January 2011
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To an Old Tune
You cannot choose but love, lad, From dawn till twilight dreary; You cannot choose but love, lad, Tho love grows weary, weary. For, lad, an if you love not, You’d best have slept unwaking; But, O, an if you love, lad, Your heart is breaking, breaking. Tho friends and lovers only Fill life with joyous breath, Yet friends or lover only Can make you pray for death. Throw open wide your heart...
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“There was no question of what to do about sex which is what I always liked about...”
– Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
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Meditatio
When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs I am compelled to conclude That man is the superior animal. When I consider the curious habits of man I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
Ezra Pound
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“Who does not know that without women we can feel no content or satisfaction...”
– Baldassare Castiglione, Il Libro del Cortegiano
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True Love at Last
The handsome and self-absorbed young man looked at the lovely and self-absorbed girl and thrilled. The lovely and self-absorbed girl looked back at the handsome and self-absorbed young man and thrilled. And in that thrill he felt: Her self-absorption is even as strong as mine. I must see if I can’t break through it And absorb her in me. And in that thrill she felt: His self-absorption is...
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“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where...”
– Francis of Assisi
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The Jewish Conscript
THEY have dressed me up in a soldier’s dress, With a rifle in my hand, And have sent me bravely forth to shoot My own in a foreign land. Oh, many shall die for the fields of their homes, And many in conquest wild, But I shall die for the fatherland That murdered my little child. How many hundreds of years ago The nations wax and cease! Did the God of our fathers doom us to bear The flaming...
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“I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual...”
– Federico Fellini
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Fire
This life that we call our own Is neither strong nor free; A flame in the wind of death, It trembles ceaselessly. And this all we can do To use our little light Before, in the piercing wind, It flickers into night: To yield the heat of the flame, To grudge not, but to give Whatever we have of strength, That one more flame may live.
Dorothea Mackellar
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“The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths...”
– H. L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun
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Felo De Se
My heart’s delight, I must for love forget you; I must put you from my heart, the better to please you; I must make the power of the spirit set you Beyond the power of the mind to seize you. My dearest heart, in this last act of homage, I must reject you; I must unlearn to love you; I must make my eyes give up your adorable image And from the inner chamber of my soul remove you. Heart of my...
