Following the Sun: Descending
Part I: Autumn Sonata
Contents
1. Do what you love
2. The quest for wisdom
3. Through distance, darkly
4. To sleep
5. Praying in words to you
6. Decrepitude
7. The wave
8. Was the wave?
9. Triptych I
10. Autumnal collage
11. Lightning and reflection
12. A wish, a prayer
13. To my abba in eternity
14. Memory and desire
15. On a pine branch
16. Morning on an ash
17. Schumann’s andante cantabile
18. Brahms showed his heart
19. Why chamber music?
20. A sonata in autumn
21. In honor of Moses
22. Nearness of death
23. Swindlers?
24. Reasons not to break away
25. Over Babi Yar
26. Reflecting with Whitman
27. All alone
28. Old man on a swing
29. The death chaplain
30. On Nietzsche and Whitman
31. Poet or prophet of democracy?
32. The naughty boy
33. Love of the beautiful
34. Not wine and roses
35. Descending
36. Edging the flame
37. A view from the perch
38. Shadows on a wall
39. For the gods to come
40. Collected works of art
41. When the dogs bed down
42. Making friends with darkness
43. The erotic draw into death
44. The fading of night
Descending
Part I: Autumn Sonata
(Fall 2021)
1. Do what you love
“Our time is short, amigo;
do what you love.”
So my friend José Jesús texted me
on 21 August 2021.
Indeed, our time is short.
1 Living and dying
I live with a constant reminder of death
of the brevity of life and my own mortality
that I’m nearing the end of my journey here
soon and very soon to slip into the silence.
So teaches me the lumbar disc bulge and protrusion
so teaches me pain preventing sleep at midnight.
Truly this being-thing is descending towards death.
And yet I hope to live and to enjoy life
both on earth and in no-time, in God.
I may live a few short months or years
or another sixteen years, matching
the age of my father when he died.
I met José in Babylon on the Potomac
in the late summer of 1980
his first year in Washington, my second.
We became friends from our first meeting
and soon grew to be close and constant
beginning a friendship which has never died.
“Our time is short, amigo;
do what you love.”
Well, José, that raises questions in my mind:
What do I love that I truly want to do?
What do I not love in truth that can be let go?
Am I doing now what I love forever?
2 The probing question
What do you love? That question scalpels
into the marrow, into who and what
one truly is, and who one is not.
You have many loves, polyphiliac
coining or unwittingly borrowing a term.
What do you most love that you may do?
I love to write, to stretch out my mind to find truth,
to express it clearly to be understood
to study, to learn, to question, to think;
to care for my dogs and myself in little ways
to love my friends and to help them as I can;
to provide a living in retirement working on investments.
I love to walk and work, moving body through space-time;
to garden and to enjoy its fruits: beauty and food.
Over years I have loved to meditate and to pray
these activities given less scope recently--
until the dark time of the year, when God drags me in.
Still I love to seek It, ever wondering about the divine
to ask questions that lead towards a more lasting union--
begun between time and eternity, fulfilled beyond time in eternity;
and to share the fruits of meditation and writing with others.
“Do what you love.” What do I most truly love, my God?
Surely I love a large variety of music, especially listening to Bach
and reading good literature, photographing, enjoying nature.
What do I not love that I am doing now?
What could be sloughed off, perhaps with growing joy?
What can be let go, to give more time for what I most enjoy?
I should gladly be freed of the pain of compressed nerves
leaving more time, mind, and energy to do what I love:
to be unfeignedly grateful, remembering with thanksgiving.
3 The question of being
Pain awakened me after two hours of fitful sleep
shortly after midnight. After hobbling-wobbling downstairs
and as I brewed coffee and took some meds
an insight insinuated into my mind,
sparked in memory as I heard Al Jolson sing
“Are you lonesome tonight?”
It was not “lonesomeness” that captured me
but the thought that the word “are” in the question
is superfluous. “Lonesome” implies the verb “to be.”
Then the thought was generalized: every verb, noun, adjective
implies the verb “to be,” because being—to be--
underlies every action and thing, every verb and noun.
Everything that is in any way, including any process
is a function of being: being is primary to all else.
It is not as Sartre wrote in his doctoral exam
“Existence precedes essence,” but that being--
the act of to be, esse per se subsistens--
is ever primary and present to all that exists in any way.
Now, this insight, which seems true, may be faulty.
I’m no Parmenides, nor Aristotle, nor Thomas
nor was meant to be, “I’m just an ordinary man,”
as Henry Higgins sings in “My Fair Lady.”
An ordinary man who enjoys thinking about reality
who loves to question and to explore unboundedly
who knows that he does not know, and has a good idea
why he does not know as he wishes to know:
that which he longs to know is present and absent
always here and there yet never fully accessible
the all-good, all-wise YHWH, He who is to be itself.
All of my life in some way is a search for God--
a search that’s a response to what is moving the search.
I am doing what I love, and wish to do it better.
To the One who is bringing into being, we give thanks.
2. The quest for wisdom
When all else is stripped away from my life--
from its daily activities and necessary tasks
from various worldly cares and healthful care of body
from the need to support myself financially
from spiritual or religious obligations freely undertaken
from my still-forming attempts to study and to write
from personal struggles to grow into who I truly am--
there remains underneath all of these activities
a longing for true well-being and childlike trust in God
a quest for the wisdom that is God’s alone to give
a desire to allow the divine to break into consciousness
directly or through the mediation of mystics, prophets
saints and philosophers who were open to the truth
of that which is: the inexhaustible source, the flowing spring
that by long tradition is known as “God.”
Again and again I will turn to the wisdom of Moses and the Torah
to the wisdom of Jeremiah, Second-Isaiah, other prophets
to the wisdom and love of Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles
to the wisdom of classical Hellas enfleshed in various forms
culminating in its philosophers who discerned with clarity
that in the loving pursuit of wisdom they were loving and seeking God
to the wisdom of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Buddha,
to the wisdom of Lao-Tse, and to other mystics east and west.
I want to dedicate myself to studying these seekers of wisdom
to receive from them what nectar I am able to receive
to glimpse however fleetingly behind the veil of verbal formulations
the moving image of the Imageless, who casts no shadow
the wholly other who is for all beings the ever-present Ehyeh
the unlimited Lover whose loving still moves the quest
for wisdom beyond words that ultimately is silently One.
3. Through distance, darkly
1
By what words can one articulate
the ways of eros between two souls?
The mystery transcends speech, and yet
the mystery bids lovers seek to understand.
Two arrows shot towards each other
in the night without a guiding light
flying straight towards they know-not-what
launched by the hand that stretched the bow strings.
2
As words between them flowed
the two yielded themselves
to each other as they believed
through the strange promptings of eros.
They told themselves they felt desire
an erotic attraction for one another.
In and through that mutual desire
the madness of eros was working--
divine madness overflowing with life.
4. To sleep
To sleep at least at last to rest
my head drooping down chin on chest
and I, exhausted to the core
await some nerve relief through surgery.
Am I awake or am I asleep?
I no longer know for sure
sitting at my writing table as dreams flit in
or fleeting images and then I stir again
Images from the distant past
from a pain-wrung imagination
drifting into sleep at last to rest.
5. Praying in words to You
1
O soul of a being blessed by God
turn aside a while from your busy thoughts
give up whatever you now have at hand
and follow the drawing of the unseen One.
Sit still in your place of quiet meditation
and let the darkness of God come upon you
the refreshing cloud enshrouding all
in a womb of mysterious unfelt love.
Enter the inner where no one goes
but you and that which is there not there
the One present when felt far away
the One awaiting your tardy return.
Enter in below above no where at all
nothing to grasp no thing to hold
enter and be at home where you’re alone
with that which only is all one alone.
2
O LORD my God, the God of Israel
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-Israel
God of Moses—I AM WHO AM--
God of the prophets of the LORD’s own people:
To the One unknown but ever sought
by every soul that comes forth into being
to You I bow and bring the longings of my heart
to You I bend the sinews of my stiff neck.
O God of your chosen receivers everywhere
through the centuries and in places far apart
all are known and drawn by You alone
into communion with You no-thing that simply is.
3
Give thanks, o my soul, to the holy One of Israel
give thanks to the creator and perfecter of all.
Give thanks to that out of which all come forth
give thanks to that which is leading all home.
I bring no gift to your altar, LORD, except what you have given:
I bring to You the little you I am, not in buildings made by hands
but here alone in the silence beneath my restless heart
here where you and I become one without destruction.
I come my God apart from every cult and practice
apart from the rituals of Israel or of the church
apart from washings in rivers and from sacred fires
I come to You “just as I am” in sheer emptiness.
I come away for I’m a loner, a wanderer into God
a soul longing to journey into its proper home
a man a human being an animal a being-thing
a creature loved by the One who brings forth each.
Give thanks to YHWH, my soul, and bless his name
bless all who remember that which is, the God of all
bless the one who forgets to turn and give thanks--
render thanks on behalf of each and of all.
4
Bless the LORD, you Soul of my soul
I of my I, and You in every you.
Bless and thank the Life of your life
the being of your being, That which ever is.
As all is passing, You alone endure
ever beyond the currents of change
of coming-to-be and passing-away--
You are as you are now and endlessly.
What does it mean to bless your name
but to acknowledge You as You forever are
to let go of all outward externalities
to gaze quietly into your bottomless pool.
What does it mean to give You thanks
but to return to You all that I am, all that I have;
to set myself at your disposal, You alone
who are wise and guide all things back to You.
Bless the LORD, Soul of my soul,
the one desired in every desire
loved in every act of loving
sought in every step and breath
by a wanderer who’s home is You alone.
6. Decrepitude
This is my play’s last scene
for I have felt and seen
the final stage of age grown old
the withering away of life within.
How long I shall live hereafter
I know no more than anyone.
But I have felt in my leg and abdomen
glutinous death devouring from within.
Old age and death have visited me
in my seventy-first year on earth.
Nearly did I lose the use of the left leg
to bear this aging body on its rounds
of harried duties and more leisurely walks
giving so much while asking so little
this leg and bladder and bowels
nearly denied their natural functioning.
Now for a month or year perhaps a score
I may creep about quietly and noisily
nearly unseen and fortunately overlooked
as I wend my way to the grave.
I shall not rage against the dying of the light
for naked I came forth and naked shall I depart
and in-between my life has been blessed
by many a gift and undeserved kindness.
Not tomorrow not today but now
I give heartfelt thanks to the God of life
who bestows breath on mere clay
and in whom alone all endure.
Now in life’s declining golden hour
after years of youth, then paid employment
enjoying the fruits of mine and others’ labors--
soon will sound the tolling tolling of the bell.
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
For Aurora is the golden hour, Aurora--
the dawn for those who truly love
the dawning of unmasked eternity.
7. The wave
The wave that flushed ashore soon dissipates
seemingly vanishing into mere nothingness
some water sinking hiddenly into wet sand
some water receding back into the restless sea
but gone is the wave, its time ended.
To what or who abides beyond all human knowing
to the One most human beings seek as God
to the greater ocean of unboundedness
I call, lingering alone on the shifting shore
waiting for the final silent ebbing away.
“O LORD, you have shown me my end
how short is the length of my days;
Now I know how fleeting is my life…
And now, LORD, what is there to wait for?
In You rests all my hope.”
And the remnants of the wave return to the sea
out of which it had flowed forth.
8. Was the wave?
The wave was and was not:
we call the motion a wave
a rising and a falling
a swelling and a withdrawal
a moving in and out
a rushing sound then hush.
It was a wave, was it not?
it was not a wave, was it?
whatever it was, was
let it be and let it go
the Ocean abides.
9. Triptych I
Ocean will swallow the land
and land will emerge from ocean.
All that I am, love, have
is passing away.
What will emerge, I do not know.
What will be will be.
On the edge of eternity
on the edge of the abyss
I choose to give thanks
to the One from whom all arise
to the One who alone endures.
O man, fellow creature of a day
prepare yourself to die.
10. Autumnal collage
Much that was good
some was painful
some was pleasant
some aroused anxiety.
Perhaps I should never have been there
Perhaps. There were lessons to learn.
It is past now, slipped away, downstream.
See how it floated away?
Much confusion, many inner woundings
struggled to be free and at peace.
What I needed or wanted then
I neither need nor want now.
Fragments of memories come to consciousness
pleasant most of them
arousing some desire and much gratitude
nibbles in life’s bountiful buffet.
11. Lightning and reflection
Lightening across an open prairie
struck in a dark quiet moment--
words as flying arrows piercing me.
Walls of a cave, imprisoning cell
seemed to crumble to the ground
leaving me stunned and exposed.
With the rising of the morning sun
a fuller reality begins to break in.
Imprisoning caves require years of work
to be torn down stone after stone;
and being stunned and exposed
may be just the beginning of a long ascent
from self-enclosure to liberation.
12. A wish, a prayer
Grant me, LORD God, before I die
to love and be loved passionately
by one good human being.
Grant me to surrender who I am
into the hands and heart of a genuine lover.
Yet wasn’t my abba the true lover of my soul?
If not, what was lacking in his love?
He loved me in truth and integrity
as he would have loved his own son.
Grant me, good LORD, a more grateful heart
to have lived and thrived through a lover’s art.
13. To my abba in eternity
Never have I loved anyone as I love you.
Of course I love my parents, sister, brother,
but you, Father Daniel, I love with all in me--
with the good, the bad, the holy spirit
with an all-too-human, light-darkling spirit.
You loved me with Christ-like love
asking nothing in return.
Now I turn back to you for a favor:
by the light of the Spirit, guide me.
That is all I ask: and we shall fare well.
Should I make a full break, dear friend
from the monastery and from the Church?
Or after a short respite, should I return?
That question I pose and pass on
and in silence through time I’ll await an answer.
What more could you have done for me
that you did not do thirty-five years ago?
Nothing of which I am aware;
you were and are alive with the healer’s art.
14. Memory and desire
A wild-driving passion thrives within you
that you neither understand nor fully control.
Long has it been named Eros.
To you, he brings desire, fear, confusion.
He kissed you--
you felt the stubble on his upper lip
“red hot fireball” he called you
and whispered, “our little secret”
15. On a pine branch
Sunlight filtering down to a Scotch pine
light gently resting on a branch
shining pine needles.
16. Morning on an ash
Even light before sunrise
leaves and branches trembling
dancing rocking shaking bowing
rhythmically moving together
kinesis
only the grounded sky-piercing trunk
still and steadfast.
17. Schumann’s andante cantabile
Within his E-flat Major Piano Quartet
Schumann placed a most lovely andante cantabile:
to hear it, truly to hear it,
is to have one’s lone heart pierced
by the agony that beauty bears:
Sung first on the mournful ‘cello
then on the ecstatic violin
you are left naked and exposed
and longing for release
from beauty’s ravishing.
18. Brahms showed his heart
Was Brahms ever as emotionally honest
as personally revealing
as he was in the exquisite Andante
of his Third Piano Quartet in c minor?
