Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
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NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
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Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Saturday, October 12. 2013

Saturday Verse: W. S. Merwin (1927- )

The River of Bees (from Merwin's The Second Four Books of Poems)


In a dream I returned to the river of bees
Five orange trees by the bridge and
Beside two mills my house
Into whose courtyard a blindman followed
The goats and stood singing
Of what was older


Soon it will be fifteen years


He was old he will have fallen into his eyes


I took my eyes
A long way to the calendars
Room after room asking how shall I live


One of the ends is made of streets
One man processions carry through it
Empty bottles their
Image of hope
It was offered to me by name


Once once and once
In the same city I was born
Asking what shall I say


He will have fallen into his mouth
Men think they are better than grass


I return to his voice rising like a forkful of hay


He was old he is not real nothing is real
Nor the noise of death drawing water


We are the echo of the future


On the door it says what to do to survive
But we were not born to survive
Only to live


Posted by Bird Dog in Saturday Verse at 05:14 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Like that "we were not born to survive.
But only to live._"

What Jesus was talking about when he talked about how those who seek to save their ife will lose it, etc. And Auden when he wrote "we must love one another or die" and the prayer of St. Francis.

Any smart animal can survive. Happy and blessed is the humanoid who can occasionally sacrifice, have a taste of life beyond themselves. When we are dragged kicking and screaming into doing something kind or brave or considerae of others, we find peace for an instant.

Earning a living is surviving. We find life thru conquering our fears even temporarily, reaching out even when we know it is dangerous,

Wanting to tell those unpatriotic Berkeley jerks that a scared 18 year old Marine knows more about life than they ever will. We are grass, the thing that makes us beautiful is the breeze of God's spirit making us shimmer, moving us, gold in His light and only He knows when we shall live and when we shall die. As mother THeresa reminded us, it was never up to us...

ENough of my nonsense, off to usual errands, but thanks for poem, to reread
#1 retriever on 2008-02-09 07:06 (Reply)
Beautiful dream language. I hadn't ever seen this one before. Thanks!
#2 Patti (Link) on 2008-02-09 11:22 (Reply)
Thanks for putting this on the page.

Retriever seems to have taken this a bit too much to heart. The eighteen year old knows no more than the Berkeley student. Each wrestles with life as he or she sees it and will, years later, look back on the path they cut perhaps from the same prospect arrived at differently. Harsh judgment one of another does not advance or help the human condition.
#3 bboot on 2008-02-10 12:49 (Reply)
Wrong place to vent. But as a parent, I know which kid I would be proud of.
#4 retriever on 2008-02-10 15:10 (Reply)
Not bad.
#5 backhoe on 2013-10-12 05:15 (Reply)
Not all of us at Berkeley were unpatriotic jerks. In fact, being a student at Berkeley back then and not drinking the Kool-Aid got a lot of crap thrown at you.
#6 Jim on 2013-10-12 15:56 (Reply)

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