Wednesday, April 28, 2010

all good things

after four days filled with lots of loveliness and chat, i was up early this morning seeing Kristen off to her flight home. the day's been kind of sleepy as a result but not without its fill of goodness. having given david's talk at DPC a couple of listens i've been thinking about cups that can't contain the goodness running over and of loving economies. and i'm feeling thankful.

over on twitter another david (lynch) has been drumming up votes for Interview Project on the webby awards. there looks to be some great stuff in the category (online film series, if memory serves) and i'm looking forward to following them up. there's now 111 stories on Interview Project and more yet to come from there 20,000 mile road trip. there's so many i've still to see and so many i've enjoyed. each one is a story worth hearing although many are hard to hear. each is the story of a unique human. i'm grateful for these simple glimpses of life in all their beauty and their pain.

glad too for conversations with loved ones near and far. much of May will be quiet and there's a lot of writing to be done between now and mid August. but within a month from now Joel will be here and the summer will be filled with company.

it's all good.

LB


risk of head exploding

Talk about seriously mixed messaging from the GOP. The irony of the following dots that refuse to connect leaves me flummoxed... 

Dot 1: last Friday, Gov Jan Brewer(R) signs the highly controversial immigration law in AZ.

Dot 2: Gov Brewer (R) has a seat in the 'War Room' of the Republican Governor's Association.
(no - i'm not sure why they call it a war room either. it's just a map. click on Arizona on the interactive map and there's her name.) i can only presume this means the RGA support Gov Brewer and she in turn is happy to be a part of the RGA and receive it's support. and indeed yours too if you wish to make a financial contribution to the GOP comeback.

Dot 3: Also this past week the Republican Governor's Association launched their 'Remember NoVember' campaign.



According to this article Joel sent me (and i don't think they're wrong) the campaign and their video appears to be 'inspired' by Alan Moore & David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, or the film of the same name. I suspect the latter because I can't believe a single GOP governor has actually read the former. It is a story about the bringing down of a facist/neo-Nazi totalitarian regime.
So, here we have the 'GOP Comeback' campaign suggesting -- with what has been called 'veiled racism' -- that President Obama is a facist and that to support your Republican Governor you should be like Guy Fawkes, or indeed V, who is based on Fawkes.
I presume/hope they mean with your vote rather than with gunpowder. or treason. or indeed plot.

Here comes the irony between those dots...
If you haven't read V for Vendetta it might be helpful to know how anarchist (and as far as i know pacifist) author Alan Moore shows the reader that the fictitious Norsefire party running Britain are indeed fascists:
Amongst other enemies of purity and unity, the state authorities forcibly round up people of colour.

To quote V himself,  "This is not anarchy, Evey, this is chaos."

(Olbermann, Maddow and guests made sharp analysis of the Arizona law last night here, here, here and here. and Olbermann also had a sober conversation with Richard Wolffe about the insidious irony that Fox & other right-leaning media outlets are describing President Obama as playing 'the race card'. )

::

keeping it all together, David preached at DPC on Sunday. skull may just hold a little longer...

LB

Friday, April 23, 2010

making a positive difference

no time to write* but two definite recommendations:

received the very lovely latest mailing from the very awesome Over The Rhine with news of their next album, which they are looking for help with. see here for all the details. i think, if a person knew that someone they loved, (like really loved, as in 'i want to spend every day of the rest of my life with you' really,) was a fan of this band and knew or even guessed at how much joy said really loved one would get from listening to this as yet unrecorded -- but quite possibly masterpiece -- album, well i think that that person could do a lot worse than going to and making a donation. not only would it help good artists make a real genuine living from their art, independent of big corporations, but pre-ordering the album means the resulting CD could then be saved as a surprise gift for some future date. it's good to be prepared. you know like for a birthday, or an anniversary, or your wedding day, even Christmas day. or what about Valentine's day, or even a plain ol' rainy day when the world needs to seem a little brighter and you want to encapsulate your affection with a small token of same? anyway, thought i'd mention it. just as a suggestion like. not looking at anyone in particular. nope. not all. the new OTR album. not yet recorded. a mere snip of a thing, starting at only $15. i'm sure the result will be well worth a listen. it's not gonna change the whole world, but it'll make someone's world better. maybe quite a few someones. and that ain't nothing. and of course, being prepared could save a person a whole lot of stress in this busy world we live in. just saying. ;)

