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 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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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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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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Dr. Sigmund Freud Discovers the Sea Shell
Science, that simple saint, cannot be bothered
Figuring what anything is for:
Enough for her devotions that things are
And can be contemplated soon as gathered.
She knows how every living thing was fathered,
She calculates the climate of each star,
She counts the fish at sea, but cannot care
Why any one of them exists, fish, fire or feathered.
Why should she? Her religion is to tell
By rote her rosary of perfect answers.
Metaphysics she can leave to man:
She never wakes at night in heaven or hell
Staring at darkness. In her holy cell
There is no darkness ever: the pure candle
Burns, the beads drop briskly from her hand.
Who dares to offer Her the curled sea shell!
She will not touch it!--knows the world she sees
Is all the world there is! Her faith is perfect!
And still he offers the sea shell . . .
What surf
Of what far sea upon what unknown ground
Troubles forever with that asking sound?
What surge is this whose question never ceases?
poem by Archibald MacLeish
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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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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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The Rock In The Sea
Think of our blindness where the water burned!
Are we so certain that those wings, returned
And turning, we had half discerned
Before our dazzled eyes had surely seen
The bird aloft there, did not mean?—
Our hearts so seized upon the sign!
Think how we sailed up-wind, the brine
Tasting of daphne, the enormous wave
Thundering in the water cave—
Thunder in stone. And how we beached the skiff
And climbed the coral of that iron cliff
And found what only in our hearts we’d heard—
The silver screaming of that one, white bird:
The fabulous wings, the crimson beak
That opened, red as blood, to shriek
And clamor in that world of stone,
No voice to answer but its own.
What certainty, hidden in our hearts before,
Found in the bird its metaphor?
poem by Archibald MacLeish
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De Votre Bonheur Il Ne Reste Que Vos Photos Sipsce…
And the rain since
And I have not heard
Leaf at the pane all winter
Nor a bird's wing beating as that was
I have not seen
All year your leaning face again
Since I have never wakened but that smell
Of wet pine bark was in the room.
poem by Archibald MacLeish
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I Am One Of Many Who Loves Nature
I am one of many who loves Nature her beauty is all around me
And every day in Nature's World new wonders I'm privileged to see
Of Nature we never stop learning we learn from her every day
Though her secrets and they are many from us she has hidden away
The only immortal I know of her presence is on every shore
All of her life forms their life spans in time is not long but she will live forever more
We depend on her for our survival yet we do not treat her that well
By our polluting and destruction of natural habitat we are creating our own earthly hell
One can only marvel at Nature each species of bird has it's own song to sing
And in the groves and woods and hedgerows they build homes for their young in Spring
The fish of lakes, streams and rivers, the mammals of sea and of land
Her billions of flying and ground insects of sky and of soil and of sand
Of Nature we never stop learning till to the scythe of her Reaper we'll fall
And in a World of many great forces she is the greatest of all.
poem by Francis Duggan
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Impure Mathematics
Let others consider pure mathematics,
I see a world
where reality leaves its mark
and the clockwork
gets shorter all the time
while time runs out.
Where no flowers remain
for the light brown bee
and everything pine away into a desert
and the greenhouse effect
covers the whole wide world,
the ozone layer burning away
and the sky full of grey clouds
shedding thunder and rain down
and waves
braking further over the horizon
in to the land
smashing in torrents
and man is dumbstruck
almost frozen
about the effect
of his own handiwork.
[Reference: Suiwer Wiskunde by N.P. Van wyk Louw.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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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 Snowflake Which Is Now and Hence Forever
Will it last? he says.
Is it a masterpiece?
Will generation after generation
Turn with reverence to the page?
Birdseye scholar of the frozen fish,
What would he make of the sole, clean, clear
Leap of the salmon that has disappeared?
To be, yes!--whether they like it or not!
But not to last when leap and water are forgotten,
A plank of standard pinkness in the dish.
They also live
Who swerve and vanish in the river.
poem by Archibald MacLeish
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Lines For A Prologue
These alternate nights and days, these seasons
Somehow fail to convince me. It seems
I have the sense of infinity!
(In your dreams, O crew of Columbus,
O listeners over the sea
For the surf that breaks upon Nothing—)
Once I was waked by the nightingales in the garden.
I thought, What time is it? I thought,
Time—Is it Time still?—Now is it Time?
(Tell me your dreams, O sailors:
Tell me, in sleep did you climb
The tall masts, and before you—)
At night the stillness of old trees
Is a leaning over and the inertness
Of hills is a kind of waiting.
(In sleep, in a dream, did you see
The world’s end? Did the water
Break—and no shore—Did you see?)
Strange faces come through the streets to me
Like messengers: and I have been warned
By the moving slowly of hands at a window.
Oh, I have the sense of infinity—
But the world, sailors, is round.
They say there is no end to it.
poem by Archibald MacLeish
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The art of poetry (cavatina sequence) (in answer to Archibald Macleish)
A poem should touch, should palpable belong,
it should reach out,
with a kind of eternal caring truth;
it should scream, shout
of each injustice and pain that do remain
and be about
almost anything or each happening,
as something that is truly worth saying.
Not silent or dumb it falls on the ear,
as it's profound,
in a great symphony of the purest
kind of clear sound,
its rhythms do ring with every line
it is not bound
by politics, machinations of men
and can be a blessing or an omen.
[Reference: "Ars poetica" 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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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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A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man.
quote by Archibald MacLeish
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent.
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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