IV. Coda
… Now that my ladder’s gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

I sat me down to write a simple story
which maybe in the end became a song
In trying to find the words which might begin it
I found these were the thoughts I brought along

At first I took my weight to be an anchor
and gathered up my fears to guide me round
but then I clearly saw my own delusion
and found my struggles further bogged me down

In starting out I thought to go exploring
and set my foot upon the nearest road
In vain I looked to find the promised turning
but only saw how far I was from home

In searching I forsook the paths of learning
and sought instead to find some pirate’s gold
In fighting I did hurt those dearest to me
and still no hidden truths could I unfold

I sat me down to write a simple story
which maybe in the end became a song
The words have all been writ by one before me
We’re taking turns in trying to pass them on
Oh, we’re taking turns in trying to pass them on

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors.
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.

Robinson Jeffers

Be Angry at the Sun (1941)

once upon a time when I was small

Swayne Britt told us fantastical stories of ridiculous things, and fantastical stories of real things. He made us Cowboy Beans for lunch.

Once, when my parents were having a party and Swayne was there, a little English boy asked him who he was. Swayne said, ‘I’m a cowboy, son.’ The little boy looked at Swayne’s shirt and trousers, shook his head and replied, ‘I don’t believe you, Mister.’

You know what Swayne did? He put down his beer, got into his car and drove back to his house on the other side of that dusty city. He came back about an hour later all dressed up in his chaps and stetson and neckerchief. He winked and smiled at that little boy and said ‘Now do you believe me, son?’ That little boy was completely lost in the magic. He was in AWE. I bet he remembers that to this day.

And that’s the magic. Some people just have it.

Yeah, me and Laura, we loved Swayne Britt. We loved him a lot.

Let’s step way-y-y-y back to Friar Giovanni da Fiesole (1387-1455)

Take peace.

The gloom of the world is but a shadow.
Behind it, yet within our reach is joy.

There is radiance and courage in the darkness could we but see; and to see, we have only to look.

Life is so generous a giver, but we, judging its gifts by their coverings, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard.

Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love, and wisdom, and power.

The day breaks and the shadows flee away.

Why isn’t peace on anyone’s platform?

Remarkably, the goal of peace does not appear.

IS THE word “peace’’ disappearing from our national conversation?

Armies of talking heads, bloggers, and op-ed opinionators assault us daily on every subject . . . but rarely on peace.

When was the last time we heard a national leader of either party, especially one running for president, put the goal of peace at the center of a political platform or place it among our highest national aspirations?

(Oh, for a long long while, we do know what to do… beterian… to improve.)

Guy Davis.

We all need more kindness in this world
we all need more kindness in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more kindness in this world.

We all need more hugging in this world
we all need more hugging in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more hugging in this world

We all need more laughing in this world
we all need more laughing in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more laughing in this world

We all need more sunshine in this world
we all need more sunshine in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more sunshine in this world

We all need more peace-times in this world
we all need more peace-times in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more peace-times in this world

We all need more friendship in this world
we all need more friendship in this world
You may look high and low, but there’s no
place else to go–we all need more friendship in this world

.
.
.

A Song that Says It’s Naughty To Magnify the Small

Seeking authoritive morality
To lead us to our vision
To live less fallibly,
To stop failure’s incision,
Is our repetitive dream
Just beneath the known,
Stitched each day like a seam
That binds us to the hope we’re shown.

For we all know of our yearning
And the imperative of our need,
We all see reality’s turning
Love in the face of greed.
Yet horror is left unsaid,
Caustic blame that’s never fair,
Graphic agony that fuel our dread,
Encumber our want to care. 

So we leave what’s worst alone.
We delegate our shores:
Join weakly to intone
Our dream, as if we’re whores
Who curb the rhythm of life,
Weak contending under threats.
Do we believe, reviewing strife,
We’ll see the instant violent nets
Closing in to disrupt our plan?

Whether passionate or tame
Each within our animate race,
We have a duty that drives the whole
From which a few prognosticate.
We walk from mountain to shoal
Where too few will legislate
Our vision and leaning to need.
And here our souls, our surety,
Our governance written by the freed
Shall carry our will and purity.

It must, it seems, be still recalled
Each finds no place to hide,
Nor fails work when called
To liberty never denied,
Not lost in conformity, hidden in nerves,
Nor lost to cult or loosely tied
In populist slogan that swerves
And sways through our dangerous day.

When trouble cloaks, becomes persistent,
When fears annoy, won’t go away,
When emptiness become consistent,
When hopes are lost in perplexities
Or controlled by causes remote,
The curious seek the complexities,
Others entrench in the rote.

