Silence

Silence is an empty peace; Violence is a pointless war. No one ever dies for silence, No one ever wins with violence, But there is peace worth fighting for As there are wars that fires may cease. Fires that blaze leave deathly silence, None to claim the spoils of violence And the pointlessness increases When the battlefield releases No one to pick up the pieces, No one to put up the score, No one fighting anymore. No one wins an empty war.


from Thirty Birds

Sealed

To put face to feathery form, the nation...

An eagle, on the wing and rising to
the sky, a field prevailing azure, blue revealed by golden glory breaking through the argent ring of clouds aligned anew above the bird: a halo made of stars now taking place and rank among the powers, the power of peace before the power of wars, all sovereignties reordered after ours, a nation reckoned by a blazing sun: and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won. The eagle tips the balance towards peace: its dexter talon rightly won’t release the olive branch; and peaceward does it face forever to its honorable embrace, and yet the raptor holds its arrows fast within its eastward talon to avast what sinister designs may come to pass; it clings this bundle, ready to the last to stave all threats before they are begun and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won. Behold the eagle’s shield, the chief and pale held front and center by their own avail, the two most honored ordinaries hailed to mark the great escutcheon unassailed, a symbol for the way the eagle rules: the azure chief a congress for the whole above a pale of stripes, argent and gules kept closely unified: so speaks the scroll of our perpetual creed: “Of many, one,” and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won. Within the eagle’s beak this Latin pun becomes our purpose and criterion, our everlasting oath beneath the sun: E pluribus, of many, unum, one, and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.


from Thirty Birds

Moleskin 4.8

Our original dad was still in our lives, but from a distance now that was usually shortened to phone calls and letters and a few weeks of vacation time. But suddenly, one Christmas break, I was deemed old enough to get on a Greyhound for the first of a series of year-end visits. It was a sixteen hour night run from Chicago to Minneapolis to Detroit Lakes. The bus culture was more than my siblings could endure, at least not in my care, but for a kid turning thirteen and fourteen it was an adventure my mother and stepfather were willing to allow. On the other end my real dad never questioned their wisdom and was simply happy to see me. And I enjoyed those bus rides, talking for hours with whomever I was seated beside, learning how to sleep sitting up, eating more vending machine food than was good for me, taking curious note of the people who seemed to live in and around bus terminals, but best of all, going to see my dad.

Devotions

But he answered and said to them, 
“You give them something to eat.”  
            Mark 6:37 (NKJV)

1

You, one and all of you,

nameless counselors,
collective observers
adding little to the sentence,
barely part of the plot,

yet there you are, pronounced
in every translation,
prompting response and
preceding the action.

Feed my sheep;
as the day begins to wear,
give them something to eat.


2

You, second person,

the emphasized imperative,
God’s audience specifically
commissioned and directed
to a singular assignment:

having first observed,
be ready to serve;
as the Lord has called you,
hear that holy word:

feed my sheep; 
they do not need to go away,
give them something to eat.


3

You, Christ companion,

one of the twelve 
on a failed retreat
and a broken rest,
your Sabbath overtaken
by a hungry crowd:

having seen the need
but unsure of the logistics,
you’ve been firmly turned 
around to see the deed:

feed my sheep;
all these sheep without a shepherd,
give them something to eat.


4

You, fellow traveler,

being stirred one morning to the life of follow,
pulled by a pulse to leave hearth and hold,
drawn to the shepherd’s call and still
at the shepherd’s feet as the day grows old:

here in the hungry gather,
observing the surround,
with an echo in your stomach
and the journey on your shoulders,

feed my sheep;
lie them down in these green pastures,
give them something to eat.


5

You, faithful follower,

making your way from practical to miracle,
turning attention from mortal to divine,
being taught to pray, to teach, to heal,
now learn your greater discipline:

take these five loaves, these couple of fish
let them first be blessed and broken, then
give thanks for what you’re given
and let the people have their fill:

feed my sheep;
with all of your devotion,
give them something to eat.


