(In response to requests from Steve Alvarez and a couple of others who still remember The Levellers …)

The Boat People Don’t Care

Times are hard, any fool can see it’s true,

I’ve been waiting for my assets to accrue.

But I’m finding it’s a struggle just to maintain,

My standard of living is under such a strain.

I had to make another payment on my Maserati,

Not to mention my townhouse-condominium,

And you don’t have to tell me ‘bout the price of gasoline –

How come those Arabs have to be so mean?

And the worst thing about it is

The Boat People don’t care

They don’t care about me,

The Boat People don’t care,

They don’t care about me …

I can’t bear such a blatant incongruence;

It’s getting hard just holding on to my affluence.

So I try a little harder each and every day,

But every time I make a dollar seems like

Somebody’s taking it away.

Well, you should’ve seen the bill for my microwave oven

And the cost of maintaining my redwood hot tub.

It’s really put a burden on my adding machine –

How come those Arabs have to be so mean?

And the worst thing about it is

The Boat People don’t care

They don’t care about me,

The Boat People don’t care,

They don’t care about me …

    Fire, sword, or crucifixion

Were lightly borne where heart and mind are sure;

But where uncertainty’s the soul’s affliction

    A word or look inflicts a wound that knows no cure.

          Can martyrs know what pains we bear,

We who never saw our own true face?

We cower at the execution place,

     Doubting all the while we should be hanging there;

          Doubting our own disbelief

And disbelieving our own doubt; while he,

Fixed securely to the upright tree,

     Suffers, sure of comfort, bliss, and sweet relief.

          Reviled, he answers not, but rests

Impaled upon the spike of confidence;

He flinches not from lash of trials or tests;

     Barbed tongue unravels not his seamless innocence.

          He knows that he is in the right:

He does not swing in anguished oscillation.

The rope about his neck is not so tight

     As that by which self-doubt secures its own damnation.

          But as for me, how can I know

If black be white or white be black, whose eyes,

Accustomed to the shades of shadow skies,

     See nothing but the grays in which I walk below?

          I know, O Lord, you suffered much;

Yet at their worst those tortures could not touch

Your spirit’s singleness:  how can it be

     That you should know the petty pains of such as me?

 *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  

St. Brendan and his men on the back of the world’s biggest fish.

The Sea

Look you out

northeastwards

over mighty ocean,

  teeming with sea-life;

home of seals,

sporting, splendid,

its tide has reached fullness.

(Ancient Irish poem from Celtic Christianity, ed. Christopher Bamford and William Parker Marsh; translated by James Carney)

I once met a Lion in a land of make-believe

And His mane seemed to fill the earth

Like the wind in the trees.

He smiled like the sunrise

And His roar was like the sea,

And He spoke with a world of tongues

And one was right for me.

And Lucy’s in the sky but she don’t need diamonds,

Flying while His eyes seem to flash like lightning,

Looking at the world from a different point of view;

And Peter’s got a sword, but he won’t misuse it,

Once you’ve found the truth, then you don’t want to lose it,

He can speak a word that will pierce your soul straight through.

I once saw a Lion on a road beyond the years,

And He scalded my eyes with a light

That could burn away my tears.

We plunged through a looking-glass

That overhung my mind,

And He showed me the truth at last

That had seemed so hard to find.

And Lucy’s in the sky but she don’t need diamonds,

Flying while His eyes seem to flash like lightning,

Looking at the world from a different point of view;

And Peter’s got a sword, but he won’t misuse it,

Once you’ve found the truth, then you don’t want to lose it,

He can speak a word that will pierce your soul straight through.

I once met a Lion in a land of make-believe,

And He told me He’d lead me beyond

If only I’d believe.

His jaws they were gentle

And His teeth they did not bite,

His yoke it is easy

And His burden is light.

* * * * * * * * * *

“I am not as other men,” he says –

Then shudders, for he thinks he hears

The posturing Pharisee

            In the shadows close at hand.

A pause; he stops; he stands;

Then chases tails of circling thought,

Smoking firebrands, little foxes;

            He ends in ash and stubble.

