tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post5591918304749671864..comments2024-03-27T13:13:25.164-04:00Comments on johnshaplin: Christoper Hitchens by Carol Bluejohnshaplinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-43919928808434833432013-01-19T23:55:06.640-05:002013-01-19T23:55:06.640-05:00With infinite life comes an infinite list of relat...With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great aunts . . . and so on, back through generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers,. Nor do daughters their mothers. No one ever comes into their own . . . such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.- "Einstein's Dream" by Alan Lightman.johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-72271721749757491832013-01-19T23:47:53.571-05:002013-01-19T23:47:53.571-05:00Torture
by Wislawa Szymborska, translated, from ...Torture<br /> <br />by Wislawa Szymborska, translated, from the Polish, by Joanna Trzeciak <br /> <br />Nothing has changed. <br />The body is painful, <br />it must eat, breathe air and sleep, <br />it has thin skin, with blood right beneath, <br />it has a goodly supply of teeth and nails <br />its bones are brittle, its joints extensible. <br />In torture, all this is taken into account. <br />Nothing has changed. <br />The body trembles, as it trembled <br />before and after the founding of Rome, <br />in the twentieth century before and after Christ. Torture is, as it's always been, only the earth has shrunk, and whatever happens, feels like it happens next door. Nothing has changed. Only there are more people, <br />next to old transgressions, new ones have appeared <br />real, alleged, momentary, none, <br />but the scream, the body's response to them-- was, is, and always will be the scream of innocence, in accord with the age-old scale and register. <br />Nothing has changed. <br />Except maybe manners, ceremonies, dances. <br />Yet the gesture of arms shielding the head <br />has remained the same. <br />The body writhes, struggles, and tries to break away. <br />Bowled over, it falls, pulls in its knees, <br />bruises, swells, drools, and bleeds. <br />Nothing has changed. <br />Except for the courses of rivers, <br />the contours of forests, seashores, deserts and icebergs. <br />Among these landscapes the poor soul winds, <br />vanishes, returns, approaches, recedes. <br />A stranger to itself, evasive, <br />at one moment sure, the next unsure of its existence, <br />while the body is and is and is <br />and has no place to go. johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-12898754753430127482013-01-19T23:43:33.839-05:002013-01-19T23:43:33.839-05:00DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggar...DULCE ET DECORUM EST<br /><br />Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,<br />Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,<br />Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs<br />And towards our distant rest began to trudge.<br />Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots<br />But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;<br />Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots <br />Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.<br />Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,<br />Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;<br />But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,<br />And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .<br />Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,<br />As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.<br />In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,<br />He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.<br />If in some smothering dreams you too could pace<br />Behind the wagon that we flung him in,<br />And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,<br />His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;<br />If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood<br />Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,<br />Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud <br />Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,<br />My friend, you would not tell with such high zest <br />To children ardent for some desperate glory,<br />The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est<br />Pro patria mori.<br /><br />Wilfred Owen<br />8 October 1917 - March, 1918johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6130830332820181818.post-88598287239094420652013-01-19T23:37:21.677-05:002013-01-19T23:37:21.677-05:00
Aubade
By Philip Larkin
I work all day, and get h...<br />Aubade<br />By Philip Larkin<br />I work all day, and get half-drunk at night. <br />Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. <br />In time the curtain-edges will grow light. <br />Till then I see what’s really always there: <br />Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, <br />Making all thought impossible but how <br />And where and when I shall myself die. <br />Arid interrogation: yet the dread<br />Of dying, and being dead,<br />Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.<br /><br />The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse <br />—The good not done, the love not given, time <br />Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because <br />An only life can take so long to climb<br />Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; <br />But at the total emptiness for ever,<br />The sure extinction that we travel to<br />And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, <br />Not to be anywhere,<br />And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.<br /><br />This is a special way of being afraid<br />No trick dispels. Religion used to try,<br />That vast moth-eaten musical brocade<br />Created to pretend we never die,<br />And specious stuff that says No rational being<br />Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing<br />That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, <br />No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, <br />Nothing to love or link with,<br />The anaesthetic from which none come round.<br /><br />And so it stays just on the edge of vision, <br />A small unfocused blur, a standing chill <br />That slows each impulse down to indecision. <br />Most things may never happen: this one will, <br />And realisation of it rages out<br />In furnace-fear when we are caught without <br />People or drink. Courage is no good:<br />It means not scaring others. Being brave <br />Lets no one off the grave.<br />Death is no different whined at than withstood.<br /><br />Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. <br />It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, <br />Have always known, know that we can’t escape, <br />Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.<br />Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to<br />ring <br />In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring<br />Intricate rented world begins to rouse.<br />The sky is white as clay, with no sun.<br />Work has to be done.<br />Postmen like doctors go from house to house.<br />johnshaplinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17618981988062495637noreply@blogger.com