6

You, just as you are,

one of the sheep
having come this far,
knowing the hunger
and needing the rest,

you give it all to Jesus
and Jesus answers
with a bit of a challenge,
a bit of a test

putting you front and center
to be God’s hands,
to show God’s love,
to prepare the feast:

feed my sheep;
for the love of God, they’re hungry,
give them something to eat.


from Stillwater Symposia

Coronata

Whiplash migration, filling the branches one day, on their way the next, so quick it seems, four weeks flying by as fast as the flash of their yellow posterity, moving in dreams from south to north to south again with stops and light refreshments. Free music. Dancing. Life, nothing fancy, but sweet all the same, the simplest warble and a two-step shuffle, easy going charity with yellow patches on the elbows of their sleeves and in the press of their hats. Plain folk simply passing through with an unexpected splash of country flare, nothing fancy but sweet all the same, and only memories with the next flight south.


from Thirty Birds

Kissing the Earth

     “Go at once...stand at the crossroads, bow down, [and] kiss the earth,” instructed Sonya (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 433, 1866, tr. David Magarshack, 1951). It was a command heavy with implications, and at first Raskolnikov refused to comply.  What was she asking?
     First, to stand at the crossroads implied that he was to stand at the center of Haymarket Square, the busiest part of the busiest city in Russia.  There he would be where the whole world could see him, making himself completely vulnerable to whatever reaction his confession would bring.  They might laugh, they might scorn and jeer, they might attack him there, or even stone him; they might just pick him up and take him away, never to return again.  But he would have no way of knowing their reaction until he carried out the instruction.
     At the crossroads he would be at St. Petersburg’s point of orientation,  where there would be street signs and mileage and direction signs; and this would also be his own orientation point.   There, based on all the resulting changes in perspective, he would be able to sort things out. 
     And he would be able to determine his future, for it is at the crossroads that one decides direction.  As much as one tries to plan such decisions ahead of time, it is only at the crossroads that the choices are actually made and the steps actually taken for the journey’s continuation.
     After Sonya spoke these words she offered Raskolnikov a cyprus cross to hang around his neck.  “We’ll suffer together, so let us also bear our cross together,” she said (435).  Here then was another implication of “crossroads.”  Confessing and asking the world for forgiveness is a praiseworthy religious act and a testimony of faith, and yet it is not an easy step to take.  The cross to bear along this road is heavy and entails a deep humiliation; it conjures no magic remedy before the symbolic  crucifixion, no preview of the resurrection.  Yet, Sonya inferred, it was a necessary step for the sinner to take. 
     Thus Raskolnikov was to stand at the crossroads: he was to bear his cross of repentance, stand in front of all people, recognize where he stood, and determine his future. 
     And he was to kiss the earth: “...the earth which you have defiled,” Sonya said in full (433), implying that at the crossroads he would be making his apology directly to the world.  By murdering, he had not only wronged his particular victims, who now lay under the soil, he had also sinned against all humankind across the globe. 
     Furthermore, kissing the earth was a demonstration of the deepest humility.  He was to bow down and prostrate to the world as low as he possibly could, showing with face to the ground that he deferred to everyone. 
     By touching the soil this way he would also atune himself with “Holy Mother Earth,” from whence he came, upon which he walked, and whither he was going.  Thus, in one action he would recognize his origin, his existence and his mortality, acknowledging his defilement with respect to all three. 
     But finally, kissing the earth is more than a humble, atoning apology.  It is experiencing a purgatory cleansing by bringing sensuality to its fullest: the taste, the smell, the feel of city dirt next to one’s nose and on one’s lips would stir the soul.  And indeed, when Raskolnikov put Sonya’s directions into practice, his sensuality was so dramatic that one observer remarked that he was drunk.  “He simply plunged... into this new and overwhelming sensation... tears gushed from his eyes... and [he] kissed the earth with joy and rapture” (537).  


from March to December, Dostoevsky Final (Russian 141, 11/30/90, Prof. Rubchak)

Understanding

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), Section V:





          V. What The Thunder Said

                    Eliot's note: 

                    In the first part of Part V three themes are employed: the journey to Emmaus, the 
                    approach to the Chapel Perilous (see Miss Weston's book) and the present decay
                    of eastern Europe. 

