As Plato quoted Heraclitus, and the peerless Dr. Nathan Tierney had us memorize, “ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ”.  Tomorrow may be better.  It may be worse.  But it will certainly be different.

As the Sufis graced us, and Lincoln quoted:

هذا أيضا سوف يمر أو يعدي

And, with any luck, when it passes, it will pass into publication.  Properly lived, then properly rendered, it may be exquisite — and, it is to be hoped, meaningful to Niall in his adulthood.

But that is not for now.  For tonight, I console myself with Tibullus’ elegy: “Credula vitam spes fovet et melius cras fore semper dicit“.  The hope may be unwarranted, but it is good enough for a pillow.  Good night.  See you on the flip-side, friends.

Being interviewed by a social worker today, because I’m applying for disability benefits, I was asked to “define love”.

“Huh,”  I said.  “I left my Keats at home.”  No reaction.  I thought for about thirty seconds, and then said, “A relationship in which one cares about another’s well-being more than one’s own.”

Then she asked me to “define peace”.  I reflected for another half minute and settled on “A shared conviction that differences can be settled without resort to violence or cruelty.”

After a few more moments I said “I’m not sure those are very good definitions.”  But she seemed pleased.

Later I realized I probably wasn’t being tested on eloquence or insight, but rather being screened for answers such as “Them’s when I cut their eyes out so they don’t look at me so funny.”

I mentioned — can’t find it — that if anyone asked to see what I consider the one decent bit of poetry I’ve ever written, I’d post it.  No one has, but I’m feeling brave (fortified?) tonight, and thought I’d share it.

With all the poetry that I’ve spent lots of time on, this was a moment in my undergraduate “Creative Writing: Poetry” class at which I arrived at class ten minutes beforehand and thought, “Oh, shit, sonnet!”  I wrote it longhand on a piece of filler paper.  I didn’t really like structured poetry (although, with distance, I think C.S. Lewis was right when he stated that one needs to understand the rules of poetry before one breaks them), so I restructured the sonnet into an ABCDCBA ABCDCBA format to suggest the to-and-fro motion of an ocean storm.  Anyway, here it is:

Shipwreck (1996)

Beneath the blue-grey sky, upon the blue
Entombed, in ice, my dear-love ship remains
As I, alone, am tossed above the sea.
No bird, no fish in view to see my plight
For Neptune in his frigid heart must be
A vicious god, whose brutal mind complains
When forced to see what angered mortals do.

I faced the sea with rage, that much is true –
Alas! this icy cold must chill my veins!
My rage alone cannot afford to be
A martyr slain, beside my soul this night.
I faced the sea alone, that much I see –
And left adrift, with Neptune at his reins
I gasp, and scream, and bare my rage anew.

Please be gentle.