and speaking of making this world a little better, awesome friend mistertumnus has just created a brand new site: Flowers for Rifles. and what a good idea it is. such a lovely concept. i'm looking forward to contributing to it myself. you should too. really. this is something positive to be a part of. and you can pull it out on a rainy day and bask in it's warmth and be reminded of the good things folks are doing in the world, big and small. go on... lend a hand. tell your stories, share the good things you see making a difference... combat the pessimism that we're all doomed to hell in a handbasket. today you get to see a very funny snippet of one of Peterson's marvellous plays. details of how to contribute content are on the About page.

*a dear college buddy arrives in from Chicago in the morning. 4 days and nights of chat to ensue. one for every year since we last saw each other. much to be done before bed. ie. tidying up my mess.
(she's bringing little debbie's snack cakes (for me) and an iPad (hers). now which will i lick first, i wonder? still the former will make for useful salve to my all-but-guaranteed jealousy over the latter.)

shoot. this was meant to be two lines.

enjoy the weekend.
LB

earth day

Restoring Life's Balance through soil and friends
a lovely post in praise of urban gardening over at the SoF blog.

LB

Monday, April 19, 2010

kill the hypothetical

I've got a face. You've got a face. It's all gonna be alright.
- Noel Fielding. 

surreal and hopeful, it's one of my favourite quotes of the year so far, and yet all too often it isn't alright, is it... this 2003 interview with david foster wallace is exactly the kind of thing that keeps me going back to the daily dish despite my shifting some measure of online allegiance to TNC. the beauty of, and indeed the inspirations behind, DFW's insights and writing reflected here only adds to the tragedy of what lay ahead. i've only scratched the surface of the interview but the opening slot is infused with the Real and i greatly admire his obvious commitment to avoiding abstraction. i think i'm going to need to file it under the slow burn. in some ways it reminds me of the Sam Keen lecture. probably because i'm becoming less and less interested in abstract argument and increasingly drawn to embodiment and experience. 

having let go of the loss yesterday of a whole list of podcasts i wanted to recommend, here's just a sample of audio treats i'm loving:

Jonny's online EP is filling me with delight. 

Pete's posted Pádraig's  mash-up, which has brought back a flood of many happy memories -- of nights singing this (and a load of other songs that share the chord sequence) after dinner, by candlelight,
with many dear friends fuelled by wine and cheese and dark chocolate. such good times. Pád's first album is launched here at Proost. so very very proud of him and so very glad folks get to have this in their virtual turntable. 

please support both Jonny and Pád by purchasing a download if you can. 

in other calls to financially support dear friends trying to make an earnest living online, i'm liking the film talk's daily broadcasts, live at the 2010 Nashville film festival. you can really help the film talk's financial viability by going to the site and then using the link to a free audiobook of your choice from audible dot com. 

i'm feeling most honoured and privileged to have been asked to contribute some thoughts for Peterson's Transfigurations graphic novel project. currently at the, 'letting it all percolate in 
the back of my mind' phase and looking forward to writing the resulting brew... 

in the meantime, enjoying another of his projects - the brand new Queer and Queerer podcast. themes are LGBTQ issues, religion, pop culture and higher education. their first effort is entertaining, provocative and i'm looking forward to seeing where they take it. 

right, this is my last week of classes. much to be done. better get to it. 

