Resumé

Resumé

by Dorothy Parker

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

In Broken Images

In Broken Images

 by Robert Graves

    He is quick, thinking in clear images;
    I am slow, thinking in broken images.

    He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
    I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

    Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
    Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

    Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
    Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

    When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
    When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

    He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
    I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

    He in a new confusion of his understanding;
    I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Insomnia

Insomnia

by James Thomson


Sleepless himself to give to others sleep.
He giveth His beloved sleep.

   I HEARD the sounding of the midnight hour;
      The others one by one had left the room,
   In calm assurance that the gracious power
      Of Sleep's fine alchemy would bless the gloom,
   Transmuting all its leaden weight to gold,
   To treasures of rich virtues manifold,
          New strength, new health, new life;
   Just weary enough to nestle softly, sweetly,
   Into divine unconsciousness, completely
Delivered from the world of toil and care and strife.

   Just weary enough to feel assured of rest,
      Of Sleep's divine oblivion and repose,
  Renewing heart and brain for richer zest
      Of waking life when golden morning glows
   As young and pure and glad as if the first
   That ever on the void of darkness burst
          With ravishing warmth and light;
   On dewy grass and flowers and blithe birds singing
   And shining waters, all enraptured springing,
Fragrance and shine and song, out of the womb of night.

   But I with infinite weariness outworn,
      Haggard with endless nights unblessed by sleep,
   Ravaged by thoughts unutterably forlorn,
      Plunged in despairs unfathomably deep,
   Went cold and pale and trembling with affright
   Into the desert vastitude of Night,
          Arid and wild and black;
   Foreboding no oasis of sweet slumber,
   Counting beforehand all the countless number
Of sands that are its minutes on my desolate track.


   And so I went, the last, to my drear bed,
      Aghast as one who should go down to lie
   Among the blissfully unconscious dead,
      Assured that as the endless years flowed by
   Over the dreadful silence and deep gloom
   And dense oppression of the stifling tomb,
          He only of them all,
   Nerveless and impotent to madness, never
   Could hope oblivion's perfect trance for ever:
An agony of life eternal in death's pall.

   But that would be for ever, without cure! —
      And yet the agony be not more great;
   Supreme fatigue and pain, while they endure,
      Into Eternity their time translate;
   Be it of hours and days or countless years,
   And boundless aeons, it alike appears
          To the crushed victim's soul;
   Utter despair foresees no termination,
   But feels itself of infinite duration;
The smallest fragment instant comprehends the whole.

   The absolute of torture as of bliss
      Is timeless, each transcending time and space;
   The one an infinite obscure abyss,
      The other an eternal Heaven of grace. —
   Keeping a little lamp of glimmering light
   Companion through the horror of the night,
          I laid me down aghast
   As he of all who pass death's quiet portal
   Malignantly reserved alone immortal,
In consciousness of bale that must for ever last.

The War Prayer

Dictated by Mark Twain [Samuel Clemens] in 1904 in advance of his death in 1910.

During his writing career, he had criticized perhaps every type of person or institution either living or dead. But this piece was just a little too hot for his family to tolerate. Since they believed the short narrative would be regarded as sacrilege, they urged him not to publish it. However, Sam was to have the last word, and even the word after that. Having directed it to be published after his death, he said,

"I have told the truth in that... and only dead men can tell the truth in this world."

The War Prayer

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great exulting and excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest depths of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast doubt upon its righteousness straight way got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Poem of the Day - Seeker Of Truth

Seeker Of Truth

by e. e. cummings

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

What is intelligence, anyway?

When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me.

(It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too.

Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.

Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test.

Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too.

In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly.

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again.

He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.

One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand.

"The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers.

Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them."

Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you."

"Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.


(By Isaac Asimov)

Poem of the Day - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Poem of the Day - Funeral Blues

Funeral Blues

by W. H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Poem of the Day - I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling leaves in glee;
A poet could not be but gay,
In such a jocund company!
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Poem of the Day - There is Another Sky

There is Another Sky

by Emily Dickinson

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!


More about Emily Dickinson.