Is it a mere coincidence
that it bears comparing to Schumann’s andante?
What young person madly in love
has not suffered this passion, in some way?
Schumann lost his sanity
and Brahms lost his beloved.
Or did he not have her for life
in a beautiful lasting friendship?
19. Why chamber music?
1 Probing questions
There are questions one never forgets
or may not forget, or should not forget--
a question I cannot forget is what Socrates
tells Chaerephon to ask Polus
in Plato’s Gorgias: Ask him “who he is.”
That is the question.
St. Augustine’s probing question was
“What do you love?” Who you are
and what you love probe the core of your being.
From such questions there is no good escape.
Then there are questions one is asked
even by a stranger in the course of one’s life:
some seem trivial, others strip the soul--
they may tantalize or penetrate,
utterly apt for you when asked here and now.
2 A minister’s question
Sometimes you are asked a question
as if out of the blue, not existentially
yet the question teases your mind for years.
One evening a fundamentalist minister in Iowa asked me
“How did you ever get interested in chamber music?”
He knew of my interest because I had mentioned Beethoven
the late string quartets, such mature masterpieces
and probably Brahms and Bach’s sonatas for violin and harpsichord--
he may have questioned me about my interests in music
which have been nourished over year and are far-ranging.
“How did you ever get interested in chamber music?”
His question was neither sympathetic nor highly belligerent
but it displayed mental reserve with my musical tastes.
The question was sufficiently barbed to sink in
and to remain in me the past thirty years.
“How did you ever get interested in chamber music?”
How does one not get interested in chamber music
an enormous genre containing so many magnificent compositions?
Each part in chamber music is exposed
allowing one to hear each instrument as well as the ensemble.
The structure of composition often shines forth
openly, transparently in chamber music
as in black and white photography
light more fully revealed against black
the skeletal form not obscured by rich-splendid colors.
3 Early interests
How did I become interested in chamber music?
We did not listen to it in our home
although my sister played the piano.
Much of my early musical experience was in concerted music
as in symphonies or symphonic poems, or in pop.
The first chamber compositions to attract my attention
arrived on records I bought as a freshman in college:
Beethoven’s Die Grosse Fuge came first--
I liked Bach fugues on the organ, and Beethoven’s symphonies,
so I took a chance and tried this quartet composition.
Now the point of departure on my journey into chamber music
seems a little strange, even laughable
as one would be hard pressed to find a more demanding
more exacting composition to appreciate as a novice
than “the Great Fugue” Beethoven composed late in life.
And yet from the opening bars into the first intense exposition
I was captivated, intellect and feelings,
caught up in the extraordinary genius that is Beethoven.
Now it seems obvious that one who loved Bach’s counterpoint
would feel strangely out of place yet at home in Die Grosse Fuge.
Also in my 18th-19th years I explored other chamber compositions:
a few Mozart string quartets (especially “the Dissonance” in C),
Schubert’s Octet, Beethoven’s Septet, then came Brahms--
Piano Quartets, Trios; and Bach’s violin and harpsichord sonatas,
a few Haydn string quartets, then those of Bartok.
In chamber pieces, one discovers some lovely melodies
sonorous harmonies, fascinating rhythms
intricate or straight-forward structural compositions
and of course some outstanding musician-performers.
What is there not to enjoy in such music?
Why chamber music? Why music?
Why sounds? Why not silence?
Why not silence? In time, God’s time.
20. A sonata in autumn
1 Out of silence
In the beginning is silence--
that out of which speech and music emerge
silence that remains the canvas
on which a sonata is painted--
still silence nourishing beauty, meaning, depth.
Music sounding in and with silence--
listening a dialectic between silence and sound
between sounds heard and those awaited
by a mind attending both to notes heard
and to those emerging now out of silence.
Often a dramatic or lyrical introduction
to prepare the listening mind for the sonata
taking form sound by sound
notes following notes, pause after pause
the mind beginning to know patterns in the flow.
Patterns in sound conceived by the composer
recognized and ordered by the musicians
perceived or not by the listener
patterned sounds in organized waves
moving through the media of time, minds, silence.
2 Ongoing development
An intended recognizable pattern of sounds
a theme, often dramatic or tense
followed by a contrasting lyrical theme
in the dominant or same key, or relative minor--
themes communicating mind to mind
from intellect to intellect, feelings to feelings:
without patterned sounds and distinct themes
there’s merely sounds, noise, chaos;
the conscious listener discriminates,
recognizes themes, soon enjoyed or not--
mere acquaintances or friends in sounds
performed by musicians, by fellow human beings
who express their consciousness through the sounds.
Perhaps or necessarily from the moment patterns begin
they undergo changes, additions, developments.
Usually there is a formal development section
but in reality all is change, becoming, development
from silence to first notes to patterns to repetitions--
each sound developing from what preceded
each sound preparing for what is coming.
3. Union through music
A true musician becomes one with the music--
as it is being produced by humans and instruments--
as it is sounding through ears into minds;
the musical—composer, performers, listeners--
becoming united through the Muse’s art.
The active listener who is mentally engaged
who enters into the sounds perceived
hears, attends, discerns with a mind
that analyzes, examines, thinks about
as well as senses, feels, intuits--
Music engages the entire person
of the composer, the musician-performers
the active listener—body, mind, soul--
art as ordered flow from dynamic energy
mind carried by music out of silence to mind.
Music the sacred craft of the Muses
the nectar of the Olympian gods
beauty enfleshed in ordered sounds
uniting composers, musicians, listeners
In an experience of transforming energy
that is the spring and autumn of the spirit
leading psyche to the border of transcendence
guiding a human being home through death.
21. In honor of Moses
To the One which let its presence be known
to Moses on Mount Sinai
transforming the fugitive shepherd
into the leader of the Hebrew people:
With gratitude on this day
21 September 2021
when my faithful dog Moses of Lone Willow
has completed fourteen years on earth--
I call him Mousi, the Moose, Scotty
but this time-traveled dog is Moses
named for the wise shepherd of the people
who forged the covenant between God and man.
How can one justly praise a dog?
Examine the letters in a mirror
and dog reflects the god whose image he bears
shining in and through a humble creature.
Day by day Moses is making his exodus
and where he goes, soon I shall follow
and Elijah, Moses’ younger understudy
as every creature returns to our Source.
22. Nearness of death
“Keep death daily before your eyes.”
--Rule of St. Benedict, 4:47
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
the valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
it seems to me most strange that men should fear
seeing that death, a necessary end,
will come when it will come.”
—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II, ii.
The play’s final act is unfolding
though perhaps not its last scene.
From the moment the tale began
it was moving towards its end.
“Every poem an epitaph.”
Every step, every word
each moment a little closer
to the ground, to your end in time.
How can one sufficiently thank the creator
for bringing this creature into being?
How can one best live and serve
in the moments, hours, days remaining?
You did not have to be, nor did anything--
life is sheer gratuity
a gift to be ever unfolded
and ever given away in love.
Without love, we are raucous songs;
through love, we are partners in divine music.
Apart from love, no meaning or purpose--
with love, each finds its meaning.
You know well that death is coming
inescapably and usually sooner
than you expected or wanted
and yet it is ever near at hand.
Watching the death of one we love
is a painful, drawn-out process
as life forces slowly ebb away:
sorrowful watching your loved one die.
My friend Bob texted to me this evening:
"I think Moses is getting close to the end;
sorry but it happens to us all.
He does mean so much to me.”
Moses cried for me three times
in the one o’clock hour this morning
seemingly restless or in distress.
He quieted down as I showed tenderness
and fell asleep
the likeness of death
sleep—at times a restorer of life
as death may be
falling asleep into death
never to awake
being nothing except in no thing.
23. Swindlers?
Granted my ingrained bias against groups:
to the degree that they are close-knit
closed to examination and scrutiny
groups are in effect mini-cult-communities
unhealthy worlds thriving on group-think--
proud, arrogant, hostile to questioning.
Academic departments were unhealthy
and often unpleasant places to work.
So many professors professing to know--
when in truth they may know little worthwhile.
These men and women receive high salaries
to act as if they have knowledge worth dispensing.
The most diseased groups in which I have shared
are ghettos of Catholic clergymen--
vowed religious and diocesan priests.
After years of living and working among them
I felt disrespected, diminished, unwanted
because I’m not willing to live their lies.
In each group there are outstanding exceptions--
good men who are worth knowing who’ve risen
above the communal shameful game.
Such men are few and often hard to find
generally obscure and not representative
of the community in which they function.
Many ordained, I believe, are swindlers--
diocesan priests and bishops, many male religious
and a wide array of Protestant ministers too.
They thrive on largesse and appearances
and generally are not what they seem.
Often these men exude arrogance and pride
the utter opposites of what they have professed.
Often they are like enrobed parasites
living on the wealth and generosity of others.
Never have I met men so resistant to change
to self-examination and self-criticism
as I found in monastic communities.
Several beliefs nourish arrogance among clergy
often proclaimed assertively by priests insisting:
“The priest is alter Christus, another Christ”
not realizing how self-deceived they are.
“Jesus was not ordained anything,” I said,
but that fell on thickly waxed, self-enclosed ears.
Laity create a major problem among clergy--
“The faithful” when deficient in faith foolishly treat
their priests and ministers as if they are Christ himself.
Their childish adulation and idolatrous adoration
helped to create and maintain the Behemoth
of pompous pretense that is the Catholic priesthood.
About such clergy, a bishop spoke truth to me:
“They feel entitled to steal from parishioners.”
One Friday in Lent I was invited out to dinner
with a group of priests, who ordered lobster
crab legs and other delicacies using parish funds.
I questioned how such luxuries fit Lent
and one and all criticized me as ignorant
because church law says, “Do not eat meat”
so they are eating lobster, halibut, crab--
which they did not catch, cook, or pay for--
while sticking parishioners with their buttered bills.
Smugly and self-assuredly they “kept the law.”
I said to these black-shirted rotundas:
“Would it not be more in the spirit of Lent
to eat a humble hamburger
than to fatten up on expensive sea-food?”
They all vigorously disagreed
and never invited me to dine with them again.
24. Reasons not to break away
You took vows, promising to be faithful.
All walks of life entail hardships unforeseen.
The future is unknown; a final break
could not be undone, possibly to your regret.
One need neither break nor fare forward;
respect one’s psychic need for clarity
that comes with peace during a time of healing.
And all the time keep this in mind:
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
25. Over Babi Yar
(29 September 2021, 80th anniversary of the mass murder)
“Over Babi Yar no monument.”
Over Chicago and Los Angeles
over Cleveland and White Plains
over the posh suburbs of DC
there’s no monument.
And yet, so many deaths
So many brutal killings.
In no way do I detract or distract
from the atrocities against the Jewish people
old and young, men and women
stripped naked and murdered
by National Socialists with their assistants--
Ukrainian nationals who hated Jews.
How many of the Nazis were baptized Catholics?
How many were Lutherans in church attendance
and Nazis in their devoted hatreds?
How many Ukrainian co-murderers
were Orthodox or who knows what?
You machine-gunned them down
these innocent Jewish people
simply because they were Jews--
the Chosen People of God.
There is a monument over Babi Yar
and over every Dachau, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen:
the monument that’s visible to eyes of faith.
These are the children of God you murdered
in your hatred for the Creator and his people.
You have made into the Holocaust
another crucifixion of Christ written in the blood of thousands:
what the Romans did to one Jewish preacher
you have done to the children of Israel--
“Crucify him, crucify them, wipe them from the earth.”
“Any man’s death diminishes me
because I am involved in Mankind.”
And the death of the child diminishes me
and the infant in its mother’s womb
killed before it could see the light of day.
Many there are who are murdered
and many just walk by
so many just want what’s “convenient.”
“O my people, what have I done unto you?
and how have I wearied you?
Answer me!”
26. Reflecting with Whitman
1 Not Whitman’s America
As a boy I, too, could hear America singing
and her songs deeply echoed in my soul
forming me with their varied notes and rhythms.
I had no doubt that America and I were one
even as millions of peoples were one with America
and we were one people in history
and self-consciously “one nation under God.”
The death of John F Kennedy in 1963
the horrendous assassination of our President
was a turning point not only in my life
but in the history and self-consciousness of America
as we were forced suddenly and painfully
to see ourselves in a vastly different light--
Violence and hatred brewing beneath the surface
cruelty as well as compassion in our hearts.
Still I could hear America singing
but shouting often drowned out our dirges and songs
for we had become fractured, torn, disassembled.
The horrendous murder of President Kennedy
then Dr. Martin Luther King, then Senator Bobby Kennedy
served as a tempestuous prelude to the murder of ourselves
our innocence, our culture, our way of life
our naïveté perhaps and our youthfulness.
America became hated as Amerika
filled with loud and noisy songs, screeching
rather than blessed silence, violence everywhere
at least in numerous cities destructively burning
children filled with distrust and dissatisfaction
dis-eased and disgusted with their parents
with our country the world the whole universe.
America: the disorganized, the chaotic, the violent
seething with poisonous ideologies and beliefs
increasingly deaf to the wonders of nature
and the over-arching truth of nature’s God.
We the people became a rebellious, unhappy people
and the ones who suffered most were the young
whose souls and minds absorbed the sicknesses
becoming increasingly unattuned to reality
immersed in ersatz religions and second realities;
often boozed up or dropped out on drugs;
thinking ourselves wise, we became childish fools
considering ourselves divine we nourished the demonic.
America had much the character of a gross insane asylum
and we the people, you and I, were soul inmates
imprisoned in a decaying culture of death.
Since those years when everything of value was torn down
mocked, ridiculed, laughed at, despised, desprized
we may have mellowed out a short while, a brief breath
but then armed by Marxist and Positivist ideologies of Europe
the leading intoxicating Gnosticisms of the day
from their universities to ours and into our culture
flowed a more coherent seemingly learned destructive mind
seeking to “transform the world” as Marx had promised
a kind of alchemy of reality from base metals into gold.
So much was hoped for and promised, and so little delivered.
The dreams of the foolish haters and deniers of reality
have little good or truth to offer anyone
but power to gain, “the world to change”--
not in reality at all, just solely in their highfalutin rhetoric
and their ideologically-intoxicated minds.
So many deceived, so many dying or dead souls
so many minds drugged and poisoned by dreams and lies.
2. Stand aside!
How can one fittingly sing America any more?
What songs could possibly harmonize with who we are?
A song of puss flowing from infected wounds?
A song of pretense and of social posturing
of grasping for power after power ending only in death?
Ah, nature, you have your ways, often confounding us.
Your beauty by night and by day we may mar
deny or seek to destroy, but you far transcend us.
How small and insignificant our big shots are
we are, we who have fallen in dis-grace.
Some in our midst would destroy the universe
if only they could, but in reality, they cannot.
How small and insignificant we the people really are
how foolish and stupid our self-selected “elected” leaders;
pretending to be great, we have become spiritual dwarfs.
How does an old man live in a world torn apart?
How can one seek and keep his sanity
living in the midst of a people drugged by vanities and insanities?
