Archive for the ‘Poems’ Category
Prometheus Bound
To understand, Prometheus Unbound, it is important consider “Promethesus Bound”.
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven’s ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
Prometheus Unbound
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory
Icarus
On golden wings I soar above you all
Downward my gaze is cast
Lofty, great, with terrible claw
Yet in the deep, I feel descending sorrow
For one day, I know I will fall
To Pan
| Hymn of Pan (Shelley) | Hymn to Pan (Crowley) |
| From the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb, Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The bees on the bells of thyme, The birds on the myrtle bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Listening to my sweet pipings. Liquid Peneus was flowing, I sang of the dancing stars, |
Thrill with the lissome lust of the light, O man! My man! Come careering out of the night Of Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Come over the sea From Sicily and from Arcady! Roaming as Bacchus, with fauns and pards And nymphs and satyrs for thy guards, On a milk-white ass, come over the sea To me, to me, Come with Apollo in bridal dress (Shepherdess and pythoness) Come with Artemis, silken shod, And wash thy white thigh, beautifal God, In the moon of the woods, on the marble mount, The dimpled dawn of the amber fount! Dip the purple of passionate prayer In the crimson shrine, the scarlet snare, The soul that startles in eyes of blue To watch thy wantonness weeping through The tangled grove, the gnarled bole Of the living tree that is spirit and soul And body and brain – come over the sea, (Io Pan! Io Pan!) Devil or God, to me, to me, My man! My man! Come with trumpets sounding shrill Over the hill! Come with drums low muttering From the spring! Come with flute and come with pipe! Am I not ripe? I, who wait and writhe and wrestle With air that hath no boughs to nestle My body, weary of empty clasp, Strong as a lion and sharp as an asp - Come, O come! I am numb With the lonely lust of devildom. Thrust the sword through the galling fetter, All-devourer, all begetter; Give me the sign of the Open Eye, And the token erect of thorny thigh, And the word of madness and mystery, O Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan Pan! Pan, I am a man: Do as thou wilt, as a great god can, O Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! I am awake In the grip of the snake. The eagle slashes with beak and claw; The Gods withdraw; The great beasts come, Io Pan! I am borne To death on the horn Of the Unicorn. I am Pan! Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! I am thy mate, I am thy man, Goat of thy flock, I am gold, I am god, Flesh to thy bone, flower to thy rod. With hoofs of steel I race on the rocks Through solstice stubborn to equinox. I rave; and I rape and I rip and I rend Everlasting, world without end, Mannikin, maiden, maenad, man, In the might of Pan. Io Pan! Io Pan Pan! Pan! Io Pan! |
Going to California
Spent my days with a woman unkind,
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine.
Made up my mind to make a new start,
Going To California with an aching in my heart.
Someone told me there’s a girl out there with love in her eyes
and flowers in her hair.
Took my chances on a big jet plane,
never let them tell you that they’all are the same.
The sea was red and the sky was grey,
I wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today.
The mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake
as the children of the sun began to awake.
Seems that the wrath of the Gods
Got a punch on the nose and it started to flow;
I think I might be sinking.
Throw me a line if I reach it in time
I’ll meet you up there where the path
Runs straight and high.
To find a queen without a king,
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings… la la la la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Tryin’ to find a woman who’s never, never, never been born.
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams,
Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems.
The Thousand and One Goals
Reading The Phenomenon of Life, The Emperor’s New Mind, Meditations on Violence (all of which fall into the changed my life category) and Outliers (give me my money back and don’t waste yours) in the past few days leads me to offer up chapter 15 from Thus Spake Zarathustra below (it was a complex and long journey to this chapter that am not going into on a blog).
I really encourage you to read the entire thing and consider these questions at the end: What do you value? Why? If you could create your own value system for humanity, what would it be? What would the goal of humanity be?
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: thus he discovered the good and bad of many peoples. No greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than good and bad.
No people could live without first valuing; if a people will maintain itself, however, it must not value as its neighbour valueth.
Much that passed for good with one people was regarded with scorn and contempt by another: thus I found it. Much found I here called bad, which was there decked with purple honours.
Never did the one neighbour understand the other: ever did his soul marvel at his neighbour’s delusion and wickedness.
A table of excellencies hangeth over every people. Lo! it is the table of their triumphs; lo! it is the voice of their Will to Power.
It is laudable, what they think hard; what is indispensable and hard they call good; and what relieveth in the direst distress, the unique and hardest of all,—they extol as holy.
