PAGE F THE MONTH

October 2008

The terror of error
The error of terror
The terror of seeing
The error of being

 

APOSTROPHE TO MAN

On reflecting that the world
is ready to go to war again...

by

Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build
bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia
and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest,
be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulæ, commercialize
Bacteria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach,
expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens.

 

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.                               E. O. Wilson

 

more poems by Edna St Vincent Millay

 

 

TWO POEMS

by

Anthony Weir

1. DAYS

My correspondent wrote:
"I hope your day is being good to you."
He is American, of course.

Days are often good to me.

But am I good to days ?
Check out the Day-Abuse Website
to read about how horrible people can also be
to nice, harmless, passing days
which just want to go by quietly
without too much noise, except
(what can they expect ?) around volcanoes
which they learned about at Day School
from the Ancient of Days
who had a Santa beard, and was an uncircumcised
collector of foreskins,
and lived on top of cloudy pillars.

He's dead now,
killed by Christians,
whom Jews might be justified in calling God-killers.

 

 

2. A CURIOUS THING

Men's armpits in their natural state
have a range of smells
- fennel, ginger,
leather, horse, ripe date,
pipe-tobacco, damp logs -
but their balls
all smell the same

though maybe not to dogs.

 

MAXIM OF THE MONTH:

The quickest of us walk about
with well-wadded stupidity.
- George Eliot

 

SEPTEMBER'S MAXIM

Sensible people are few and far between,
apart from those who share our opinions.
- La Rochefoucauld

 

AUGUST'S MAXIM

We try to make virtues out of the faults we don't want to correct.
- La Rochefoucauld

 

JULY'S MAXIM

Humility is not obedience -
nor is obedience humility.

 

JUNE'S MAXIM

The first step to Heaven
is to cut off your feet.
(after Rumi)

 

MAY'S MAXIM

Even the poor have more money than sense.

 

APRIL'S MAXIM

Love is
estrangement's
distorting mirror.

 

MARCH'S MAXIM

It's not what's going on that matters
but what's going off.

 

FEBRUARY'S MAXIM

Nothing that is guarded is worth having.

 

JANUARY'S MAXIMS

'Silence is always accurate.'
- Mark Rothko

'C'est en nous qu'il nous faut nous taire'.
- Louis Aragon.

more recent Maxims and Aphorisms can be read on the
weBlog

 

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