When I went out to kill myself, I caught A pack of hoodlums beating up a man. Running to spare his suffering, I forgot My name, my number, how my day began, How soldiers milled around the garden stone And sang amusing songs; how all that day Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.
Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten, Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms: Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten, The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope, I held the man for nothing in my arms.
In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not. – T.S. Eliot, from East Coker
I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through belief in the Threeness, Through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
I arise today Through the strength of Christ’s birth with His baptism, Through the strength of His crucifixion with His burial, Through the strength of His resurrection with His ascension, Through the strength of His descent for the judgment of doom.
I arise today Through the strength of the love of cherubim, In the obedience of angels, In the service of archangels, In the hope of resurrection to meet with reward, In the prayers of patriarchs, In the predictions of prophets, In the preaching of apostles, In the faith of confessors, In the innocence of holy virgins, In the deeds of righteous men.
I arise today, through The strength of heaven, The light of the sun, The radiance of the moon, The splendor of fire, The speed of lightning, The swiftness of wind, The depth of the sea, The stability of the earth, The firmness of rock.
I arise today, through God’s strength to pilot me, God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s host to save me From snares of devils, From temptation of vices, From everyone who shall wish me ill, afar and near.
I summon today All these powers between me and those evils, Against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and soul, Against incantations of false prophets, Against black laws of pagandom, Against false laws of heretics, Against craft of idolatry, Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards, Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul; Christ to shield me today Against poison, against burning, Against drowning, against wounding, So that there may come to me an abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, Through belief in the Threeness, Through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
The gregarious And mild-tempered never know Each other by name: Creatures who make friends are shy And liable to anger. * Unable to see A neighbor to frown at, Eutroplus beat his wife. (after K. Lorenz) * A dead man Who never caused others to die Seldom rates a statue. * Small tyrants, threatened by big, Sincerely believe They love Liberty. * Tyrants may get killed, But their hangmen usually Die in their beds. * Patriots? Little boys Obsessed by bigness, Big pricks, big money, big bangs. * He praised his God For the expertise Of his torturer and his chef. * Reluctant at first To break his sworn promise Of Safe Conduct, after Consulting his confessor, In good spirits He signed a death-warrant. * “Be godly,” he told his flock, “Bloody and extreme Like the Holy Ghost.” * After the massacre, They pacified their conscience By telling jokes. * When their Infidel Paymaster fell in arrears, The mercenaries Recalled their unstained childhoods In devout Christian homes. * With silver mines, Recruiting grounds, A general of real genius, He thought himself invulnerable: In one battle He lost all three. * The last king Of a fallen dynasty Is never well spoken of. * Intelligent, rich, Humane, the young man dreamed of Posthumous glory As connoisseur and patron Of Scholarship and the Arts. An age bent on war, The ambitions of his king, Decreed otherwise: He was to be remembered As a destroyer of towns. * Born to flirt and write light verses, He died bravely By the headsman’s axe. * Into the prosperous quiet Between two wars Came Anopheles. * The Queen fled, leaving Books behind her That shocked the pious usurper. * Assembling With ceremonial pomp, The Imperial Diet Cravely debated Legislation It had no power to reject. * Victorious over The foreign tyrant, The patriots retained His emergency Police regulations, Devised to suppress them. * In States unable To alleviate Distress, Discontent is hanged. * In semi-literate countries Demagogues pay Court to teen-agers. * To maintain a stud Of polo ponies he now Was too stout to ride, He slapped taxes on windows, Hearth-stones and door-steps and wives. * He walked like someone Who’d never had to Open a door for himself. * Abandoning his wives, He fled with their jewels And two hundred dogs. * Providentially Right for once in his lifetime (His reasons were wrong), The old sod was permitted To save civilization. * Who died in Nineteen-Sixty-Five More worthy of honors Than Lark, the cow Who gave to mankind One hundred and fifteen thousand Litres of milk? * When we do evil, We and our victims Are equally bewildered. * * The decent, probably, Outnumber the swine, But few can inherit The genes, or procure Both the money and time, To join the civilized.
A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there.
In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.
He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough And rested his throat upon the stone bottom, And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness, He sipped with his straight mouth, Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently.
Someone was before me at my water-trough, And I, like a second-comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do, And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do, And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment, And stooped and drank a little more, Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.
And voices in me said, If you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.
But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth?
Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured.
And yet those voices: If you were not afraid, you would kill him!
And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth.
He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black, Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream, Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned.
I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.
I think it did not hit him, But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in an undignified haste, Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front, At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.
And I thought of the albatross, And I wished he would come back, my snake.
For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again.
And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness.
Sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.
Edge of Atlantic 