Whatever maketh them rule and conquer and shine, to the dismay and envy of their neighbours, they regard as the high and foremost thing, the test and the meaning of all else.
Verily, my brother, if thou knewest but a people’s need, its land, its sky, and its neighbour, then wouldst thou divine the law of its surmountings, and why it climbeth up that ladder to its hope.
“Always shalt thou be the foremost and prominent above others: no one shall thy jealous soul love, except a friend”—that made the soul of a Greek thrill: thereby went he his way to greatness.
“To speak truth, and be skilful with bow and arrow”—so seemed it alike pleasing and hard to the people from whom cometh my name—the name which is alike pleasing and hard to me.
“To honour father and mother, and from the root of the soul to do their will”—this table of surmounting hung another people over them, and became powerful and permanent thereby.
“To have fidelity, and for the sake of fidelity to risk honour and blood, even in evil and dangerous courses”—teaching itself so, another people mastered itself, and thus mastering itself, became pregnant and heavy with great hopes.
Verily, men have given unto themselves all their good and bad. Verily, they took it not, they found it not, it came not unto them as a voice from heaven.
Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself “man,” that is, the valuator.
Valuing is creating: hear it, ye creating ones! Valuation itself is the treasure and jewel of the valued things.
Through valuation only is there value; and without valuation the nut of existence would be hollow. Hear it, ye creating ones!
Change of values—that is, change of the creating ones. Always doth he destroy who hath to be a creator.
Creating ones were first of all peoples, and only in late times individuals; verily, the individual himself is still the latest creation.
Peoples once hung over them tables of the good. Love which would rule and love which would obey, created for themselves such tables.
Older is the pleasure in the herd than the pleasure in the ego: and as long as the good conscience is for the herd, the bad conscience only saith: ego.
Verily, the crafty ego, the loveless one, that seeketh its advantage in the advantage of many—it is not the origin of the herd, but its ruin.
Loving ones, was it always, and creating ones, that created good and bad. Fire of love gloweth in the names of all the virtues, and fire of wrath.
Many lands saw Zarathustra, and many peoples: no greater power did Zarathustra find on earth than the creations of the loving ones—”good” and “bad” are they called.
Verily, a prodigy is this power of praising and blaming. Tell me, ye brethren, who will master it for me? Who will put a fetter upon the thousand necks of this animal?
A thousand goals have there been hitherto, for a thousand peoples have there been. Only the fetter for the thousand necks is still lacking; there is lacking the one goal. As yet humanity hath not a goal.
But pray tell me, my brethren, if the goal of humanity be still lacking, is there not also still lacking—humanity itself?—
Thus spake Zarathustra.
Beauty
For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. – Duino Elegies
I have not read Rilke before, but after reading this snip in the Economist, I had to read all ten elgies.
There is so much more here — I have a feeling that I will be studying this for a while.
Earth, is it not this that you want: to rise
invisibly in us? – Is that not your dream,
to be invisible, one day? – Earth! Invisible!
What is your urgent command if not transformation?
Earth, beloved, I will. O, believe me, you need
no more Spring-times to win me: only one,
ah, one, is already more than my blood can stand.
Namelessly, I have been truly yours, from the first.
You were always right, and your most sacred inspiration
is that familiar Death.
See I live. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows less……Excess of being
wells up in my heart.
If
I just learned that Blagojevich quoted Kipling’s If at his recent press conference.
You can think what you want about Kipling (see The White Man’s Burden) , this particular poem (likely Kipling’s Stairway to Heaven) or even Blagojevich (I think many things about him, all of them not good based on the data that I have), but this poem certainly speaks to me personally.
Below is a taste (best rendition on youtube):
Winter Solstice
We are celebrating the winter solstice today.
Follow my thoughts about this (it is long causal chain)…
The solstice made me think of the Ancient of Days (below).
William Blake has been on my mind the last two days via Allen Ginsberg.
I read a wonderful Ginsberg quote from Andrew Sullivan yesterday that I think is apt for the winter solstice:
GINSBERG: Well, I had a sort of visionary experience in which I heard William Blake’s voice. It was probably an auditory hallucination, but it was a very rich experience.
LOFTON: This happened while you were masturbating, right?
GINSBERG: Yes, but after.
I also watched The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg last night which reminded me of Kaddish:
Dreaming back thru life, Your time–and mine accelerating toward Apocalypse,
the final moment–the flower burning in the Day–and what comes after
All of which brings me back to winter solstice as death leads to rebirth.