Many seek comfort in diversion,
Ostensibly relaxing, secured
In claims of light reversion
To simpler things, like what’s inured
To lifting the self, distinct from the rest:
Pursuing, demanding to keep
Preserving and lofting the best,
‘Til our better efforts must leap
Away from ideas that heal.

This is the price denial must keep.
Is this the ache tired citizens feel?
Confronted by fear and by threat,
Bent in the forum of civic concern,
Impotent sketches of slow defeat, and yet
Is there no other way for people to learn
That when most of the world is worried
And agony’s millions alert; 
challenge dramatic and flurried,
Our future either gentle or curt,
Ambitious roam in and through,
Peace still rough and tumble,
Tomorrow is squeezed on me or on you,
No practical plan to escape the rumble,
If cosmic, natural, or imperial;
These caustic options are revealed,
Will we retreat to the ethereal?

Instead we forge and we hammer a shield,
Our victory is long before battle!
Improve our goals, real and chattel,
Our humane gifts, compassion curled
In strength we have found here together,
Not towers of rare and inspired,
Not magic stoked with mystic feather,
Not experts endorsed when hired
To mimic hope until we’ve agreed
We’re merely tokens, opinions in court,
Gleaned response, polled queries of need:
How wise is this answer? “Sell it out short:
Gluttony must keep us invisible
To hope no one sees what we’ve gained.”

Is our best so rare, indivisible?
Is common the safest, in truth or if feigned?
Is purpose hiding in cranky abstract
Giving too little and too little great?

Each day we give lies to this pertinent fact,
“We cannot ignore conspiring fate.
If you will use us, Abuse us, All Right,
As long as the pay is on time,
We’re better here, far from the worst.
We comply to the game, call it sublime,
Knowing those lessor are cursed.”

Please notice it’s we paying the bill 
And drawing us to face it.
In all our lives: We’re able to fill
Our needs, our dreams, if we chase it.
Our world is huge not the smaller it’s claimed.

We seek and find cooperative deals,
Partners help the small and the great;
Break risk to join in repeals
Of all but continued good fate.

Unhook from the habits that lock us to loss.
Unhook from the stories invented for wars.

Be part of the ideas we toss
To each other to pry open doors
To industry, commerce and governing fair;
With leadership to guide our plans
Bring us tools, not threats and high tare.

Like our ancients, our families, our clans,
We clock blood for this day to endure,
Progress made by ignoring patter
And keeping from trouble or cur.
Why should the trivial matter?
Why stay for only approval?
We each have deeper concerns than that.
Why justify, scorn, force removal,
Instead of solution, fair and democrat?

Why plan or plot any false hope,
Or prop goals in mutual rigidity,
Leaving us detached and static,
Tied to life’s constant turbidity?
Find the gate through strife’s erratic!

Why sell dreams, or myth or song
In automat lyric airwaves?
Why tune to hawking that’s wrong,
Mere drama, politics, close shaves?
When as clear as the sky that’s curving the light
Our beckoning insists to us all,
And annoys as strong as the great that we see?

It’s our promise shadowed on history’s wall:
The past we’re from and the hopes of the free.

It’s initiative growing in faith’s provocation
That fear and diversion won’t bury.
There’s no reason to leave the care of this nation
To sponsoring, to agents, nor hustle nor hurry;
Not sly, nor secrets hid in the back
as grief is alliance with less.
We win when we work on our lack,
Joined in our plans for the best
Becoming our lives every day.
Choose the highest, the moral, the true.
Let each of our lives find this way.

Let forums see the eagle flew;
Has never left grace to defeat,
Is never blind in bright sun
Nor bent in cataclyst’s heat.
We nest in the innocents’ life,
Soar in the query of truth,
Stillness above the strife.
We signal bright justice, temper our youth,
Always for better and always the part
To secure our contentment to peace,
We bring to the gates of our heart,
Our symbol’s strength in the fleece
That’s soft in the depth of this land.

No empire or keeper of keys
Can know better than any
That motive and hope is our way:
The insistent calls of the many,
Bringing our best to the day.

Needs lots of work!! – 1985 Brian Hayes

We human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell. —Kafka

Guy Davis – We all need more kindness in this world !

My experience, my recovering:

There’s cancer to care for.
What’s good for me is she died in our bed,
sleeping delighted,
stunned day to day in our love.

And also, there’s Hitchens:

Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to “do” death in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a life span.

However …

“If there is light in the soul, There will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, There will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, There will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, There will be peace in the world.” — Chinese Proverb