                    For the journey to Emmaus, see TWL 360-366, although the theme begins to 
                    appear at TWL 328-330; for the decay of eastern Europe, see TWL 367-385; 
                    and for the approach to the Chapel Perilous, see TWL 386-395. These themes, 
                    and the more prominent emergence of Eliot’s own voice without allusions (see 
                    TWL 331-359), will lead to the poem’s “thunder” culmination, beginning at TWL 
                    396.  After the sections of earth, air, fire and water, this might be called the 
                    quintessential “spirit” section of the poem, in which the poet begins to find 
                    understanding, or more properly a peace that passes understanding (see note 
                    at TWL 434).

                    This section's central metaphor of THE VOICE OF THUNDER comes from 
                    Prajapati’s lesson in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (see TWL 400-423), but 
                    see also the note at TWL 44 and lines 327 and 342, and see also Revelations 10:4: 

                    And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: 
                    and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the 
                    seven thunders uttered, and write them not. 

                    See also John 12:27-30: 

                    Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say ? Father, save me from this hour: 
                    but for this cause came I unto this hour.  Father, glorify thy name. Then came 
                    there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.  
                    The people therefore, that stood by, and heard it, said that it thundered: others 
                    said, An angel spake to him. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not 
                    because of me, but for your sakes.

                    And see Job 26:14: 

                    Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? 
                    but the thunder of his power who can understand?

                    Finally, see the "thunder of infinite ululations" in Dante Alighieri, Inferno 4.1-9:

                    Broke the deep lethargy within my head
                           A heavy thunder, so that I upstarted,
                           Like to a person who by force is wakened;

                    And round about I moved my rested eyes,
                           Uprisen erect, and steadfastly I gazed,
                           To recognise the place wherein I was.

                    True is it, that upon the verge I found me
                           Of the abysmal valley dolorous,
                           That gathers thunder of infinite ululations.


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Meditations of a Waiting Room

Today we meditated: father, son
And waited on a Wednesday afternoon
To see the doctor of attention spans
Whom we had hoped to meet at four pm
But found her overbooked and in demand.
We found ourselves within a waiting room
Of fellow patients of psychiatry
(And those of us along for the support)
For two full hours, and ironically
Amid the stacks of social magazines
And with a background television on,
Among a sampling of the population
Listening to hear their names be called,
We meditated. Unexpectedly

My son, the one who never could sit still,
Is starting to mature before my eyes.
He’s waiting here more patiently than me,
And I begin to wonder anymore
If he’d been diagnosed with ADD
A bit to hastily back in the day
When he was acting all of eight years old
And telegraphing his apparent need
For Adderol, if we have come this far
Again to have his old prescription filled
More out of habit than necessity,
And if there isn’t better therapy
In meditations of a waiting room
Than medications of amphetamine.

Today we meditated: everyone
Who waited with us had a different need,
A different habit, if their trials be told,
And yet we seem to be so much the same,
At least as far as anyone reveals.
I don’t begrudge the doctor for her role
In getting us to recognize ourselves
And realize how simple life can be,
How we all need this opportunity
Of time, however given, to reflect
On simple things, like having empathy
Or understanding our maturity
Or sitting in positions of support
Or being patient in a waiting room.

My father once was in a waiting room
For me. The wait was relatively short
And our trial was a different one to tell,
A different diagnosis, but the same
Prognosis: Give it time, give it time.
The doctor didn’t specify these words
Or scribble his prescription b.i.d.,
But as he had my father wait outside
He talked to me a while, and then he asked
If I played chess. This took me by surprise,
But I said yes, and so the troubled teen
And the Psy.D. played chess while the old man
Was waiting in the hall, more patiently
Than I appreciated, until now.


from Stillwater Symposia and Turning the Metaphor

Brooding Barn

The brooding barn was an old hen perched
On a tilting nest at a hillside farm.
Her eggs were lifelong memories,
To the very end kept safe and warm,

And now that she’s gone, the eggs are hatching,
Generating chicks dispatching
Hungry peeps with a sweet refrain:
The barn’s expired, but we remain.

