Category: Literature/Poetry

Libertatis Sacra Fames

Albeit nurtured in democracy,
And liking best that state republican
Where every man is Kinglike and no man
Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,
Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,
Better the rule of One, whom all obey,
Than to let clamorous demagogues betray
Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane
Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street
For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign
Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honour, all things fade,
Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,
Or Murder with his silent bloody feet.

Oscar Wilde 1854-1900

And now we are living in The Days Of Trump.

Appropriate…

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost
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:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a 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,
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.

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.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side.
It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
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.

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.

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 offense.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.
”  I could say “Elves” to him,
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,
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.

Liberty…

Edward Thomas, 1878 – 1917

The last light has gone out of the world, except
This moonlight lying on the grass like frost
Beyond the brink of the tall elm’s shadow.
It is as if everything else had slept
Many an age, unforgotten and lost
The men that were, the things done, long ago,
All I have thought; and but the moon and I
Live yet and here stand idle over the grave
Where all is buried. Both have liberty
To dream what we could do if we were free
To do some thing we had desired long,
The moon and I. There’s none less free than who
Does nothing and has nothing else to do,
Being free only for what is not to his mind,
And nothing is to his mind. If every hour
Like this one passing that I have spent among
The wiser others when I have forgot
To wonder whether I was free or not,
Were piled before me, and not lost behind,
And I could take and carry them away
I should be rich; or if I had the power
To wipe out every one and not again
Regret, I should be rich to be so poor.
And yet I still am half in love with pain,
With what is imperfect, with both tears and mirth,
With things that have an end, with life and earth,
And this moon that leaves me dark within the door.

A Poem For The 21st Century…

Children of a Lesser God  by Eileen Manassian Ghali

I’m tired of knowing
That because of my race
Because of where I live
Because of my last name
I’m part of the band…
The children of a lesser God

I’m tired of knowing
That there is so much hate
That it can only escalate
Till someone presses the button
And we blow up in nuclear hate
All because
Some of us are children…
Children of a lesser God

First world 
Second world
Third world
Labels and degrees
Different ideologies
Religion no longer a balm
But something to cause harm
Human life of differing values
We mourn them differently
for some of them are children...
Children of a lesser God

How it must make God cry
When His children bleed and die
Unable to understand
That there is a grander plan
One of perfect harmony
In another place in time

He won’t be sitting at heaven’s gate
Asking for an ID
Or checking your nationality
He won’t see the color of your face
Or ask about your race
All He will want to know
Is if you let love grow
Did you live according to His will?
Did you try to relieve suffering and pain?
Were you the bandage of peace
that bound up the wounds of hate?

First, second, third world people
Are all children of one God
Though some may disagree
I ask you all to see
That we are all
Every single one of us...
Children of the Greatest God.

Poetry Tonight…

 “Philosophical Poem”

The disease of civilization is not tools, citizen.

Ignorance might be closer to it.

Politics closer. But only Money

Will hit the brass tacks everyone wants to get down to

Squarely on the head.

 

Above all, I have no case against human nature.

Whatever that is, I like it.

I like mechanics with wrenches,

Taxi drivers’ photos on licenses,

Drunks lighting cigarettes.

What the hell else is there to like

After you’ve kissed your wife and gone to sleep?

 

I like everything but important people being important.

And academic people being academic.

What I like least is bookkeepers

Spending their human eyes on accounts receivable,

Interest receivable, payment due, balance on hand.

And columns of soldiers marching.

John Ciardi