Author Topic: To Everyone  (Read 3044 times)

Hopalong

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Re: To Everyone
« Reply #15 on: August 12, 2006, 06:08:19 PM »
back at you, TT!
so glad you endure

Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."

Stormchild

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Re: To Everyone
« Reply #16 on: August 12, 2006, 07:29:33 PM »
The Face of the Lion
                --Loren Eiseley


The moth-eaten lion with shoe-button eyes
is lumpy by modern standards
                                                and his mane
scarcely restorable.
                              I held him in my arms
                                                  when I was small.
I held him when my parents quarreled
as they did often while
                                     I shrank away.
                                     My beast has come
down the long traverse of such years and travel
                                                                 as have left outworn or lost
beds slept in, women loved, hall clocks that struck
                                               wrong hours,
                                                photographs
in years forgotten, notes, lovers' quarrels, dear God
                                                           where go
our living hours,
                           upon what windy ash heaps are they kept?
Down what sepulchral chambers must we creep
who seek the past?
                                   I who have dug through bones
and broken skulls and shards
                                      into the farther deeps
                                                       rescind
such efforts now.
                             I cannot practice
         the terrible archaeology of the brain
                                                     nor plumb
one simple childhood thought. I want no light to shine
        into those depths forever
                                                  but the lion
sits on the shelf above my desk
                                                   and I,
                                                   near-sighted now,
take comfort that he looks
                                   forthright and bold
                                           as when
my hands were small,
                                   as when
my brain received him living,
                                   something kind
                                   where little kindness was.

The mirror tells me that my hair is grey
but the wild animist within my heart
refuses to acknowledge him a toy
given by someone long ago
                                            forgotten.
No, no, the lion lives
                                and watches me
as I do him.
                      Should I forget
the hours in the blizzard dark,
                                                the tears
spilled silent while I clutched his mane?
He is very quiet there upon the shelf,
as I am here, but we were silent
                                                 even then,
past words,
                   past time.
                                   We waited for the light
and fell asleep when no light ever came.

                                                     I do not
delude myself.
                        The lion's face is slowly changing
               into the face of death
                   but when I lie down
                                            upon my pillow
                                                      in the final hour
I shall lie quietly and clutch
                              the remnants of his mane.
                                                        It happens we have known
a greater dark together
                                                 he and I.
I am not terrified
                           if he has come
                                          wearing another guise.
To him the watcher I will trust my sleep,
                               shoe-button eyes, the lion on the shelf.
The only way out is through, and the only way to win is not to play.

"... truth is all I can stand to live with." -- Moonlight52

http://galewarnings.blogspot.com

http://strangemercy.blogspot.com

http://potemkinsoffice.blogspot.com

Stormchild

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Re: To Everyone
« Reply #17 on: August 12, 2006, 07:32:40 PM »
[Hoping the typography doesn't throw people. In my copy of 'Notes of an Alchemist' they used a serif font and 1.5 spacing, so it's not so cluttered looking. But it is a very poignant poem and seemed very fitting here...]
The only way out is through, and the only way to win is not to play.

"... truth is all I can stand to live with." -- Moonlight52

http://galewarnings.blogspot.com

http://strangemercy.blogspot.com

http://potemkinsoffice.blogspot.com

pennyplant

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Re: To Everyone
« Reply #18 on: August 12, 2006, 07:42:08 PM »
It makes me wish I still had my "lion" which was a yellow cat made from rabbit fur.  I poured my heart out to that cat.  It was given to me for Valentine's Day when I was six or seven and I was so surprised because my parents usually only gave gifts for Christmas and birthdays.  I wanted to be buried with that cat.  My sister got a stuffed turtle.  To this day, she still loves turtles and I still love cats.

Thanks for sharing this poem.  It is just right for this thread.

PP
"We all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun."
John Lennon

Overcomer

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Re: To Everyone
« Reply #19 on: August 12, 2006, 08:29:26 PM »
Hey all, and Penelope I see the oLD repeated.......................actually that was just a typo...............but you can use it when talking about oLD posters.  I looked and Ellie and Bunny haven't posted for at least a year. :(

About the Christianity and the "not feeling a part of a club...................."  I was raised a Christian but I remember taking an intense Bible Study class and saying to the people in it "I feel like you are all a part of a club which I am not a part........I just don't get it."  People talking about hearing God's voice and being led by the Spirit.  I just don't get it.  An agnostic?  No.  I believe but I don't feel.................not feel the way that these other people make it sound like they are feeling.  I believe and I guess that is faith and the alternative is just so empty and sad..................but I often wonder why people say they have a close personal relationship with God or with Christ and I don't think he is accessible to me.  So then I have these feelings of inferiority.  That I don't measure up and that's why God doesn't want to bless me.  I pray all the time that SOMETHING will happen in my life which breaks the ties which bind me and my nmom together................to be able to be free from her "whatever she has over me."  Sometimes I cry out to God for peace and love and happiness........
Kelly

"The Best Way Out is Through........and try laughing at yourself"

moonlight52

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Re: To Everyone
« Reply #20 on: August 12, 2006, 11:03:04 PM »
Stormy    wow    A scientist that likes fun experiments with the heart of a poet.
Thank you

PP I WISH YOU HAD YOUR LION TOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When I was 5 we moved and my favorite white stuffed kitty was losted...........

Kelly I never heard God's voice that's wild

love,
moon


Stormchild

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Re: To Everyone
« Reply #21 on: August 13, 2006, 08:20:16 AM »
Hi moon

I didn't write this one - the paleontologist/zoologist/essayist/poet Loren Eiseley did. He was born in Lincoln, Nebraska and taught for years at the University of Pennsylvania. He wrote incredibly beautiful and moving essays on science, and he wrote a number of poems - this is one of them.

The poem I did write and post here, which I dedicated to him at the time I wrote it [and now you know why] takes its title from a line in one of his essays.

He was a man of arts and letters as well as a scientist. I think his most beautiful prose work is an essay titled "The Star Thrower" in a collection under the same title. If it isn't still in print, a good library should have it. It's well worth reading.

He too came from an emotionally unhealthy household. But clearly, he found his voice. Thinking that I wrote this poem of his is the highest compliment you could possibly have given me....
The only way out is through, and the only way to win is not to play.

"... truth is all I can stand to live with." -- Moonlight52

http://galewarnings.blogspot.com

http://strangemercy.blogspot.com

http://potemkinsoffice.blogspot.com

Hopalong

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Re: To Everyone
« Reply #22 on: August 13, 2006, 11:57:40 AM »
Hi Storm,

It was spectacularly apt.

thanks so much,
Hops
"That'll do, pig, that'll do."