LB

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Sunday, April 18, 2010

mish mash ups odds n ends etc

  • edited to add - if anyone knows where the first half of this post went please get in touch. had a whole list of links to cool audio stuff i'm liking. pah!
  • i can't remember if i posted this already, but regardless, i've listened several times now to Sam Keen's In The Absence of God. i love this talk. fits really nicely with some ikon themes and has a lovely emotional and community groundedness to it. i can't recommend this one highly enough. very much looking forward to reading his book on this theme. 
  • i'm listening to a series of southern gardening podcasts and trying to decide what i wanna keep up with. i think this is one from MSU is my fave so far (archives / podcast).

this has been a somewhat strange week. my step-mother's in hospital (although hopefully not for much longer), there's an ash cloud hanging over our heads and not a plane in the sky. i've a friend due to visit from Chicago on Saturday and i'm hoping things will be back to normal so we don't miss out on several days of chat we have planned.

but despite the uncertainty, it's spring here in Dublin and although it's a little cool, it's dry and quite lovely.

i've planted some seeds in my window boxes and pots...
*sunflowers
*sweet peas
*gypsophlia
*clarkia
*night scented stock
*two different types of nasturtium

once they're established i'll be looking into staking options.
and just in case none of them grow (which not only shows a lack of trust in my own green fingers but a silly lack of faith in soil+sun+water+life) - i got a couple of geraniums.

all in all things are good. i miss my love but so far it's not proved a fatal separation. i fell asleep in last night with him on skype beside me while he worked on some weeds in a flower bed.

blessings all,

LB

Friday, April 16, 2010

not fair. not balanced.

so Fox News is picking on kids... in this case, transgender kids.

first up the action call issued by glaad is here. however, the video links provided don't go where they are supposed to. so, fwiw, i'm linking them. even though that risks Fox getting hits i'd rather they not have. but someone might see them and want to write an angry email. (see the previous glaad link for how to do that.)

for the first video, even though it's Fox News and even though it's Megyn Kelly wearing her 'concerned' face, which never lifts my mood, i decided to check it out.
her live interview with Mara Keisling of the National Center for Transgender Equality, been pulled from youtube. but you can get it here at Fox News. Fair play to Keisling for keeping a cool head.

as for the bill o'reilly segment, it's here on o'reilly's page. see Is It Legal? Lowdown  - april 13 in the video playlist. "Kimberly Guilfoyle and Lis Wiehl discuss Russian adoption controversy and atheist vs. pope" - the discussion follows those two items in the segment. 

frankly, i wouldn't recommend it. it's hideous. i just hope no trandsgender kid was in the room with this on the tv. o'reilly had the audacity to say he wasn't picking on kids -- after several minutes of displaying nothing short of intentional ridicule. ugh.

i give a damn... 

LB

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

meditate this

seriously good auditory blessings to be found over at Pete's blog in the form of Pádraig's poetry and song and the unravelling ikon benediction - all recorded in Brooklyn at the weekend.

LB

note for parents with kidlets: Maranatha contains some (entirely appropriate) adult language.
gorgeous photo is courtesy of Thomas Just. no infringement intended.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

thou best and dearest

not unconnected to this morning's earlier post, comes a lament of a different kind. another offering from the BBC's long-running Transatlantic Sessions*, this is too gorgeous not to share.
Joel's been on something of a Shakespeare fix of late. so for that, and because our own story is woven with letters across distance - ours and those from other pens -- this offering from the great bard i was raised on, is for him...

(this song was written in a letter to Agnes M'Lehose, or 'Clarinda', also known as 'Nancy' to her friends in December 1791, when she left Burns, and Scotland, to follow her husband to Jamaica to try to save her marriage. see wiki)

Nancy was one of many 'loves', but for a' that, the human heart has rarely been expressed with more ache or more tender beauty...

Ae Fond Kiss, And Then We Sever
by Robert Burns
Song; 1791
Tune: Rory Dall's Port.
(words below the video)





Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.
Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerful twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.

