In the middle of two wars and coming up on Memorial Day, here is Milosz’s great poem.

PREPARATION

Still one more year of preparation.
Tomorrow at the latest I’ll start working on a great book
In which my century will appear as it really was.
The sun will rise over the righteous and the wicked.
Srpings and autumns will unerringly return,
In a wet thicket a thrush will build his nest lined with clay
And foxes will learn their foxy natures.

And that will be the subject, with addenda. Thus: armies
Running across frozen plains, shouting a curse
In a many-voiced chorus; the cannon of a tank
Growing immense at the corner of a street; the ride at dusk
Into a camp with watchtowers and barbed wire.

No, it won’t happen tomorrow. In five or ten years.
I still think too much about the mothers
And ask what is man born of woman.
He curls himself up and protects his head
While he is kicked by heavy boots; on fire and running,
He burns with a bright flame; a bulldozer sweeps him into a clay pit.
Her child. Embracing a teddy bear. Conceived in ecstasy.

I haven’t learned yet to speak as I should, calmly.

Or does it begin?

Yeah, I have no idea what that means.

I want to thank Ed for giving me the chance to play around here. I didn’t piss anyone off, too much, I don’t think. But I hope you all enjoyed it.

Be sure to check me out here.

And remember the old adage of sports talk radio, it doesn’t matter the logic of your argument. Only how loud and stubborn you are. Loud enough and stubborn enough means you’re always right.

I’m not quite done yet, so this isn’t my closing post, but I—like Tao—will post a poem. Okay, two poems, one of which you’ve read a thousand times before but that I [heart]. Deal with it!

First poem:

A STUDY OF READING HABITS

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my coat and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don’t read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who’s yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

Philip Larkin

Second poem:

THE LEADEN ECHO

How to kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankéd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there’s none, there’s none, O no there’s none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there’s none; no no no there ’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

My last two posts’ll be up today and that’ll be adieu.

I am going to blog about poetry and then post a poem. There is some poetry that I like.

I like poetry by Matthew Rohrer, Michael Earl Craig, Ben Lerner, and Ellen Kennedy.

All those people have poetry on BEAR PARADE except Ben Lerner.

Gene Morgan and I solicited Ben Lerner for BEAR PARADE before he was nominated for the National Book Award for ANGLE OF YAW, his second poetry book, but he said he did not have anything for BEAR PARADE.

ORGANIC COLD-PRESSED VIRGIN COCONUT OIL

Coconut oil is the only oil that can be heated and remain non-toxic in its unrefined state.
Coconut oil stimulates the thyroid which promotes an appetite
that is socially responsible and not out of control.
In the 1970’s people started to say to eat less fats
which caused people to eat more carbohydrates

in the form of bread, cake, soda, and other low-fat foods.
There is no such thing as an obese wild animal.
There is also no such thing in the wild habitats as bread, cake, soda, refined sugar,
muffins, or any kind of baked goods. A diet high in fat and protein and raw vegan foods
will make you feel better, look better, and also reduce pain and suffering in the world.
Eating meat or dairy for one year is equivalent to dumping 500 pounds of toxic shit
into the ocean, choosing to inflict severe pain onto hundreds of animals, both human
and non-human, and voting 20 times for the presidential candidate
you talk shit about for over 200 hours each year.

Since we are alive right now and not killing ourselves
our philosophy of life must be that life is worth living.

I know that all meaning is arbitrary. All goals are arbitrary.
But conscious existence is impossible without meaning and goals
however temporary or inconstant those meanings and goals are.
To think beyond what I just said will make a person go insane.
Therefore I think like the answer to a math question
the correct thing for me to do sometimes is to lecture you about eating meat and dairy.