It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world’s values.
What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine
The fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values.
Who would remember Helen’s face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world’s values.
Never weep, let them play,
Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
- Robinson Jeffers, “The Bloody Sire” (1940)
_________ Deafening Decay _________
ReplyDeleteDelight to some, to others desecration
Eradicating every single chance
At peaceful, soul-enriching contemplation
Fostering the hope for sweet romance.
Ears and mind, instead, sit stunned –– assaulted.
Noxious noise befouls the atmosphere
In throbbing pseudo-ecstasy exalted
Neutralizing all that’s clean and clear.
Ground out tones smacking of self-pity
Degrade the mise en scene where they appear,
Erasing what’s not grubby, gross or gritty
Catering, instead, to our worst fears.
Aggravation never ceasing breeds
Yammering lemmings aping Satan’s leads.
~ FreeThinke
Good old Jeffers! I've always loved on cold winter evenings to cuddle up with one of his frothy collections of charm and life-affirming good cheer to help lift me from a state of depression or anxiety. (:-s
ReplyDelete...time to get back to wallowing in perpetual crapulence. ;)
ReplyDelete