He returns again to his former place.

“I am not,” he says, “and I will not;”

Then hears their voices close at hand,

            “You shall, or shall not be.”

In terror then he runs, he flees

Before the awful Juggernaut,

He bends beneath the woeful yoke

            And buttons up the collar.

He stretches muscles that are not,

He paints a pleasant face and strains

To climb; he thinks he stands but falls.

            He ends with “I cannot.”

Sonnet II

It’s pride that bends the mind to self-disdain;

Ambition’s the green well-spring of discontent.

And hearts that love themselves delight in pain

And revel in the fond embellishment

Of every fluke and flaw that makes one less

Than the very god he jealously aspires

To make himself; and yet he’ll not confess

To such naked offense, but like all liars

Dissembles cleverly to make his sin

Appear his crown of thorns, himself the poor

And hapless victim, who, adread within,

Yet feeds the beast that crouches at the door:

And when it springs, he feigns dismay and fear

While casting backward glances at the mirror.    

My Fair-haired boy, my blue-eyed son,

I see you as one lately come

From foreign lands and shores unknown;

And fearfully I look upon

Your face, and wonder what you are –

Native of a distant star.

A window to worlds beyond the sky

I see within your shining eye,

And from your infant lips I hear

A word to crush the man of war,

To silence scholar, scribe, and sage

From sun to sun and age to age.

My blue-eyed boy, my fair-haired son,

Your cradled head recalls the morn

When Heaven’s bright Sun came down to sleep

Among the oxen and the sheep:

Who grew so wise and kind and good

They nailed Him to a cross of wood.

When moon and stars are dimmed with tears,

And the passage of the fading years

Obscures my eye and fogs my head,

I’ll look to you in hope and dread

Lest world and flesh and evil one

Have made a man of you, my son.

Silent, silver, aslant, the rain

Washes sky-dark sidewalks.

The gray sky weeps;

All hushed, the city passes

            In the street below.

Umbrellas cluster shadow black

Over sheeted pavements.

Headlights, tail-lights,

Blood-red, ghost-white,

Bend and ripple in the deeps

            Of the street’s dark mirror.

Cold, cracked comfort, brick and stone,

Rest the halt and hunching stalkers,

Walkers, derelict, alone,

Suspect

            In the street below.

Gray faces haunt shadow-scrawled corridors,

And night draws near.

But silent in my room a single lamp

Lights this little corner without presumption;

And within the church’s thick rain-stained brick

The heart glows warm and red.

Here and there

Beneath the world’s gray crust

Quiet peace takes refuge,

Unseen, unassuming.

Enclaves of joy humbly hold out,

Unconquered, unyielding,

Under the rawness, rain, and night.

Hope haunts the catacombs;

Salvation goes underground.

Against all odds

The kingdom drops into the earth,

A grain of wheat upon the cold, hard, clayey ground.

Small and weak, we few insanely sing

Of life and hope and heaven’s newborn king.

We light our candles as the dark shuts down

And wait the coming day.

Baldur

Baldur the Bright,

Wise and good and kind,

Undone by mistletoe –

Fragrant kiss of death

That touched the cheek

And choked the breath

Of life and left thee withered, empty, blind:

How is it that such beauty, truth, and grace

Could fall to a prankster’s trick?

Do idle jests

Decree the falling of the stars,

Or test the right of sun and moon

To keep their place?

Did Judas laugh to see his joke

Played out?  To take the bribe

And plant the kiss?

Or was it with a smirk

He took a twist

Of rope,

Or on a snicker

That he choked?

A joke that cracked

The pillars of the years

And rent the veil of sky;

The thundered earth

Yawed and yawned

And gave birth to the dead,

While blind he pulled the world

About his ears.

But Bifrost’s brightness

Now in ruin lies,

And Gotterdammerung’s

A Present Truth.

The brood of Loki laugh to see thy youth

Gone ghostly gray

With darkness on thine eyes.

