A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST
    

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

   Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

   And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

   And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

   Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,

   Is our destined end or way;

But to act, that each to-morrow

   Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,

   And our hearts, though stout and brave,

Still, like muffled drums, are beating

   Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,

   In the bivouac of Life,

Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

   Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!

   Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act,— act in the living Present!

   Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us

   We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

   Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,

   Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,

A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,

   Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,

   With a heart for any fate;

Still achieving, still pursuing,

   Learn to labor and to wait.

 

 

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Salvaged

Beachthieves

Waves policed the sand to call

me criminal. I played their game: stole

shells for my table, climbed the stones

with loot. Weed hands obliged. Salt

stung my knuckles pink with guilt

but laws like moon and slant prevailed.

One bird above me, shell in hand

(no shell I'd mount for smiles, yet,

loaded as it was with ooze and meat,

a famous jewel), circled in raid,

his wing acknowledging I'd run

from tailing tides in tribute to his greed.

These to him were crucial:

aim and height, hard target, his corkscrew fall

to where the take lay broken for his meal.

No sound of water fought my social

claim: a dipping wing when he, black

felon, aimless dropped his felony on rock.

                                                                                                 -Richard Hugo

Number One.

Resistance has delayed my arrival into this universe, the blogosphere. But I came across a quote of Kurt Vonnegut's and caved: "I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. " This blog claims little novelistic resemblance; Vonnegut's quote is simply one that brought about a personal microscopic epiphany. To ignore the existence and accessibility of the net is to refuse a now vital part of our modern culture.

Originally I thought I'd call this experiment Vonnegut Peripherals, in a nod to Mr. V's cosmic other-worldliness. Here, another of his quotes: "I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center." I hope this too will exist on a plane outside of the mainstream, regardless of its address. As he loved outlines, so too do I. Here, among the ever evolving variables are some constants I hope to rediscover:

• 
  
  found art [and hidden masterpieces]
• 
  
  poetry, stories, obscurities
• 
  
  ironies
• 
  
  etc., i.e., ...