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Go to the Limits of Your Longing​

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Book of Hours, I 59
 
donbosco said:

Go to the Limits of Your Longing​

Written by Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Book of Hours, I 59
Click to expand...
That is lovely.
 
Onondaga Thanksgiving Address (Most historically known as The Words That Come Before All Else)

Today we have gathered and when we look upon the faces around us we see that the cycles of life continue.
We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things.
So now let us bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People.
Now our minds are one.*

Not a poem exactly but a recitation for every day and every gathering.
 
There is more...Thanksgiving Address...i.e., the response.

We are thankful to our Mother the Earth, for she gives us every-
thing that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about
upon he1: It gives us joy that she still continues tq care for us, just
as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send
thanksgiving, love, and respect. Now our minds are one.
 

“AMERICA IS A GUN” by Brian Bilston​

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.
Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.
Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.
Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.
 
IMG_0378.jpeg

The Spanish Flu May Get You Too
From ‘The Carolina Mountaineer And Waynesville Courier,’ Thursday, October 27, 1917.
 
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Song of Myself, 52​

Walt Whitman
1819 – 1892

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,

It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
 
The juxtaposition of the Onodaga Thanksgiving Address and the America is a Gun poem put me in mind of William S. Burroughs' Thanksgiving poem. It's a bit more sardonic than the former and a bit more caustic than the latter. Warning for language...

Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986​

William S. Burroughs​

For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts —

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcasses to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for n****r-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for “Kill a Queer for Christ” stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes,

thanks for all the memories… all right, let’s see your arms… you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.
 

“What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why”​

BY Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
 
donbosco said:
IMG_0378.jpeg

The Spanish Flu May Get You Too
From ‘The Carolina Mountaineer And Waynesville Courier,’ Thursday, October 27, 1917.
Click to expand...
DB
A friend and I were hired to help dig up graves and move a cemetery for the widening of Randleman Rd in Gboro in the late 1970’s. It had been a church turned hardware store with a cemetery next door.
In NC at that time you had to be a GC and Funeral Director to move graves you also have to hand dig them and get the local health department inspector (usually restaurants) to certify the hole was cleared out. Anyway there hadn’t been anyone buried there since the 1940s. So most of the graves were from 1915-1925 and were mostly smaller like babies or children. I was getting $15 an hour and minimum wage was $1.35!
Long story short that’s how I found out that there was a Spanish Flue in the 1915-1920 period.
Honestly like the Wilmington coop and other stuff I think I understand why conspiracies are popular. I kinda feel like we’re doing the same thing with Covid 19.
In 50 years will anyone remember?
Anyway sorry for the detour.
 

You Men​

(English)
Silly, you men-so very adept
at wrongly faulting womankind,
not seeing you're alone to blame
for faults you plant in woman's mind.

After you've won by urgent plea
the right to tarnish her good name,
you still expect her to behave—
you, that coaxed her into shame.

You batter her resistance down
and then, all righteousness, proclaim
that feminine frivolity,
not your persistence, is to blame.

When it comes to bravely posturing,
your witlessness must take the prize:
you're the child that makes a bogeyman,
and then recoils in fear and cries.

Presumptuous beyond belief,
you'd have the woman you pursue
be Thais when you're courting her,
Lucretia once she falls to you.

For plain default of common sense,
could any action be so queer
as oneself to cloud the mirror,
then complain that it's not clear?

Whether you're favored or disdained,
nothing can leave you satisfied.
You whimper if you're turned away,
you sneer if you've been gratified.

With you, no woman can hope to score;
whichever way, she's bound to lose;
spurning you, she's ungrateful—
succumbing, you call her lewd.

Your folly is always the same:
you apply a single rule
to the one you accuse of looseness
and the one you brand as cruel.

What happy mean could there be
for the woman who catches your eye,
if, unresponsive, she offends,
yet whose complaisance you decry?

Still, whether it's torment or anger—
and both ways you've yourselves to blame—
God bless the woman who won't have you,
no matter how loud you complain.

It's your persistent entreaties
that change her from timid to bold.
Having made her thereby naughty,
you would have her good as gold.

So where does the greater guilt lie
for a passion that should not be:
with the man who pleads out of baseness
or the woman debased by his plea?

