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It took me fifty years to deal with the Holocaust at all. And I did it in a literary way.

quote by Leonard Baskin
Added by Lucian Velea
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Canto the First

I
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the devil somewhat ere his time.

II
Vernon, the butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke,
Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe,
Evil and good, have had their tithe of talk,
And fill'd their sign posts then, like Wellesley now;
Each in their turn like Banquo's monarchs stalk,
Followers of fame, "nine farrow" of that sow:
France, too, had Buonaparté and Dumourier
Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier.

III
Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, Mirabeau,
Petion, Clootz, Danton, Marat, La Fayette,
Were French, and famous people, as we know:
And there were others, scarce forgotten yet,
Joubert, Hoche, Marceau, Lannes, Desaix, Moreau,
With many of the military set,
Exceedingly remarkable at times,
But not at all adapted to my rhymes.

IV
Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;
There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,
'T is with our hero quietly inurn'd;
Because the army's grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern'd;
Besides, the prince is all for the land-service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.

V
Brave men were living before Agamemnon
And since, exceeding valorous and sage,
A good deal like him too, though quite the same none;
But then they shone not on the poet's page,
And so have been forgotten:—I condemn none,
But can't find any in the present age
Fit for my poem (that is, for my new one);
So, as I said, I'll take my friend Don Juan.

[...] Read more

poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
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That Fifty Year Old Woman

That fifty year old woman
she is someones mother
that fifty year old woman
she is someones lover
them fifty years of her life
unseen by a cover.

Covered by the leaves
from the autumn trees is the grass
surrounded by blue tape
and nosey people who pretend to pass
a group of actors walk by
they have come from a history class
to make history new
with conversation with questions to ask.

A fifty year old woman
in an autumn so cold
a fifty year old woman
seen dark winter unfold
them fifty years of life
it is all we are told.

The actors, they didn't get any information
they did not get pictures
nothing known about the situation
nothing at all to discuss
fifty years of age is all thats said
on the morning paper on the fifty bus
thats all thats said
a fifty year old woman, shes found dead.

That fifty year old woman
shes not someones mother
that fifty year old woman
how she had no lover
them fifty years of life
unseen by a cover.

That fifty year old woman
she was quoted in the paper today
that fifty year old woman will be gone tomorrow
the writers they will show no sorrow
because its the way things work
as people pass
she no longer lies on grass
shes covered in dirt.

poem by Daniel McCann
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Genesis Of Genocide

GENESIS OF GENOCIDE

Jewish history comes with homily,
the seder shared by all the family
the best example. When men talk about
the Holocaust the homilies they're taught
homogenize the fate that menaced us
the Jews, with that of gentiles. Genesis
of genocide is changed: the hermeneutic
of revision makes it therapeutic
for those who wish to drive Jews from their land.
"The Jews, " they say, "have like the Nazis sinned,
creating victims just as Nazis did,
replacing Hitler with the settlers' God, "
revisionists exclaiming "Out of order! "
when hearing at the end of every seder
the mantra, "Next year in Jerusalem! "
while they as chauvinists condemn
the Jews, in spite of their thousand years
of blood and sweat and toil, and lots of tears,
as then in Jewish wounds rub salt, declaring
that there were other holocausts, comparing
other genocidal horrors to
what happened to the Jews, a point of view
that totally distorts significance of what,
in Wannsee, Hitler's minions chose to plot,
reducing the Solution that was Final
to a competition's quarterfinal.
The greatest homily of Jewish history
is Jews' survival, a great mystery
which it's impossible to overhype,
based on the theme of their great anthem, hope.