What is one to do in a world of chaos and mass deceptions
except to withdraw from the turbulence, and let the storms pass by.
I will sit in silence alone far from the madding crowds.
I will seek to avoid all interactions with their social-political diseases.
I will open my mind and heart to the beauties of nature
the wonders of reality as it truly is and has been
and the greatest wonder who is the Lord of all.
Stand aside, and let the dismal graffiti-filled train pass by.
Stand aside, and tune out the slogans and false claims
the games of the wealthy and powerful seeking ever more.
Stand aside and find your homeland not here any more
but in the heart of God who is the heart of the world as well.
3. Two “visions” of America
Now I shall sing a sweeter song, sitting and standing apart
listening not to the money-lubricated crud socially generated
but to the songs of the lovers of wisdom mostly long gone
now living and alive to those who will to listen.
With neither the sharp and disciplined intellect of a philosopher
nor the musical and all-embracing soul of a poet
In this last season of my life I write for the mind
to find peace and truth and beauty beneath and in it all.
You heard America singing, Walt, when its songs still had beauty
a joy of life, an expansiveness of spirit, some waywardness
but you listened and you heard, you were attuned
to your people and their myriads of busy activities.
Your vision of America is not mine, nor is America
of the 21st century the same as America of the 19th.
The more freedom-drenched and egalitarian society you knew
has given way to a nascent and unrecognized totalitarianism
dominated by elites who claim to know the truth
who “know” that they are the wave of the future, the bringers
of a new era, a “new world order,” a “transformed world”
dominated and controlled by magical-scientistic knowers.
Walt my friend, you had your own dose of gnosis
possibly learned from self-divinized Emerson, or from Quakers;
but another voice also sings in many of your poems--
a more sane and sober voice, not gnostic-prophetic but poetic.
4. Whitman’s call to be a poet
Whitman’s poetic vision is broad, sweeping, adventurous
his formulations not intended to be philosophically precise
but take into account the profusions and extrusions of lived life
rather than force reality into sterile and fixed intellectual categories.
The range of his poetry is impressively vast.
When first I began to read him around age twenty
I found him shocking, often bawdy, self-absorbed
and although poetic, also spiritually strange, even diseased.
Fifty years later, at seventy, having returned to Whitman
from time to time over the years, and especially
since retiring several years ago, he appears quite differently:
I’ve become far more patient with his excesses
and appreciative of the scope of his vision, as well as
his sheer poetic genius—at best, perhaps America’s finest.
When I was thirty, an erudite and gentlemanly monk
Fr. Thomas Fahy, recommended that I study the poem
“Out of the cradle endlessly rocking” in his “Leaves of Grass.”
I gave it a read then but understood little in those days
largely because I was baffled by Whitman’s poetic language.
Still, Fr. Thomas had a most discerning eye for quality.
After hours of reading and studying, in all of the “Leaves”
“Out of the cradle” has become my favorite poem
partly for its poignancy and poetic beauty
also because here Whitman explores the origins
and hence nature of his call to become a poet, America’s poet;
in his remembered experiences on the shore of Long Island
he explores what engendered his two great themes—both central
to the genius of Whitman, as to many poets: love and death.
Some of the particular formulations in “Out of the cradle”
are exquisitely expressed, and earn Whitman high praise
as a poet in America, for America, for the world.
To the male mockingbird that lost his mate, Whitman cries:
“Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, 0—now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and
more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.”
Other than self-absorbed, self-referential experience here--
not so unusual in a child, perhaps—the sense of having his poetic soul
awakened through the mockingbird’s singing to and for his dead mate
is touching indeed, even if an adult’s partially fanciful account of his calling.
That is the self-designated formative experience of the poet
the moment when, as he writes, “I know what I am for, I awake…”
Death and love were so powerful and entwined in that experience
that they kept pouring out their depth and beauty to this poet’s songs.
Whitman relates the carol of love and death sung by the mockingbird
to the explicit song of death he hears the same night from the sea
in effect validating the experience and interpretation of his poetic calling:
Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?…
Whereto, answering, the sea…
Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death,
And again death, death, death, death…
My own songs awakened from that hour…”
27. All alone
Not much noise is stirring from the noisy world
dogs resting quietly with the setting of the sun
no tech devices distracting the mind
Canada geese flying, wind blowing near the river
ash and cherry plum leaves falling singly, slowly
and I’m sitting alone beneath trees with body
mind, thoughts, and a soothing lack of emotion.
When one is alone and not encrowded
with ample space and time to enjoy one’s solitude
this is the kairos, the critical moment—not for action
but to be aware of being alone and also a partner
a member of the Kosmos that is itself in and out of time
timeless and bottomless and breathless
yet a living whole, what Goethe called die lebendige Natur--
alone and perhaps only alone can a human being
find himself not lost, but rooted and grounded in All.
“I did not have to be”
I was standing alone in our backyard
near Pearl Harbor on Oahu
between a hedge of hibiscus and citrus trees
under a bright sky with a naked-hot sun
a fourth grade student then, so about ten
and as I thought to myself, I realized
an apparent contrast between the sun and me.
“The sun was here before I was born
and the sun will be here after I die.
The sun is always here, but I am not--
I did not have to be.”
With the clear realization that “I did not have to be”
rather than be overcome with “existential Angst” or dread
I felt gratitude for the gift of life, for being--
for “existing” borrowing a term I learned years later.
The sun simply is—a symbol then of the eternal--
but I’m a transitory being that did not have to be
and a time was coming, as I was aware
when I would be no more—gone forever.
In this experience there was no calling to be a poet
(or surely none that I ever perceived)
but a grounding sense of my place within the Whole
that in the right conditions, with good nourishment
becomes a foundation for the search for wisdom.
Anyone who thinks that s/he had to be
is laughably lacking in any wisdom whatsoever.
And “the search for truth begins with one’s awareness
of existence in untruth,” as one philosopher wrote.
28. Old man on a swing
A white-haired man, suspenders and beard
sits amidst deciduous trees in early autumn
slowly intermittently dropping their leaves
brilliant yellow leaves on trees reflecting sunlight
branches moving rhythmically, leaves fluttering
as leaf after leaf is released to the breezes.
Sitting still and alone on his wooden bench swing
as young boys bounce a ball and shoot baskets
in the yard behind him talking and playing
a radio sounding music no one hears.
Leaves descending singly downward to earth
for a brief respite until enlivened by autumnal winds.
29. The death chaplain
Not a dresser of wounds, nor a wounded healer
but a middle-aged chaplain sent to minister to the dying
in cancer wards, intensive care, a large emergency room
neo-natal intensive care, a cardiac care unit--
visiting from patient to patient, room after room
on seven floors of the huge Naval Medical Center, San Diego
to console, to touch, to offer a prayer, quietly to be present--
with and for a fellow human being passing from here
into the arms of death—into the longing and patient arms of death.
Death seems to follow wherever I go—named “the death chaplain”
as I precede the rounds of death stopping by bed after bed.
This old sailor was a radioman on the USS Nevada on December 7th, 1941
that “day of infamy,” now tormented by recurring nightmares.
Another fellow had his leg amputated, and gangrene had set in
the room reeking of infection, puss, and imminent death.
And then Joe Condon, sailor, husband, father of fifteen
who told me that he wanted to meet a monk before he died.
We met, we grew close, and we were all together as death claimed him.
Did I truly minister to these dying men and women at all?
Did they not much more minister to me and to their families
showing us how to live and how to die?
That elderly Lutheran man, who had been a heavy smoker
now bravely dying of lung cancer and filled with faith
only to be drugged up so much that he fell into death
crazed by drug-hallucinations, rather than with a prayer on his lips
as those tending him could not stand to see him suffer:
death day after day death with its stark finalities.
30. On Nietzsche and Whitman
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Walt Whitman’s poetic persona
have much in common, more than superficial similarities.
Presently I will not offer a thorough comparison between them
but focus on the underlying spiritualities,
the self-consciousness of the men as displayed in writing.
Each man writes as if he is the true herald of the future
the one who knows the future sufficiently
to usher it in through his prophetic poetry.
Both fell silent at about the same time--
one slipped into death, the other into an inner void.
Although going silent over two decades before the Great War--
Wilson’s Gnostic-irrational “war to end all war”--
Whitman and Nietzsche both sensed and prognosticated
on the magnitude, the vast scale, of what was coming--
Nietzsche more realistic, cautious; Whitman naively optimistic.
Each man presented himself as the knower of the future
the one who truly discerned historical patterns
and could see and feel what was coming upon the world.
Their claims were extreme, yet in retrospect
each sensed or imagined much that most men overlooked.
Each man was attuned, not to God, but to himself
and saw himself as an embodiment of the future
even before future time unfolded.
Whitman the democrat writ large for a democratic world
Zarathustra the forerunner replacement for the murdered God.
Much more than this I do not wish to write
for Nietzsche and Whitman lead one into bizarre worlds
that in truth are unhealthy places to dwell--
especially in their certainty of being in some sense God
a common and diseased course not worth pursuing.
In the case of both men, I prefer their poetry
in its expressive power and poetic brilliance
to the foolishness and self-deceptions of their gnosis.
There’s a time to appreciate the truth and beauty in a poet
and a time to analyze and diagnose, if real, his spiritual disease.
31. Poet or prophet of democracy?
The optimism and naïveté of American democracy
surfaced early yet gradually in our history.
Suffice it for the present to note that Whitman
was above all a self-declared prophet of democracy.
Nietzsche was too intelligent and learned
to allow himself addictions to popular mass politics
and surely to none in which “the herd” ascends.
What would Whitman be without American democracy
or without his beliefs in the goodness and value
of our democratic way of life, triumphing over all?
Perhaps more than any other 19th-century voice
Whitman extols democracy unchecked and uncontrolled.
For Walt was to a large extent a libertine soul himself
and saw democracy as delivering freedom from all restraints.
Whitman is worth reading to understand better
the American exaltation of democracy--
in his exuberance one may discern
what this poetic singer does not admit:
that democracy can be, and often is, self-destructive.
Whitman is best read for his memorable poetry
rather than for his Gnostic-democratic ideology.
The Whitman of “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking”
and of “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”
is far better than a poet of democracy
far better than a self-absorbed Gnostic ideologue
more or less of the Emersonian-Transcendentalist variety.
In his outstanding songs, Whitman has bequeathed to America
perhaps our finest, most naturally poetic voice.
32. The naughty boy
He was in our class at PS 15 in Crestwood, New York,
where I attended for fifth and sixth grades
having two teachers, Miss Bradley and Miss Stevenson
the most memorable teachers I ever had.
I loved, revered, learned much from both women.
In my fifth grade class was a naughty boy
about whom I would tell my mother
when I got home from school.
With some details, the boy’s antics were recounted
and especially punishments received for misbehavior
from Miss Bradley, who was in school to teach
and who brooked no classroom disruptions.
This boy could not sit still in class
he fidgeted, and worst of all, talked out of turn
to one student sitting nearby or another.
I remember he liked to talk to Stephen Petersen
a beautifully behaved, tranquil blond boy
son of a Norwegian shipping magnate, I believe.
I even told my mother about the old bat--
the baseball bat Miss Bradley used on occasion
when a boy was too unruly, and needed a taste.
She was never violent with us, but made her point:
“Be quiet, or worse will surely befall you.”
Some Saturday Miss Bradley and my mother worked together
at Asbury Methodist church, perhaps for a funeral
or for some church function or benefit beyond recall.
What I remember is that my mother told Miss Bradley
about the naughty boy of whom her son would often speak
and how this little boy kept getting into trouble with the teacher.
According to my mother, Miss Bradley solemnly said to her
“Mrs. McKane, that `naughty boy’ is your son, Bill.”
33. Love of the beautiful
The vision of Beauty prepares a soul to die in peace.
What would life be like, I wonder
without an informed love of the beautiful?
Would not human life itself be dull and drab
without Beauty’s enrichments and inspirations?
Answers are heard and seen daily all around us
in the coarse and undisciplined tastes of many
in a disordered society deformed by poor education
mass and social media—often a swirling cesspool—
and the ludicrous cult of pampered celebrities
many of whom boast of their degeneracies.
Our culture is more ugly than beautiful or noble.
What would my life be like, I’ve often wondered
without my persistent love of the beautiful--
without what Raffaela Gherardi called
my strong “senso estetico”?
when I was a naive twenty-two year old
studying with her in southern Bavaria.
Although I often appreciate what’s functional
in a garage, a kitchen, an automobile, a store
in the rooms of my house where time seems to cease--
where I read, write, quietly reflect, or listen to music
it is beauty that prevails, not functionality--
beauty showing up in every direction I turn.
Sitting in my den and looking around as I write
I see two artistic photographs taken and printed by my father
pottery made by Navahos, a hand-made bowl from Dakota
an ikon of the Apostle Paul, a photo of Robert E Lee
an early Italian Renaissance painting of Jesus crowning Mary
symbolizing the deification of human being by God
and the resulting marriage between them
a well-matted and framed copy of the Desiderata
a circular stained-glass piece made for me by Sarita
depicting the burning bush on Mount Sinai
English ivy stretching itself out in various directions
and cut flowers past their prime but adding color
an antique drop-leaf oak table on which I’m writing
two straight-backed leather-seated oak chairs
and three tall wooden cases filled with my favorite books
a knotty-pine paneled ceiling with large cross beams
old Moses sleeping before me on his memory-foam dog bed
and playing quietly for us on two Apple speakers
the exquisite Larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet--
(ah, Mozart, with your acute and highly developed senso estetico
so generously shared with your fellow “creatures of a day”).
What would my life be without my love of the beautiful
without the enjoyment and pursuit of beauty as it presents itself
without my desire to be immersed in beautiful art and music
and to read beautiful literature? What else demands my attention
in photography except my vision of beauty in nature (with frequent
photos of my dogs, whose souls manifest the beautiful to me).
Does the love of the beautiful show up in my choice of friends?
Yes, if one understands that beauty in a human being
is not confined to the outer form or the skin but includes
the person’s character, the soul, and who they truly are;
in that sense, I desire to have and cherish friends
who are truly good human beings--kalos k’agathos--
beautiful and good inside and outside
in form, in truthful speech, and in good deeds.
Not since studying Plato’s Republic at age twenty-two
have I thought of the beautiful as substantially subjective.
That which is truly beautiful is such whether one thinks so or not.
And that which is beautiful has the power to draw a soul
from the transitory to that which is complete and eternal.
By the love of the beautiful a soul ascends into God.
Ultimately truth, goodness, beauty, and oneness
are characteristics of what we call “God,” of reality transcending
human velleity and imagination, beyond our pettinesses.
That which is truly beautiful manifests the divine to the soul--
in other terms, beauty reveals divinity as present.
Of that I have conviction that grounds and nourishes my life.
Despite Goethe’s profound chorus mysticus
it is not “das Ewig Weibliche” that leads me on;
it is the eternally beautiful within its abundant manifestations
that draws me on and in, lifts my spirits, fills me with hope
and largely guides how I spend my remaining time.
