On St. Thomas More--for her grandson, my nephew, his grandmother: My Mom

Relativity

Most have some and few have none but More had
more than most, while he with most of all still
wanted more -- still wanted More. Yet More would
not take more nor give of More to seek what
most would want, for More had All and more was
none (to More but not to all). So More gave
all for All, gave More for All, to leave the
one with most not more, nor More, but less than
most, not even none: not all, not most, not more, not
More, not some, not less, not none, not even
none, but less, far less, and less than none at all.
(c) DHB 2008

III

They've been used to profit
From years of traffic in men's desires
For which they've sailed the many seas
For which they've sacrificed their lives.

And all for what?

A Gold dubloon festooned upon a mast
That marked a value they could not measure?
Or perhaps these former schoolmasters
Fancied them masters instead of slaves.

But who ain't a slave? Tell me that.
What of it if some schoolmaster
Thumps and punches me and
Orders me to get a broom?
How if everyone is served in some such way
And the universal thump is passed around?

All hands should rub each-other's shoulder blades
And be content.

They have no cause for complaint, these
Grub-worms and Sub-subs,
For they have made their profit and ought
To count the pennies in their jars
Since no wine will ever warm them

Against the cold that can't help to come
Since the storm gathers
And presages a grand-hooded phantom,
Like a snow-hill in the air.


(image (c) copyright Justin Quinn, "Moby Dick Chapter 55 or 9200 times E")

And they've been used to profit

Rembrandt's Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple (1626)
(Part II, "They Say it is the Second Coming" (c) Gregory Borse 2007-2008)

II

In the market they complain
There's noone left to buy their wares:
And they've been used to profit.

From gold, silver, jewels, and pearls,
From purple linen and from silk,
From scarlet, sandalwood, and ivory,
From marble, iron and from bronze.

From cinnamon and from spices,
From ointment, incense, and from myrrh.

I'll keep my money against the cold
And wait for winter to take its hold.
And when I make again the street,
I'll hear them calling, men to mete:

Wine! Oil! Flour! Wheat! We can sell you things to eat!  
We have Cattle! We have Sheep! We have Goats! And Chariots!

I'll check the coins still in my pocket
And wonder at their bitter cry:

We have bodies and souls of men to buy. . .

[see post labeled "Let us go and make our visit" for part I]

Remembering a Friend

Installed at the Gasson Rotunda at Boston College in 1913, this statue of St. Michael the Archangel's victory over Satan was commissioned in 1865 by Gardner Brewer for his Boston Street home. It was sculpted by Scipione Tadolini.

I offer the image today in tribute to a friend who passed away recently. He taught me something about hope and perseverance, faith and conviviality, good humor, courage, love, and wisdom. I will miss him.

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host -
by the Divine Power of God -
cast into hell, satan and all the evil spirits,
who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

Rest in Peace, friend. I will never forget your voice.

Let us go and make our visit

Dante and Virgil in Hell by William Adolphe-Bouguereau (1850).

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

***

If I thought my answer were given/ to anyone who would ever return to the world, / this flame would stand still without moving any further. / But since never from this abyss/ has anyone ever returned alive, if what I hear is true, / without fear of infamy I answer you.

Dante's L'Inferno--(Canto 27, 61-66) Spoken by Guido de Montefeltro (one of Dante's "false counselors"). The above translation, as well as the quote from T.S. Eliot below, from The Norton Anthology of Poetry Shorter 4th Edition (Ferguson, Salter, Stallworthy, eds. Norton and Company, New York, 1997. 767).

Bouguereau's image is of Dante and Virgil's encounter, in the fifth circle, with those who suffer the sin of wrath, just on the edge of the river Styx. The lines quoted are secondarily from Dante's L'inferno, as incorporated into T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."

Disorienting, perhaps. But T. S. Eliot begins his poem with the quote from Dante, above, in the original Italian. He proceeds with a very curious opening speech--perhaps uttered by a kind of anti-Virgil inviting a wearily post-modern Dante on a tour of a different kind of Hell:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

***

Almost as if to say, but not quite yet:
(Here begins "They Say it is the Second Coming" (c) Gregory Borse 2007-2008)

I

They say it is the Second Coming,
So I hide myself on a side street
And count the coins in my pocket

To fill my flask one last time
And soften steely nerves
For the suffering I know
will surely come.

But it never does.

I go and buy my pint at the corner package store.
The counter-lady knows me there and asks if I'd like more.

I tell her yes but thank-you no
And wander to the street,
Forgetting to prepare my face
For the faces I might meet.

It doesn't matter.

They know me because they do not know me
Nor do I know them.
We simply share a circle
And will meet again.

(for Part II, see post labeled "And they've been used to profit")

What Price Bread?

Ary Scheffer's Temptation of Christ (1854).

The last century proved not to be the deciding contest in the argument between security and freedom. But this century will prove to be so.

The twentieth century will go down for being, among other things, the beginning of a short war between authoritarianism and liberty. The twenty-first century will go down for being, perhaps for nothing else, the century in which that contest was decided. But the questions upon which this contest are founded were raised in the 19th century.

As Betty Burch, in Dictatorship and Totalitarianism (D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc. 1964) wrote, "The basic issues in the relation of freedom to authority are raised by Dostoyevsky in the dialogue between Christ and the Grand Inquisitor [in The Brothers Karamozov], a dialogue in which Christ remains silent. The aged Inquisitor chides Christ for offering men the freedom they dread instead of the bread they want. The Inquisitor admits that men must have something beyond bread for which to live, but whoever holds authority can guide their conscience, and whoever holds their conscience and gives them bread can rule the world and bring universal peace and happiness. The questions raised by the Grand Inquisitor lie at the heart of social organization. . . . [W]hat price in freedom are men willing to pay for bread . . .?"

Burch notes that in Dostoyevsky's dialogue, Christ "remains silent."

He remains silent, perhaps, because it is our time to speak.

Agrippa's Statement of Faith

There is no more humble signature on a piece of art than Agrippa's on the Pantheon in Rome-- Agrippa: I made this.

I know it's tranlsated: "built during his third consulate." But it means "I made this."

And why I feel it's humble: I know what I've done and what I need to take responsibility for. Agrippa was the God of what he did. I am the God of what I have done.

I am not the God of what I have not done and do not insist that I am the God of everything. And yet there are things I have not done and yet are.

There is a God. And it's not me. . . .