So, trouble not at the season’s end
That the hen is dead.  Remember how
She was a shelter from the rain,
She was a friend to horse and cow,

And when they left, the children found her,
Rebuilt her nest and ran around her
With energy that’s still sustained.
The barn has fallen, but we remain

To never forget how that barn stood tall
And caught the sunrise on the hill
And defined the farm.  Or so it seemed:
There is a windmill creaking still,

Just one mile north of Yankee Hollow,
And still an easy pace to follow
On Sawmill Creek at Loyalty Lane.
The barn is gone, but there remains

The Andrew Path, the winding trails
The planted pines, the budding oaks,
The setting sun, a billion stars,
And time to visit with the folks,

And the lasting word from Dick O’Brien
Who has no time for country cryin’:
Enjoy! Sit back! Don’t give a darn!
The barn is dead?  Long live the barn!




from Calendrums; photos from Calendrums

Moleskin 4.7

Meanwhile, for all the resistance to change this old man was showing, my own world was like Richard Nixon: full of it, with a banner headline of unasked for, unexpected news. Not only the house and the dad, but we were dropped into a new neighborhood with none of my old friends. I had to give up the paper route job, and in the fall I would be going to a new school —a bigger junior high school, no less. We started going to a new church, a Baptist church, where my mom was now working as an organist and where my step-dad was the treasurer. And the change kept a-coming: I was given chores: mowing the lawn, taking out the garbage; and a behavior code: being told to speak more courteously to adults, or better, not to speak at all. At ages eight and five my malleable, eager to please brothers seemed impervious to all this, but they had not had more than incidental friendships and didn’t have to quit a job and were still in the first half of elementary school. But I was almost a teenager, brimming with angst and anger, and I did not want all this change.

Windmill Creaks

from Calendrums

A Conversation

The people hold themselves as unaccountable:
Their inner souls are theirs (and theirs) alone
To be revealed but never to be known.
They build their walls and shields of insurmountable
Disclosure, every bit (of it) discountable
With very (very) little substance shown
Beyond the names and faces they would own,
Convenient tags and masks of empty countenance.

It’s funny how you never (really) see
Someone until the day she isn’t looking,
Never hear her (un)til she’s finished talking,
Never know her (un)til she goes away
(And how, when asked to give her eulogy,
You find she’s left you something good to say).

You people claim to have your own identity
And you pretend to bare (and share) your soul
With every handshake touch and every cold
Embrace, as if you gripped me with intensity,
But who (the hell) are you with this propensity
To speak in (cryptic) poetry, to hold
Me with a stranger’s words, to seek control
Beyond a time that’s silent, dark and meant to be?

Yet as I stare you (deeply) in the eye
I will admit to liking how you look at me
But never (truly) see me, how you talk to me
But never (really) have too much to say
(And even as I offer a reply
You didn’t seek, you get it anyway).


from Calendrums

Dans le Restaurant, Stanza 3, by T.S. Eliot (a new translation)

Phlebas the Phoenician, fifteen days dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls and the swell of Cornwall
And the profits and losses and the cargo of tin:
A current under sea took him far away,
Past the stages of his former life.
You have to consider, it was a painful exit;
All the same, he was a man who once was
handsome and tall.


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)

Translating the Water Section

T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (TWL), lines 312-321 

          IV. Death by Water

                    This is the water section, the fourth of five sections of The Waste Land that 
                    adopt the themes of the CLASSICAL ELEMENTS of earth, air, fire, water and 
                    wind. Eliot would later repeat this structure with the first four elements and the 
                    quintessential wind in Four Quartets (1943).  Designation of these classical
                    elements can be found in early Babylonian, Indian, Greek and Chinese
                    philosophies.

                    See Anon., Enuma Elis (ca. 1800 BC, tr. as The Seven Tablets of Creation
                    by E. A. Wallis Budge, 1921), a Babylonian cuneiform text which describes 
                    creation through personifications of water, earth, sky and fire.

                    See also Upanishads, Shvetashvatara Upanishad 2:12 (ca 400-200 BC, tr. 
                    Robert Ernest Hume, 1921):

                    When the fivefold quality of Yoga has been produced,
                    Arising from earth, water, fire, air and space,
                    No sickness, no old age, no death has he
                    Who has obtained a body made out of the fire of Yoga.

                    See also Plato, Timaeus 48b, (ca. 360 BC, tr. W.R.M. Lamb, 1925):

                    We must gain a view of the real nature of fire and water, air and earth, 
                    as it was before the birth of Heaven.

