Poetry

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A Poem

August 8, 2009 in Iran, Poetry by Mardé | No comments

This is by the Persian poet Sa’adi (1210 – 1290)

‘Human Beings are Members of a Whole’

Human beings are members of a whole,

In creation of one essence and soul.

If one member is afflicted with pain,

Other members uneasy will remain.

If you have no sympathy for human pain,

The name of human you cannot retain.

It graces the entrance of the Hall of Nations of the United Nations building in New York City. I copied it from Juan Cole this morning. And he copied it from a statement on Iran by engaged scholars. Well worth a read or at least a scan. There are forty signatures.

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Impassioned Clay

June 12, 2009 in Poetry, Religion, UU by Mardé | No comments

Here’s a poem by Ralph Helverson, minister emeritus of the First Parish UU in Cambridge, MA, which he served as minister from 1959 to 1977. The Rev. Dr. Ralph Norman Helverson died April 25, 2007, at Carleton-Willard Village, Bedford, MA, at the age of ninety-five.


Impassioned Clay
by Ralph N. Helverson

Deep in ourselves resides the religious impulse.
Out of the passions of our clay it rises.
We have religion when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining or self-derived.

We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present,
some self-respect beyond our failures.
We have religion when our hearts are capable of leaping up at beauty,
when our nerves are edged by some dream in our heart.
We have religion when we have an abiding gratitude for all
that we have received.

We have religion when we look upon people with all their
failings and still find in them good;
when we look beyond people to the grandeur in nature and to the purpose in our own heart.

We have religion when we have done all that we can,
and then in confidence entrust ourselves to the life that is
larger than ourselves.

Not bad.

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Fun at Open Mic Last Night!

May 30, 2009 in Entertainment, Music, Poetry, open mic by Mardé | 5 comments

OK, I’m still on a high I guess from participating in Heather Pierson’s Open Mic last night at our First Universalist Church of Norway, Maine. I recited/read three poems, there was a great young comedian, and the great character Wellington was there with his wife, and some of the other performers, like Nate Towne, and Harry [?], and Bob Wallace, were great too. Am I including myself under the word “great”? Ha Ha. Hardly! I think I was a bit over the top in trying to get attention for the poems I read, but I felt powerful and enjoyed getting laughs — certainly different from the old days when I was so shy and frightened up there on the Open Mic stage trying to be perfect. And to top it all off, the Rev. Richard Beal was there providing scrumptious popcorn which I couldn’t resist.

For the record, here’s the poems I read: (1) Poem XXXII from Alfred E. Housman’s Shropshire Lads (note he’s not Alfred E. Newman) with the first line. From far, from eve and morning; (2) Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens of which I read only the first stanza and part of the final, and last but not least (3) Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath. Quite a bunch! I gave my personalized interpretation of each.

Perhaps I’ll add more to this later. I’ve probably forgotten things I should mention. OH, I forgot the Rev. Tom Myorie (sp?), and Mary Uke! More later.

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Strange Suicides

March 25, 2009 in Depression, Poetry, Weirdnesses by Mardé | 2 comments

I had a mad crush on Sylvia Plath at one time. This fascination I’m sure arose in part from the fact of her suicide: a beautiful and brilliant young woman of 30 sticks her head in an oven while her infant children sleep in an adjoining room. I tried memorizing several of her poems, e.g. Daddy and Lady Lazarus, and I’ve listened to her reciting — in what I felt was a slightly affected sophisticated tone — her own poetry.

The new tragic irony now is that one-year old, Nicholas Hughes, asleep in the next room while his mother had her head in the oven has now committed suicide himself by hanging at the age of 47. He was a successful fisheries biologist, apparently suffering from depression for many years. Read about it here.

Another curious, and tragic, irony is that Assia Wevill, the woman who motivated Sylvia’s suicide by having an affair with Sylvia’s husband, Ted Hughes, also committed suicide at the age of 30, along with her 4-year old daughter even!, by using a gas oven, similar to Sylvia.

What can one say? It runs in the families?

Here’s Ted and Sylvia on the left and Ted and Assia on the right.
……

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A Man Not A God!

