On Reading Graham Greene's 'The Quiet American
Pyle and Fowler
So civilized
Fighting over Phoung
And Vietnam
So quietly
Pyle offers her his world
White picket fence
Baseball games and picnics
He'd hide the grime and mayhem
He used to win her
Fowler is honest in his need
Naked loneliness is all he has
No wedding ring
No London Bridge nor Westminster
Just his ache and desire
Phoung was one taxi dance
From whoring more openly
She sold herself for safety
Her youth disguised her wantonness
Fowler knew but Pyle didn't
That was Greene's vision
But what if she were another –
Fatima rather than Phoung
And a desert rose, not an orchid –
Just fifty years later
poem by Robert J Meyer
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It was a night when London was ringed and stabbed with fire.
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But to the fighting soldier that phase of the war is behind. It was left behind after his first battle. His blood is up. He is fighting for his life, and killing now for him is as much a profession as writing is for me.
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Someday when peace has returned to this odd world I want to come to London again and stand on a certain balcony on a moonlit night and look down upon the peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges.
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The men are walking. They are fifty feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as you can tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion.
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Gray Music
You wrote your Yiddish signature in rain.
I could not match it in a thousand years.
Old words are classic to my memory.
Because of you, my feet have wings this day.
Gray music paints a picture of rare worth,
A Slavic image of an April mood,
Breaching the barrier of your last breath,
I should not wonder, Friend, you said it would.
'For a poet who was born in April and died in April'.
Copyright,2009, Sandra Fowler
poem by Sandra Fowler
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I've really been sick with this cold, but I think I might have kept the columns going anyhow except I was just so low in spirit, I didn't have the will to struggle against them when my deadline was so close and I felt so lousy.
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We used to play baseball back in that field and keep an eye out for the bulls.
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Upon The Lark and The Fowler
Thou simple bird, what makes thou here to play?
Look, there's the fowler, pr'ythee come away.
Do'st not behold the net? Look there, 'tis spread,
Venture a little further, thou art dead.
Is there not room enough in all the field
For thee to play in, but thou needs must yield
To the deceitful glitt'ring of a glass,
Plac'd betwixt nets, to bring thy death to pass?
Bird, if thou art so much for dazzling light,
Look, there's the sun above thee; dart upright;
Thy nature is to soar up to the sky,
Why wilt thou come down to the nets and die?
Take no heed to the fowler's tempting call;
This whistle, he enchanteth birds withal.
Or if thou see'st a live bird in his net,
Believe she's there, 'cause hence she cannot get.
Look how he tempteth thee with is decoy,
That he may rob thee of thy life, thy joy.
Come, pr'ythee bird, I pr'ythee come away,
Why should this net thee take, when 'scape thou may?
Hadst thou not wings, or were thy feathers pull'd,
Or wast thou blind, or fast asleep wer't lull'd,
The case would somewhat alter, but for thee,
Thy eyes are ope, and thou hast wings to flee.
Remember that thy song is in thy rise,
Not in thy fall; earth's not thy paradise.
Keep up aloft, then, let thy circuits be
Above, where birds from fowler's nets are free.
Comparison.
This fowler is an emblem of the devil,
His nets and whistle, figures of all evil.
His glass an emblem is of sinful pleasure,
And his decoy of who counts sin a treasure.
This simple lark's a shadow of a saint,
Under allurings, ready now to faint.
This admonisher a true teacher is,
Whose works to show the soul the snare and bliss,
And how it may this fowler's net escape,
And not commit upon itself this rape.
poem by John Bunyan
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I was away from the front lines for a while this spring, living with other troops, and considerable fighting took place while I was gone. When I got ready to return to my old friends at the front I wondered if I would sense any change in them.
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I had travelled pretty widely around the world even before then, so I knew where to go to film wildlife.
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Never thank anybody for anything, except a drink of water in the desert - and then make it brief.
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At last we are in it up to our necks, and everything is changed, even your outlook on life.
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If I can just see the European war out I think I might feel justified in quitting the war.
quote by Ernie Pyle
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If you go long enough without a bath, even the fleas will leave you alone.
quote by Ernie Pyle
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Psalm 124
A song for the fifth of November.
Had not the Lord, may Isr'el say,
Had not the Lord maintained our side,
When men, to make our lives a prey,
Rose like the swelling of the tide;
The swelling tide had stopped our breath,
So fiercely did the waters roll,
We had been swallowed deep in death;
Proud waters had o'erwhelmed our soul.
We leap for joy, we shout and sing,
Who just escaped the fatal stroke;
So flies the bird with cheerful wing,
When once the fowler's snare is broke.
For ever blessed be the Lord,
Who broke the fowler's cursed snare,
Who saved us from the murd'ring sword,
And made our lives and souls his care.
Our help is in Jehovah's name,
Who formed the earth and built the skies:
He that upholds that wondrous frame
Guards his own church with watchful eyes.
poem by Isaac Watts
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Our artillery has really been sensational. For once we have enough of something and at the right time. Officers tell me they actually have more guns than they know what to do with.
quote by Ernie Pyle
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War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
quote by Ernie Pyle
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All the rest of us - you and me and even the thousands of soldiers behind the lines in Africa - we want terribly yet only academically for the war to get over.
quote by Ernie Pyle
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January Mist
Sometimes at night I hear small birds lament.
Dark notes that seem to second moon's descent.
Cold is the color of a deep regret,
An etude perfected by winterset.
The world was music and it turned us round.
Stirred by the subtle atmospheric sound,
You gently sketched a snowflake on my face
Which shall be mine till light has left this place.
Such solace has the power to outlast time,
To lock a small bird's elegy in rhyme.
Somewhere beyond the January mist,
The magic of our landscape still exists.
Copyright,2008, Sandra Fowler
poem by Sandra Fowler
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Beyond Eden
Green leaves tap at my window like lost souls.
I trace their signatures upon the glass.
Dawn is only a few quatrains away.
I memorize the fragrance of spring rain.
It takes me back beyond Eden, my friends
Where Adam brushed the first tear from Eve's eye.
Stripped of their innocence, how could they know?
The last grief would be soothed by God himself.
Somewhere deep in the hills, a lyric bird
Sings of the poignancy of humanness.
The ever freshness of that ancient sound
Brings back the sun that shone aeons ago.
Sandra Fowler, copyright,2010
poem by Sandra Fowler
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