The last part of this poem was inspired by an emotional outburst that I had after Gerald Duchovnay told Linda, Florence Zhou and me about how he teaches students in Texas about the Holocaust by using the Shoah to explain to them "the holocaust in Sudan."
Ed Rothstein ("Memories of Holocaust, Fortified, " NYT,4/22/11) writes from Skokie:
Before the $45 million Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center opened here two years ago, there was some urgency in completing its 65,000-square-foot building, which now stands so incongruously monumental in the midst of Chicago's suburban landscape. At one time,7,000 Jews bearing the scars of the Holocaust had lived in Skokie with their families, and they were aging. Many had contributed artifacts to the museum; some participated when it was just a storefront on Main Street; some had their oral histories recorded for its exhibition and their lives chronicled in the institution's imposing companion book, "Memory and Legacy."…..
If we want to find a lesson in the events, for example, is it that individuals should not be bystanders or that nations should not be appeasers? Is the lesson that everybody should have a social conscience, or that a different kind of political action is needed when such forces emerge? Was the Holocaust a product of intolerance or an expression of more specific archetypal hatreds?
One of the challenges faced by Holocaust museums as survivors die is to understand their experience by seeing it through more than their eyes, to examine the past without homogenizing it with platitudes, to offer history without homily.
This poem echoes one that I wrote on 2/17/09, inspired by a statement by the Lubavitcher Rebbe:
TOMORROW MORNING, EARLY

"Will there be another holocaust? "
they asked the Rebbe of Lubavitch.
For an answer he was never lost.
"Of course there will be. Man is savage."

"When will this happen? " they inquired.
"Morgen in der frih, " he said,
Tomorrow morning, early, has transpired,
and millions are already dead.

[...] Read more

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Can You Deal With It?

(words and music: duran duran)
There must be somebody
Wholl make love to me.
Blow the rules away
And trash these yesterdays.
Live in simpathy
Use psychology.
To find the twist in me (ah-ha)
Can you deal with it?
Recent enquiry
Showed now boundry.
Loves the only way
Can you handle it?
Can you deal with it? (oowa)
Can you deal with it?
Can you deal with it? (oowa)
Can you deal with it?
Can you deal with it?
When you aint sorry? (can you deal with it? )
For all that you appologise (can you deal with it? )
Working up to something,
I know youre up to something...
Yeahhhh...
Can you deal with it? (somethings got to happen)
Can you deal with it? (somethings got to get me up)
Say you deal with it? (but nothing never happens)
Can you deal with it? (cos nothings ever good enough)
Say you deal with it?
Can you deal with it? (somethings got to happen)
Can you deal with it? (somethings got to get me up)
Say you deal with it? (but nothings gonna happen)
Can you deal with it? (cos nothings ever good enough)
Say you deal with it?

song performed by Duran Duran
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XI. Guido

You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Fifty Cents A Day

I am an humble Soldier
far from my friends and home,
mid scenes of war and hardships
I constantly must roam,
with many officers over me,
and them I must obey,
and do just what they tell me,
for fifty cents a day.

I enlisted in the army
to help my country's cause,
because I loved it dearly,
and would sustain its laws,
I felt a free man's duty,
his country to obey,
I came not as a hireling,
for fifty cents a day

I enlisted as a soldier.
a free man and a man
To do a soldiers duty,
as best a soldier can.
hope to fight the rebels,
and hate this long delay.
I came to help my country,
for fifty cents a day.

I now must yield to hardships
in cold in storm and rain
perchance with scanty rations
not even then complain
the right of seeking comfort
long since I signed away
my life I am slowly losing
for fifty cents a day.

who send the soldiers to the field
to buy his willing hand,
with promises so plentiful,
of treatment like a man?
twas those who, in two days,
received a larger pay
than does the soldiers in a month
at fifty cents a day

who promised to the soldier,
his wrongs should be redressed
if tyanny or officers
should his right oppress?
alas! the sword may smight him,

[...] Read more

poem by Shauna Stoltz
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Junle Law And Refusal To Forgive

When Israelis captured Eichmann and
decided they would put him up for trial
many people thought their conduct vile,
claiming Israel's acts were grossly out of hand.
The Washington Post said this was 'jungle law, '
while William Buckley called on Israel to
forgive its enemies. Arendt, a Jew,
called Hausner 'a Galician who knew
no languages.' No Jews would turn their cheek
towards the enemies not just outside,
but those within, and chose to override
complaints of those who said, 'We must be meek.'
Few understood the shift in paradigm
initiated by the judges, Jews
who were not merely plaintiffs who accuse,
but people justly punishing a crime.