I'll ne'er blame my partial fancy,
Naething could resist my Nancy:
But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever.
Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met-or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure!
Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae fareweel, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

LB
* edited to add -- there's a cracking session with Aly Bain and transatlantic friends at that link. jerry douglas and others play to perfection with james taylor in a slower session here. one of my favourite songs of all time. you can't go wrong with these folk start playing... blissful way to spend a sunday listening to these sessions...

tis a durge, that is murmured...

having dinner with my dad last night, he mentioned an article he'd been reading about Gettysburg and conversation turned to civil war history and the south. being a lover of traditional music of the scots-irish variety my dad mentioned the songs of the mid 1800s and then to the work Stephen Foster. later in the evening i did an unrelated YouTube search for the Transatlantic Sessions and just-so happened upon the beautiful version of one of Foster's most famous songs, see below, which brings my dad's musical loves and mine together through the various voices joined here. (RIP Kate McGarrigle)...

this morning i find it making all too apt accompaniment to this AP article on msnbc.com, which is deeply disturbing (and i say that without an ounce of hyperbole): Even after death, gay Africans are abused. i'm not sure what one does in response to this story. in other recent reports on LGBT rights in Africa, (such as this one), there appears to be caution amongst Senegalese activists to speak about international support they are receiving for fear it will cause more harm than good. (I assume this is because, 1. publicising international activist support plays into the hands of the anti-gay political meme that homosexuality is being encouraged by pro-gay western intrusion and/or 2. activists risk being identified via any publicity that arises from links with western activist organisations.)

this is the most emailed article on msnbc.com at time of writing. at least it means some folks must give a damn...

(this version doesn't have the final, sadly all too appropriate final verse from the original lyrics - see below the video)



Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh Hard times come again no more.

Chorus:

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.
(Chorus)

There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times come again no more.
(Chorus)

Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh hard times come again no more.

(Chorus)

- Stephen Foster, 1854

i give a damn. do you?

LB

Friday, April 09, 2010

Instructions

On a day touched by the worries of reality and unknowns that lie ahead, this piece of magic from Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess seems to me to be a beautiful call to calm courage. I can't wait to get a copy of the book.



LB

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

bait and switch

i've been reading the hundreds of comments online about Constance McMillan and the two proms held for the IAHS students on Good Friday.

In numerous places the case of an African American student excluded by a cruel trick from her Birmingham, Alabama high school prom in 1965 has been raised. Parallels have been drawn with whites-only private events that were a response to school integration in the 'desegregated' South. while i don't think there's exact overlay, i can see why folks see the parallels - a spirit of majority rule, a definite flavour of separatism and scapegoating. what strikes me is the blindness that comes all to easily with privilege. 

these comments (apparantly from IHAS students) defending the private prom and responding to comments that they excluded students with learning challenges as well as McMillan, struck me as being... well... i'll let them speak for themselves...

What people are failing to realize is that much of the fault of this whole stink lies with Constance, not her mistreatment by the school district, but her crazy-reckless need for attention. It sounds mean and horrible and like we planned it all specifically to embarrass Constance, but we didn’t. We let her have her prom with her girlfriend and her tuxedo and we went to party it up in the “boondocks” not because we wanted her rights violated, but so we could salvage what has turned into a total fiasco....
I’m proud that we took a stand and just said you know what? forget it, we have just as much right as you do to have a party for ourselves. So we did, and now we’re getting flack because poor Connie’s ego got a bit of bruising. She’s playing the lesbian card to prove she ALWAYS gets what she wants. This time, we didn’t just let her.
Take it as you will, because I’m sure it sounds like we faked her out, but understand this- the decision NOT to attend prom had nothing to do with the school or with Constance’s sexual preferences; it had everything to do with proving we weren’t going to let her and the ACLU steamroll us into doing what Constance wanted. We flexed the muscle of the majority and we’ll suffer the consequences. - from here. bold my own.


i don’t understand the disabled kids stuff, we don’t even talk to them, so stop judging. they could have come to our prom if they wanted to.
- from here. bold my own.

Billie Holiday was born this day, 1915*. While there is no comparison to be made with current events in Fulton, Miss. and the history of lynching, hearing this song again was a sobering reminder of just how far we can descend into inhumanity.

when we have privilege on one hand and burden on the other, i'm mindful it is not the role of the privileged to take the role of victim, nor to see those who are burdened as needing to be 'let' have their rights -- equality demands much deeper transformation than the many making concessions to the few. all are demeaned by inequality -- it keeps us all from the fullness of our humanity. in the words of another song, none of us is free. when a minority is not being afforded respect, no true respect exists for any. yet how quickly we can cast blame on the burdened, on those in the minority as our privilege is unsettled. and how ugly it can get.