As I grow old and feeble, I intensely hope and wish
that I will not be immersed in ugly noise and low-quality music
but in Bach, in Mozart, in Beethoven, in the music that I love
because it presents to my mind and heart the divine breaking in
through well-ordered and profoundly beautiful music.
And I would far rather be facing the sky above and the vast sea
then penned up in a room with crud-studded television
or discontented and malformed human beings
who hate beauty and beauty’s God--
who do not live with grateful hearts for all they received.
One may ask, “If beauty matters so much to you
why are your poems prosaic, and not more beautiful?”
That’s a fair question. When it comes to words—to logos--
truthfulness matters far more than lovely words and phrases.
Would you not prefer the homely truth from Socrates
to lovely poetic fictions from some feel-good story-teller?
Is not straight-forward insight better than forced meter and rhyme?
“Yes, but why write poetry at all? Why not prose that seeks the truth?”
That may come, but poetic form enforces a condensation of thought
and rewards the effort to write clearly and understandably.
Behind loose words and overly detailed verbiage the many hide.
Listen again to the aforementioned Larghetto by Mozart:
in such lovely and well-ordered melodies and harmonies
the mind of the attentive listener becomes so sated and pacified
that the inner person is carried in spirit to the border of death
and at that moment is willing—may even desire—to die
surrendering all into the bosom of boundless Beauty.
34. Not wine and roses
Thankful to be living, to be relieved of nerve pain
to have my companions Moses and Elijah with me daily
but a dying old dog presents challenges.
Moses naps off and on during the day, and is restless all night
beginning around sunset, continuing at least until I rise
somewhere a little either side of midnight.
The old fellow drinks water in the night, waking me up
as I’m a light sleeper, attuned to any sound from him;
not infrequently he slips a few times in the hall, unable to rise
and cries out to me to assist him, which I promptly do.
The dying process places demands on love.
To love is to assist another being into death.
Would that we all realized that every creature is dying
and allow that realization to condition our actions.
Moses is dying, I am dying, and even Elijah
not quite five and full of energy, is dying.
To be alive is to be moving towards death;
to live is be dying. That is “part of the deal.”
Still, the creature struggles, clinging to life
which is by its nature good and often enjoyable.
The will to live is far greater and more pervasive
than the will to power that Nietzsche found everywhere.
Without the will to live, there could be no will to power.
The creature by nature desires to live, and to live well.
These may not be, are not, “days of wine and roses”
but after Moses has died, I will be thankful to have loved him
thankful for our friendship extending already fourteen years.
I will treasure the way he gazes into my eyes to read me--
and the way his look can burn my conscience to do better--
the way he has always “smelled the roses,” stopping to ponder
examining a plant or scenery or another creature up close.
I’ve never known a dog as contemplative as Moses has been--
ever a model of patience, meekness, utter gentleness
even as he suffers in his aging body.
Mazel tov, Moshe, my friend,
you are far better than wine and roses.
Next year in Jerusalem!
—11 October 2021
35. Descending
I’m descending into the netherworld
the never world of the unknown
a world not world, neither time nor space
no place no where, no utopia there--
“the undiscovered country from whose bourn
no traveller returns…”
By day one descends into a haze of uncertainties
into an ever-returning condition of knowing unknowing
in a world becoming ever more unfamiliar
in a world becoming yet stranger to this passing stranger.
By night one descends into a different dream world
in which one is and is not
much happens and yet does not happen
as all becomes fluid in a vast ocean of dreaming.
You descend into the self to find no self at all
but figments and fragments of your imagination
that do not bear inspection or examination
becoming ever less real as one truly searches.
You descend through the labyrinth of memory
and find that what you thought happened, did not--
or not in the ways you had assumed
and perhaps not to you at all but to not-you.
To write is to descend into an unknown world
not primarily of words and phrases and thoughts
but of reality that remains largely unattainable
as one pursues truth in this shadowland world.
Soon I must descend into the silence of sleep
a silence filled with sounds I do not hear
but which somehow take hold of me
and lead me into undiscovered, unknown realms.
“The way up and the way down
one and the same.”
36. Edging the flame
Why did a boxelder bug
light upon the burning candle--
a candle two inches across
so he climbed along the edge
an inch away from a wavering flame?
Warmth, adventure, ignorance
suicide or just plain stupidity?
He crawled along the edge of death.
I rescued the fellow from the flame
by flipping him onto the floor
before carrying the candle into my den.
Lo and behold, again he appeared
the boxelder bug edging the flame.
Again I flipped him down to the floor
then wrapped him in a winding sheet
and lowered him into the disposal.
Will he rise like Rasputin from the drain?
Will he return to edge the candle
to lick the flickering flame of death?
Or has he returned to the “potency of matter”?
Does it matter at all?
Yes, his death seems untimely
but he displayed a strange foolishness
or some unfathomable desire--
a will to die, or to flaunt death?
37. A view from the perch
Rhythmical movements of limbs and leaves
swaying of trees above their waists;
branches fairly bare of purple and gold
and a question re-emerges: have I grown old?
The end of all life lies beyond mortal sight
and so does the length of one’s span of days;
yet I think and feel the Rubicon’s been crossed
but I’m not heading to Rome, but to death.
I accept the death of aged Moses, blessed be he
and my pending death in all-devouring time.
Amidst coming uncertainties, pain, and myriad testings
I desire to die with hearty thanksgiving on my lips
or under my breath if I’ve lost all speech.
Like Moses I will to live accepting my fate
free of hate’s soul-perverting poisonings
free of cruelty, ill-will, pettiness, complaints.
Time ends in time for every mortal life
every creature of a day that’s born to perish.
Still a day arrives when consciousness admits
“The breath of death blows cooly on my neck.”
Then death. And the sun will rise, shine, slip from sight
crops planted, weeded, watered, and harvested;
some will still hate and kill for twisted imaginings
others will bury themselves in disquieting despair.
In truth I neither hope for heaven
nor dread the pains of fiery hell
nor long for the ceasing of consciousness;
I place my trust in the Agathon.
What matters most is not private existence
but what the unknown God is known to be--
that out of which each being arises
and which alone is indestructible.
Hope lies not in a separate eternal existence
but in the One “who’s not the God of the dead
but of the living—to him all are alive.”
And that suffices for me—not I but God alone.
A single leaf falls from a deciduous tree
fluttering quickly and quietly to the ground.
It had its budding, growth, and withering
and in time all that it was will decay
nourishing the engendering earth.
38. Shadows on a wall
In the darkened bedroom
the second floor of my home
attention is drawn at once
to shadows on a wall
cast by a tall locust tree
rising from the ground
to well above the second floor
its branches nearly touching the window
some reaching the roof above.
A bright light in the backyard
casts shadows of this locust
on the wall facing the bed.
As Montana winds move trees to sway
so small branches outside the window
dance restlessly dance.
Or is it my mind that’s dancing
as I watch the shadows
and slip away into sleep?
39. For the gods to come
Do you understand why Plotinus told a disciple
who invited him to attend religious ceremonies:
“It is up to the gods to come to me
and not for me to go to the gods.”
These are not the words of a haughty man
as one might hastily assume from experience
but the words of a humble lover of wisdom
attuned to divine presence in and around him.
How refreshing it is to turn back to Plotinus
setting aside for a while both non-noetic poetry
and the externalities of religious practice.
The goal is to enter into the living God
and not to be weighed down by lower concerns
such as the politics and functioning of churches
with their dogmas, rituals, vestments
with vocal prayers, preaching, and sacraments.
For those who desire or need religious externals
they are available and may prove helpful;
but devotees need to take heed truly
to “seek first God’s reign and his righteousness”
and not become addicted to substitutes--
to outward forms rather than to inner emptiness
to going through the motions of “religion”
without attending to presence in nature, in neighbor
in the intangible uncontrollable realm between
where suddenly without provocation it breaks in
yet not in but simply is there as if encompassing
and one is but is not a separate self at all
left speechless yet addressed by the wordless word.
***
In my seventy-first year, having already laid aside
the duties of pastoring and performing rituals
and at present feeling little or no desire for externals
I desire rather to attune to non-external presence.
And so I return to philosophy, especially to the Greeks
who have long had a strong pull on my mind and soul.
Presently to read Plotinus to whom I’ve again turned
is to be pulled back into the search, the zétésis
not for money or for fame, not for pleasure nor for gain
but for finding one’s way through the nonsensical sensible world
back into the simple reality of noûs, of intellect-spirit
in which every breath is rich in divine possibilities.
40. Collected works of art
To judge the greatest sculptor or painter
or whose oeuvre made the greatest contribution
I’m neither competent, nor pretend to be.
In certain areas of the arts, I would take a stab
using a device popular on the radio years ago:
“What would you take on your desert island experience?”
If you could enjoy only one artist in his genre
and could take a set of works, not a single piece
which collections by which artists would you choose?
In the world of drama, I would gladly choose
the complete plays of William Shakespeare
and hope that his poetry tagged along for the ride.
If I could take one work or collection of poetry
and be restricted to that body of work until death
it would either be the works of Homer
(the Iliad and the Odyssey), or Dante’s Comedia
but most likely Homer, whose myths fascinate me;
I derive no pleasure from stories of torture.
So I would have Shakespeare and Homer along with me.
And now for music: one composer, one set of works.
That the composer would be Johann Sebastian Bach
I have no doubt; if I could, I would take his complete works
as all extant compositions have been recorded.
If I could take only one set or genre, I would surely choose
what Germans call das Kantatenwerk, the Cantatas.
Their composition spans most of Bach’s active life
and their spiritual, intellectual, emotional range
(sometimes despite weaker libretti) sets them apart
high above any other set of compositions I know.
With Homer, Shakespeare, and Bach, I would fare well.
Now if the master overseeing this exercise were to say
“You may also select one body of sacred-spiritual writings”
I would not choose the Mahabharata, despite its length
and profundity, nor would I select the Pali Canon of the Buddha.
I would choose the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures, the Bible
for its scope, profundity, and role in my own formation.
Finally, if this overseeing master permitted one writer
in any genre other than poetry or drama
and that writer could have written in any field of study
without hesitating I should be happy to choose
the collected works of Plato, the greatest philosopher
who would never cease to challenge me to grow.
Of course I would love to carry with me Aristotle and Thomas
but if limited to one thinker, it would have to be Plato.
And so off I go to a desert island, or to be isolated
without a library or internet: but what great minds
and dear friends would attend me: Homer, Plato
the Bible, Shakespeare, and Bach. And you--
what greatest works or collections would you choose?
41. When the dogs bed down
When Moses and Elijah have finally settled down
(after a cigarette, perhaps, and a sip of champagne)
with my coveralls spinning in the washer
and the perpetual sounds of buzzing in my ears
still I sit quietly to read and to write.
When the dogs bed down, other beings awake
(or is it just my imagination reveling in silence?)
as I sense the spirits or spirit moving
and calmly enter into their silent stirrings
waiting for thoughts to arise to begin a quest
from where I am to where I am not, or perhaps
from where I am not to where I truly am.
Before the nocturnal journey begins
I never know what or who will arise
or where we are going this evening.
Words break lose and some swim to the surface
drawing my attention to them to consider
perhaps to write them down or dismiss them
dropping them freely with outstretched hands
yet grateful that they have paid a house call.
When at last agèd Moses and lively Elijah
have either fallen asleep or just keep still
I breathe more freely and sense somewhere
in memory or thought that now I am alone
alone with the Alone, mind with penetrating Mind.
Nothing need be said, felt, or sensed.
It is enough to be together, You and I
whether near or far or two or one
or both two yet one in ways unknown
does not matter, is not my present concern.
Alas that the quietness of a quiet evening
after the old and the restless have disappeared
elicits from my slower breathing a yawn
and a desire to wend my way to bed.
Then how long before I’m awakened by crying
when Moses feels needy and lonely in the night?
I must take some rest when I have the chance.
For the dogs have bedded down, and so shall I.
42. Making friends with darkness
Montana’s winters are cold, dark, windy, and long.
Cold and wind must be endured if one is outside
doing chores on ranch, farm, or around the home
or to take walks or hikes, or just to run errands.
If one cannot stand the cold and dark of Montana
he or she has several choices: stay indoors
month after month, from late October to June
go south for the winter, or just move away;
or the simplest alternative: accept what is
dress warmly, do your chores, take walks
whether it’s 5 out or a Chinook-mild forty-five;
if below zero, do chores quickly and read by the fire.
Holing up indoors has never appealed to me.
It’s a kind of escapism, a denial of reality; but then
spending much time outdoors in sub-zero wind chills
can be foolhardy and life-threatening.
Wear layers of warm clothes, take yourself outside
and enjoy the bracing cold, which in daylight
often means blazing bright and usually cloudless skies
except in the valleys of western Montana.
Those mountainous areas, as around Missoula
or the Bitterroot, or the Flathead, have milder temperatures
but more hours of overcast skies, getting “socked in.”
One way or another, Nature makes her demands
and one can adjust prudently to what she offers
or resist, complain, and make oneself miserable.
Montana’s winters are cold, dark, windy, and long.
One can rise early in the deep darkness of night
and enjoy the quiet, peaceful, embracing darkness
using one’s time to read, to write, or simply to think.
It took me some years to welcome the darkness
for the enveloping mantle of peace it proffers.
In darkness, without television, radio, stereo
sitting still in low light with a book in one’s hands
perhaps a pad of paper to jot down thoughts--
here one finds and feels reasons to live
and how to tend one’s soul in quiet happiness
far from annoying crowds and bothersome noise
that dominate so much of contemporary life.
In darkness one may find an inner light
Or turn away by way of distractions
mere passing attractions that capture one’s fancy
for a moment or two before stark dark reality
breaks in: “Perish with what is perishing
or eternalize being mindful of what endures death.”
43. The erotic draw into death
Rather than cut the tension, treasure it.
Behold the shadows on the wall
and recall seeing ocean waves
rolling in and out and in again:
how strangely sexy the dancing shadows
how movingly sexual the ocean waves
how disturbingly erotic the draw into death.
In a moment of climax, one dies.
The outpouring of bodily self in ecstasy
foreshadows the outpouring of life into death.
44. The fading of night
Night is ending as I gaze upwards
towards the stars not yet faded;
watching for some twenty minutes
seated in my backyard beneath the pines;
gradually and slowly, a kind of cosmic glow
a pale faint light encompassing all that’s visible
begins to grow imperceptibly
yet noticeably through memory’s reckoning.
A jet flies high overhead soundlessly
far above the earth, then later a satellite
traveling in the opposite direction
not in a straight line, it seems
but somehow slightly deviating:
“Master,,” asks the novice, “is the flag waving?
or is the wind waving?”
“Your mind is waving,” comes the reply.
Comfortable outside in temperate air
mild enough to enjoy sitting still in darkness
night slowly, slowly fading and then
as if out of nowhere a breath upon the face
a coolness with some familiar, disquieting depth
the kind of slight drop in temperature
one often feels in woods shortly before dawn
an invigorating exhalation of nature.