This poem was written fifty years after execution of Adolf Eichmann, at around midnight on 5/31/62.

Franklin Foer, reviewing Deborah Lipstadt's The Eichmann Trial in the NYT,4/8/11 ('Why the Eichmann Trial Really Mattered') wrote:

To write about the trial of Adolf Eichmann is to put its most notorious court reporter, Hannah Arendt, in the dock. In the nearly 50 years since its publication, her account of those proceedings, 'Eichmann in Jerusalem, ' has come to overshadow its subject. The book, it is true, commands attention. It is a breathtaking admixture of genres (history, philosophy, journalism) and contains strong, often unconventional, moral judgments (especially her contempt for the Jewish leaders who cooperated with their murderers) . It aims to render grand historical conclusions but remains unintentionally and inescapably personal.

'The Eichmann Trial, ' by Deborah E. Lipstadt, can't entirely avoid Arendt, but it does manage to keep her largely offstage until the very end. Lipstadt has done a great service by untethering the trial from Arendt's polarizing presence, recovering the event as a gripping legal drama, as well as a hinge moment in Israel's history and in the world's delayed awakening to the magnitude of the Holocaust.
Aside from Eichmann's trial, in 1961, the Holocaust has been the subject of at least two other memorable legal battles. The first, of course, was the Nuremberg tribunals — proceedings that occurred amid the ruins of war and concentrated on the crimes of the Nazis, giving little voice to the still dazed survivors of the genocide. The second featured none other than Lipstadt herself. In 2000, she found herself the defendant in a British libel suit unsuccessfully brought by the writer David Irving, who protested her characterization of him as a Holocaust denier. This experience has made her a sensitive guide to the awkward complexities of squeezing the crimes of the Holocaust into the constricting confines of the courthouse.

The book begins with the daughter of an Argentine man dating the son of a German refugee. The Argentine man was himself German-born and half Jewish. Many fathers expect the worst from the boys their daughters bring home — but the man's suspicions about this one's family grew thanks to the boy's obvious anti-Semitism and his evasive answers to basic biographical questions. The man began to assume the worst and outlined his fears in a letter to a German prosecutor who happened to be Jewish. The prosecutor enlisted the man and his daughter in a stealth operation, and in the course of her snooping, the possibility arose that she was stalking Adolf Eichmann. When her father reported this astonishing finding to the prosecutor, he forwarded the tip to the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency.
The Mossad wasn't initially enthusiastic. But once it grasped the importance of its target, it unleashed a risky kidnapping scheme, what Lipstadt describes as the prototype of the brash, clever operations that are the foundation of the Mossad's mythic reputation. The Israelis drugged Eichmann and dressed him as an El Al crewman to get him past the Argentine authorities.

Much of Western opinion, Lipstadt reminds us, was not pleased. Argentina demanded Eichmann's repatriation, and the American establishment agreed. The Washington Post editorial page condemned Israel's 'jungle law'; The Christian Science Monitor equated Israel's claims to those of the Nazis. William F. Buckley Jr. said the kidnapping was symptomatic of the Jewish 'refusal to forgive.' Even the American Jewish Committee asked the Israeli prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to cede the prosecution to Germany or an international tribunal. But these challenges only made Ben-Gurion a more vociferous champion of the trial.