LB
*hat tip to today's writer's almanac with garrison keillor.

Tuesday, April 06, 2010

footage and film stock(ings)

really lovely compilation of censored film from the early days of cinema over at the daily dish. nothing offensive at all in the collection by today's standards so no need for any caution. worth taking a look.

i thought it beautifully put together and gently thought provoking.

LB

how to speak of faith



(click anywhere in the video and it takes you to the Ustream site to play there.
clicking on the play arrow on the left hand side of the player's bottom margin will cause it to play here as an embedded link. take your pick.)

more info on this recording at SoF

LB




Monday, April 05, 2010

a matter of the imagination

after a hideously all-too-brief chat with Joel as he downed some breakfast in a hurry, i thought i'd experiment with video-blogging. a frustrated hour later i concluded i can't get it to work. so, for now at least, i'll have to settle for trusty old text.
i was inspired by David's 'Evolving Church' video over at Peer Pressure is Forever -- both in form (it made me wonder if i had the technology to respond in kind. right now it seems i don't.) and in content (some stuff i'd been thinking about blogging fits somewhat as a response to his conversation starter.)

 
going by the title, 'Evolving Church, David is evidently speaking at the Evolving Church conference: Kingdom Economy in Toronto next week. it's organised by a small group called the Epiphaneia Network
(incidentally, epiphaniea is the greek noun for, 'an appearance' or 'an appearing'. it's the root of the English word epiphany. seems to me that links nicely with David's definition of the classic.)

David's talk of 'cosmic plainspeak' links with a series of conversations i've got going on at the moment. there's a rolling theme of definitions around which the core of Christianity is based and whether we (or Christianity) are better served (a) by a singular agreed unifying literal definition or (b) by multiple definitions that go beyond the fixed, literal, absolute to embrace the multiplicity of definitons that extend across the metaphorical, the poetic, the psychoanalytic, the imaginative... you can guess which i go with i'm sure... it also links with some reading and writing of late...

For Christmas, David and Sarah gave me a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin.
By coincidence, while i was reading it, i had a class on the theme of the sexual division of labour -- a radical feminist theory that draws on Marxism to explore how labour is divided along gender lines into the productive and the reproductive. we explored theoretical texts and also fictional texts -- in particular, Marge Piercy's A Woman on the Edge of Time and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. It was a happy coincidence because The Left Hand of Darkness is (among other themes) an exploration of gender difference, social ordering, reproduction and duality.

When were given a list of essay questions for that course, along with the option of coming up with our own title, i decided i wanted to explore the sexual division of labour theory and incorporate LeGuin's novel. so, i sat down with my lecturer, (also called Ursula), and we came up with this:

Is it gender difference that determines our primary caring roles, or is it our inability to imagine another order?

i like the use of 'imagine' there. it opens up a possiblity to explore how our thinking is often unimaginative - we assume that gender and gendered roles are ordered because that's simply the way it is, it's common sense, there's no other way we might do it, because we forget or ignore it is in large part a social construction. 'imagine' also allows me to see what we might learn from those who have imaginatively explored these issues through fiction.

when i came up with that title, i had not (consciously) remembered that the opening lines of The Left Hand of Darkness are these...

I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its teling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. And both are sensitive.
The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge the better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.

That line, 'Truth is a matter of the imagination' seems to connect a lot with what David's got going on with his 'cosmic plainspeak' and 'life sentences' and 'the classic'...