Night ends as life ends and begins
in a slow unsteady unsure crawl
step by uncertain step in pacing time
slipping away without recognition
alone in its essential solitude
unnoticed by the busy and the restless
as dawn rides in on gentle breezes
in the fading fading of the night.
—End of “Following the Sun,” “Descending. Part I: Autumn Sonata.”
28 October 2021
Part I: Autumn Sonata
(Fall 2021)
1. Do what you love
“Our time is short, amigo;
do what you love.”
So my friend José Jesús texted me
on 21 August 2021.
Indeed, our time is short.
1 Living and dying
I live with a constant reminder of death
of the brevity of life and my own mortality
that I’m nearing the end of my journey here
soon and very soon to slip into the silence.
So teaches me the lumbar disc bulge and protrusion
so teaches me pain preventing sleep at midnight.
Truly this being-thing is descending towards death.
And yet I hope to live and to enjoy life
both on earth and in no-time, in God.
I may live a few short months or years
or another sixteen years, matching
the age of my father when he died.
I met José in Babylon on the Potomac
in the late summer of 1980
his first year in Washington, my second.
We became friends from our first meeting
and soon grew to be close and constant
beginning a friendship which has never died.
“Our time is short, amigo;
do what you love.”
Well, José, that raises questions in my mind:
What do I love that I truly want to do?
What do I not love in truth that can be let go?
Am I doing now what I love forever?
2 The probing question
What do you love? That question scalpels
into the marrow, into who and what
one truly is, and who one is not.
You have many loves, polyphiliac
coining or unwittingly borrowing a term.
What do you most love that you may do?
I love to write, to stretch out my mind to find truth,
to express it clearly to be understood
to study, to learn, to question, to think;
to care for my dogs and myself in little ways
to love my friends and to help them as I can;
to provide a living in retirement working on investments.
I love to walk and work, moving body through space-time;
to garden and to enjoy its fruits: beauty and food.
Over years I have loved to meditate and to pray
these activities given less scope recently--
until the dark time of the year, when God drags me in.
Still I love to seek It, ever wondering about the divine
to ask questions that lead towards a more lasting union--
begun between time and eternity, fulfilled beyond time in eternity;
and to share the fruits of meditation and writing with others.
“Do what you love.” What do I most truly love, my God?
Surely I love a large variety of music, especially listening to Bach
and reading good literature, photographing, enjoying nature.
What do I not love that I am doing now?
What could be sloughed off, perhaps with growing joy?
What can be let go, to give more time for what I most enjoy?
I should gladly be freed of the pain of compressed nerves
leaving more time, mind, and energy to do what I love:
to be unfeignedly grateful, remembering with thanksgiving.
3 The question of being
Pain awakened me after two hours of fitful sleep
shortly after midnight. After hobbling-wobbling downstairs
and as I brewed coffee and took some meds
an insight insinuated into my mind,
sparked in memory as I heard Al Jolson sing
“Are you lonesome tonight?”
It was not “lonesomeness” that captured me
but the thought that the word “are” in the question
is superfluous. “Lonesome” implies the verb “to be.”
Then the thought was generalized: every verb, noun, adjective
implies the verb “to be,” because being—to be--
underlies every action and thing, every verb and noun.
Everything that is in any way, including any process
is a function of being: being is primary to all else.
It is not as Sartre wrote in his doctoral exam
“Existence precedes essence,” but that being--
the act of to be, esse per se subsistens--
is ever primary and present to all that exists in any way.
Now, this insight, which seems true, may be faulty.
I’m no Parmenides, nor Aristotle, nor Thomas
nor was meant to be, “I’m just an ordinary man,”
as Henry Higgins sings in “My Fair Lady.”
An ordinary man who enjoys thinking about reality
who loves to question and to explore unboundedly
who knows that he does not know, and has a good idea
why he does not know as he wishes to know:
that which he longs to know is present and absent
always here and there yet never fully accessible
the all-good, all-wise YHWH, He who is to be itself.
All of my life in some way is a search for God--
a search that’s a response to what is moving the search.
I am doing what I love, and wish to do it better.
To the One who is bringing into being, we give thanks.
2. The quest for wisdom
When all else is stripped away from my life--
from its daily activities and necessary tasks
from various worldly cares and healthful care of body
from the need to support myself financially
from spiritual or religious obligations freely undertaken
from my still-forming attempts to study and to write
from personal struggles to grow into who I truly am--
there remains underneath all of these activities
a longing for true well-being and childlike trust in God
a quest for the wisdom that is God’s alone to give
a desire to allow the divine to break into consciousness
directly or through the mediation of mystics, prophets
saints and philosophers who were open to the truth
of that which is: the inexhaustible source, the flowing spring
that by long tradition is known as “God.”
Again and again I will turn to the wisdom of Moses and the Torah
to the wisdom of Jeremiah, Second-Isaiah, other prophets
to the wisdom and love of Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles
to the wisdom of classical Hellas enfleshed in various forms
culminating in its philosophers who discerned with clarity
that in the loving pursuit of wisdom they were loving and seeking God
to the wisdom of the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Buddha,
to the wisdom of Lao-Tse, and to other mystics east and west.
I want to dedicate myself to studying these seekers of wisdom
to receive from them what nectar I am able to receive
to glimpse however fleetingly behind the veil of verbal formulations
the moving image of the Imageless, who casts no shadow
the wholly other who is for all beings the ever-present Ehyeh
the unlimited Lover whose loving still moves the quest
for wisdom beyond words that ultimately is silently One.
3. Through distance, darkly
1
By what words can one articulate
the ways of eros between two souls?
The mystery transcends speech, and yet
the mystery bids lovers seek to understand.
Two arrows shot towards each other
in the night without a guiding light
flying straight towards they know-not-what
launched by the hand that stretched the bow strings.
2
As words between them flowed
the two yielded themselves
to each other as they believed
through the strange promptings of eros.
They told themselves they felt desire
an erotic attraction for one another.
In and through that mutual desire
the madness of eros was working--
divine madness overflowing with life.
4. To sleep
To sleep at least at last to rest
my head drooping down chin on chest
and I, exhausted to the core
await some nerve relief through surgery.
Am I awake or am I asleep?
I no longer know for sure
sitting at my writing table as dreams flit in
or fleeting images and then I stir again
Images from the distant past
from a pain-wrung imagination
drifting into sleep at last to rest.
5. Praying in words to You
1
O soul of a being blessed by God
turn aside a while from your busy thoughts
give up whatever you now have at hand
and follow the drawing of the unseen One.
Sit still in your place of quiet meditation
and let the darkness of God come upon you
the refreshing cloud enshrouding all
in a womb of mysterious unfelt love.
Enter the inner where no one goes
but you and that which is there not there
the One present when felt far away
the One awaiting your tardy return.
Enter in below above no where at all
nothing to grasp no thing to hold
enter and be at home where you’re alone
with that which only is all one alone.
2
O LORD my God, the God of Israel
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob-Israel
God of Moses—I AM WHO AM--
God of the prophets of the LORD’s own people:
To the One unknown but ever sought
by every soul that comes forth into being
to You I bow and bring the longings of my heart
to You I bend the sinews of my stiff neck.
O God of your chosen receivers everywhere
through the centuries and in places far apart
all are known and drawn by You alone
into communion with You no-thing that simply is.
3
Give thanks, o my soul, to the holy One of Israel
give thanks to the creator and perfecter of all.
Give thanks to that out of which all come forth
give thanks to that which is leading all home.
I bring no gift to your altar, LORD, except what you have given:
I bring to You the little you I am, not in buildings made by hands
but here alone in the silence beneath my restless heart
here where you and I become one without destruction.
I come my God apart from every cult and practice
apart from the rituals of Israel or of the church
apart from washings in rivers and from sacred fires
I come to You “just as I am” in sheer emptiness.
I come away for I’m a loner, a wanderer into God
a soul longing to journey into its proper home
a man a human being an animal a being-thing
a creature loved by the One who brings forth each.
Give thanks to YHWH, my soul, and bless his name
bless all who remember that which is, the God of all
bless the one who forgets to turn and give thanks--
render thanks on behalf of each and of all.
4
Bless the LORD, you Soul of my soul
I of my I, and You in every you.
Bless and thank the Life of your life
the being of your being, That which ever is.
As all is passing, You alone endure
ever beyond the currents of change
of coming-to-be and passing-away--
You are as you are now and endlessly.
What does it mean to bless your name
but to acknowledge You as You forever are
to let go of all outward externalities
to gaze quietly into your bottomless pool.
What does it mean to give You thanks
but to return to You all that I am, all that I have;
to set myself at your disposal, You alone
who are wise and guide all things back to You.
Bless the LORD, Soul of my soul,
the one desired in every desire
loved in every act of loving
sought in every step and breath
by a wanderer who’s home is You alone.
6. Decrepitude
This is my play’s last scene
for I have felt and seen
the final stage of age grown old
the withering away of life within.
How long I shall live hereafter
I know no more than anyone.
But I have felt in my leg and abdomen
glutinous death devouring from within.
Old age and death have visited me
in my seventy-first year on earth.
Nearly did I lose the use of the left leg
to bear this aging body on its rounds
of harried duties and more leisurely walks
giving so much while asking so little
this leg and bladder and bowels
nearly denied their natural functioning.
Now for a month or year perhaps a score
I may creep about quietly and noisily
nearly unseen and fortunately overlooked
as I wend my way to the grave.
I shall not rage against the dying of the light
for naked I came forth and naked shall I depart
and in-between my life has been blessed
by many a gift and undeserved kindness.
Not tomorrow not today but now
I give heartfelt thanks to the God of life
who bestows breath on mere clay
and in whom alone all endure.
Now in life’s declining golden hour
after years of youth, then paid employment
enjoying the fruits of mine and others’ labors--
soon will sound the tolling tolling of the bell.
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
For Aurora is the golden hour, Aurora--
the dawn for those who truly love
the dawning of unmasked eternity.
7. The wave
The wave that flushed ashore soon dissipates
seemingly vanishing into mere nothingness
some water sinking hiddenly into wet sand
some water receding back into the restless sea
but gone is the wave, its time ended.
To what or who abides beyond all human knowing
to the One most human beings seek as God
to the greater ocean of unboundedness
I call, lingering alone on the shifting shore
waiting for the final silent ebbing away.
“O LORD, you have shown me my end
how short is the length of my days;
Now I know how fleeting is my life…
And now, LORD, what is there to wait for?
In You rests all my hope.”
And the remnants of the wave return to the sea
out of which it had flowed forth.
8. Was the wave?
The wave was and was not:
we call the motion a wave
a rising and a falling
a swelling and a withdrawal
a moving in and out
a rushing sound then hush.
It was a wave, was it not?
it was not a wave, was it?
whatever it was, was
let it be and let it go
the Ocean abides.
9. Triptych I
Ocean will swallow the land
and land will emerge from ocean.
All that I am, love, have
is passing away.
What will emerge, I do not know.
What will be will be.
On the edge of eternity
on the edge of the abyss
I choose to give thanks
to the One from whom all arise
to the One who alone endures.
O man, fellow creature of a day
prepare yourself to die.
10. Autumnal collage
Much that was good
some was painful
some was pleasant
some aroused anxiety.
Perhaps I should never have been there
Perhaps. There were lessons to learn.
It is past now, slipped away, downstream.
See how it floated away?
Much confusion, many inner woundings
struggled to be free and at peace.
What I needed or wanted then
I neither need nor want now.
Fragments of memories come to consciousness
pleasant most of them
arousing some desire and much gratitude
nibbles in life’s bountiful buffet.
11. Lightning and reflection
Lightening across an open prairie
struck in a dark quiet moment--
words as flying arrows piercing me.
Walls of a cave, imprisoning cell
seemed to crumble to the ground
leaving me stunned and exposed.
With the rising of the morning sun
a fuller reality begins to break in.
Imprisoning caves require years of work
to be torn down stone after stone;
and being stunned and exposed
may be just the beginning of a long ascent
from self-enclosure to liberation.
12. A wish, a prayer
Grant me, LORD God, before I die
to love and be loved passionately
by one good human being.
Grant me to surrender who I am
into the hands and heart of a genuine lover.
Yet wasn’t my abba the true lover of my soul?
If not, what was lacking in his love?
He loved me in truth and integrity
as he would have loved his own son.
Grant me, good LORD, a more grateful heart
to have lived and thrived through a lover’s art.
13. To my abba in eternity
Never have I loved anyone as I love you.
Of course I love my parents, sister, brother,
but you, Father Daniel, I love with all in me--
with the good, the bad, the holy spirit
with an all-too-human, light-darkling spirit.
You loved me with Christ-like love
asking nothing in return.
Now I turn back to you for a favor:
by the light of the Spirit, guide me.
That is all I ask: and we shall fare well.
Should I make a full break, dear friend
from the monastery and from the Church?
Or after a short respite, should I return?
That question I pose and pass on
and in silence through time I’ll await an answer.
What more could you have done for me
that you did not do thirty-five years ago?
Nothing of which I am aware;
you were and are alive with the healer’s art.
14. Memory and desire
A wild-driving passion thrives within you
that you neither understand nor fully control.
Long has it been named Eros.
To you, he brings desire, fear, confusion.
He kissed you--
you felt the stubble on his upper lip
“red hot fireball” he called you
and whispered, “our little secret”
15. On a pine branch
Sunlight filtering down to a Scotch pine
light gently resting on a branch
shining pine needles.
16. Morning on an ash
Even light before sunrise
leaves and branches trembling
dancing rocking shaking bowing
rhythmically moving together
kinesis
only the grounded sky-piercing trunk
still and steadfast.
17. Schumann’s andante cantabile
Within his E-flat Major Piano Quartet
Schumann placed a most lovely andante cantabile:
to hear it, truly to hear it,
is to have one’s lone heart pierced
by the agony that beauty bears:
Sung first on the mournful ‘cello
then on the ecstatic violin
you are left naked and exposed
and longing for release
from beauty’s ravishing.
18. Brahms showed his heart
Was Brahms ever as emotionally honest
as personally revealing
as he was in the exquisite Andante
of his Third Piano Quartet in c minor?
Is it a mere coincidence
that it bears comparing to Schumann’s andante?
What young person madly in love
has not suffered this passion, in some way?
Schumann lost his sanity
and Brahms lost his beloved.
Or did he not have her for life
in a beautiful lasting friendship?
19. Why chamber music?
1 Probing questions
There are questions one never forgets
or may not forget, or should not forget--
a question I cannot forget is what Socrates
tells Chaerephon to ask Polus
in Plato’s Gorgias: Ask him “who he is.”
That is the question.
St. Augustine’s probing question was
“What do you love?” Who you are
and what you love probe the core of your being.
From such questions there is no good escape.
Then there are questions one is asked
even by a stranger in the course of one’s life:
some seem trivial, others strip the soul--
they may tantalize or penetrate,
utterly apt for you when asked here and now.
