i was born by the river

sorry for the long hiatus. i am definitely extra full of insight, wit, and touching poetry, though, as a result.

there's probably interweb slang for this phenomenon, whereby after missing a few days you feel the (sometimes paralyzing) urge to find something truly postworthy. otherwise you have to face the fact that you were probably posting too often before.

or else face the fact that there's really no reason for you to be posting at all. or at least no good reason.

my strategy, the obvious one, was going to be to post a song. but it's just taking too darn long. abbie and i have one we like, and we hope you will like it too. but at the moment it is missing some words. anybody got any words they can loan us?

meanwhile, please enjoy this poem, which was inspired by sacred heart's production of cinderella, and please take good care of yourself and get some sleep.


Lullaby


Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.



W. H. Auden