Rants, mumbling, repressed memories, recipes, and haiku from a professor at the University of St. Thomas Law School.
Thursday, December 06, 2012
Advent Quiet Thursday
For advent, I'm going to put the political mayhem on hold for a bit and instead just post a poem or some music or a photo for these four Thursdays. We'll start today...
“When it comes, you’ll be dreaming that you don’t need to breathe; that breathless silence is the music of the dark and it’s part of the rhythm to vanish like a spark.” ― Wisława Szymborska
Imagine striking a match that night in the cave: Imagine crockery, try to make use of its glaze To feel cold cracks in the floor, the blankness of hunger Imagine the desert--but the desert is everywhere.
Imagine striking a match in that midnight cave, The fire, the farm beasts in outline, the farm tools and stuff; And imagine, as you towel your face in enveloping folds, Mary, Joseph, and the Infant in swaddling clothes.
Imagine the kings, the caravans' stilted procession As they make for the cave, or, rather, three beams closing in And in on the star; the creaking of loads, the clink of a cowbell; (No thronging of Heaven as yet, no peal of the bell
That will ring in the end for the Infant once he has earned it). Imagine the Lord, for the first time, from darkness, and stranded Immensely in distance, recognizing Himself in the Son Of Man: His homelessness plain to him now in a homeless one.
--Joseph Brodsky (translated from the Russian by Seamus Heaney)
“When it comes, you’ll be dreaming
ReplyDeletethat you don’t need to breathe;
that breathless silence is
the music of the dark
and it’s part of the rhythm
to vanish like a spark.”
― Wisława Szymborska
A treasured musician. His music will live on....
ReplyDeleteA respite to appreciate and embrace. . .
ReplyDeleteNATIVITY POEM
ReplyDeleteImagine striking a match that night in the cave:
Imagine crockery, try to make use of its glaze
To feel cold cracks in the floor, the blankness of hunger
Imagine the desert--but the desert is everywhere.
Imagine striking a match in that midnight cave,
The fire, the farm beasts in outline, the farm tools and stuff;
And imagine, as you towel your face in enveloping folds,
Mary, Joseph, and the Infant in swaddling clothes.
Imagine the kings, the caravans' stilted procession
As they make for the cave, or, rather, three beams closing in
And in on the star; the creaking of loads, the clink of a cowbell;
(No thronging of Heaven as yet, no peal of the bell
That will ring in the end for the Infant once he has earned it).
Imagine the Lord, for the first time, from darkness,
and stranded
Immensely in distance, recognizing Himself in the Son
Of Man: His homelessness plain to him now in a homeless one.
--Joseph Brodsky (translated from the Russian by Seamus Heaney)