Seamus Heaney Poetry



Perch

Perch on their water-perch hung in the clear Bann River
Near the clay bank in alder-dapple and waver,
Perch we called "grunts," little flood-slubs, runty and ready,
I saw and I see in the river's glorified body
That is passable through, but they're bluntly holding the pass,
Under the water-roof, over the bottom, adoze,
Guzzling the current, against it, all muscle and slur
In the finland of perch, the fenland of alder, on air
That is water, on carpets of Bann stream, on hold
In the everything flows and steady go of the world.


Excerpt from The Loose Box

Michael Collins, ambushed at Beal na Blath,
At the Pass of Flowers, the Blossom Gap, his own
Bloom-drifted, soft Avernus-mouth,
Has nothing to hold on to and falls again
Willingly, lastly, foreknowledgeably deep
Into the hay-floor that gave once in his childhood
Down through the bedded mouth of the loft trapdoor,
The loosening fodder-chute, the aftermath ...

Divine!

Journal du jour

A brilliant-lit sunny day, a day of small piquancies, of trees palpably strong in their greenness, in their confidence. The rains have subsided and I know without seeing the roots are fat and full. Leaves are brandished by the wind and the picture of it all is unbearably beautiful.

People of every age and ethnicity are walking down the street and I am struck by their fragility – by our fragility – how temporary these bodies, these markers of differences. How silly to fixate on gender, race or beauty! To dust we shall return, soon. Walking skeletons, they and me. How to live with that knowledge? How to make best use of time?

*

Undefragged

Scrupulousity grows lichen-like
where the shadows gather
where the devil’s reasonable voice
speeds beads of 'feit moisture
whispering always of lack.

*

Seamus

Print falls like scales from my eyes
Finned words of Heaney’s Lough Neagh
Lines like softed turrets and wedding banns
Like salmon leaping into the perfect white.

*

Veiled

Was instantiates versteckt
in die reveries entfernt und streng?
Von verlorenen Ursachen und heiligen longings
reels die Spannvorrichtungen
des gerbstoffartigen Wassers
über eklektischen Träumen
des Jahrwunderns hinaus.

Revel in the Complement

One of the great things about Christianity is that it's the obverse of the world and we can relax in that complement. By not having to measure by outward signs we can find tremendous rest. Inferiorities shrink in His sun. Instead of viewing the apostles in the Upper Room as having received something we cannot, we can have confidence that nothing is held back that but that we make it so.

We can look at many of the mysteries of the rosary as great outpourings of grace upon our mother and brothers; the nature of a close family is that if success occurs to one, it occurs to all. Outsiders no more, we hold the mysteries as precious family heirlooms.

Interesting Comment from Ben on Disputations

Last night I was speaking to my wife, and she was troubled by the repetitive and burdensome nature of her work as a housewife. I can understand her complaint. I'm also troubled by the seemingly useless and repetitive nature of my work as an office worker.

But then I came to an understanding, that the root of our disatisfaction is that the both of us were conditioned by 16-20 years of education to be goal-oriented creatures. We were taught that what we do is inherently meaningless unless we do it for the greater purpose of achieving some goal or other (this is an essential ideology for the current economic system). Yet the work of a housewife is not goal oriented. There are no quarterly reports or major accomplishments. One does not really improve at the task of vacuming the floor, nor indeed accomplish it since it must be done again in a matter of hours.

Yet I feel this relates to your point about Creation. Creation is not goal oriented. God does not have "objectives" He is trying to achieve by adhering to "core principles" and "mission statements" He is not striving for "measureable outcomes for success". He is pure actuality. The capitalist mind can't get arround that concept, becaues we are too involved with "continuously improving our processes".

Anyway, your post, coupled with the conversation I had with my wife last night has given me a whole new insight into the parable of the birds and the lilies of the field.

Today's Assignment

Pick up a copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf and everywhere it says "Jew" mentally substitute "George Bush", everywhere it says "bourgeoisie" mentally subsitute "Big Oil" and everywhere it says "Zionist" substitute "Bush Administration" and voila - you now have a fresh Salon.com article. Or a NY Times/LA Times/Pravda editorial. Picture Maureen Dowd with slightly less humor.

By way of background, Ham of Bone & me and two other co-workers created a little email club in which strident voices are sometimes heard. (I joke that the club should be renamed "cancelling each other's vote since 1984"). Two lefties, two righties - can they get along? It sounds like a sitcom.

Some recent bon mots:
I have called Bush "venal", "dimwitted", "hypocritical", "dishonest", and "morally bankrupt"...His brand of pharisaical religiosity gives Christians a bad name, but it is the unapologetic, breathtakingly self-righteous hypocrisy of his administration that sticks in my craw the most.

The ongoing venality of the current appointistration will make Clinton look positively statesmanlike in comparison.

If it is OK for heads of state and captains of industry to be interchangeable, then let's just call it what it is: fascism. The checks and balances inherent in our purported system of government are largely theoretical at this point.

And that's the nice commentary. Bush = evil is commonplace.

It's a training camp for charity. Set vent off.

