Ab initio: an epithalamium for Josias and Agnieszka

His view was of the free-and-easy and exceedingly
  gentle, mbira-like;

of the purple jacaranda, too, that fruits but can't blind

and of Shona elegance to ward off attacks at night
  for love of bride
 
From first to last all these were (to me) like clearing stars,
   his music and love            

December bird (written as I wait for return of vision)

I 'd love to sit with you, too, splayed
  into light, stringing along

and receive teaching (as I know you do)
  from the rugose tree

I'd throw out pleasures to the wind
  like a true inventor

or go rattling off from time to time--
  a perfect wan prophet

And I'd like, when it's time, to stop at a
   cute little extinction, too
 

Responsorial of mine

"Che sola a me par donna" (Petrarch)
_____________

    The little i do out of ardent love for
utterly little

         if i love! and see it

merge with whatnot, is still for you--

        the little i've got

   And the primacy of eye and joy over eye,
        amounting to the same old

        cold of rigid hearts,

    is still full value for Christ, is it not?


But what can my beloved of frilly anklet, eye
   hunched down by the well, do?

   Up or down, pure or not

it will still be just for me the utterly little
         i do love,

         if i do

George Grant



George Grant (1918-1988)

How delighted that I've discovered a blog dedicated to the writings and insights of the great George Grant, a person I had the privilege of meeting and reading some Plato with in the 70s. I'd like to thank Chris Faiers for posting at his Riffs and Ripples from ZenRiver Garden blog an article on Grant by Ron Dart that led me eventually to Ron's The Owl: George Grant Journal blog.

Now begins what (I guarantee) will be a very long discussion about the social, political and philosophical issues dear to the heart of one of Canada's greatest public intellectuals and scholars.

"Questionings of a daughter"

 (for Amy King)

I saw two girls holding hands,

  jasmine mit in mit,

balancing together 'gainst the

  icy walks, giggling,

heads bent low—

  & wouldn't have

thought much 'cept that at the

  light, when one

turned to kiss the other, on

  the mouth

( a pure Sapphic one )

  and leant softly

into her, both intertwining a

  moment, secure

against an icy fall--then I saw

   at last
  the world

could finally be safe from itself

Ternion: or thoughts on the usual male sorrow



Vultures always come in twos when a sky (under god!) perfumes
  the heart and mind, like both of us

and then breaks into a room where the stinking flabby-limbed
  always dart the heart (as I saw her do!)--

I mean, how can the rays and veiny leaves of my sunny day
 compare to uncomprehending legs and arms

  that won't completely entirely stop thrashing?

Why they kill gypsy moths

 "All visible things need a cross... All intelligible things need a tomb"
                                                                                       (Maximus Confessor)
______________________

  I got it from the rose & cicadas

(as also later from the fruit flies that watch for Ruth)

  & they said the gypsy, dying gypsy,   

who looks up at a thick rind sky as it lies eye-level over

  the sweet loofah & rye, —said it dies

& becomes dust that dries on the stalks, up to the top

  of both stalk and sky

And rising in this way, star-stitched the gypsy turns to dust

  But, again, just as they said

and I also sensed it from the fateful flutter & wings of dust,

  (wings praiseworthy for flight!)

a moth lifts & arcs, soul-bearing & frail & stalks past pig-weed

  & grasses with its cane,

knocking out bits of shale and algae to fight the slimy world

  Gypsy's silly cane! cloaked in dust,

against all that world's hard slimy shale as it tries to look deep

  (dusty moth!) into a pond's own hurt

or a lake's dark stony seed, and tame all that carnal hurt

  of rock, algae and dirt

Straining hard towards the world, when it flies , they say, it rises

  with a cane made of rye!

the gypsy moth that cruelly dies in dark serpentine woods