A principal villain of Arendt's book is Gideon Hausner, who had recently been installed as attorney general and who assigned himself the first chair in the prosecution. He was a strange choice for the job. There was little in his background as a commercial lawyer that suggested he had the courtroom skills to battle a cunning defendant, which Eichmann turned out to be. Indeed, Arendt accused Hausner of being more of a demagogic politician than a rule-abiding barrister. She disparaged his emotionalism and his aggressive effort to pin every crime of Nazi Germany on Eichmann. In one of her less-than-¬attractive letters from the trial, Arendt accused Hausner of having a 'ghetto mentality' and of being a 'typical Galician Jew,... one of those people who don't know any language.'…

It is always bracing to recall the world in which the Eichmann trial was held — where the slaughter was largely unacknowledged (and even unknown) . That's why Ben-Gurion and Hausner were spectacularly right to exploit the Eichmann prosecution for pedagogical purposes. They forced the Nazi genocide onto the front pages of the world's newspapers. Nearly 20 years after the fact, the Holocaust finally began to find a place in the public consciousness that reflected the size of the atrocity. (Indeed, the trial was largely responsible for making 'Holocaust' the universal term for the genocide.) Critics of the trial insinuated that the Israelis were somehow transgressing the bounds of fairness and justice by pressing these larger points. But Ben-Gurion and Hausner served precisely these goals by giving a voice to Eichmann's victims.

6/1/12 #10380

poem by Gershon Hepner
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Deal With The Preacher

I need love, the kind I've
never known before.
You need it, too, the kind that makes you feel so good, baby.
I want to give, give you all the love you need.
Well, I'm a loner, and that's the way I want to be, Yeah.
Let me say. As the sun climbs across the sky above,
So your smile filled me with a stronger love.
Just as you and I, watchin' the morning sky, oh, yeah.
Somehow I know it's time for me to say goodbye, Yeah, yeah.
Here's why: can't make a deal with the preacher, oh, yeah, yeah.
And I can't make a bargain in heaven, now.
Angel, you came to my window, Angel, you came to my door.
I was a fool and I let you in; I sure ain't no fool anymore!
Yeah, yeah, you better believe me right now baby.
Oh, yeah.
As the sun climbs across the sky above,
So your smile, filled me with a stronger love, mm.
Just as you and I, we're watchin' the morning sky,
And somehow I know, it's time for me to say goodbye.
I can't make a deal with the preacher, you know yeah.
And I can't make a bargain in heaven, yeah, yeah.
Heaven knows me by now.
I can't make a deal, oh no, no, no,
no.
I love you baby, I love you baby.
I can't make a deal, make a deal, make a deal,
Make a deal, make a deal. Yeah, yeah.
You know and I can't make no bargain in heaven,
Listen, I can't make a deal, make a deal, make a deal,
Make a deal, make a deal, oh, oh.
And I can't make no bargain in heaven, oh yeah.
Make a deal...

song performed by Bad Company
Added by Lucian Velea
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Deal

Since it costs a lot to win, and even more to lose,
You and me bound to spend some time wondrin what to choose.
Goes to show, you dont ever know,
Watch each card you play and play it slow,
Wait until that deal come round,
Dont you let that deal go down, no, no.
I been gamblin hereabouts for ten good solid years,
If I told you all that went down it would burn off both of your ears.
Goes to show you dont ever know
Watch each card you play and play it slow,
Wait until that deal come round,
Dont you let that deal go down, no, no.
Since you poured the wine for me and tightened up my shoes,
I hate to leave you sittin there, composin lonesome blues.
Goes to show you dont ever know
Watch each card you play and play it slow,
Wait until that deal come round, dont you let that deal go down.
Wait until that deal come round, dont you let that deal go down,
Wait until that deal come round, dont you let that deal go down,
Dont you let that deal go down, dont you let that deal go down.

song performed by Grateful Dead
Added by Lucian Velea
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Ode to the Great Unknown

'O breathe not his name!'
—Moore.

