Divided We Stand

      Divided We Stand

      

   "We know that you are royally blest
    Cicada when, among the tree-tops,
   You sip some dew and sing your song;
   For every single thing is yours
   That you survey among the fields
   And all the things the woods produce.
   The farmers' constant company,
   You damage nothing that is theirs;
   Esteemed you are by every human
   As the summer's sweet-voiced prophet.
   The Muses love you, and Apollo too,
   Who's gifted you with high-pitched song.
   Old age does nothing that can wear you,
   Earth's sage and song-enamored son;
   You suffer not, being flesh-and-blood-less,
   A god-like creature, virtually."

(ancient Greek poet unknown:

traditionally cicadae are elders

who fall in love with the muses,

& become garrulous chatterboxes) 

Dividing We Stand

For those not in love there’s Law:

to ruleto regulate to rectify.

              (Wm Gass)

Celebrate the great unbridgeable divide

between amateurs and professionals: those

whom love conquers  and the remainder in

debt to lawyers & the legal system; & there’s

no way the  2  can be expected to just get

along.

Always some voices: impotent witness to the

prosecution of common  sense & practical house

keeping: concerns we have with us always—

fascinated, charmed, enthralled, obsessed,

compelled  to make the world a  better place in

my own terms of desire  of course or at least sustain

as is: let me  not  permit it  to fall into disarray.

My yesterday’s-chorus  sampling specimen dead

white myn: chattering cicada  across a dusty

lawn… 

Gass

Goethe

Milton

Heidegger

Arnold

Paul

Shakespeare

Brown

Emerson

Hawthorne

Lewis

Eliot

Rilke

Thoreau,

Carey

etc.

…invoked on behalf of Liberal Art always for

the sake of argument.

To act is so easy, to think is so hard. Where there is

much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much

arguing, much writing,  many opinions; for opinion

in good men is but knowledge in the making. (Goethe

& Milton)

I would hear more & merrier testimony to what a
difference  a  daze makes as opposed to  claritas
uber alles and the  purpose it takes  to win a war:
aims, objectives, determination  & strategic planning,
saying what  I mean & meaning what I say, walking
the talk & talking the walk  & covering ground crying

out  loud:  consummation  so devoutly desired.  Daze
is covered,  denied  & banished  to cellar or attic

 

“A universe comes into being  when a  space is severed
or taken  apart. The skin of a living being  cuts off an
outside from an inside.  (G. Spencer Brown, Laws of Form)

Prior to division, what kind of unified universe might
there be? nothing but a cheese ball or billiard—one part
is the whole: and unity, an un-emerged phenomenon
waiting for its severance and the relationship of parts,
particulars, and participation and partisans.