I did a bit of research and discovered that in the 1976 edition of the novel, LeGuin inserted an author's introduction in which she explores this very theme of truth and imagination. she sees science fiction as descriptive rather than extrapolative or predictive. It's a thought experiment, in which we explore the present by using the future as metaphor.
In some ways i am thinking we could take what she has written about science fiction and apply it to scripture... and it's got connections to what i want to do with my paper as i play with 'imagine'...

for revelation, for epiphanies and appearances, for telling to be the kind of gift that keeps on giving, for the classic -- we need more than the empirical, the literal, the kind of proofreading that says there's only one reading... we need to approach text with our whole selves and with our imaginations open to possibility, to revelation. to use another line of LeGuin's "a book is just a box of words until a reader opens it"

and, to quote Joel's nephew Patrick,
"The problem with talking about canon is that you end up talking about texts rather than ideas."


anyways... there's some dots.


The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K LeGuin at amazon

1976 author's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness

the Insurrection tour has reached Nashville. as i type Pádraig is sleeping in Joel's house. that is both comforting and delightfully weird to wrap my head around in a way that it wouldn't have been last summer. i'm sorry to be missing it all.

LB

Sunday, April 04, 2010

the persistent newness

Feeling the distance this weekend and yet goodness abounds. Jayne came down here for an overnight trip so there was chat and comfort aplenty, and there was dinner with my folks and skyping with Nashville, where family and friends are gathered in abundance.

and i got to skype with Toronto, from where my 3 year old neice sang me songs and my nephew is teetering on the edge of taking his first steps. my face damn near fell off i was smiling so hard.

may we find life eastering in us.

LB


Image: the easter bunny. by Sequoia.
no copyright infringement intended.

Saturday, April 03, 2010

it's time for things to change


i would have posted this yesterday but the site was inundated with traffic beyond their expectations. it's been upgraded and now running smoothly. catch up today.
via the site, via twitter, via facebook, on your blog, your website, via email and more.
Because Joel is a male-identified man and i am a female-identified woman, he and i are being afforded privileges and protections in our relationship that some of our friends are being denied. 
this is unequal. it demeans others. but  i believe this inequality also demeans us and our relationship. 
Why? Because we didn't earn those privileges and protections. instead they've been given to us unearned, simply by virtue of our gendered identity -- because of the bodies we were born into, bodies we did not choose. not because we love one another, not because of our commitment, not because of what we share together or how we are alike, not even because of our orientations, but because he and i are simply perceived to be different from one another. and our gender difference from one another is seen as more important than our characters and the quality of the loving care and commitment we show one another. i don't think that's just unequal, i find that insulting to our humanity and our love for one another, just as it insults the humanity and love of our friends. 
just because we chose each other, why should we be treated better than others? ours is not a better class of love. and yet it's treated like it is better. we will accept 
the protections on offer to us so that we can make a life together. but i, for one, will not accept the inequality on which our unearned privilege is based. this inequality affords our togetherness a social and civic status that is being denied to our friends. i want all couples to be granted these same protections we are being offered, these same rights for togetherness.
it's time for things to change.
get informed. get involved. 
i give a damn. do you?
LB

Friday, April 02, 2010

hard core poetry

The Martyr by Herman Melville


Good Friday was the day

Of the prodigy and crime,

When they killed him in his pity,

When they killed him in his prime

Of clemency and calm--

When with yearning he was filled

To redeem the evil-willed,

And, though conqueror, be kind;

But they killed him in his kindness,

In their madness and their blindness,

And they killed him from behind.


There is sobbing of the strong,

And a pall upon the land;

But the People in their weeping

Bare the iron hand;

Beware the People weeping

When they bare the iron hand.


He lieth in his blood--

The father in his face;

They have killed him, the Forgiver--

The Avenger takes his place,

The Avenger wisely stern,

Who in righteousness shall do

What the heavens call him to,

And the parricides remand;

For they killed him in his kindness,

In their madness and their blindness,

And his blood is on their hand.


There is sobbing of the strong,

And a pall upon the land;

But the People in their weeping

Bare the iron hand;

Beware the People weeping

When they bare the iron hand




::


hat tip goes to Sorn, one of the many great regulars over at TNC's blog on The Atlantic. (there's an open thread at noon everyday and a tradition of posting poetry on a Friday.)

more later.

LB

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