I

Thou Great Unknown!
I do not mean Eternity, nor Death,
That vast incog!
For I suppose thou hast a living breath,
Howbeit we know not from whose lungs 'tis blown,
Thou man of fog!
Parent of many children—child of none!
Nobody's son!
Nobody's daughter—but a parent still!
Still but an ostrich parent of a batch
Of orphan eggs,—left to the world to hatch
Superlative Nil!
A vox and nothing more,—yet not Vauxhall;
A head in papers, yet without a curl!
Not the Invisible Girl!
No hand—but a handwriting on a wall—
A popular nonentity,
Still call'd the same,—without identity!
A lark, heard out of sight,—
A nothing shin'd upon,—invisibly bright,
'Dark with excess of light!'
Constable's literary John-a-nokes—
The real Scottish wizard—and not which,
Nobody—in a niche;
Every one's hoax!
Maybe Sir Walter Scott—
Perhaps not!
Why dost thou so conceal and puzzle curious folks?

II

Thou,—whom the second-sighted never saw,
The Master Fiction of fictitious history!
Chief Nong-tong-paw!
No mister in the world—and yet all mystery!
The 'tricksy spirit' of a Scotch Cock Lane—
A novel Junius puzzling the world's brain—
A man of Magic—yet no talisman!
A man of clair obscure—not he o' the moon!
A star—at noon.
A non-descriptus in a caravan,
A private—of no corps—a northern light
In a dark lantern,—Bogie in a crape—
A figure—but no shape;

[...] Read more

poem by Thomas Hood
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I Looked Out at Life with Holocaust Eyes

I looked out at life with Holocaust eyes
And what better did I know that I had been
looking through the lens of guilt and affliction,
Seeing life amiss and askew through my Holocaust guilt,
This fatal flaw was burning in my eyes
and how it lay siege to my Jewish heart,
A Greek tragedy in the making all of these years,
The guilt rose from deeply sealed vaults
inside my Jewish eyes and heart,
I could not help but see life through my Holocaust eyes,
Until these Holocaust pangs smoldered and burned
its acrid smoke in my eye sockets,
I peeled away its painful gauze and ace bandages,
My eyes had once lamented over the Holocaust afflictions,
But now I could see with clarion eyes and feel anew
with my Jewish heart by virtue of Holocaust healing balm,
As it clarified the lens, fluid and muscles of my eyes,
And now this healing balm paved a shimmering path within me,
For my Jewish heart to emerge and then shine its splendor
outwards on straight and forward path of life.

poem by Alan Freshman
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III. The Other Half-Rome

Another day that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
And lamentable smile on those poor lips,
And, under the white hospital-array,
A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise
You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,
Alive i' the ruins. 'T is a miracle.
It seems that, when her husband struck her first,
She prayed Madonna just that she might live
So long as to confess and be absolved;
And whether it was that, all her sad life long
Never before successful in a prayer,
This prayer rose with authority too dread,—
Or whether, because earth was hell to her,
By compensation, when the blackness broke
She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,
To show her for a moment such things were,—
Or else,—as the Augustinian Brother thinks,
The friar who took confession from her lip,—
When a probationary soul that moved
From nobleness to nobleness, as she,
Over the rough way of the world, succumbs,
Bloodies its last thorn with unflinching foot,
The angels love to do their work betimes,
Staunch some wounds here nor leave so much for God.
Who knows? However it be, confessed, absolved,
She lies, with overplus of life beside
To speak and right herself from first to last,
Right the friend also, lamb-pure, lion-brave,
Care for the boy's concerns, to save the son
From the sire, her two-weeks' infant orphaned thus,
And—with best smile of all reserved for him—
Pardon that sire and husband from the heart.
A miracle, so tell your Molinists!

There she lies in the long white lazar-house.
Rome has besieged, these two days, never doubt,
Saint Anna's where she waits her death, to hear
Though but the chink o' the bell, turn o' the hinge
When the reluctant wicket opes at last,
Lets in, on now this and now that pretence,
Too many by half,—complain the men of art,—
For a patient in such plight. The lawyers first
Paid the due visit—justice must be done;
They took her witness, why the murder was.
Then the priests followed properly,—a soul
To shrive; 't was Brother Celestine's own right,
The same who noises thus her gifts abroad.
But many more, who found they were old friends,
Pushed in to have their stare and take their talk

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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At A Meeting Of Friends

AUGUST 29, 1859

I REMEMBER--why, yes! God bless me! and was it so long ago?
I fear I'm growing forgetful, as old folks do, you know;
It must have been in 'forty--I would say 'thirty-nine--
We talked this matter over, I and a friend of mine.

