Sunday morning on my mind (with Poetry Index)

BALTIMORE, Maryland July 28, 2013- If the season ended today the Orioles would travel to Boston for the one-game Wild Card Playoff, with the Winner advancing to American League Divisional Series against an opponent to be named.  Of course, if the season ended today, neither the Yankees or Rangers would be in the Playoffs at all...There are dozens of things, dozens, that obama could do to improve the job picture in these United States.  And there are dozens and dozens of things obama could do to improve the economy that would improve the job picture.  And obama not only refuses to do any of those things, he blasts and humiliates - or tries to - those who want him to do those many things.  Instead, he dresses up tired and useless marxist ideas as if any of them would help these massive problems at all, ever. If you study the history of the communist bloc during the cold war you will see all of obama's economic ideas played out over and over, and you will see that they did not work.  You will also see that the governments who employed them, at the expense of tried and true open market ideas, all saw their governments implode in favor of capitalism and open markets...Driving through the northern reaches of central Maryland and then south central Pennsylvania yesterday I saw nothing but rolling fields full of tall and lush corn stalks, huge hardwoods creating a canopy of green wherever the fields gave way to the forest, and some of the most beautiful American scenery anywhere...Those poor souls condemned to my acquaintance know that I have a fervent love for poetry. Once in the proverbial blue moon I scratch a poem of sorts onto paper but mostly I read and acknowledge great poems. One enigmatic poet - some, at this point scream, "aren't they all?" - was Rupert Brooke. But don't be fooled by all of the gossip-column type stuff you read about Brooke, his best poems take a back seat to no one.  His problem is that in his short (actually way too short) career he also penned some God-awful numbers that continue in print and drag his reputation down.  Born in England (the Town of Rugby in Warwickshire) in 1887.  He died very young, at the age of 27, aboard a French Hospital Ship anchored in a bay on the Greek Island of Skyros in the Aegean Sea.  He was serving as a Lieutenant in the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force bound for fighting at Gallipoli in World War I.  His death there was ironic on many counts: much of his fame arose from a series of five War Sonnets he wrote not long before his death that, intended or not, fueled an anti-war fever in England at the time.  Wikepedia's write-up on Brooke gives an excellent consolidation of the Brooke myth, career, and his life and death.  The poem which he wrote and titled "Dust," is one of the best Romantic Poems I have ever come across.  And the strange thing is, most people familiar with it have no idea it is a Romantic Poem.  That is because the late Danny Kirwan, formerly of the .../legendary Rock Group Fleetwood Mac, purloined the first several verses of "Dust" and made it into a song which is on the "Bare Trees" album that was released well before the group took on Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks.  The song leads listeners to believe that they are hearing a commentary on death.  When you read the poem, you realize that Brooke was describing the most powerful Romantic Love he could conjure up. 

Dust
by Ruppert Brooke


When the white flame in us is gone,
    And we that lost the world’s delight,
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
    To crumble in our separate night

When your swift hair is quiet in death,

And through the lips corruption thrust

Has stilled the labour of my breath—

   When we are dust, when we are dust!---

Not dead, not undesirous yet,

Still sentient, still unsatisfied,

We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,

Around the places where we died,

And dance as dust before the sun,

And light of foot, and unconfined,

Hurry from road to road, and run

About the errands of the wind.

And every mote, on earth or air,

Will speed and gleam, down later days,

And like a secret pilgrim fare

By eager and invisible ways,

Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,

Till, beyond thinking, out of view,

One mote of all the dust that's I

Shall meet one atom that was you.

Then in some garden hushed from wind,

Warm in a sunset's afterglow,

The lovers in the flowers will find

A sweet and strange unquiet grow

Upon the peace; and, past desiring,

So high a beauty in the air,

And such a light, and such a quiring,

And such a radiant ecstasy there,

They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,

Or out of earth, or in the height,

Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,

Or two that pass, in light, to light,

Out of the garden, higher, higher. . . .

But in that instant they shall learn

The shattering ecstasy of our fire,

And the weak passionless hearts will burn

And faint in that amazing glow,

Until the darkness close above;

And they will know---poor fools, they'll know!---

One moment, what it is to love.  

If you are by some foolish chance wondering if there is a poetry index to be had for Credible and Incisive, the answer is: not until now. 

Index to Poems in Credible and Incisive

January 7, 2013, Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, by John Milton
April 6, 2013, poem no. 1, by John William Trotz
July 28, 2013, Dust, by Rupert Brooke