerard Manley Hopkins
"The words "ecology,""economics," and "ecumenism" all have their root in the Creek word `oikos', meaning house or home. Ecology, topmost in the hierarcy of the life sciences, has indeed to do with the economy of the great house of nature, of which it seeks to reveal the structure in space and time and especially the interactions of animals and plants with themselves and each other. Its content is enormous, for ecology enjoys the entire empirical content of the sciences below it in the hierarcy as well as, of course, the concepts contextually peculiar to itself." - From `Aristotle to Zoos' by P.B. and J.S. Medawar
The last lines of John Webster's play, 'The Duchess Of Malfi'---
"As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts, Both form and matter. I have ever thought Nature doth nothing so great for great men (and women), As when she's pleased to make them lords of truth: Integrity of life is fame's best friend, Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.
FRom: An Interview with Maya Angelou By David Frost
DF: In your poem to the U.N., you said, "We, this people, on a small and lonely planet Traveling through casual space, passed a lot of stars, across a way of indifferent suns to a destination where all signs tell us it is possible and imperative that we discover a brave and startling truth." MA: Yes.
DF: What -- can you see the shape of that brave and startling truth? MA: Yes. I think we have to start to love life. Again, I didn't think about that `til this moment, but Thomas Wolfe said in `A Web and a Rock', "And in loving life, hate death." We have got to start loving life and living. We have to respect that thing which we cannot create, which is life and stop taking it from people and stop taking it from things. Stop taking it. We can't make it. We can't reproduce one single person*. Stop minimizing people's lives by our ignorance, at our whim, for our own personal convenience. You see, I can minimize your life. I can keep you from getting that job. I can keep you from having respect for yourself. I can keep you from being able to support your children. I can keep you from that. I can minimize your life. Yes, I can. So I can live fuller. Well, we've got to get beyond that. and it is passed aloof stars. I mean, we are living on this mote of matter. That's exactly what it is. And we live about that long. (Snaps fingers.) I mean, to realize that the reptiles were on this blob of spit and sand for 200 million years and here we are (snaps fingers) moths of time. And so -- and even so in this little brief interlude, we can pinch out somebody's life. We have to force ourselves to be more intelligent. I don't mean intellectually agile either, but really intelligent."
An excerpt from a poem attributed to the Welsh bard Aneurin:
"To Cattraeth's vale, in glimering row, Twice two hundred warriors go: Every warrior's manly neck Chains of regal honor deck, Wreathed in many a golden link; From the golden cup they drink Nectar that the bees produce, Or the grape's exalted juice. Flushed with mirth and hope they burn, But none to Cattreath's vale return, Save Aeron brave, and Conan strong, Bursting through the bloody throng, And I, the meanest of them all, That live to weep, and sing their fall."
"This is not the time to analyze and criticize works of art, This is not the time to select the flowers of genius, differentiate between them, label and categorize. This is the time to accept what is offered and be thankful that something other than mass intolerance, mass suicide, can preoccupy the human intellect. If through indifference and inertia we can create human as well as atomic bombs, then it seems to me that the poet has the right to explode in his own fashion at his own appointed time. If all is hopelessly given over to destruction, why should the poet not lead the way? Why should he remain amdist the ruins like a crazed beast? If we deny our Maker, why should we preserve the maker of words and images? Are the forms and symbols he spins to be put above Creation itself? When men deliberately create instruments of destruction to be used against the innocent as well as the guilty, against babes in arms as well as against the aged, the sick, the halt, the maimed, the blind, the insane, when their targets embrace whole populations, when they are immune to every appeal, then we know that the heart and the imagination of man is no longer capable of being stirred. If the powerful ones of this earth are in the grip of fear and trembling, what hope is there for the weaker ones? What does it matter to those monsters now in control what becomes of the poet, the sculptor, the musician? In the richest and the most powerful country in the world there is no means of insuring an invalid poet such as Kenneth Patchen against starvation or eviction. Neither is there a band of loyal fellow artists who will unite to defend him against the unncecessary attacks of shallow, spiteful critics. Every day ushers in some fresh blow, some fresh insults, some fresh punishment. In spite of it all he continues to create. He works on two or three books at once. He labors in a state of almost unremitting pain. He lives in a room just about big enough to hold his carcass, a rented coffin you might call it, and a most insecure one at that. Would he not be better off dead? What is there for him to look forward to as a man, as an artist, as a member of society?" We have plenty destitute among us. Then and Now! Henry Miller, 'Patchen: Man of Anger and Light', (Big Sur, CA 1946)
"Love by ambition of definition suffers partition And cannot go From yes to no, For no is not love: no is no, The shutting of a door, The tightening jaw, A willful sorrow; And saying yes Turns love into success, Views from the rail Of land and happiness; Assured of all, The sofas creak, And were this all, love were But cheek to cheek And dear to dear." - W. H. Auden, from "Too Dear, Too Vague"
"Devotion to Rama lay like a seed in his heart: as he listened to the discourse, it began to sprout." - Author 'Rasika,Puttige' describing the Indian poet Goswami Tulsidas.
