THE CHILDREN OF EVE

 

                       To Thee do we cry, poor banished Children Of Eve.  To Thee we do

                        send up our sighs...

                                                    - 'Salve Regina' - Catholic Prayer

                       And her being dead was filling her like fullness for like a fruit all

                       of sweetness and dark, she too was full of her immense death.

                                                   - 'Rainer Maria' -  Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes

                        But the day of the absolute is over, and we're in for the strange

                        Gods once more.

                                                   - 'Kangaroo' - D.H. Lawrence

                        What Lonely death am I to die/ in this cold region.

                                                  - Endymion - John Keats

                         The modern artist must live by craft and violence... These

                          artists, so called , whose work does not show this strife...

                         are uninteresting.

                                                - ' The New Sculpture' - Ezra Pound

                          Consider, brethren, what a wonderful honour this is. We

                          men are cared for by Angels... we who are so full of the

                          miseries of the flesh that we cannot bear to be in each other's

                          presence are watched without ceasing by these glorious beings.

                                               - ' On Devine Providence and the Guardian Angels'

                                                          - Gerard Manley Hopkins

                        

                     

   And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us

   truths...

                             William Shakespeare,  Macbeth

    I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot

    explain as a fraud.

                              C. G. Jung,  Address to the Society for psychical Research 1919

     There must have been a moment, at the beginning where we could have said- No.

     But somehow we missed it.

                                Tom Stoppard- Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead

       He left you, he left you, and now you are ours...

                                 Kathryn Nuernberger- "You are afraid of the Dark"

THE FURIES

 

SISTERS STRANGE

A word worth one coin, silence is worth two.

                                                  Chiam Potok,  The Chosen

The moon on the one hand, the dawn on the other; The moon is my sister.

                                                   Hilaire Belloc,  The Early Morning

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything

than face the odds.

                                                     Iris Murdoch,  Acastios: Two Platonic Dialogues

I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many

birthdays as the grains of dust. I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.

                                                       Ovid,  Metamorphoses

THE FURIES

The vast cities of America, The fertile plains of Hindostan, The crowded 

abodes of the Chinese, are menaced with utter ruin.

                                                          Mary Shelley,  The Last man  (1826)

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of  the living.

                        

                                                             Marcus Tullus Cicero,  Ninth Oration

The Starlings wandered

Till three hawks took them

And now my agents

Have caught the cripple.

                                                             Les Murray, 'Property'

THE NAMELESS ONES

                                           

"Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill"

                                                                   -Robert Louis Stevenson "Requiem"

"Is it justice to make evil, and then punish for it?"

                                                                    - James Fenimore Cooper

                                                                       The Last of The Mohicans

"My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are grey faces that peer

ever over my shoulder."

                                                                     - William Golding   Freefall

"I incline to Cain's heresy...I let my brother go to the Devil in his own way."

                                                                      - Robert Louis Stevenson

                                                                         Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

THE DIRTY SOUTH

               

 

"Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.

                                                                            -Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

"A small town is automatically a world of pretense. Since everyone knows everyone elses

business, it becomes the job of the populace to act as if they don't know what is going on

instead of it's being their job to find out...in a world like this, news is not welcome..."

                                                                            - Jeanne Basinger,  A Woman's view; How

                                                            Hollywood spoke to Women, 1930-1960

"The blood-dimmed tide loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned...

                                                                            - W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming"

" Yonder come little David

    with his rock and sling

     I don't wanna meet him,

     He's a dangerous man.

                                                                         - "Sit Down Servant"  (Traditional)

"But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for the murderers, the sexually

  immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that

  burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death."

                                                                           - Revelation 21:8

                                                                             

A BOOK OF BONES

Waneth the watch, but
the world holdeth.
                            -Anonymous, "The Seafarer"



Dawn-sniffing revenant
plodder through midnight
rain, question me again.
                                -Seamus Heaney, "Casualty


Trackway and camp and city
lost, salt marsh where is corn; old wars, old
peace, old arts that cease,
and so was England born...
                              -Rudyard Kipling, "Puck of Pook's Hill


The thing from the churchyard
that was found with it's
hand missing
in the excavation
undertook on the north side called
Several times
wanted converse
about your assumptions.
                            -Bill Griffiths,
                           "Decorating & Insurance Factors"


This oratory looks evil.
With herbs overgrown it
fits well that fellow 
transformed into Green to
follow here his devotions
in the Devils fashion.
                         -Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
                          (trans. JRR Tolkien)

It is not what they built.
It is not what they knocked down.
It is not the houses.
It is the spaces between the houses.
It is not the streets that no longer exist.
It is not your memories which haunt you.
                         - James Fenton, "German Requiem


Out of the Ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
                   -Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus


Dire portents appeared over 
Northumbria and sorely
Frightened the people.
                    -Anonymous, "Anglo Saxon Chronicles


Besides I find this tree
hath never been
like other fruit trees, walled
or hedged in,
but in the highway standing
many a year,
It never yet was robbed, as
I could hear.
The reason apparent to our eyes,
that what it bears, are dead
commodities...
                      -John Taylor, "Description of Tyburn


I kill wher I please
because it is all mine
There is no sophistry in
my body:
My manners are tearing off heads-
                        -Ted Hughes, "Hawk Roasting"


Lo! Thy dread Empire chaos!
is restor'd;
Light hand great Anarch!
Lets the curtain fall;
And Universal darkness
Buries all.
                       -Alexander Pope, "The Dunciad"


Deflores: Yes, and the
while I coupled with your mate
At barley-break; Now we are
left in hell.
Vermandero: We are all there; It circumscribes us here.
                         -Thomas Middleton, "The Changling"

There are other places
which also are the worlds end,
some at the sea jaws,
Or over a dark lake, in a desert or a city-
But this is the nearest, in place and time,
Now and in England.
                      -T.S. Eiot, "Little Gidding from four Quartets"

         

THE WOMAN IN THE WOODS

"And I will restore you to the years that the locust hath eaten..."
                                                                                  Joel 2:25



The only ghost, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young
mothers, returned to see how their children fare.
                                                                                  J.M. Barrie - The Little White Bird



Thomas: Who shall have it?
Tempter: He who will come.
Thomas: What shall be the month?
Tempter: The last from the first.
Thomas:  What shall we give for it?
Tempter:  Pretence of priestly power.
Thomas:  Why should we give it?
Tempter:  For the power and the glory.
                                                                              T.S. Eliot- Murder In the Cathedral




We all know that books burn - yet we have the greater knowledge that
books cannot be killed by fire.... 
People die, but books never die...
in this war, we know, books are weapons.
                                                                              Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945)