Lean as a drawl,
weaving words that mean,
questioning the music that life brings
to compose his own quest.
As left on voicemail by his godfather January 31, 2006
(Played on the February 9, 2006 podcast.)
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, [...]
I Askèd a Thief
I askèd a thief to steal me a peach:
He turnèd up his eyes.
I ask’d a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek, she cries.
As soon as I went
An Angel came:
He wink’d at the thief,
And smil’d at the dame;
And without one word said
Had a peach from the tree,
And still as a maid
Enjoy’d [...]
Clytaemestra:
No shame, I think, in the death given
this man. And did he not
first of all in this house wreak death
by treachery?
The flower of this man’s love and mine,
Iphigeneia of the tears
he dealt with even as he has suffered.
Let his speech in death’s house be not loud.
With the sword he struck,
with the sword he paid for [...]
THE WASHING OF DISHES
Miss Downing says: “I have found in my teaching that only the pupils who do not know how to wash them properly dislike the washing of dishes. When I hear a young lady say, ‘I hate to wash dishes,’ I know she is not a trained worker and does not know the [...]
As we enter 2006, Virtual Hudson Valley wishes you
A year of cold colds and warm hots and clear definitions, straight answers and problems solved.
A year of powerful inspirations.
A year of ideas absorbed, digested, and reborn fresh with perspective.
A year of debate.
A year of compromise.
A year of universal respect for the ideas of others.
A year’s rest [...]
“Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art–”
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the [...]
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked [...]
The Harlot’s House
We caught the tread of dancing feet,
We loitered down the moonlit street,
And stopped beneath the harlot’s house.
Inside, above the din and fray,
We heard the loud musicians play
The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss.
Like strange mechanical grotesques,
Making fantastic arabesques,
The shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the ghostly dancers spin
To sound of horn and violin,
Like black [...]
Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America
Savages we call them, because their manners differ from ours, which we think the perfection of civility; they think the same of theirs.
Perhaps, if we could examine the manners of different nations with impartiality, we should find no people so rude, as to be without any rules of politeness; [...]