William Rose Benét, 'The Horse Thief'

[duathir.livejournal.com]

The Horse Thief

There he moved, cropping the grass at the purple canyon’s lip.
His mane was mixed with the moonlight that silvered his snow-white side,
For the moon sailed out of a cloud with the wake of a spectral ship,
I crouched and I crawled on my belly, my lariat coil looped wide.

Dimly and dark the mesas broke on the starry sky.
A pall covered every color of their gorgeous glory at noon.
I smelt the yucca and mesquite, and stifled my heart’s quick cry,
And wormed and crawled on my belly to where he moved against the moon!

Some Moorish barb was that mustang’s sire. His lines were beyond all wonder.
From the prick of his ears to the flow of his tail he ached in my throat and eyes.
Steel and velvet grace! As the prophet says, God had “clothed his neck with thunder.”
Oh, marvelous with the drifting cloud he drifted across the skies!

And then I was near at hand—crouched, and balanced, and cast the coil;
And the moon was smothered in cloud, and the rope through my hands with a rip!
But somehow I gripped and clung, with the blood in my brain aboil,—
With a turn round the rugged tree-stump there on the purple canyon’s lip.

( Right into the stars he reared aloft, his red eye rolling and raging. )

By William Rose Benét

The scholar and his cat, Pangur Bán

[med_cat]

The scholar and his cat, Pangur Bán

(from the Irish by Robin Flower)

I and Pangur Ban my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

Afterlife ~ Natalie Eilbert

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

There is no life after death. Why
              should there be. What on
earth would have us believe this.
              Heaven is not the American
highway, blackened chicken alfredo
              from Applebee’s nor the
clown sundae from Friendly’s. Our
              life, this is the afterdeath,
when we blink open, peeled and
              ready to ache. Years ago
my aunt banged on the steering, she
              insisted there had to be a
God, a heaven. We were on our
              way to a wedding. I would
have to sit at the same table as the
              man who saw no heaven
in me. Today I am thinking about
              Mozart, of all people, who
died at 35 mysteriously, perhaps of
              strep. What a strange cloth
it is to live. But that we came from
              death and return to it, made
different by form, shaped again back
              into anti–, anti–. On my run,
I think of Jack Gilbert, who said we
              must insist while there is still
time, but insist toward what. Why we
              must fill the void with light—
isn’t that our human insistence? But
              we drift into a distance of
distance until proximity fails, our
              name lifts away with any
future concerns, the past a flattened
              coin that cannot spin. I am
matter spun from death’s wool—and
              I bewilder the itch, I who am
I am just so happy to go.