2 A minister’s question
Sometimes you are asked a question
as if out of the blue, not existentially
yet the question teases your mind for years.
One evening a fundamentalist minister in Iowa asked me
“How did you ever get interested in chamber music?”
He knew of my interest because I had mentioned Beethoven
the late string quartets, such mature masterpieces
and probably Brahms and Bach’s sonatas for violin and harpsichord--
he may have questioned me about my interests in music
which have been nourished over year and are far-ranging.
“How did you ever get interested in chamber music?”
His question was neither sympathetic nor highly belligerent
but it displayed mental reserve with my musical tastes.
The question was sufficiently barbed to sink in
and to remain in me the past thirty years.
“How did you ever get interested in chamber music?”
How does one not get interested in chamber music
an enormous genre containing so many magnificent compositions?
Each part in chamber music is exposed
allowing one to hear each instrument as well as the ensemble.
The structure of composition often shines forth
openly, transparently in chamber music
as in black and white photography
light more fully revealed against black
the skeletal form not obscured by rich-splendid colors.
3 Early interests
How did I become interested in chamber music?
We did not listen to it in our home
although my sister played the piano.
Much of my early musical experience was in concerted music
as in symphonies or symphonic poems, or in pop.
The first chamber compositions to attract my attention
arrived on records I bought as a freshman in college:
Beethoven’s Die Grosse Fuge came first--
I liked Bach fugues on the organ, and Beethoven’s symphonies,
so I took a chance and tried this quartet composition.
Now the point of departure on my journey into chamber music
seems a little strange, even laughable
as one would be hard pressed to find a more demanding
more exacting composition to appreciate as a novice
than “the Great Fugue” Beethoven composed late in life.
And yet from the opening bars into the first intense exposition
I was captivated, intellect and feelings,
caught up in the extraordinary genius that is Beethoven.
Now it seems obvious that one who loved Bach’s counterpoint
would feel strangely out of place yet at home in Die Grosse Fuge.
Also in my 18th-19th years I explored other chamber compositions:
a few Mozart string quartets (especially “the Dissonance” in C),
Schubert’s Octet, Beethoven’s Septet, then came Brahms--
Piano Quartets, Trios; and Bach’s violin and harpsichord sonatas,
a few Haydn string quartets, then those of Bartok.
In chamber pieces, one discovers some lovely melodies
sonorous harmonies, fascinating rhythms
intricate or straight-forward structural compositions
and of course some outstanding musician-performers.
What is there not to enjoy in such music?
Why chamber music? Why music?
Why sounds? Why not silence?
Why not silence? In time, God’s time.
20. A sonata in autumn
1 Out of silence
In the beginning is silence--
that out of which speech and music emerge
silence that remains the canvas
on which a sonata is painted--
still silence nourishing beauty, meaning, depth.
Music sounding in and with silence--
listening a dialectic between silence and sound
between sounds heard and those awaited
by a mind attending both to notes heard
and to those emerging now out of silence.
Often a dramatic or lyrical introduction
to prepare the listening mind for the sonata
taking form sound by sound
notes following notes, pause after pause
the mind beginning to know patterns in the flow.
Patterns in sound conceived by the composer
recognized and ordered by the musicians
perceived or not by the listener
patterned sounds in organized waves
moving through the media of time, minds, silence.
2 Ongoing development
An intended recognizable pattern of sounds
a theme, often dramatic or tense
followed by a contrasting lyrical theme
in the dominant or same key, or relative minor--
themes communicating mind to mind
from intellect to intellect, feelings to feelings:
without patterned sounds and distinct themes
there’s merely sounds, noise, chaos;
the conscious listener discriminates,
recognizes themes, soon enjoyed or not--
mere acquaintances or friends in sounds
performed by musicians, by fellow human beings
who express their consciousness through the sounds.
Perhaps or necessarily from the moment patterns begin
they undergo changes, additions, developments.
Usually there is a formal development section
but in reality all is change, becoming, development
from silence to first notes to patterns to repetitions--
each sound developing from what preceded
each sound preparing for what is coming.
3. Union through music
A true musician becomes one with the music--
as it is being produced by humans and instruments--
as it is sounding through ears into minds;
the musical—composer, performers, listeners--
becoming united through the Muse’s art.
The active listener who is mentally engaged
who enters into the sounds perceived
hears, attends, discerns with a mind
that analyzes, examines, thinks about
as well as senses, feels, intuits--
Music engages the entire person
of the composer, the musician-performers
the active listener—body, mind, soul--
art as ordered flow from dynamic energy
mind carried by music out of silence to mind.
Music the sacred craft of the Muses
the nectar of the Olympian gods
beauty enfleshed in ordered sounds
uniting composers, musicians, listeners
In an experience of transforming energy
that is the spring and autumn of the spirit
leading psyche to the border of transcendence
guiding a human being home through death.
21. In honor of Moses
To the One which let its presence be known
to Moses on Mount Sinai
transforming the fugitive shepherd
into the leader of the Hebrew people:
With gratitude on this day
21 September 2021
when my faithful dog Moses of Lone Willow
has completed fourteen years on earth--
I call him Mousi, the Moose, Scotty
but this time-traveled dog is Moses
named for the wise shepherd of the people
who forged the covenant between God and man.
How can one justly praise a dog?
Examine the letters in a mirror
and dog reflects the god whose image he bears
shining in and through a humble creature.
Day by day Moses is making his exodus
and where he goes, soon I shall follow
and Elijah, Moses’ younger understudy
as every creature returns to our Source.
22. Nearness of death
“Keep death daily before your eyes.”
--Rule of St. Benedict, 4:47
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
the valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
it seems to me most strange that men should fear
seeing that death, a necessary end,
will come when it will come.”
—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, II, ii.
The play’s final act is unfolding
though perhaps not its last scene.
From the moment the tale began
it was moving towards its end.
“Every poem an epitaph.”
Every step, every word
each moment a little closer
to the ground, to your end in time.
How can one sufficiently thank the creator
for bringing this creature into being?
How can one best live and serve
in the moments, hours, days remaining?
You did not have to be, nor did anything--
life is sheer gratuity
a gift to be ever unfolded
and ever given away in love.
Without love, we are raucous songs;
through love, we are partners in divine music.
Apart from love, no meaning or purpose--
with love, each finds its meaning.
You know well that death is coming
inescapably and usually sooner
than you expected or wanted
and yet it is ever near at hand.
Watching the death of one we love
is a painful, drawn-out process
as life forces slowly ebb away:
sorrowful watching your loved one die.
My friend Bob texted to me this evening:
"I think Moses is getting close to the end;
sorry but it happens to us all.
He does mean so much to me.”
Moses cried for me three times
in the one o’clock hour this morning
seemingly restless or in distress.
He quieted down as I showed tenderness
and fell asleep
the likeness of death
sleep—at times a restorer of life
as death may be
falling asleep into death
never to awake
being nothing except in no thing.
23. Swindlers?
Granted my ingrained bias against groups:
to the degree that they are close-knit
closed to examination and scrutiny
groups are in effect mini-cult-communities
unhealthy worlds thriving on group-think--
proud, arrogant, hostile to questioning.
Academic departments were unhealthy
and often unpleasant places to work.
So many professors professing to know--
when in truth they may know little worthwhile.
These men and women receive high salaries
to act as if they have knowledge worth dispensing.
The most diseased groups in which I have shared
are ghettos of Catholic clergymen--
vowed religious and diocesan priests.
After years of living and working among them
I felt disrespected, diminished, unwanted
because I’m not willing to live their lies.
In each group there are outstanding exceptions--
good men who are worth knowing who’ve risen
above the communal shameful game.
Such men are few and often hard to find
generally obscure and not representative
of the community in which they function.
Many ordained, I believe, are swindlers--
diocesan priests and bishops, many male religious
and a wide array of Protestant ministers too.
They thrive on largesse and appearances
and generally are not what they seem.
Often these men exude arrogance and pride
the utter opposites of what they have professed.
Often they are like enrobed parasites
living on the wealth and generosity of others.
Never have I met men so resistant to change
to self-examination and self-criticism
as I found in monastic communities.
Several beliefs nourish arrogance among clergy
often proclaimed assertively by priests insisting:
“The priest is alter Christus, another Christ”
not realizing how self-deceived they are.
“Jesus was not ordained anything,” I said,
but that fell on thickly waxed, self-enclosed ears.
Laity create a major problem among clergy--
“The faithful” when deficient in faith foolishly treat
their priests and ministers as if they are Christ himself.
Their childish adulation and idolatrous adoration
helped to create and maintain the Behemoth
of pompous pretense that is the Catholic priesthood.
About such clergy, a bishop spoke truth to me:
“They feel entitled to steal from parishioners.”
One Friday in Lent I was invited out to dinner
with a group of priests, who ordered lobster
crab legs and other delicacies using parish funds.
I questioned how such luxuries fit Lent
and one and all criticized me as ignorant
because church law says, “Do not eat meat”
so they are eating lobster, halibut, crab--
which they did not catch, cook, or pay for--
while sticking parishioners with their buttered bills.
Smugly and self-assuredly they “kept the law.”
I said to these black-shirted rotundas:
“Would it not be more in the spirit of Lent
to eat a humble hamburger
than to fatten up on expensive sea-food?”
They all vigorously disagreed
and never invited me to dine with them again.
24. Reasons not to break away
You took vows, promising to be faithful.
All walks of life entail hardships unforeseen.
The future is unknown; a final break
could not be undone, possibly to your regret.
One need neither break nor fare forward;
respect one’s psychic need for clarity
that comes with peace during a time of healing.
And all the time keep this in mind:
“They also serve who only stand and wait.”
25. Over Babi Yar
(29 September 2021, 80th anniversary of the mass murder)
“Over Babi Yar no monument.”
Over Chicago and Los Angeles
over Cleveland and White Plains
over the posh suburbs of DC
there’s no monument.
And yet, so many deaths
So many brutal killings.
In no way do I detract or distract
from the atrocities against the Jewish people
old and young, men and women
stripped naked and murdered
by National Socialists with their assistants--
Ukrainian nationals who hated Jews.
How many of the Nazis were baptized Catholics?
How many were Lutherans in church attendance
and Nazis in their devoted hatreds?
How many Ukrainian co-murderers
were Orthodox or who knows what?
You machine-gunned them down
these innocent Jewish people
simply because they were Jews--
the Chosen People of God.
There is a monument over Babi Yar
and over every Dachau, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen:
the monument that’s visible to eyes of faith.
These are the children of God you murdered
in your hatred for the Creator and his people.
You have made into the Holocaust
another crucifixion of Christ written in the blood of thousands:
what the Romans did to one Jewish preacher
you have done to the children of Israel--
“Crucify him, crucify them, wipe them from the earth.”
“Any man’s death diminishes me
because I am involved in Mankind.”
And the death of the child diminishes me
and the infant in its mother’s womb
killed before it could see the light of day.
Many there are who are murdered
and many just walk by
so many just want what’s “convenient.”
“O my people, what have I done unto you?
and how have I wearied you?
Answer me!”
26. Reflecting with Whitman
1 Not Whitman’s America
As a boy I, too, could hear America singing
and her songs deeply echoed in my soul
forming me with their varied notes and rhythms.
I had no doubt that America and I were one
even as millions of peoples were one with America
and we were one people in history
and self-consciously “one nation under God.”
The death of John F Kennedy in 1963
the horrendous assassination of our President
was a turning point not only in my life
but in the history and self-consciousness of America
as we were forced suddenly and painfully
to see ourselves in a vastly different light--
Violence and hatred brewing beneath the surface
cruelty as well as compassion in our hearts.
Still I could hear America singing
but shouting often drowned out our dirges and songs
for we had become fractured, torn, disassembled.
The horrendous murder of President Kennedy
then Dr. Martin Luther King, then Senator Bobby Kennedy
served as a tempestuous prelude to the murder of ourselves
our innocence, our culture, our way of life
our naïveté perhaps and our youthfulness.
America became hated as Amerika
filled with loud and noisy songs, screeching
rather than blessed silence, violence everywhere
at least in numerous cities destructively burning
children filled with distrust and dissatisfaction
dis-eased and disgusted with their parents
with our country the world the whole universe.
America: the disorganized, the chaotic, the violent
seething with poisonous ideologies and beliefs
increasingly deaf to the wonders of nature
and the over-arching truth of nature’s God.
We the people became a rebellious, unhappy people
and the ones who suffered most were the young
whose souls and minds absorbed the sicknesses
becoming increasingly unattuned to reality
immersed in ersatz religions and second realities;
often boozed up or dropped out on drugs;
thinking ourselves wise, we became childish fools
considering ourselves divine we nourished the demonic.
America had much the character of a gross insane asylum
and we the people, you and I, were soul inmates
imprisoned in a decaying culture of death.
Since those years when everything of value was torn down
mocked, ridiculed, laughed at, despised, desprized
we may have mellowed out a short while, a brief breath
but then armed by Marxist and Positivist ideologies of Europe
the leading intoxicating Gnosticisms of the day
from their universities to ours and into our culture
flowed a more coherent seemingly learned destructive mind
seeking to “transform the world” as Marx had promised
a kind of alchemy of reality from base metals into gold.
So much was hoped for and promised, and so little delivered.
The dreams of the foolish haters and deniers of reality
have little good or truth to offer anyone
but power to gain, “the world to change”--
not in reality at all, just solely in their highfalutin rhetoric
and their ideologically-intoxicated minds.
So many deceived, so many dying or dead souls
so many minds drugged and poisoned by dreams and lies.
2. Stand aside!
How can one fittingly sing America any more?
What songs could possibly harmonize with who we are?
A song of puss flowing from infected wounds?
A song of pretense and of social posturing
of grasping for power after power ending only in death?
Ah, nature, you have your ways, often confounding us.
Your beauty by night and by day we may mar
deny or seek to destroy, but you far transcend us.
How small and insignificant our big shots are
we are, we who have fallen in dis-grace.
Some in our midst would destroy the universe
if only they could, but in reality, they cannot.
How small and insignificant we the people really are
how foolish and stupid our self-selected “elected” leaders;
pretending to be great, we have become spiritual dwarfs.
How does an old man live in a world torn apart?
How can one seek and keep his sanity
living in the midst of a people drugged by vanities and insanities?
What is one to do in a world of chaos and mass deceptions
except to withdraw from the turbulence, and let the storms pass by.
I will sit in silence alone far from the madding crowds.
I will seek to avoid all interactions with their social-political diseases.
I will open my mind and heart to the beauties of nature
the wonders of reality as it truly is and has been
and the greatest wonder who is the Lord of all.
Stand aside, and let the dismal graffiti-filled train pass by.
Stand aside, and tune out the slogans and false claims
the games of the wealthy and powerful seeking ever more.
Stand aside and find your homeland not here any more
but in the heart of God who is the heart of the world as well.