He said, 'Well now, old fellow, I'm thinking that you and I,
If we act like other people, shall be older by and by;
What though the bright blue ocean is smooth as a pond can be,
There is always a line of breakers to fringe the broadest sea.

'We're taking it mighty easy, but that is nothing strange,
For up to the age of thirty we spend our years like Change;
But creeping up towards the forties, as fast as the old years fill,
And Time steps in for payment, we seem to change a bill.'

'I know it,' I said, 'old fellow; you speak the solemn truth;
A man can't live to a hundred and likewise keep his youth;
But what if the ten years coming shall silver-streak my hair,
You know I shall then be forty; of course I shall not care.

'At forty a man grows heavy and tired of fun and noise;
Leaves dress to the five-and-twenties and love to the silly boys;
No foppish tricks at forty, no pinching of waists and toes,
But high-low shoes and flannels and good thick worsted hose.'

But one fine August morning I found myself awake
My birthday:--By Jove, I'm forty! Yes, forty, and no mistake!
Why, this is the very milestone, I think I used to hold,
That when a fellow had come to, a fellow would then be old!

But that is the young folks' nonsense; they're full of their
foolish stuff;
A man's in his prime at forty,--I see that plain enough;
At fifty a man is wrinkled, and may be bald or gray;
I call men old at fifty, in spite of all they say.

At last comes another August with mist and rain and shine;
Its mornings are slowly counted and creep to twenty-nine,
And when on the western summits the fading light appears,
It touches with rosy fingers the last of my fifty years.

There have been both men and women whose hearts were firm and bold,
But there never was one of fifty that loved to say 'I'm old';
So any elderly person that strives to shirk his years,
Make him stand up at a table and try him by his peers.

Now here I stand at fifty, my jury gathered round;
Sprinkled with dust of silver, but not yet silver-crowned,

[...] Read more

poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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We Deal In Dreams

Don't you feel so very pointless
In the feelings of the rain
And the violence of the sun
I must confess that I feel graciously
Bigger than the rain
And hotter than the sun
What did you do
What do you say
When the blood spilled is of your loved one
And the kremlins of the world fall around you
We deal in dreams, yeah
We deal in dreams
We deal in structures that grow cold in our hearts
Oh fearful, crying people
The fool is by the river
Watching, but not swimming
It takes energy not to get used to it
And fall into this place
Where everything runs together and dies
This quiet kingdom she is now
Forever will she be, in silent celebration
We deal in dreams, yeah
We deal in dreams
We deal in structures that grow cold in our hearts, yeah
We deal in dreams
We deal in dreams
We deal in structures that grow cold in our hearts, yeah
We deal in dreams
We deal in dreams, silent silent dreams
Structures that grow cold
Structures that grow cold
Structures that grow cold in our hearts, yeah
Don't you feel so very pointless
In the feelings of the rain
And the violence of the sun

song performed by Live
Added by Lucian Velea
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The four Monarchyes, the Assyrian being the first, beginning under Nimrod, 131. Years after the Floo

