On The End Of The World (Cavatina Sequence)
(after Archibald MacLeish)
Behind the scenes they act, while on the stage
life is a dance
and we fall for the show and laugh and play
in romance,
as in quick-time we are very smitten,
are in a trance
as some Bee-bee Bob the clown laughs and cries;
men go off to war to kill and some dies
and then still lurking are unseen beings,
in sheer darkness;
they poise, do mislead and cover their tracks,
with great aloofness
they turn all beliefs in nothing at all,
bring lawlessness,
try to drag most of humanity down
to wait on great disaster as their own.
[Reference: 'The End of the World' by Archibald MacLeish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Will Nature At A Time Be Really Lost? (Cavatina Sequence)
(after Archibald MacLeish)
Will nature at a time be really lost,
no snowflake fall
as the world becomes extremely hot,
while big and small
live in a man-made kind of sheer hot hell?
If man kills all;
the fish, each bird, each animal and tree,
what's living will at a time, no more be.
No bird will sing, or even be flying,
tranquility
will be gone in a world as stark as stone,
each thing lovely,
each leaping fish, diving crying great eagle
will die slowly,
when all of the ozone layer is gone
and the greenhouse effect just lingers on.
[Reference: 'The Snowflake Which Is Now And Hence Forever' by Archibald MacLeish.}
poem by Gert Strydom
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On science (cavatina sequence)
(after Archibald MacLeish)
She does not worry about why things are;
that they exist
to be contemplated or observed,
how they persist,
is far enough for her own simple reasoning,
she does resist
their reason, in rote produces answers,
perfect to devotions of her followers.
She thinks she knows where all things do come from,
far beyond her
kind of scope is metaphysics, physical
she does gather,
she is protected in her own dungeon,
nothing further
she knows about love, joy, fear and sorrow,
as she proclaims things for each tomorrow.
Beyond the stars, the sheer utter darkness,
shines a true light,
beyond the unknown, beyond a ocean,
out of her sight
are things like life to which He answers know,
to her its night
to comprehend the very soul of man,
as mechanical she does what she can.
[Reference: "Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell" by Archibald MacLeish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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She Does Not Need Any Praise (Cavatina Sequence)
(after Archibald MacLeish)
The greatest happiness she have given
today to me,
in the ways that together our lives is,
tranquillity
is in each smile, like a hot summer day,
totally free
she does her duty in words and her ways,
she acts unhindered like the sun's rays.
Fresh loaves of bread, lovely food she spreads,
great joy she finds
in her selfless acts that brings happiness,
free like the winds
her feet run while she lights candles, sometimes sings;
one of her kind
my wife is, she does not need any praise
as she loves with an amazing true grace.
[Reference: 'Poem in Prose' by Archibald MacLeish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The Night Dream (Cavatina Sequence)
(after Archibald MacLeish)
It had been a dream but seemed much too real;
her eyes, her voice,
had a quiet kind of lovely quality,
even her poise
had maturity, some kind of gentleness,
with no noise
but the buzzing of bees at a flower
while we lay down in fields of white clover.
The sun fell hot on our skins, her smile was
very dazzling,
while her soft hand gently touched my face,
there was something
known in the way that she did speak with me,
how she did fling
her hair back, while my head did gently rest,
on her soft heaving perfect naked breast.
Love I do not know she said and smiled,
but she was mine,
while we kissed in moments of pure bliss,
drank some white wine,
talked about some things close to the heart,
the curving line
I traced of her bended lovely back
while the greatest pure joy we did not lack.
It had only been a rapturous dream,
that was fading
but her skin, her smile was kind of special;
away wading
into the vast ocean of memory
until reading
from the magazine you looked up at me,
I could not pass when your face I did see.
[Reference: 'The Night Dream' by Archibald MacLeish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Graduate (cavatina sequence) (in answer to Archibald Macleish)
In three years or four, holy beliefs are slain,
He did not make
either man or the earth, Charles Darwin's
theory does take
centre stage at great universities,
nonsense do rake
as mere myth the Bible into the ground,
learned men sound to themselves profound;
like gods they toss and play with all their students,
as memories
of God and His great things they cause to dwindle;
flowers and bees
as lust become simple chemical yearning,
they teach duties,
to be like gods in self actualization;
they destroy God and his creation
while magic things like the force of life
stays beyond science,
while man is bound to facts and to his own
experience,
cannot measure to an almighty being;
with patience
God and His character of love remains,
mere man struggle on in his life of pains
while still is lingering the truths of youth,
love is beyond
the bounds of man's mere own observations,
the simple bond
to survive on earth, bound by time and space,
does correspond
with a higher intelligent being
whose selfless power sustains everything.
[Reference: "Baccalaureate" by Archibald Macleish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The Too-Late Born (Cavatina) (In Answer To Archibald Macleish)
We were too late born to escape from war,
was forced to go,
have caused with great manmade bolts of thunder
the slain; do know
the soulless agony that comes from killing,
saw phosphor glow
as it burns red with a projectile strike;
the destruction, killing, we did not like.
[Reference: 'The Too-Late Born' by Archibald MacLeish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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There are those who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American Dream.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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What Any Nature Lover Knows (Cavatina) (In Answer To Archibald Macleish)
Water rushes on; brown, green or silver
as it breaks stone,
it caries particles as sand along
till it is gone,
filling everything that it covers,
has a loud tone
that thunders ominous where it does fall
but it allures, draws both people big and small.
[Reference: 'What Any Lover Learns' by Archibald MacLeish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Autumn (In Reply To Archibald Macleish)
Like the end of life that comes with old age,
Autumn stripped
turns most of the trees into skeletons,
in cold nipped
days are windswept, the sun without its glare,
we are gripped
by the first spells of winter that is coming,
as if death is already in homing.
[Reference: Immortal Autumn by Archibald MacLeish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Freedom is the right to one's dignity as a man.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Eternal (Cavatina Sequence) (In Answer To Archibald Macleish)
Again the wind will pass, as it did before
while it does sing
of some feelings that we both do have now,
in flocks flying
some birds will go and not a single thing
will be dying
as this moment have got something eternal,
while the bright sun rises epithermal
as if disaster, death, pain and sorrow
never was,
very long moments will still linger on,
blue-green like glass
the sea will always swell, rock to and thro;
the new green grass
will rise again in spring after the first rain;
while after life our feelings still do remain.
[Reference: 'An Eternity' by Archibald Macleish.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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The End of the World
Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.
poem by Archibald MacLeish
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The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
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We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
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What is more important in a library than anything else - than everything else - is the fact that it exists.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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You burned the city of London in our houses and we felt the flames.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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