This piece of perfect song

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K n o w   W h e n   T o   F o l d   ' E m

Magnolia Cemetery

Charleston, South Carolina

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How all is one way wrought!

How all things suit and sit!

Then ah! the tune that thought

Trod to that fancied it.

Nor angel insight can

Learn how the heart is hence:

Since all the make of man --

Is law's indifference.

Who built these walls made known

The music of his mind

Yet here he has but shewn

His ruder-rounded rind.

Not free in this because

His powers seemd free to play:

He swept what scope he was

To sweep and must obey.

Though down his being's bent

Like air he changed in choice,

That was an instrument

Which overvaulted voice.

Therefore this masterhood

This piece of perfect song,

This fault-not-found-with-good,

Is neither right nor wrong.

No more than red and blue,

No more than Re and Mi,

Or sweet the golden glue

That's built for by the bee.

What makes the man and what

The man within that makes:

Ask whom he serves or not

Serves and what side he takes.

For good grows wild and wide,

Has shades, is nowhere none;

But right must seek a side

And choose for chieftain one.

= Gerard Manley Hopkins =

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Happy Friday

We arrive here improvised

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L i g h t   R e i g n

Tiger Lilies 2017

Columbia, South Carolina

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Nothing can ever happen twice.
In consequence, the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice.

Even if there is no one dumber,
if you’re the planet’s biggest dunce,
you can’t repeat the class in summer:
this course is only offered once.

No day copies yesterday,
no two nights will teach what bliss is
in precisely the same way,
with precisely the same kisses.

One day, perhaps some idle tongue
mentions your name by accident:
I feel as if a rose were flung
into the room, all hue and scent.

The next day, though you’re here with me,
I can’t help looking at the clock:
A rose? A rose? What could that be?
Is it a flower or a rock?

Why do we treat the fleeting day
with so much needless fear and sorrow?
It’s in its nature not to stay:
Today is always gone tomorrow.

With smiles and kisses, we prefer
to seek accord beneath our star,
although we’re different (we concur)
just as two drops of water are.

= Wislawa Szymborska =

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Happy Thursday

And open unseen gates

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O p e n   F o r   B u s i n e s s

Tiger Lilies 2017

Columbia, South Carolina

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Who grasps the substance? who ’mid shadows strays?
He who within some dark-bright wood reclines,
’Twixt sleep and waking, where the needled pines
Have cushioned all his couch with soft brown sprays?
He notes not how the living water shines,
Trembling along the cliff, a flickering haze,
Brimming a wine-bright pool, nor lifts his gaze
To read the ancient wonders and the signs.
Does he possess the actual, or do I,
Who paint on air more than his sense receives,
The glittering pine-tufts with closed eyes behold,
Breathe the strong resinous perfume, see the sky
Quiver like azure flame between the leaves,
And open unseen gates with key of gold?

= Emma Lazarus =

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Happy Wednesday

Out of sight and lost

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O n   T h e   G l o r y   S i d e

Dorn Veterans Hospital

Columbia, South Carolina

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All glass may yet be whole

She thinks, it may be put together

From the deep inner flashing of her face.

One moment the windshield held

The countryside, the green

Level fields and the animals,

And these must be restored

To what they were when her brow

Broke into them for nothing, and began

Its sparkling under the gauze.

Though the still, small war for her beauty

Is stitched out of sight and lost,

It is not this field that she thinks of.

It is that her face, buried

And held up inside the slow scars,

Knows how the bright, fractured world

Burns and pulls and weeps

To come together again.

The green meadow lying in fragments

Under the splintered sunlight,

The cattle broken in pieces

By her useless, painful intrusion

Know that her visage contains

The process and hurt of their healing,

The hidden wounds that can

Restore anything, bringing the glass

Of the world together once more,

All as it was when she struck,

All except her. The shattered field

Where they dragged the telescoped car

Off to be pounded to scrap

Waits for her to get up,

For her calm, unimagined face

To emerge from the yards of its wrapping,

Red, raw, mixed-looking but entire,

A new face, an old life,

To confront the pale glass it has dreamed

Made whole and backed wth wise silver,

Held in other hands brittle with dread,

A doctor's, a lip-biting nurse's,

Who do not see what she sees 

Behind her odd face in the mirror:

The pastures of earth and of heaven

Restored and undamaged, the cattle

Risen out of their jagged graves

To walk in the seamless sunlight

And a newborn countenance

Put upon everything,

Her beauty gone, but to hover

Near for the rest of her life,

And good no nearer, but plainly

In sight, and the only way.

= James Dickey =

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Happy Tuesday

Spring comes as sharply

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P i n k   P o s i t i v e

Trinity Episcopal Church Graveyard

Columbia, South Carolina

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It was a night of early spring,
The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;
Around us shadows and the wind
Listened for what was never spoken.

Though half a score of years are gone,
Spring comes as sharply now as then --
But if we had it all to do
It would be done the same again.

It was a spring that never came;
But we have lived enough to know
That what we never have, remains;
It is the things we have that go.

= Sara Teasdale =

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Happy Monday