7.4.2020 – created equal

created equal
this truth self-evident, rights
unalienable

I hope I do not need to identify the source of these words.

But I will.

They are from the 2nd sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

The sentence reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

For the few words in this sentence, I have always been amazed at how much it says.

The point I want to make is the author’s use of the terms SELF EVIDENT and UNALIENABLE.

For such a short sentence, there is not much wiggle room.

Yet somehow, someway some people don’t get it.

I guess for some people some things are more self evident than others.

And somehow, less unalienable.

I don’t understand it myself.

But there we are.

7.3.2020 – red winged blackbird sings

red winged blackbird sings
inflections? innuendoes?
now and just after

Sitting on my back porch in North Georgia, I heard the sharp trilling of the song of a red winged blackbird.

Once I heard, the memories of so many other place I had heard this bird song came to mind.

It is the most numerous bird in the world after all.

Sitting there thinking about the bird song after the end of the bird song, the poetry of Wallace Stevens came to mind.

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Does anyone read Stevens any more?

Always listed in the top tier of American poets.

He is the only one to ever having broke their hand punching Hemingway in the face.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
BY WALLACE STEVENS
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

6.26.2020 – No love? Am only

No love? Am only
sounding brass or clanging cymbals
mankind or Angel

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal – 1 Corinthians 13:1 (NIV)

Much is made in the history books of the fact that the United States of America twice held national elections in the middle of a war.

In 1864, with the country engaged in Civil War, Abraham Lincoln ran for reelection.

Re election alone had not been tried since Andrew Jackson.

An election in the middle of a Civil War?

World couldn’t quite figure that one out.

In 1944, with World War 2 winding down, Franklin Roosevelt ran for the 4th time.

That’s not so much you would think but consider that Mr. Churchill called an election about 8 months later and got tossed out of office.

Stalin never did understand how Mr. Churchill allowed that to happen.

In less than 4 months, we are going to try and have a national election.

I put it to you that if you took the national mood at its worst in 1864 and combined it with the national mood at its worst in 1944 and then mixed it real good, the result would not come close the the national mood right now.

It is ugly out there.

And it is going to get worse.

Not much love.

Lots of sounding brass and cymbals.

If not with us, then against us and take no prisoners.

We are better than this.

At least we were.

Faith?

Hope?

Love?

All seem to have been thrown out the window for baseball bats and bricks.

I have to ask myself that old WWJD.

What would Jesus do?

WHAT would Jesus do!

Once he stopped throwing up I think Jesud would do one of two things.

It wouldn’t surprise me if he went through the United States like he went through the Temple saying, “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers!”

That or he would turn and shake the dust of his sandals on the United States and walk away.

That 2nd option is by far the worse.

6.23.2020 – music heard with you

music heard with you
more than music, without you
all is desolate

Adapted from the Conrad Aiken’s Music I Heard.

I like his work though I had never heard until Savannah attached itself to myself late in life.

Yet the words, Music I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread, describe life with my wife that it seems like I have known his work for years.

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!

Like Johnny Mercer, the poet Conrad Aiken was known as Savannah’s own.

Mr. Aiken, according to his entry in Wikipedia, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, taught briefly at Harvard, and served as consultant in poetry for the Library of Congress.

Somehow, he was also largely responsible for establishing Emily Dickinson’s reputation as a major American poet.

Yet, in Savannah, he might be best know for recognizing a word combination in the daily newspaper where one day under SHIPS – ARRIVALS – DEPARTURES, he saw the notice;

Cosmos Mariner—Destination Unknown.

Mr. Aiken took notice of the notice.

Mr. Aiken recognized the pure accidental poetry of the words.

He like the arrangement.

He like the rythym.

He liked it so much you that can read to this day as he had it carved into a marble bench.

A marble bench that sits next to his grave in a Savannah.

A bench where anyone can sit and watch the ships come and go from the port of Savannah.

Maybe one of them might be the Cosmos Mariner.

And its destination might be unknown.

Maybe I am the Cosmos Mariner.

Going out through the Cosmos.

Destination unknown.

6.20.2020 – Sympathetic thoughts

Sympathetic thoughts.
America cannot be deaf,
to calls such as that.

This was adapted from this paragraph, “While we are thinking of promoting the fortunes of our own people I am sure there is room in the sympathetic thought of America for fellow human beings who are suffering and dying of starvation in Russia. A severe drought in the Valley of the Volga has plunged 15,000,000 people into grievous famine. Our voluntary agencies are exerting themselves to the utmost to save the lives of children in this area, but it is now evident that unless relief is afforded the loss of life will extend into many millions. America cannot be deaf to such a call as that.”

That was said by President Warren G. Harding in the State of Union address on December 6, 1921.

Mr. Harding was referring to problems in Russia at least and not problems at home.

About problems at home, he said, “I am not unaware that we have suffering and privation at home. When it exceeds the capacity for the relief within the States concerned, it will have Federal consideration.”

Mr. Harding also said: “It has been perhaps the proudest claim of our American civilization that in dealing with human relationships it has constantly moved toward such justice in distributing the product of human energy that it has improved continuously the economic status of the mass of people. Ours has been a highly productive social organization. On the way up from the elemental stages of society we have eliminated slavery and serfdom and are now far on the way to the elimination of poverty.

Through the eradication of illiteracy and the diffusion of education mankind has reached a stage where we may fairly say that in the United States equality of opportunity has been attained, though all are not prepared to embrace it. There is, indeed, a too great divergence between the economic conditions of the most and the least favored classes in the com

The further we get from President Harding and the more time we spend in the present, President Harding doesn’t look so bad.

After all is said and done about Mr. Harding, maybe Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt’s cousin summed him up best when she said, “Harding wasn’t a bad man. He was just a slob.”

I feel like I know what she meant.