[Image: “Through the Fretboard,” by Abhinav Rajagopalan. (Found it on Flickr, and used here under a Creative Commons license — thank you!)]
From whiskey river (italicized lines):
A Brief For The Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
(Jack Gilbert [source])
Not from whiskey river:
The Beautiful Changes
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you
Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes.The beautiful changes as a forest is changed
By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it;
As a mantis, arranged
On a green leaf, grows
Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves
Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows.Your hands hold roses always in a way that says
They are not only yours; the beautiful changes
In such kind ways,
Wishing ever to sunder
Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose
For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.
(Richard Wilbur [source])
…and:
Yes, I’m sure civilizations will still evolve through play, or rather as play, since that seems to be a fundamental mechanism of our humanity. New religions will arise, new art forms, new ways to tantalize or jolt one’s senses. Artists will continue to reveal how the world touches us, how we are linked to the powerful unseen forces of nature. For deep play, people will need sacred arenas, rules, time limits, tension, exaltation, an openness to risk, and the freedom to play. Of course, their versions of deep play will explore new locales, new materials, new ways of evading the grand concourse of society for a few rapturous moments.
But suppose paradise awaits us, as so many tales foretell—freedom from disease, crime, early death. In a transcendent world, what will become of our passion for transcendence? As effervescent as turn-of-the-century life sometimes seems, we live in the dark ages. I don’t suppose those who lived before us thought of themselves in the dark any more than we do, but it’s inevitable: the miraculous advances of each new age throw a shadow upon the previous one. What discoveries, fascinations, and crazes we will miss. I ache to see that future Earth, to know the triumphs and struggles of those distant people, who will have other worlds to conquer, other nights to cross.
(Diane Ackerman [source])
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