3. Two “visions” of America
Now I shall sing a sweeter song, sitting and standing apart
listening not to the money-lubricated crud socially generated
but to the songs of the lovers of wisdom mostly long gone
now living and alive to those who will to listen.
With neither the sharp and disciplined intellect of a philosopher
nor the musical and all-embracing soul of a poet
In this last season of my life I write for the mind
to find peace and truth and beauty beneath and in it all.
You heard America singing, Walt, when its songs still had beauty
a joy of life, an expansiveness of spirit, some waywardness
but you listened and you heard, you were attuned
to your people and their myriads of busy activities.
Your vision of America is not mine, nor is America
of the 21st century the same as America of the 19th.
The more freedom-drenched and egalitarian society you knew
has given way to a nascent and unrecognized totalitarianism
dominated by elites who claim to know the truth
who “know” that they are the wave of the future, the bringers
of a new era, a “new world order,” a “transformed world”
dominated and controlled by magical-scientistic knowers.
Walt my friend, you had your own dose of gnosis
possibly learned from self-divinized Emerson, or from Quakers;
but another voice also sings in many of your poems--
a more sane and sober voice, not gnostic-prophetic but poetic.
4. Whitman’s call to be a poet
Whitman’s poetic vision is broad, sweeping, adventurous
his formulations not intended to be philosophically precise
but take into account the profusions and extrusions of lived life
rather than force reality into sterile and fixed intellectual categories.
The range of his poetry is impressively vast.
When first I began to read him around age twenty
I found him shocking, often bawdy, self-absorbed
and although poetic, also spiritually strange, even diseased.
Fifty years later, at seventy, having returned to Whitman
from time to time over the years, and especially
since retiring several years ago, he appears quite differently:
I’ve become far more patient with his excesses
and appreciative of the scope of his vision, as well as
his sheer poetic genius—at best, perhaps America’s finest.
When I was thirty, an erudite and gentlemanly monk
Fr. Thomas Fahy, recommended that I study the poem
“Out of the cradle endlessly rocking” in his “Leaves of Grass.”
I gave it a read then but understood little in those days
largely because I was baffled by Whitman’s poetic language.
Still, Fr. Thomas had a most discerning eye for quality.
After hours of reading and studying, in all of the “Leaves”
“Out of the cradle” has become my favorite poem
partly for its poignancy and poetic beauty
also because here Whitman explores the origins
and hence nature of his call to become a poet, America’s poet;
in his remembered experiences on the shore of Long Island
he explores what engendered his two great themes—both central
to the genius of Whitman, as to many poets: love and death.
Some of the particular formulations in “Out of the cradle”
are exquisitely expressed, and earn Whitman high praise
as a poet in America, for America, for the world.
To the male mockingbird that lost his mate, Whitman cries:
“Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping, 0—now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake,
And already a thousand singers, a thousand songs, clearer, louder and
more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me, never to die.”
Other than self-absorbed, self-referential experience here--
not so unusual in a child, perhaps—the sense of having his poetic soul
awakened through the mockingbird’s singing to and for his dead mate
is touching indeed, even if an adult’s partially fanciful account of his calling.
That is the self-designated formative experience of the poet
the moment when, as he writes, “I know what I am for, I awake…”
Death and love were so powerful and entwined in that experience
that they kept pouring out their depth and beauty to this poet’s songs.
Whitman relates the carol of love and death sung by the mockingbird
to the explicit song of death he hears the same night from the sea
in effect validating the experience and interpretation of his poetic calling:
Are you whispering it, and have been all the time, you sea-waves?…
Whereto, answering, the sea…
Lisp’d to me the low and delicious word death,
And again death, death, death, death…
My own songs awakened from that hour…”
27. All alone
Not much noise is stirring from the noisy world
dogs resting quietly with the setting of the sun
no tech devices distracting the mind
Canada geese flying, wind blowing near the river
ash and cherry plum leaves falling singly, slowly
and I’m sitting alone beneath trees with body
mind, thoughts, and a soothing lack of emotion.
When one is alone and not encrowded
with ample space and time to enjoy one’s solitude
this is the kairos, the critical moment—not for action
but to be aware of being alone and also a partner
a member of the Kosmos that is itself in and out of time
timeless and bottomless and breathless
yet a living whole, what Goethe called die lebendige Natur--
alone and perhaps only alone can a human being
find himself not lost, but rooted and grounded in All.
“I did not have to be”
I was standing alone in our backyard
near Pearl Harbor on Oahu
between a hedge of hibiscus and citrus trees
under a bright sky with a naked-hot sun
a fourth grade student then, so about ten
and as I thought to myself, I realized
an apparent contrast between the sun and me.
“The sun was here before I was born
and the sun will be here after I die.
The sun is always here, but I am not--
I did not have to be.”
With the clear realization that “I did not have to be”
rather than be overcome with “existential Angst” or dread
I felt gratitude for the gift of life, for being--
for “existing” borrowing a term I learned years later.
The sun simply is—a symbol then of the eternal--
but I’m a transitory being that did not have to be
and a time was coming, as I was aware
when I would be no more—gone forever.
In this experience there was no calling to be a poet
(or surely none that I ever perceived)
but a grounding sense of my place within the Whole
that in the right conditions, with good nourishment
becomes a foundation for the search for wisdom.
Anyone who thinks that s/he had to be
is laughably lacking in any wisdom whatsoever.
And “the search for truth begins with one’s awareness
of existence in untruth,” as one philosopher wrote.
28. Old man on a swing
A white-haired man, suspenders and beard
sits amidst deciduous trees in early autumn
slowly intermittently dropping their leaves
brilliant yellow leaves on trees reflecting sunlight
branches moving rhythmically, leaves fluttering
as leaf after leaf is released to the breezes.
Sitting still and alone on his wooden bench swing
as young boys bounce a ball and shoot baskets
in the yard behind him talking and playing
a radio sounding music no one hears.
Leaves descending singly downward to earth
for a brief respite until enlivened by autumnal winds.
29. The death chaplain
Not a dresser of wounds, nor a wounded healer
but a middle-aged chaplain sent to minister to the dying
in cancer wards, intensive care, a large emergency room
neo-natal intensive care, a cardiac care unit--
visiting from patient to patient, room after room
on seven floors of the huge Naval Medical Center, San Diego
to console, to touch, to offer a prayer, quietly to be present--
with and for a fellow human being passing from here
into the arms of death—into the longing and patient arms of death.
Death seems to follow wherever I go—named “the death chaplain”
as I precede the rounds of death stopping by bed after bed.
This old sailor was a radioman on the USS Nevada on December 7th, 1941
that “day of infamy,” now tormented by recurring nightmares.
Another fellow had his leg amputated, and gangrene had set in
the room reeking of infection, puss, and imminent death.
And then Joe Condon, sailor, husband, father of fifteen
who told me that he wanted to meet a monk before he died.
We met, we grew close, and we were all together as death claimed him.
Did I truly minister to these dying men and women at all?
Did they not much more minister to me and to their families
showing us how to live and how to die?
That elderly Lutheran man, who had been a heavy smoker
now bravely dying of lung cancer and filled with faith
only to be drugged up so much that he fell into death
crazed by drug-hallucinations, rather than with a prayer on his lips
as those tending him could not stand to see him suffer:
death day after day death with its stark finalities.
30. On Nietzsche and Whitman
Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Walt Whitman’s poetic persona
have much in common, more than superficial similarities.
Presently I will not offer a thorough comparison between them
but focus on the underlying spiritualities,
the self-consciousness of the men as displayed in writing.
Each man writes as if he is the true herald of the future
the one who knows the future sufficiently
to usher it in through his prophetic poetry.
Both fell silent at about the same time--
one slipped into death, the other into an inner void.
Although going silent over two decades before the Great War--
Wilson’s Gnostic-irrational “war to end all war”--
Whitman and Nietzsche both sensed and prognosticated
on the magnitude, the vast scale, of what was coming--
Nietzsche more realistic, cautious; Whitman naively optimistic.
Each man presented himself as the knower of the future
the one who truly discerned historical patterns
and could see and feel what was coming upon the world.
Their claims were extreme, yet in retrospect
each sensed or imagined much that most men overlooked.
Each man was attuned, not to God, but to himself
and saw himself as an embodiment of the future
even before future time unfolded.
Whitman the democrat writ large for a democratic world
Zarathustra the forerunner replacement for the murdered God.
Much more than this I do not wish to write
for Nietzsche and Whitman lead one into bizarre worlds
that in truth are unhealthy places to dwell--
especially in their certainty of being in some sense God
a common and diseased course not worth pursuing.
In the case of both men, I prefer their poetry
in its expressive power and poetic brilliance
to the foolishness and self-deceptions of their gnosis.
There’s a time to appreciate the truth and beauty in a poet
and a time to analyze and diagnose, if real, his spiritual disease.
31. Poet or prophet of democracy?
The optimism and naïveté of American democracy
surfaced early yet gradually in our history.
Suffice it for the present to note that Whitman
was above all a self-declared prophet of democracy.
Nietzsche was too intelligent and learned
to allow himself addictions to popular mass politics
and surely to none in which “the herd” ascends.
What would Whitman be without American democracy
or without his beliefs in the goodness and value
of our democratic way of life, triumphing over all?
Perhaps more than any other 19th-century voice
Whitman extols democracy unchecked and uncontrolled.
For Walt was to a large extent a libertine soul himself
and saw democracy as delivering freedom from all restraints.
Whitman is worth reading to understand better
the American exaltation of democracy--
in his exuberance one may discern
what this poetic singer does not admit:
that democracy can be, and often is, self-destructive.
Whitman is best read for his memorable poetry
rather than for his Gnostic-democratic ideology.
The Whitman of “Out of the cradle endlessly rocking”
and of “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d”
is far better than a poet of democracy
far better than a self-absorbed Gnostic ideologue
more or less of the Emersonian-Transcendentalist variety.
In his outstanding songs, Whitman has bequeathed to America
perhaps our finest, most naturally poetic voice.
32. The naughty boy
He was in our class at PS 15 in Crestwood, New York,
where I attended for fifth and sixth grades
having two teachers, Miss Bradley and Miss Stevenson
the most memorable teachers I ever had.
I loved, revered, learned much from both women.
In my fifth grade class was a naughty boy
about whom I would tell my mother
when I got home from school.
With some details, the boy’s antics were recounted
and especially punishments received for misbehavior
from Miss Bradley, who was in school to teach
and who brooked no classroom disruptions.
This boy could not sit still in class
he fidgeted, and worst of all, talked out of turn
to one student sitting nearby or another.
I remember he liked to talk to Stephen Petersen
a beautifully behaved, tranquil blond boy
son of a Norwegian shipping magnate, I believe.
I even told my mother about the old bat--
the baseball bat Miss Bradley used on occasion
when a boy was too unruly, and needed a taste.
She was never violent with us, but made her point:
“Be quiet, or worse will surely befall you.”
Some Saturday Miss Bradley and my mother worked together
at Asbury Methodist church, perhaps for a funeral
or for some church function or benefit beyond recall.
What I remember is that my mother told Miss Bradley
about the naughty boy of whom her son would often speak
and how this little boy kept getting into trouble with the teacher.
According to my mother, Miss Bradley solemnly said to her
“Mrs. McKane, that `naughty boy’ is your son, Bill.”
33. Love of the beautiful
The vision of Beauty prepares a soul to die in peace.
What would life be like, I wonder
without an informed love of the beautiful?
Would not human life itself be dull and drab
without Beauty’s enrichments and inspirations?
Answers are heard and seen daily all around us
in the coarse and undisciplined tastes of many
in a disordered society deformed by poor education
mass and social media—often a swirling cesspool—
and the ludicrous cult of pampered celebrities
many of whom boast of their degeneracies.
Our culture is more ugly than beautiful or noble.
What would my life be like, I’ve often wondered
without my persistent love of the beautiful--
without what Raffaela Gherardi called
my strong “senso estetico”?
when I was a naive twenty-two year old
studying with her in southern Bavaria.
Although I often appreciate what’s functional
in a garage, a kitchen, an automobile, a store
in the rooms of my house where time seems to cease--
where I read, write, quietly reflect, or listen to music
it is beauty that prevails, not functionality--
beauty showing up in every direction I turn.
Sitting in my den and looking around as I write
I see two artistic photographs taken and printed by my father
pottery made by Navahos, a hand-made bowl from Dakota
an ikon of the Apostle Paul, a photo of Robert E Lee
an early Italian Renaissance painting of Jesus crowning Mary
symbolizing the deification of human being by God
and the resulting marriage between them
a well-matted and framed copy of the Desiderata
a circular stained-glass piece made for me by Sarita
depicting the burning bush on Mount Sinai
English ivy stretching itself out in various directions
and cut flowers past their prime but adding color
an antique drop-leaf oak table on which I’m writing
two straight-backed leather-seated oak chairs
and three tall wooden cases filled with my favorite books
a knotty-pine paneled ceiling with large cross beams
old Moses sleeping before me on his memory-foam dog bed
and playing quietly for us on two Apple speakers
the exquisite Larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet--
(ah, Mozart, with your acute and highly developed senso estetico
so generously shared with your fellow “creatures of a day”).
What would my life be without my love of the beautiful
without the enjoyment and pursuit of beauty as it presents itself
without my desire to be immersed in beautiful art and music
and to read beautiful literature? What else demands my attention
in photography except my vision of beauty in nature (with frequent
photos of my dogs, whose souls manifest the beautiful to me).
Does the love of the beautiful show up in my choice of friends?
Yes, if one understands that beauty in a human being
is not confined to the outer form or the skin but includes
the person’s character, the soul, and who they truly are;
in that sense, I desire to have and cherish friends
who are truly good human beings--kalos k’agathos--
beautiful and good inside and outside
in form, in truthful speech, and in good deeds.
Not since studying Plato’s Republic at age twenty-two
have I thought of the beautiful as substantially subjective.
That which is truly beautiful is such whether one thinks so or not.
And that which is beautiful has the power to draw a soul
from the transitory to that which is complete and eternal.
By the love of the beautiful a soul ascends into God.
Ultimately truth, goodness, beauty, and oneness
are characteristics of what we call “God,” of reality transcending
human velleity and imagination, beyond our pettinesses.
That which is truly beautiful manifests the divine to the soul--
in other terms, beauty reveals divinity as present.
Of that I have conviction that grounds and nourishes my life.
Despite Goethe’s profound chorus mysticus
it is not “das Ewig Weibliche” that leads me on;
it is the eternally beautiful within its abundant manifestations
that draws me on and in, lifts my spirits, fills me with hope
and largely guides how I spend my remaining time.
As I grow old and feeble, I intensely hope and wish
that I will not be immersed in ugly noise and low-quality music
but in Bach, in Mozart, in Beethoven, in the music that I love
because it presents to my mind and heart the divine breaking in
through well-ordered and profoundly beautiful music.
And I would far rather be facing the sky above and the vast sea
then penned up in a room with crud-studded television
or discontented and malformed human beings
who hate beauty and beauty’s God--
who do not live with grateful hearts for all they received.