                    Finally, see Anon., Mawangdui Silk Texts (ca. 168 BC), presenting the Chinese 
                    philosophy of Wu Xing and the five phases of wood, fire, earth, metal and water.

                    Eliot foreshadowed the title and theme of this section pages earlier when Madame 
                    Sosostris generally warned her patron to “Fear death by water” (TWL 55). Like
                    the previous sections, this section is full of allusions, but the primary source of the 
                    text is now Eliot’s own voice, loosely translated from a poem he first wrote in 
                    French.  See Eliot, Dans le Restaurant (1920), stanza 3; here is my translation 
                    of In the Restaurant, prompted by Eliot’s restatement and adding my own take of 
                    the “Dans” variations:

                    Phlebas the Phoenician, fifteen days dead,
                    Forgot the cry of gulls and the swell of Cornwall
                    And the profits and losses and the cargo of tin:
                    A current under sea took him far away,
                    Past the stages of his former life.
                    You have to consider, it was a painful exit;
                    All the same, he was a man who once was
                    handsome and tall.

          Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

                    PHLEBAS THE PHOENICIAN reflects the drowned Phoenician Sailor, whose 
                    death by water Madame Sosostris portended (see above) and whose eyes are
                    now pearls (see below). 

          Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
          And the profit and loss.

                    By his association with profit and loss and by Eliot’s own explanations (see his 
                    note at TWL 218), Phlebas is related to Mr. Eugenides, the one eyed Smyrna 
                    merchant (TWL 52, 208); 

                                                 A current under sea
          Picked his bones in whispers.  As he rose and fell
          He passed the stages of his age and youth

                    Phlebas is also related to the pearly eyed Prince Ferdinand (see TWL 48 and
                    Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.376-402); and to the hyacinth girl (see Eliot's
                    note at TWL 126).  

          Entering the whirlpool.

                                                  Gentile or Jew

                    The speaker now turns ambivalently to the Gentile or Jew i.e., one without
                    distinction whether one is in the faith or out of it; compare TWL 365 (“I do not know
                    whether a man or a woman”). See also Romans 3: 9-10: 

                    What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before 
                    proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; As it is written, 
                    There is none righteous, no, not one.

          O you who turn the wheel and look windward,

                    Speaking directly to “YOU” THE READER, the poet appears to once again break
                    the fourth wall. He could just as easily be talking to himself, and an earlier instance 
                    also suggests that he is addressing his editor as “hypocrite lecteur” (see TWL 69,
                    76), but this passage and several others (see especially TWL 21, 76, 320 and 360 
                    but also TWL 17, 113, 122, 126 and 432) seem to be directed more to the “you,” 
                    whether poet or fellow pilgrim, who would seek answers through the figurative 
                    reading of the cards and the various surrounding elements of earth, water, etc. 

                    The wheel in this section, which recalls the Tarot card and the change of seasons,
                    also reflects the whirlpool now being entered by “you” who look windward; thus, in 
                    this sense “you” are the reader who would turn with the poet towards the wind. The 
                    wind, or spirit, is the fifth classical element about to be introduced in Section 5.

          Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

                    The name Phlebas alludes to Plato’s Philebas, one who held pleasure to be
                    superior to intellect, in contrast to Socrates, who valued knowledge.  See 
                    Plato, Philebus (360 BC), tr. Harold N. Fowler (1925), 48e: 

                    SOCRATES

                    And there are still more who think they are taller and handsomer than they are...

                    The Socratic evaluation begins with DECONSTRUCTION, and here the reader is 
                    told to separately consider what the water has done. Compare this to how each of 
                    the classical elements is deconstructed in turn, beginning at the end of Section 1, 
                    just before the “lecteur” passage, when the reader is asked to consider what 
                    happens to a body planted in the earth (TWL 71-72); then near the end of Section
                    2, when the poet asks what “we” can ever do in the empty air (TWL 131-138); and 
                    finally in the consumption of fire at the end of Section 3 (TWL 308- 311) with the 
                    suggested allusion to the Sermon on the Mount, addressed very much to “you.” 
                    See Matthew 6:23:

                    If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! 

                    Time indeed to turn toward the wind.


from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, with annotations (and other explanations)