Truth be Told

I've been pondering of late the idea that the gospels leave a lot of questions open, which invites one, well, to ask. Ask others, ask theologians, or best of all, ask Jesus. But I struggle with the idea of asking Jesus questions like that for a couple reasons. First, it strikes me as presumptuous, to ask questions which far holier have longed to know. Second, I'm not sure it's relevant as far as helping me on the road to salvation. Third, if the experience of Protestantism teaches anything, it's that one can trust only the Church, not personal revelation, to the point that I so fully distrust the latter that it probably borders on the unhealthy. Our Dominican priest has a very different view, telling us that there is a wide pasture of things we can explore and believe, and that the Church only teaches us what the boundaries are - for example the divinity of Christ. But there is much freedom. But freedom to error? If I am convinced of something and my neighbor something else and we are both Christians, someone is wrong. It bothers that previous generations - our forefathers in faith - believed lies. Jews believed, for example, that their personal sins or their father's sins caused sickness. Still, the root issue might be one of pride, for even if I believed no outright untruths the knowledge I do have pales beside the fullness of truth. It is our portion and cup to look through the glass darkly. I recall visiting a tiny olde-timey ship in Boston. The actors on board portrayed 17th century pilgrims and played their parts. I asked, "how do you have privacy for sex?" (I was 22 at the time - 'nuff said). He pointed his nose skyward at such an impertinent question and intoned with a British accent, "Privacy is something given to you, not taken by you". In a fallen world, truth is a privilege, not a right.

Post-Resurrection Different from Post-Ascension Body?

Jesus' body after the Resurrection was normal in that he could eat and Thomas could probe his wounds and the hundreds who saw him could look upon Him without incident (although it could pass through walls). But post-Ascension seems a different matter, given St. Paul's encounter on the road to Damascus and St. John's in the Apocalypse. At that point His glory seems so powerful, more powerful by far than during the Transfiguration, that those who look upon Him fall involuntarily immediately to the ground, sometimes blinded. I've never heard anyone remark on this before. It's almost as if Jesus, after returning to the Father absorbed His glory in a way similar (only infinitely greater) than how Moses came down from the mountain glowing. I bring it up because I've heard it said the Eucharist is a way to receive Him without being blinded or overwhelmed by his glory...

I received an email suggestion from a correspondent who I daresay would prefer to remain anonymous (as many Cincinnati Bengal fans likewise would). He suggested boobs as a way to increase site traffic. Bad, Phil*, bad!

On an entirely different subject, you wouldn't believe how many folks come to this blog attempting to find the lyrics to Donny & Marie's "Morning Side of the Mountain". And you thought I was the only closet lover of corny love songs?

* - not his real name

State of the Blog Address

From: TS O'Rama; Chief Financial Officer

SiteMeter stats are down this month, and we're going to have to make some reductions to make our June number.

During the 2003 All-Associate Meeting, our CEO Reilly Girtz described the challenges we face given difficult blog markets. Reilly understands that the work we do today to build a great website prepares us for when the environment is more supportive of our posts. As the chief financial officer for Video Melioria...blah, blah,blah my main focus in Building a Great Blog is, of course, Financial Discipline and performance.

Great blogs review expenses as a matter of practice. At Video Melioria...., we call this Challenging the Base and it needs to involve everyone. This is not a project. It is a discipline and it is about continually evaluating our costs as part of our ongoing expense management process.

Our current goal is to permanently remove $125 billion in expenses from our bottom line. This will help us keep our 2003 promise, but, perhaps more importantly, better support our future goals starting in 2004. As bloggers, our role is to uncover why hits are down and what can be done about it. Weather-related excuses are simply not acceptable; it is sunny in Los Angeles every day of the year and their blogs have not been hit.

We should all recommend and decide ways for improvement and then act upon them. Please share your ideas with your Finance Office.

*******the Blog-In News*******

Jeff Culbreath of El Camino Real has an interesting post on blogging. He made the move to blog-city just in time. I concede his point that in the flesh is better, but it's probably a symptom of my preverse desire for speed & efficiency that I say I can read more quickly than I can listen, and I can write more interestingly than I can speak.

From yesterday's Magnificat meditation

It's in the nature of the Church to survive all crisises - in however battered a fashion...Everything has to operate first on the literal level...I suppose what bothers us so much about writing about the return of modern people to a sense of the Holy Spirit is that the religious sense seems to be bred out of them in the kind of society we've lived in since the eighteenth century. And it's bred out of them double quick now by the religious substitutes for religion. There's nowhere to latch on to, in the characters or the audience. If there were in the public just a slight sense of ordinary theology (much less crisis theology), if they only believed at least that God has the power to do certain things. THere is no sense of the power of God that could produce the Incarnation and the Resurrection. They are all so busy explaining away the virgin birth and such things, reducing everything to human proportions that in time they lose even the sense of the human itself, what they were aiming to reduce everything to.

--Flannery O'Connor

Written to a Nigerian Scammer Pastor Joseph:

Pasture Joe, thank you for your missive. As a fellow fiction writer, I feel a certain solidarity. Here's a poem I wrote for you:

"There is a land
where the men never grow tired
where the pounds shed easily
and the women all want you...

Where Nigerians offer you a cut
to free their money.

There is a place
called Spam."

Reviewed "Drop City" over at Catholic Bookshelf...

Quick Quotes...from Russel Kirk's The Sword of Imagination

'At certain epochs,' says Innocent Smith in Chesterton's Manalive, 'it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.'

Ordinary human senses measure only a small range of the phenomena that are in heaven and earth. Dogs, for instance, hear sounds imperceptible to humans even at close range, and can be summoned by whistles silent to the human eardrum. In a mechanized world, the average man - aye, even the average educated man, or perhaps especially such a one - tends to fancy that everything is an exercise in technology. Kirk suspected that a people whose imagination has been atrophied by the machine may lose the faculty for ruling themselves.

--Russel Kirk

Our Dominican priest gave an interesting homily the other day. He said that the Church, even the local one, is typically built on martyrs, something the American church lacks (and suffers for). North American martyrs who gave their lives hundreds of years ago are not part of our culture - the flag under which the martyrs died was French or Spanish. He suggests that the lack of having canonized martyrs might be due to the fact that we are products of a culture in which compromise is not only valued but is the basis for our form of government. He wonders if that tendency to compromise extends to the Faith to the point of robbing us of heroes.