Or which is more to be blamed—
though both will have cause for chagrin:
the woman who sins for money
or the man who pays money to sin?

So why are you men all so stunned
at the thought you're all guilty alike?
Either like them for what you've made them
or make of them what you can like.

If you'd give up pursuing them,
you'd discover, without a doubt,
you've a stronger case to make
against those who seek you out.

I well know what powerful arms
you wield in pressing for evil:
your arrogance is allied
with the world, the flesh, and the devil!

~Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
 
Alcohol Blues
I'm a poor old boy and I can't find me no ma
I guess I'll have to nurse from a jug of alcohol
Hey bartender fix me another malt
I'm a poor drunk fool and its all my mammy's fault
When that sun do rise I'm gonna leave this town
Ship me off to a place where the booze ain't watered down
They locked me up in the wagon, lordy, hear that siren wail
Tossed me in the drink with noone to go my bail
Don't bring me silver, mama, don't bring me gold
Just pay my freight on down the highway cause,
Mama, I'm a heavy load.

 

September

THE golden-rod is yellow;
The corn is turning brown;
The trees in apple orchards
With fruit are bending down.

The gentian's bluest fringes
Are curling in the sun;
In dusty pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun.

The sedges flaunt their harvest,
In every meadow nook;
And asters by the brook-side
Make asters in the brook,

From dewy lanes at morning
The grapes' sweet odors rise;
At noon the roads all flutter
With yellow butterflies.

By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer's best of weather,
And autumn's best of cheer.

But none of all this beauty
Which floods the earth and air
Is unto me the secret
Which makes September fair.

'T is a thing which I remember;
To name it thrills me yet:
One day of one September
I never can forget.

Helen Hunt Jackson
 
The Thumbs Up, At Arlington
He stood amongst the stones of white
Where heroes rest in endless night
But in his eyes, no reverence shone Nor horror in his heart was known.
He, the man who speaks so loud
Who wears his arrogance like a shroud
Could not perceive the sacred ground
Where valor lost is ever found.
He talks of strength, of might, of pride
But in his soul, there’s naught inside.
No understanding of the pain of those who’ve borne the war’s harsh strain
At Arlington, where silence reigns He failed to feel the soldiers’ chains
That bind them to this hallowed place In service, in death, in honor’s grace.
He stepped on graves as if they were but stones beneath a man’s cruel stir.
His thumbs raised high as though he’d won
A game, a match, a war undone.
But this is not his playground here,
No boxing ring, no crowd to cheer
This is where the brave lie still,
Where sacrifice has paid the bill.
He doesn’t know the meaning true
Of giving all, of seeing through
A promise made to country’s call to stand, to fight, to risk it all.
He’s never faced the battle’s heat
Nor felt the drum of wars hard beat.
He speaks of power, deals, and fame
But has no sense of duty’s claim.
The military, always proud and tall
Now whispers low, a mournful call
Remove this man, this petty king
Who knows not what our honor brings
For in his reign there’s only scorn
For those who bled, for those who’ve borne
The weight of freedom’s fragile thread
While he steps lightly on the dead
It’s time, they say, to end this farce,
This to a failure, void and sparse
For leadership is more than might
It’s knowing when to serve the right he’s shown the world his shallow side
His thumbs up high, his lack of pride
OBut history will judge him true
As one who never really knew
That sacrifice is not a game It’s not a prop, it’s not for fame.
It’s what the brave have always known,
That freedom’s cost is not their own.
So let him fade, let him depart With all his bluster, all his art
For in the end, it’s clear to see
He’s never grasped what it means to be
An American; with duty’s call
To rise and stand and give it all
He’ll be remembered not for might,
But for the darkness in his light.

Addison K. Witt
 
‘Some Afternoon’ ~Robert Creeley (1965)

Why not ride
with pleasure
and take oneself
as measure,
making the world
tacit description
of what’s taken
from it
for no good reason,
the fact only.
There is a world
elsewhere, but here
the tangible faces
smile, breaking
into tangible pieces.
I see
myself and family,
and friends, and
animals attached,
the house, the road,
all go forward
in a huge
flash, shaken
with that act.
Goodbye, goodbye.
Nothing left
after the initial
blast but
some echo like this.
Only the faded
pieces of paper
etc.
 
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