January 16, 2009 in Poetry, Politics by Mardé | 6 comments

Believe it or not, Bush will be gone now in a matter of days. Well, we elected him! Here’s Willie Shakespeare:


“Ye gods, it doth amaze me,
A man of such a feeble temper should
So get the start of the majestic world,
And bear the palm alone. (1.2.129)

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. (1.2.135)”

Thanks, Juan Cole, for “W.’s Twilight: A Man of Feeble Temper”. Great reading!

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A Friends Award!

January 10, 2009 in Friends, Memes, Poetry by Mardé | 8 comments

Hey, I’m amazed! I received one of these ubiquitous blogger meme things, usually disguised as an award! My friend Missy did it to me this time, but to tell ya the truth I appreciate it!

I better not scoff at awards any more. I’ll be 80 freaking years old this coming Monday! How many more awards can I possibly get given the limited amount of time I probably have left on this earth?

I better accept this one while I’m ahead.

See Missy’s post, Where Everybody Knows Your Name, for all the details. She got the award, which she’s passing on to me and seven others, from my friend Barbara of Home in France. Barbara is probably one of the most sincerely friendly people in the whole blogisphere!

Incidentally, notice Missy’s poem leading off her post. Brilliant! You wanna go where everybody knows your name! Yah! Right on!

To quote Barbara, from Missy’s post, “The Friends Award isn’t about being the most popular blogger or having the most read blog. It is just because you are a friend.” Wow. Can I stand it?

The text of the award, which according to the rules I must pass on, is as follows: “These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

Wow. Charming? Self-effacing? No self-aggrandizement? Who can I choose?

OK, I bestow on the following friends the Friends Award:

Kate (She’s my daughter and a good friend too!)

Dragonstar (She’s a great photographer and photo hunter! A friend?)

Aileni (He’s a brilliant artist and poet! I’d be honored to be his friend!)

Debi in Hawaii (Yo Debi! You’re a friend, right?)

Zhu (Another brilliant girl! I hope she can be a friend.)

Minds Erased (Ah, my anonymous and brilliant atheist friend!!)

Greenabby (Lovely and shy, a neat young English lady! A friend?)

Joyce Hopewell (Another lovely English lady. Related to Greenabby? A friend?)

OK, that’s it! I made it to the magic number of eight. Yer all my friends and I bestow the Friends Award on all of ye!

Gary Snyder

December 26, 2008 in Poetry by Mardé | No comments

My buddy Tom from out there near The City (San Francisco, you know) sent me a heads up on that old poet Gary Snyder resurrecting himself with a book of his letters with Allen Ginsberg covering 35 years. I’m intrigued because Gary is almost my age and has already won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Here’s one of his poems which rings a bell with me because I’d like to have the experience:

Three Deer One Coyote Running In The Snow

            First three deer bounding
and then coyote streaks right after
                 tail       flat out 

I stand dumb a while       two seconds
blankly black-and-white  of trees and snow 

            Coyote's back!
	good coat, fluffy tail,
sees me:          quickly gone. 

            Later:
I walk through where they ran 

to study how that news all got put down. 

                                    Gary Snyder


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Ten Days of Newton

December 24, 2008 in Celebrations, Humor, Music, Poetry by Mardé | 5 comments

Hey, for you science buffs, and anyone else who is curious, there’s a great humorous op-ed in the New York Times this morning called, The Ten Days of Newton by Olivia Judson.

She points out that Sir Isaac Newton, arguably the greatest scientist of all time, may have been born on Christmas day, depending on the calendar you use, or he may have been born as late as Jan. 4th. The year was 1642.

So, why not celebrate the Ten Days of Newton?, she asks. She gives us the final verse of a new song to be sung to the tune of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”:

On the tenth day of Newton,
My true love gave to me,
Ten drops of genius,
Nine silver co-oins,
Eight circling planets,
Seven shades of li-ight,
Six counterfeiters,
Cal-Cu-Lus!
Four telescopes,
Three Laws of Motion,
Two awful feuds,
And the discovery of gravity!

Olivia Judson, Sir Isaac Newton, John Lennon:

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O Me! O Life!

October 14, 2008 in Poetry by Mardé | 13 comments

Here’s a great poem by Walt Whitman!

O Me! O Life!
by Walt Whitman

O Me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

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A Lennon Meditation

July 18, 2008 in Meditation, Poetry by Mardé | 2 comments

Found on PrayerCards:

Meditation Exercise/Exorcize:

Imagine there’s no heaven,
It’s easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace…

–John Lennon

Try this once a day forever

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