Monthly Archives: March 2008

Fictitious biography

Posted on March 25, 2008 | Leave a comment

At first a childhood, boundless, with no aim,
no self-denial. O unconscious bliss.
Then sudden terror, school and rules and shame,
constraint, temptation, fall into otherness.

Defiance. Now the bent becomes the bender,
makes others pay in kind for his defeat.
Loved, feared, a champion, friend, defender,
bully and conqueror, to beat and beat.

Then on his own in the cold, wide, weightless air.
Yet deep within the second self’s redoubt
a taking breath for what at first was there…

When from His ambush God came rushing out.

— Rilke (trans. M. Hamburger)

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Posted in Poetry, rilke

Carrion comfort

Posted on March 17, 2008 | Leave a comment

Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Nor untwist – slack they may be – these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry, I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
They wring-earth right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised boned? and fan
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart, lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer.

Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot trod
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? that night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

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Posted in Hopkins, Poetry

Out of the thousands

Posted on March 17, 2008 | 2 comments

Out of the thousands
who are known,
or who want to be known
as poets,
maybe one or two
are genuine
and the rest are fakes,
hanging around the sacred precincts
trying to look like the real thing.
Needless to say
I am one of the fakes,
and this is my story.

— Leonard Cohen

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Posted in Leonard Cohen, Poetry

Courting the song

Posted on March 14, 2008 | Leave a comment

It’s basically like a courting process, like hunting women. Most of the time it’s a hassle. And you feel you’re not really getting as much as you should, and you’re unsatisfied. And from time to time there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do. Of course from time to time you connect. The time you don’t connect, you just kind of scratch.

— Leonard Cohen (on songwriting)

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Posted in Leonard Cohen

Holy Sonnet

Posted on March 5, 2008 | Leave a comment

Batter my heart, three person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow mee, ‘and bend
Your force, to break, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to’another due,
Labour to’admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue,
Yet dearely’I love you, and would be lov’d faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie,
Divorce mee, ‘untie, or break that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you’enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

— John Donne

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Posted in john donne, Poetry, Religion