One may ask, “If beauty matters so much to you
why are your poems prosaic, and not more beautiful?”
That’s a fair question. When it comes to words—to logos--
truthfulness matters far more than lovely words and phrases.
Would you not prefer the homely truth from Socrates
to lovely poetic fictions from some feel-good story-teller?
Is not straight-forward insight better than forced meter and rhyme?
“Yes, but why write poetry at all? Why not prose that seeks the truth?”
That may come, but poetic form enforces a condensation of thought
and rewards the effort to write clearly and understandably.
Behind loose words and overly detailed verbiage the many hide.
Listen again to the aforementioned Larghetto by Mozart:
in such lovely and well-ordered melodies and harmonies
the mind of the attentive listener becomes so sated and pacified
that the inner person is carried in spirit to the border of death
and at that moment is willing—may even desire—to die
surrendering all into the bosom of boundless Beauty.
34. Not wine and roses
Thankful to be living, to be relieved of nerve pain
to have my companions Moses and Elijah with me daily
but a dying old dog presents challenges.
Moses naps off and on during the day, and is restless all night
beginning around sunset, continuing at least until I rise
somewhere a little either side of midnight.
The old fellow drinks water in the night, waking me up
as I’m a light sleeper, attuned to any sound from him;
not infrequently he slips a few times in the hall, unable to rise
and cries out to me to assist him, which I promptly do.
The dying process places demands on love.
To love is to assist another being into death.
Would that we all realized that every creature is dying
and allow that realization to condition our actions.
Moses is dying, I am dying, and even Elijah
not quite five and full of energy, is dying.
To be alive is to be moving towards death;
to live is be dying. That is “part of the deal.”
Still, the creature struggles, clinging to life
which is by its nature good and often enjoyable.
The will to live is far greater and more pervasive
than the will to power that Nietzsche found everywhere.
Without the will to live, there could be no will to power.
The creature by nature desires to live, and to live well.
These may not be, are not, “days of wine and roses”
but after Moses has died, I will be thankful to have loved him
thankful for our friendship extending already fourteen years.
I will treasure the way he gazes into my eyes to read me--
and the way his look can burn my conscience to do better--
the way he has always “smelled the roses,” stopping to ponder
examining a plant or scenery or another creature up close.
I’ve never known a dog as contemplative as Moses has been--
ever a model of patience, meekness, utter gentleness
even as he suffers in his aging body.
Mazel tov, Moshe, my friend,
you are far better than wine and roses.
Next year in Jerusalem!
—11 October 2021
35. Descending
I’m descending into the netherworld
the never world of the unknown
a world not world, neither time nor space
no place no where, no utopia there--
“the undiscovered country from whose bourn
no traveller returns…”
By day one descends into a haze of uncertainties
into an ever-returning condition of knowing unknowing
in a world becoming ever more unfamiliar
in a world becoming yet stranger to this passing stranger.
By night one descends into a different dream world
in which one is and is not
much happens and yet does not happen
as all becomes fluid in a vast ocean of dreaming.
You descend into the self to find no self at all
but figments and fragments of your imagination
that do not bear inspection or examination
becoming ever less real as one truly searches.
You descend through the labyrinth of memory
and find that what you thought happened, did not--
or not in the ways you had assumed
and perhaps not to you at all but to not-you.
To write is to descend into an unknown world
not primarily of words and phrases and thoughts
but of reality that remains largely unattainable
as one pursues truth in this shadowland world.
Soon I must descend into the silence of sleep
a silence filled with sounds I do not hear
but which somehow take hold of me
and lead me into undiscovered, unknown realms.
“The way up and the way down
one and the same.”
36. Edging the flame
Why did a boxelder bug
light upon the burning candle--
a candle two inches across
so he climbed along the edge
an inch away from a wavering flame?
Warmth, adventure, ignorance
suicide or just plain stupidity?
He crawled along the edge of death.
I rescued the fellow from the flame
by flipping him onto the floor
before carrying the candle into my den.
Lo and behold, again he appeared
the boxelder bug edging the flame.
Again I flipped him down to the floor
then wrapped him in a winding sheet
and lowered him into the disposal.
Will he rise like Rasputin from the drain?
Will he return to edge the candle
to lick the flickering flame of death?
Or has he returned to the “potency of matter”?
Does it matter at all?
Yes, his death seems untimely
but he displayed a strange foolishness
or some unfathomable desire--
a will to die, or to flaunt death?
37. A view from the perch
Rhythmical movements of limbs and leaves
swaying of trees above their waists;
branches fairly bare of purple and gold
and a question re-emerges: have I grown old?
The end of all life lies beyond mortal sight
and so does the length of one’s span of days;
yet I think and feel the Rubicon’s been crossed
but I’m not heading to Rome, but to death.
I accept the death of aged Moses, blessed be he
and my pending death in all-devouring time.
Amidst coming uncertainties, pain, and myriad testings
I desire to die with hearty thanksgiving on my lips
or under my breath if I’ve lost all speech.
Like Moses I will to live accepting my fate
free of hate’s soul-perverting poisonings
free of cruelty, ill-will, pettiness, complaints.
Time ends in time for every mortal life
every creature of a day that’s born to perish.
Still a day arrives when consciousness admits
“The breath of death blows cooly on my neck.”
Then death. And the sun will rise, shine, slip from sight
crops planted, weeded, watered, and harvested;
some will still hate and kill for twisted imaginings
others will bury themselves in disquieting despair.
In truth I neither hope for heaven
nor dread the pains of fiery hell
nor long for the ceasing of consciousness;
I place my trust in the Agathon.
What matters most is not private existence
but what the unknown God is known to be--
that out of which each being arises
and which alone is indestructible.
Hope lies not in a separate eternal existence
but in the One “who’s not the God of the dead
but of the living—to him all are alive.”
And that suffices for me—not I but God alone.
A single leaf falls from a deciduous tree
fluttering quickly and quietly to the ground.
It had its budding, growth, and withering
and in time all that it was will decay
nourishing the engendering earth.
38. Shadows on a wall
In the darkened bedroom
the second floor of my home
attention is drawn at once
to shadows on a wall
cast by a tall locust tree
rising from the ground
to well above the second floor
its branches nearly touching the window
some reaching the roof above.
A bright light in the backyard
casts shadows of this locust
on the wall facing the bed.
As Montana winds move trees to sway
so small branches outside the window
dance restlessly dance.
Or is it my mind that’s dancing
as I watch the shadows
and slip away into sleep?
39. For the gods to come
Do you understand why Plotinus told a disciple
who invited him to attend religious ceremonies:
“It is up to the gods to come to me
and not for me to go to the gods.”
These are not the words of a haughty man
as one might hastily assume from experience
but the words of a humble lover of wisdom
attuned to divine presence in and around him.
How refreshing it is to turn back to Plotinus
setting aside for a while both non-noetic poetry
and the externalities of religious practice.
The goal is to enter into the living God
and not to be weighed down by lower concerns
such as the politics and functioning of churches
with their dogmas, rituals, vestments
with vocal prayers, preaching, and sacraments.
For those who desire or need religious externals
they are available and may prove helpful;
but devotees need to take heed truly
to “seek first God’s reign and his righteousness”
and not become addicted to substitutes--
to outward forms rather than to inner emptiness
to going through the motions of “religion”
without attending to presence in nature, in neighbor
in the intangible uncontrollable realm between
where suddenly without provocation it breaks in
yet not in but simply is there as if encompassing
and one is but is not a separate self at all
left speechless yet addressed by the wordless word.
***
In my seventy-first year, having already laid aside
the duties of pastoring and performing rituals
and at present feeling little or no desire for externals
I desire rather to attune to non-external presence.
And so I return to philosophy, especially to the Greeks
who have long had a strong pull on my mind and soul.
Presently to read Plotinus to whom I’ve again turned
is to be pulled back into the search, the zétésis
not for money or for fame, not for pleasure nor for gain
but for finding one’s way through the nonsensical sensible world
back into the simple reality of noûs, of intellect-spirit
in which every breath is rich in divine possibilities.
40. Collected works of art
To judge the greatest sculptor or painter
or whose oeuvre made the greatest contribution
I’m neither competent, nor pretend to be.
In certain areas of the arts, I would take a stab
using a device popular on the radio years ago:
“What would you take on your desert island experience?”
If you could enjoy only one artist in his genre
and could take a set of works, not a single piece
which collections by which artists would you choose?
In the world of drama, I would gladly choose
the complete plays of William Shakespeare
and hope that his poetry tagged along for the ride.
If I could take one work or collection of poetry
and be restricted to that body of work until death
it would either be the works of Homer
(the Iliad and the Odyssey), or Dante’s Comedia
but most likely Homer, whose myths fascinate me;
I derive no pleasure from stories of torture.
So I would have Shakespeare and Homer along with me.
And now for music: one composer, one set of works.
That the composer would be Johann Sebastian Bach
I have no doubt; if I could, I would take his complete works
as all extant compositions have been recorded.
If I could take only one set or genre, I would surely choose
what Germans call das Kantatenwerk, the Cantatas.
Their composition spans most of Bach’s active life
and their spiritual, intellectual, emotional range
(sometimes despite weaker libretti) sets them apart
high above any other set of compositions I know.
With Homer, Shakespeare, and Bach, I would fare well.
Now if the master overseeing this exercise were to say
“You may also select one body of sacred-spiritual writings”
I would not choose the Mahabharata, despite its length
and profundity, nor would I select the Pali Canon of the Buddha.
I would choose the Hebrew-Christian Scriptures, the Bible
for its scope, profundity, and role in my own formation.
Finally, if this overseeing master permitted one writer
in any genre other than poetry or drama
and that writer could have written in any field of study
without hesitating I should be happy to choose
the collected works of Plato, the greatest philosopher
who would never cease to challenge me to grow.
Of course I would love to carry with me Aristotle and Thomas
but if limited to one thinker, it would have to be Plato.
And so off I go to a desert island, or to be isolated
without a library or internet: but what great minds
and dear friends would attend me: Homer, Plato
the Bible, Shakespeare, and Bach. And you--
what greatest works or collections would you choose?
41. When the dogs bed down
When Moses and Elijah have finally settled down
(after a cigarette, perhaps, and a sip of champagne)
with my coveralls spinning in the washer
and the perpetual sounds of buzzing in my ears
still I sit quietly to read and to write.
When the dogs bed down, other beings awake
(or is it just my imagination reveling in silence?)
as I sense the spirits or spirit moving
and calmly enter into their silent stirrings
waiting for thoughts to arise to begin a quest
from where I am to where I am not, or perhaps
from where I am not to where I truly am.
Before the nocturnal journey begins
I never know what or who will arise
or where we are going this evening.
Words break lose and some swim to the surface
drawing my attention to them to consider
perhaps to write them down or dismiss them
dropping them freely with outstretched hands
yet grateful that they have paid a house call.
When at last agèd Moses and lively Elijah
have either fallen asleep or just keep still
I breathe more freely and sense somewhere
in memory or thought that now I am alone
alone with the Alone, mind with penetrating Mind.
Nothing need be said, felt, or sensed.
It is enough to be together, You and I
whether near or far or two or one
or both two yet one in ways unknown
does not matter, is not my present concern.
Alas that the quietness of a quiet evening
after the old and the restless have disappeared
elicits from my slower breathing a yawn
and a desire to wend my way to bed.
Then how long before I’m awakened by crying
when Moses feels needy and lonely in the night?
I must take some rest when I have the chance.
For the dogs have bedded down, and so shall I.
42. Making friends with darkness
Montana’s winters are cold, dark, windy, and long.
Cold and wind must be endured if one is outside
doing chores on ranch, farm, or around the home
or to take walks or hikes, or just to run errands.
If one cannot stand the cold and dark of Montana
he or she has several choices: stay indoors
month after month, from late October to June
go south for the winter, or just move away;
or the simplest alternative: accept what is
dress warmly, do your chores, take walks
whether it’s 5 out or a Chinook-mild forty-five;
if below zero, do chores quickly and read by the fire.
Holing up indoors has never appealed to me.
It’s a kind of escapism, a denial of reality; but then
spending much time outdoors in sub-zero wind chills
can be foolhardy and life-threatening.
Wear layers of warm clothes, take yourself outside
and enjoy the bracing cold, which in daylight
often means blazing bright and usually cloudless skies
except in the valleys of western Montana.
Those mountainous areas, as around Missoula
or the Bitterroot, or the Flathead, have milder temperatures
but more hours of overcast skies, getting “socked in.”
One way or another, Nature makes her demands
and one can adjust prudently to what she offers
or resist, complain, and make oneself miserable.
Montana’s winters are cold, dark, windy, and long.
One can rise early in the deep darkness of night
and enjoy the quiet, peaceful, embracing darkness
using one’s time to read, to write, or simply to think.
It took me some years to welcome the darkness
for the enveloping mantle of peace it proffers.
In darkness, without television, radio, stereo
sitting still in low light with a book in one’s hands
perhaps a pad of paper to jot down thoughts--
here one finds and feels reasons to live
and how to tend one’s soul in quiet happiness
far from annoying crowds and bothersome noise
that dominate so much of contemporary life.
In darkness one may find an inner light
Or turn away by way of distractions
mere passing attractions that capture one’s fancy
for a moment or two before stark dark reality
breaks in: “Perish with what is perishing
or eternalize being mindful of what endures death.”
43. The erotic draw into death
Rather than cut the tension, treasure it.
Behold the shadows on the wall
and recall seeing ocean waves
rolling in and out and in again:
how strangely sexy the dancing shadows
how movingly sexual the ocean waves
how disturbingly erotic the draw into death.
In a moment of climax, one dies.
The outpouring of bodily self in ecstasy
foreshadows the outpouring of life into death.
44. The fading of night
Night is ending as I gaze upwards
towards the stars not yet faded;
watching for some twenty minutes
seated in my backyard beneath the pines;
gradually and slowly, a kind of cosmic glow
a pale faint light encompassing all that’s visible
begins to grow imperceptibly
yet noticeably through memory’s reckoning.
A jet flies high overhead soundlessly
far above the earth, then later a satellite
traveling in the opposite direction
not in a straight line, it seems
but somehow slightly deviating:
“Master,,” asks the novice, “is the flag waving?
or is the wind waving?”
“Your mind is waving,” comes the reply.
Comfortable outside in temperate air
mild enough to enjoy sitting still in darkness
night slowly, slowly fading and then
as if out of nowhere a breath upon the face
a coolness with some familiar, disquieting depth
the kind of slight drop in temperature
one often feels in woods shortly before dawn
an invigorating exhalation of nature.
Night ends as life ends and begins
in a slow unsteady unsure crawl
step by uncertain step in pacing time
slipping away without recognition
alone in its essential solitude
unnoticed by the busy and the restless
as dawn rides in on gentle breezes
in the fading fading of the night.
—End of “Following the Sun,” “Descending. Part I: Autumn Sonata.”
28 October 2021