One last short one about death that I will add now as well:

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell


From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

"hunched upside-down in his little sphere, he looked like the foetus in the womb." (Jarrell's notes)

realiz wrote:The Dead Crab makes me think of a person who pushes the world away to protect themselves from hurt: legs with stilleto points, and claws like mouths could be a prickly personality hiding a scared individual, who dies inside from lack of love and connection.

I wasn't clear on the question he was asking when I first read this ...

Or does it make for death to be
Oneself a living armoury?

The 'make for death' part just didn't make sense to me, but now it does. So, living within the walls of heavy duty, emotional defenses may cause one to live like the walking dead ... quite possible I think. But after all, the crab needs defenses. They are quite small and slow moving compared to the many predators of the sea and they are quite tasty!

Delayed Action

Korf invents some jokes of a new sort
That only many hours later work.
Everybody listens to them, bored.

Yet, like some still fuse glowing in the dark,
You wake up suddenly that night in bed
Beaming like a baby newly fed.

-- Christian Morgenstern

This happens to me sometimes, but rather than the cleverness of the humorist, I think it the slow acrobatics of my aging brain.

Desert Places
by Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less--
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.


Ahh, the inner landscape matters so much more than the outer, or at least the appreciation and/or perception of the outer depends very much on the inner.

I think that, in an inspiring outer landscape, the line between inner landscape and outer landscape blurs, if you are open to it. There can be a meeting, a communion of the two, an internalizing of the outer landscape in a spiritual sense. Frost does such a great job of conveying a sense of inner landscape in his poems, using the outward landscape as metaphor. I like this poem, and for comparison I insert a few lines from Birches which I think is my favourite Frost poem. The sense of inner landscape in Birches is just brilliant IMO.

May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,

Yes, wouldn't it be great if the branches we climbed were all black against white, instead of camoflaged with leaves and bloody great bunches of nuts or fruit to distract us?

Lovely metaphore. The more I read him, the more I like Robert Frost.

THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB

by: George Gordon (Lord) Byron (1788-1824)

THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.

And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!


What great rhythm this poem has. It reminds me of Twas the Night Before Christmas, and not just the rhythm, but some of the wording choices as well. I am guessing that this poem came first, so perhaps it was an influence for the other? I'll look it up.

"The Destruction of Sennacherib is a poem by Lord Byron first published in 1815 in his Hebrew Melodies. "

and From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

—Clement Clark Moore"A Visit from St. Nicholas", also known as "The Night Before Christmas" and "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" from its first line, is a poem first published anonymously in 1823 and generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, although the claim has also been made that it was written by Henry Livingston, Jr.

Some good sleuthing here. I wonder how Lord Byron felt about having his poems rhythm stolen 8 years later? Not sure it qualifies as copyright infringement but interesting that Twas came out as anonymously at first. Bit of an old testament thing happening with the Byron poem, Angels of Death and smoting for example. Twas is a little nicer.

Today we have two devil poems:

A Devil

He is an utter failure as a devil. Even his tail. Not long and fleshy with
a black brush of hair at the end, but short, fluffy, and sticking out comically
like a rabbit's. His skin is pink, only under his left shoulder-blade a mark the
size of a gold ducat. But his horns are the worst. They don't grow outward
like other devils' but inward, into the brain. That's why he suffers so often
from headaches.
He is sad. He sleeps for days on end. Neither good nor evil attract him.
When he walks down the street, you see distinctly the motion of the rosy
wings of his lungs.
Zbigniew Herbert

For the second one, I am including what I found on the internet. The Rattlebag only inlcudes the second half of this poem. Also, the title in Rattlebag is The Devil in Texas, this version was titled The Devil Made Texas, which seems more fitting with the poem.


The Devil Made Texas

Oh, the devil in hell they say he was chained,
And there for a thousand years he remained;
He neither complained nor did he groan,
But decided he'd start up a hell of his own,
Where he could torment the souls of men
Without being shut in a prison pen;
So he asked the Lord if he had any sand
Left over from making this great land.

2. The Lord He said, "Yes, I have plenty on hand,
But it's away down south on the Rio Grande,
And to tell you the truth, the stuff is so poor
I doubt it will do for a hell anymore."
The Devil went down and looked over the truck,
And he said if it came as a gift he was stuck,
For when he'd examined it carefully and well
He decided the place was too dry for a hell.

3. But the Lord to just get the stuff off His hands
He promised the Devil He'd water the lands,
For He had some old water that was of no use,
A regular bog hole that stunk like the deuce.
So the contract was signed and the deed was given,
And the Lord went up to his spread up in heaven.
The Devil soon saw he had everything needed
To make a good hell and I'll say he succeeded.

4. He scattered tarantulas over the road,
Put thorns on the cactus and horns on the toads,
He sprinkled the sand with millions of ants
So the man that sits down must wear soles on his pants.
He lengthened the horns of the Texas steer,
And added an inch to the jack rabbit's ear;
He put water puppies in all of the lakes,
And under the rocks he put rattlesnakes.

5. He hung thorns and brambles on all of the trees.
He mixed up the dust with jiggers and fleas.
The rattlesnakes bites you, the scorpion stings,
The mesquito delights you by buzzing his wings.
The heat in the summer's a hundred and ten--
Too cool for the devil and too hot for men,
And all who remained in that climate soon bore
Stings, cuts, bites, scratches, and blisters galore.

6. He quickened the buck of the bronco steed
And poisoned the feet of the centipede.
The wild boar roams in the black chaparral.
It's a hell of a place that we've got for a hell.
He planted red pepper beside of the brooks;
The Mexicans use them in all that they cook.
Just dine with a Mexican and you will shout,
"I've got hell on the inside as well as the out!"

Anon.

I've never been to Texas, but I like the poem.