Claes Persson wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: al winslow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Thursday, May 16, 2002 4:51 AM
> Subject: {W&P} Poem
>
>
> >
> > Once upon a time I owned many volumes of the poetry of Robinson Jeffers.
> >
> > Bits and pieces of his work can be found on the web. I thought I'd send
> > one since we seem to be in a mood for poetry. The cosmology expressed in
> >
> > "The Great Explosion" may or may not be fashionable. Still, this piece
> > speaks to me.
> >
> > Al Winslow
> > USA
> > -----------------
> > The Great Explosion
> >
> > The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.
> >
> > It is expanding, the farthest nebulae
> > Rush with the speed of light into empty space.
> >
> > It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies, dust clouds
> > and nebulae
> > Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one harbor, they
> > stick in one lump
> >
> > And then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no way to
> > express that explosion; all that exists
> > Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each other into
> > all the sky, new universes
> > Jewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae like
> > charging spearmen again
> > Invade emptiness.
> >
> > No wonder we are so fascinated with
> > fireworks
> > And our huge bombs: it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for the howling
> >
> > fireblast that we were born from.
> > But the whole sum of the energies
> > That made and contain the giant atom survives. It will
> > gather again and pile up, the power and the glory--
> > And no doubt it will burst again; diastole and systole: the whole
> > universe beats like a heart.
> > Peace in our time was never one of God's promises; but back and forth,
> > live and die, burn and be damned,
> > The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His terrible life.
> >
> > He is beautiful beyond belief.
> > And we, God's apes--or tragic children--share in the beauty. We see it
> > above our torment, that's what life's for.
> >
> > He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's Florence,
> >
> > no anthropoid God
> > Making commandments,: this is the God who does not care and will never
> > cease. Look at the seas there
> > Flashing against this rock in the darkness--look at the tide-stream
> > stars--and the fall of nations--and dawn
> > Wandering with wet white feet down the Caramel Valley to meet the sea.
> > These are real and we see their beauty.
> >
> > The great explosion is probably only a metaphor--I know not --of
> > faceless violence, the root of all things.
> >
> > --Robinson Jeffers
> >
>
> Al, this is a very good and poetic explanation of the Big Bang.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Claes
> §( :8-)
>
>
>
-----------------------------------
Yes, a great, pulsating, endless cycle of birth and death, birth and
death, birth and death...the eternal universe ruled by a mysterious
purpose that
Jeffers called "God."
Robinson Jeffers created a version of "Medea" that had a very long run
on the NY stage back in the late 1940s before Broadway was totally
dominated by simple-minded musicals. A young Judith Anderson starred.
Jeffers wrote many long poems that were stories set in the California
Big Sur country where his stone-towerd home, Tor House, still stands. I
found his work magnificent. Sometimes it was almost painful. "The Loving
Sheperdess" captivated me and made me almmost cringe at the same time.
I suspect that his work will be known and valued more as the centuries
unfold. As he wrote, "flower-soft verses" outlive stone buildings and
empires.
Al Winslow
USA
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