The centre cannot hold

>>>>++<<<<

A t   Y o u r   B e a k   a n d   C l a w

Bowling Green State University

Bowling Green, Ohio

>>>>++<<<<

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

> William Butler Yeats <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

Nothing that is anywhere

>>>>++<<<<

E y e   D o

Defunct Funeral Home

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

You meant more than life to me. I lived through
you not knowing, not knowing I was living.
I learned that you called for me. I came to where
you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.
No one to appreciate me. The legality of it
upset a chair. Many times to celebrate
we were called together and where
we had been there was nothing there,
nothing that is anywhere. We passed obliquely,
leaving no stare. When the sun was done muttering,
in an optimistic way, it was time to leave that there.

Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly
at the tag on the overcoat near the window where
the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now.
Now it was time to stumble anew,
blacking out when time came in the window.
There was not much of it left.
I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. Can you see now?
Yes I can see I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window.
Go presently you said. Go from my window.
I am in love with your window I cannot undermine
it, I said.

> John Ashbery <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Wednesday

The hour of the waning of love

>>>>++<<<<

L o v e   I s   P a t i e n t

Greenville Union Cemetery

Greenville, Ohio

>>>>++<<<<

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

> W.B. Yeats <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

See on the portals

>>>>++<<<<

S u m m e r ' s   C u r t a i n   C a l l

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling

Calling for you and for me

See, on the portals He's waiting and watching

Watching for you and for me.

Come home, come home

Ye who are weary, come home

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling

Calling, O Sinner, come home.

Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading

Pleading for you and for me?

Why should we linger and heed not His mercies

Mercies for you and for me?

Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing

Passing for you and for me

Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming

Coming for you and for me.

Oh, for the wonderful love He has promised

Promised for you and for me

Though we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon

Pardon for you and for me.

Come home, come home

Ye who are weary, come home

Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling

Calling, O sinner, come home.

> Will L. Thompson <

>>>>++<<<<

I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Luke 5:32

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Sunday

A softness suffuse the story

>>>>++<<<<

D a y   I s   D o n e

Town Square

McDonough, Georgia

>>>>++<<<<

Glee -- The great storm is over --

Four -- have recovered the Land --

Forty -- gone down together --

Into the boiling Sand --

Ring -- for the Scant Salvation --

Toll -- for the bonnie Souls --

Neighbor -- and friend -- and Bridegroom --

Spinning upon the Shoals --

How they will tell the Story --

When Winter shake the Door --

Till the Children urge --

But the Forty --

Did they -- come back no more?

Then a softness -- suffuse the Story --

And a silence -- the Teller's eye --

And the Children -- no further question --

And only the Sea -- reply --

> Emily Dickinson <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Saturday

I touched the ground

>>>>++<<<<

O v e r l a p

Elmwood Cemetery

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

Listen, love,

The fat lark sang in the field;

I touched the ground, the ground warmed by the killdeer,

The salt laughed and the stones;

The ferns had their ways, and the pulsing lizards,

And the new plants, still awkward in their soil,

The lovely diminutives.

I could watch! I could watch!

I saw the separateness of all things!

My heart lifted up with the great grasses;

The weeds believed me, and the nesting birds.

There were clouds making a rout of shapes crossing a windbreak of cedars,

And a bee shaking drops from a rain-soaked honeysuckle.

The worms were delighted as wrens.

And I walked, I walked through the light air;

I moved with the morning.

> Theodore Roethke <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Friday

A thing forever sealed

>>>>++<<<<

O u t e r   S p a c e

Gay Street

Knoxville, Tennessee

>>>>++<<<<

Now the dead past seems vividly alive,
And in this shining moment I can trace,
Down through the vista of the vanished years,
Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face. 

And suddenly some secret spring's released,
And unawares a riddle is revealed,
And I can read like large, black-lettered print,
What seemed before a thing forever sealed.

I know the magic word, the graceful thought,
The song that fills me in my lucid hours,
The spirit's wine that thrills my body through,
And makes me music-drunk, are yours, all yours.

I cannot praise, for you have passed from praise,
I have no tinted thoughts to paint you true;
But I can feel and I can write the word;
The best of me is but the least of you.

> Claude McKay <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Thursday

Set your fancies free

>>>>++<<<<

I   D e w

Miniature Morning Glory

Columbia, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where -- by death, fools think, imprisoned --
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
-- Pity me?

Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
-- Being -- who?

One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.

No, at noonday in the bustle of man’s work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
“Strive and thrive!” cry “Speed, -- fight on, fare ever
There as here!”

> Robert Browning <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Tuesday

No doubts are permitted

>>>>++<<<<

P o r c h   P r e s e r v e s

Out of the Way

Lexington County, South Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

The whole process is a lie,
unless,
crowned by excess,
It break forcefully,
one way or another,
from its confinement --
or find a deeper well.
Antony and Cleopatra
were right;
they have shown
the way. I love you
or I do not live
at all.

Daffodil time
is past. This is
summer, summer!
the heart says,
and not even the full of it.
No doubts
are permitted --
though they will come
and may
before our time
overwhelm us.
We are only mortal
but being mortal
can defy our fate.
We may
by an outside chance
even win! We do not
look to see
jonquils and violets
come again
but there are,
still,
the roses!

Romance has no part in it.
The business of love is
cruelty which,
by our wills,
we transform
to live together.
It has its seasons,
for and against,
whatever the heart
fumbles in the dark
to assert
toward the end of May.
Just as the nature of briars
is to tear flesh,
I have proceeded
through them.
Keep
the briars out,
they say.
You cannot live
and keep free of
briars.

Children pick flowers.
Let them.
Though having them
in hand
they have no further use for them
but leave them crumpled
at the curb’s edge.

At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse --
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident.

> William Carlos Williams <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Monday

Infinitie to dwell

>>>>++<<<<

Age to Age

Riverside Cemetery

Asheville, North Carolina

>>>>++<<<<

O Yeares! And Age! Farewell

Behold I go

Where I do know

Infinitie to dwell.

And these mine eyes shall see

All times, how they

Are lost i' th' Sea

Of vast Eternitie.

Where never Moone shall sway

The Starres; but she

And Night, shall be

Drown'd in one endlesse Day.

= Robert Herrick (1591 - 1674) =

>>>>++<<<<

The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty;

the LORD is clothed with strength,

wherewith he hath girded himself:

the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.

Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting.

The floods have lifted up, O LORD,

the floods have lifted up their voice;

the floods lift up their waves.

The LORD on high is mightier than the noise of many waters,

yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.

Thy testimonies are very sure:

holiness becometh thine house, O LORD, forever.

> Psalm 93 <

>>>>++<<<<

Happy Sunday