Please forgive me for failing: Please forgive me for failing to reply to this comment in a timely manner. I always love your theological insights, and this one, in the comment above, is one of your finest. I regret my negligence and delay to acknowledge it, and I ask your forgiveness.
Though it’s true those who stole..: Though it's true those who stole a continent from Native Americans
Were Europeans who were white
In no way am I saying what was done is right
But if you suffer from incontinence
European half the night
It's also true your bedsheets may no longer stay so white!
Thank you very much for that: Thank you very much for that comment. As always, you understand my intention; but, in my own self-doubt, I was still uncomfortable with the use of the slur words, and the easy callousness of the speaker toward the five victims that were executed. I think the ease with which these evil feelings can be imitated, even by one who most adamantly despises them, is an indicator of the spiritual flaws in all of us that someone like Lenin, Hitler, or the local agitator down the street or (as we shall all be facing in 2024) the Innkeeper himself can exploit. To simply say that those who are deemed to be different, or look different, or sound different, "will get what they deserve" is a most heinous attitude (and it is one that, I must confess, my ultra-reactionary parents attempted to instill into me before my adolescence; but my innate resentment toward their dismissal of all that was dear to me had the positive effect of preventing me from "buying into" their narrow world-view).
Your validation of this poem has removed all of my doubts about it.
So I could appreciate your: So I could appreciate your emotionally cataclysmic poem better, I looked up a translation of the "Hymn Of The Bolshevik Party" and I would encourage other readers to the same to get a sense of the ferocious arrogance behind the atrocity and the farcical triumphalism of those words against the backdrop of the story. A brilliant strategy!
The parallels to our current trajectory of events is unsettling, and you make it even more palpable by the clever insertion of topical references. But these modern soundbites are not anachronisms, but absolutely believable, and in one case historically accurate to the 1930's when Hitler, on occasion, used the phrase "make Germany great again".
You also understand the potency of writing in the vernacular of the speaker in order to provide the necessary realism in a heart-pummeling drama. With knockout skill, you wove a credible voice and current struggles into an historical frame, and then, striking hard with images and superior style, you unveiled, stanza by riveting stanza, the end game of frenzied nationalism turned into collective hate: state-sanctioned murder. A cleansing that rationalizes any possible crime against humanity.
While this superb drama, as rich, haunting and laudable as anything composed by the great anti-Soviet poet Joseph Brodsky, cracks open the heart, the real compensation awaits the reader at the end. You saved something astoundingly poignant for last, something almost ironically elegant in its composition, and yet it scorches the landscape of our consciousness like a blowtorch.
I tell you honestly: anyone who truly reads this, with an open mind and heart, will be able to move on to the next post and quickly forget it. Certainly, it will stay with me for a long time.
Although I do not care for: Although I do not care for the title of the poem, I really like the text of the poem. The succinct and short statements give the poem an enormous verbal power.
Thank you Patricia, for the: Thank you Patricia, for the kind words, your time and visit to my writings, and your poetic support.
You ain't bad yourself, ya know? :)
I could say the same about: I could say the same about you: you see far and with a benevolent eye. Truly, I'm unspeakably grateful for your insights into my work, your valuable presence in this community and your support that has made all the difference. Your pen is a beacon!
This is a beautiful poem,: This is a beautiful poem, reading like snippets of overheard conversations. The final two lines present a striking, and maybe even a little frightening, concept of the moon's death. But I doubt the poem indicates anything about the medical health of the Poet.
Have you spoken to your..: Have you spoken to your doctor regarding a possible change in medication? Keep the faith. You will recover from this. Have they ever determined what the problem is?
Thank you so much for the: Thank you so much for the reply, I really appreciate your kind words. But I would also like to add an addendum to my original comment.
First . . . and I will never tire of saying this, Poetry is one of the most essential human functions, and your Poems have proven you as one of the most essential Poets. Wallace Stevens wrote a late poem called "The Planet on the Table" in which he described his Poetry under the metaphor of a globe that can be seen in any elementary school classroom. But you have gone beyond him---your Poetry is "The Universe on the Table," or, in this cyber age, "On the Screen," but wherever it is, table or screen, the main thing is that it is a universe. Your poems have a vertical dimension that Stevens reached only rarely; you reach it like it is right outside your front door, and you just step out to take a look around. Consider, for example, the lines that follow "I knew what joy might be." At that point, the poem blossoms into one of the most spiritually comforting perspectives that I have ever read in a poem in the fifty years that I have been reading Poetry. So many people start with or from this Earth, and then look toward the Cosmos (like the Webb and the Hubble out there in orbit), and ask "What's out there?"; but you, with your very adroit grasp of grandeur, look from the Cosmos back toward the earth and tell us, not asking but telling, "This is what's out there," and then you provide us a verbal depiction that is as exquisite, and as stunning, and as breathtaking, as any photograph that the Webb is capable of sending back to us. The Webb can see such perspectives because of a clever arrangement of mirrors, power sources, and programming code. You can see even further, and even greater, perspectives because of the receptive power of your Soul, and the largesse, also in your Soul, to share it in your Poems. When Stevens wrote that "Poets help people live their lives" he was describing what he hoped he would be, but he also was predicting what you do and do very well. I did not ever think of the vocation of human beings explaining the Cosmos to itself until your Poems began to demonstrate that very function.
How on Earth do I thank you: How on Earth do I thank you for such an outstanding vote of confidence, written with expansive comprehension and your own stratospheric brand of poetics?
I was particularly moved by your conclusion and the choice we have to languish like wreckage on the ocean floor . . . or look up, homeward. And I believe you may have outdone me with your paraphrasing: "nor need we feed the sharks the best parts of ourselves". I almost wish I had said it that way! I also never fail to be awed by your definition of our supreme vocation: "to explain the Cosmos to itself".
After enjoying all your insights, splendor and perception, "Thank you" doesn't seem to cut it, but it's all I have, so in humble gratitude for this valuable gift, especially for the way you grasped the broader intent of my expression: Thank you!
Thank you. I think it was: Thank you. I think it was either something from the past or something that will come from the future which somehow had overlapped into the present. I think time is fluid and I often sense this sort of thing for some reason. sue.
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