When time was young, & World in Infancy,
Man did not proudly strive for Soveraignty:
But each one thought his petty Rule was high,
If of his house he held the Monarchy.
This was the golden Age, but after came
The boisterous son of Chus, Grand-Child to Ham,
That mighty Hunter, who in his strong toyles
Both Beasts and Men subjected to his spoyles:
The strong foundation of proud Babel laid,
Erech, Accad, and Culneh also made.
These were his first, all stood in Shinar land,
From thence he went Assyria to command,
And mighty Niniveh, he there begun,
Not finished till he his race had run.
Resen, Caleh, and Rehoboth likewise
By him to Cities eminent did rise.
Of Saturn, he was the Original,
Whom the succeeding times a God did call,
When thus with rule, he had been dignifi'd,
One hundred fourteen years he after dy'd.
Belus.
Great Nimrod dead, Belus the next his Son
Confirms the rule, his Father had begun;
Whose acts and power is not for certainty
Left to the world, by any History.
But yet this blot for ever on him lies,
He taught the people first to Idolize:
Titles Divine he to himself did take,
Alive and dead, a God they did him make.
This is that Bel the Chaldees worshiped,
Whose Priests in Stories oft are mentioned;
This is that Baal to whom the Israelites
So oft profanely offered sacred Rites:
This is Beelzebub God of Ekronites,
Likewise Baalpeor of the Mohabites,
His reign was short, for as I calculate,
At twenty five ended his Regal date.
Ninus.
His Father dead, Ninus begins his reign,
Transfers his seat to the Assyrian plain;
And mighty Nineveh more mighty made,
Whose Foundation was by his Grand-sire laid:
Four hundred forty Furlongs wall'd about,
On which stood fifteen hundred Towers stout.
The walls one hundred sixty foot upright,
So broad three Chariots run abrest there might.
Upon the pleasant banks of Tygris floud
This stately Seat of warlike Ninus stood:
This Ninus for a God his Father canonized,
To whom the sottish people sacrificed.

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poem by Anne Bradstreet
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Be Cool

If theres one rule to this game
Everybodys gonna name
Its, be cool!
If youre worried or uncertain
If your feelings are hurtin
Youre a fool if you cant keep cool
Charm em
Dont alarm em
Keep things light
Keep your worries out of sight
And play it cool
Play it cool
Fifty-fifty
Fire and ice
If your heart is on the floor
Cause youve just seen your lover
Comin through the door with a new fool--
Be cool
Dont get riled
Smile-keep it light
Be your own best friend tonight
And play it cool
Play it cool
Fifty-fifty
Fire and ice
Dont get jealous
Dont get over-zealous
Keep your cool
Dont whine
Kiss of that flaky valentine
Youre nobodys fool
Be cool fool
Be cool
(lots of other fish in the sea)
Play it cool
Play it cool
Fifty-fifty
Fire and ice
So if theres one rule to this game
Everybodys gonna name
Its--be cool
If youre worried or uncertain
If your feelings are hurtin
Youre a fool if you cant keep cool
They want you to
Charm em
Dont alarm em
Keep things light
Keep your worries out of sight
And play it cool

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song performed by Joni Mitchell
Added by Lucian Velea
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II. Half-Rome

What, you, Sir, come too? (Just the man I'd meet.)
Be ruled by me and have a care o' the crowd:
This way, while fresh folk go and get their gaze:
I'll tell you like a book and save your shins.
Fie, what a roaring day we've had! Whose fault?
Lorenzo in Lucina,—here's a church
To hold a crowd at need, accommodate
All comers from the Corso! If this crush
Make not its priests ashamed of what they show
For temple-room, don't prick them to draw purse
And down with bricks and mortar, eke us out
The beggarly transept with its bit of apse
Into a decent space for Christian ease,
Why, to-day's lucky pearl is cast to swine.
Listen and estimate the luck they've had!
(The right man, and I hold him.)

Sir, do you see,
They laid both bodies in the church, this morn
The first thing, on the chancel two steps up,
Behind the little marble balustrade;
Disposed them, Pietro the old murdered fool
To the right of the altar, and his wretched wife
On the other side. In trying to count stabs,
People supposed Violante showed the most,
Till somebody explained us that mistake;
His wounds had been dealt out indifferent where,
But she took all her stabbings in the face,
Since punished thus solely for honour's sake,
Honoris causâ, that's the proper term.
A delicacy there is, our gallants hold,
When you avenge your honour and only then,
That you disfigure the subject, fray the face,
Not just take life and end, in clownish guise.
It was Violante gave the first offence,
Got therefore the conspicuous punishment:
While Pietro, who helped merely, his mere death
Answered the purpose, so his face went free.
We fancied even, free as you please, that face
Showed itself still intolerably wronged;
Was wrinkled over with resentment yet,
Nor calm at all, as murdered faces use,
Once the worst ended: an indignant air
O' the head there was—'t is said the body turned
Round and away, rolled from Violante's side
Where they had laid it loving-husband-like.
If so, if corpses can be sensitive,
Why did not he roll right down altar-step,
Roll on through nave, roll fairly out of church,
Deprive Lorenzo of the spectacle,