While Hela croaks

And Fenris gapes with jaws

Wide as all the world,

And the encircling Worm

Constricts his coils and takes

Yet one more turn

Round the raveling roots

Of Yggdrasil;

While Jotunheim and Niflheim

Swell with pride and cold,

While wraiths rise white-eyed

From the crumbling mold;

Even now the light above thy brow

Descends and makes its bed

In Hell.

A star upon the sea, thy burning pyre

Sinks at last,

Like hopes of dying souls.

The cold and purple ocean

Heaves and rolls,

Its silence huge above

The phoenix fire;

Till Lif and Lifthrasir

Jump from the heap

Of ash – the Second Adam

And His Bride –

Whom Witch nor Wolf

Nor Serpent can deride;

And rising in thy light,

They dance and leap.   

Once having cast me in this little mold,

So soon to draw me from the first hot fires

Of youth and zeal, and cooled and made me old

And hard with care for all the task requires;

Once having set my steps within this track

Whose stony sides grow sheerer either side

The farther on I go, where turning back

Is every foot less easily thought or tried;

How now, at this late date, will you demand

That I grow malleable, liquid, free; enlarged

To bolt my bounds, to quit the course, disband

The circle, slough the loves with which I’m charged?

In leaving loves, one finds the road may lead

Where other loves soon other leavings need.    

SUMMER’S SUN

Summer’s sun is golden

In the cooling afternoon.

The autumn breeze in August,

Fresh and gently floating

Among the sun-green leaves,

Wakens nameless longings

And tearless hopes that burgeon

Brimming on the verge.

The garden droops to ruin

In the lightless afternoon,

And my fair sunflowers fade

And lose their yellow hair,

Bending sleepy heads

Above a sagging fence.

The wind-chimes of summer

Chinkle sadly on the breeze

Blown in from other climes

Where heat of southern shores

Never blasts the glistening trees;

Where mists shroud the peninsula

In folds of quiet gray

And the sea-spray on the rocks

Never dries; where fluted redwood

Columns with Christmas crowns

Drop fresh tears through fog

Meandering from the bay

Into the forest bed

Where seeds of giants lie.

The twining bean and pumpkin

Wither in the leaf

And mildew under morning clouds;

The fruit, past ripe, is picked.

The earth, soaked and baked

By summer suns, is cracked

And gapes, hard and dry,

As fluttering leaves fall.

The monarch of the garden,

Not long past his prime,

Yet bows towards the ground

And prepares to die.

So summer leaves drop

From greenly dancing boughs

To presage barren bones

Of naked winter trees

As friendly faces fall

Away by ones and twos,

And friendly places molt

And fade like summer’s sun.

 A Puffin and an Albatross,

          Just sitting down to tea,

Were startled by the sound of Grunion

          Running up their tree.

“Oh dear!” exclaimed the Albatross.

          The Puffin said, “Oh me!”

“Now calm yourself,” the Puffin said

          (The calmer of the two)

And let us try and clear our heads

          And see what we must do.”

The Albatross just sat and sipped

          His tea out of his shoe.

Across the streaming river wide

          The Grunion slyly surged,

Then up the boughs till in the leaves

          Their heads were half submerged,

And tangled mid the silvery twigs

          Their twinkling toes converged.

“My word!” declared the Albatross

          In undulating tones,

“I fear we’ve been invaded

          By a flock of migrant Krones!”

The Puffin simply sat and picked

          Her teeth with chicken bones.

“Three lumps or five?” the Puffin cried

          As down the trunk she sped,

Colliding in collusion  

          With a fat policeman’s head.

“No, thank you,” croaked the Albatross,

          And promptly dropped down dead. 

  (With apologies to Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear)

The Wing of the Black Crow

The wing of the black crow

                   Sails silent down the sun-blue sky.

At rest he sits, head downward-cocked,

                   Upon a barren, thorny branch;

He utters raw and raucous notes;

                   He lifts his glossy, glinting pinions,

                   He dives into the sun,

                   And diving makes his blackness jump,

                             A flash of jet,

                             A somber star,

                   To sing bright his Maker’s praise