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Sunday at Hampstead

I

(AN VERY IDLE IDYLL BY A VERY HUMBLE MEMBER OF THE GREAT AND NOBLE LONDON MOB.)

This is the Heath of Hampstead,
This is the Dome of Saint Paul’s;
Beneath, on the serried house-tops,
A chequered luster falls:

And the might city of London,
Under the clouds and the light,
Seems a low, wet beach, half shingle,
With a few sharp rocks upright.

Here we sit, my darling,
And dream an hour away:
The donkeys are hurried and worried,
But we are not donkeys to-day:

Through all the weary week, dear,
We toil in the murk down there,
Tied to a desk and a counter,
A patient, stupid pair!

But on Sunday we slip our thether,
And away from the smoke and the smirch;
Too grateful to God for His Sabbath
To shut its hours in a church.

Away to the green, green country,
Under the open sky;
Where the earth’s sweet breath is incense
And the lark sings psalms on high.

On Sunday we’re Lord and Lady,
With ten times the love and glee
Of those pale, languid rich ones
Who are always and never free.

The drawl and stare and simper,
So fine and cold and staid,
Like exquisite waxwork figures
That must be kept in the shade.

We can laugh out loud when merry,
We can romp at kiss-in-the-ring,
We can take our beer at a public,
We can loll on the grass and sing.

Would you grieve very much, my darling,

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poem by James Thomson
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Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas

'How long shall fortune faile me nowe,
And harrowe me with fear and dread?
How long shall I in bale abide,
In misery my life to lead?

'To fall from my bliss, alas the while!
It was my sore and heavye lott:
And I must leave my native land,
And I must live a man forgot.

'One gentle Armstrong I doe ken,
A Scot he is, much bound to mee;
He dwelleth on the Border side,
To him I'll goe right privilie.'

Thus did the noble Percy 'plaine,
With a heavy heart and wel-away,
When he with all his gallant men
On Bramham moor had lost the day.

But when he to the Armstrongs came,
They dealt with him all treacherouslye;
For they did strip that noble erle,
And ever an ill death may they dye!

False Hector to Earl Murray sent,
To shew him where his guest did hide,
Who sent him to te Lough-leven,
With William Douglas to abide.

And when he to the Douglas came,
He halched him right courteouslie;
Say'd, 'Welcome, welcome, noble earle,
Here thou shalt safelye bide with mee.'

When he had in Lough-leven been
Many a month and many a day,
To the regent the lord warden sent,
That banisht erle for to betray.

He offered him great store of gold,
And wrote a letter fair to see,
Saying, 'Good my Lord, grant me my boon,
And yield that banisht man to mee.'

Erle Percy at the supper sate,
With many a goodly gentleman;
The wylie Douglas then bespake,
And thus to flyte with him began.

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poem by Anonymous Olde English
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Most Of The So Called Literary Experts

Most of the so called literary experts are dismissive of rhyme
They say 'tis the poetry of a long gone time
Yet the poets that they laud the poems they do write
Cannot be put to music and are hard to read and recite
The rhymer of today is not looked on as a poet
Or is not seen as one worthy of literary note
By the so called literary experts with literary degrees
Though their judgement on what is or is not poetry not everyone does please
They never will convince the old style rhyme buff
To him or her well written rhyme is not throw away stuff
In well written rhyme are the words to a song
And good rhyming poetry to music belong
Yet the degreed literary experts who on poetry like to have their say
Dismiss rhyming poets and their poetry as of yesterday.

poem by Francis Duggan
Added by Poetry Lover
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