Poesis by Douglas Burton-Christie

“Stone by stone it rises, this little house by the sea. Soft, damp sand for mortar, moss for the garden, driftwood for the roof. A tiny stone wall encircles the yard, a path winds toward the front door. I am on my belly working to bring this little dwelling into being. My wife and young daughter work beside me. A breeze from the ocean cools us. We have begun building this miniature house on a whim, but now we are going at it in earnest. We want to make it strong and beautiful. Pausing from time to time to consider our creation, we talk and laugh and exchange stories. We imagine the lives of the inhabitants of this place, how they live, what they care about. A whole cosmos gradually comes into being.

This desire to make things, beautiful things�where does it come from? I do not know. I only know that there is a pleasure, deep and pure, that comes from making something beautiful, from fitting stones into a pattern, laying a floor, creating a garden, making a life. Even if the making is all there is, even if the thing made is ephemeral and not destined to last, there is pleasure and joy in the making. Sometimes, though, our creations do endure. We are able to behold the work and feel it work its magic on us, kindling the imagination, taking us out of ourselves if only for a moment, into another world.”

From: Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 2.2 (2002) vii-ix

Iraq has known war for thousands of years. This account is from Sin-leqe-unnini
, the Mesopotamian story of Gilgamesh, one of the legendary kings of Uruk who lived between 2800 and 2500 BCE.

[Why (?)] have you exerted yourself? What have you achieved (?)?

You have made yourself weary for lack of sleep,

You only fill your flesh with grief,

You only bring the distant days (of reckoning) closer.

Mankind’s fame is cut down like reeds in a reed-bed.

A fine young man, a fine girl,

[                          ] of Death.

Nobody sees Death,

Nobody sees the face of Death,

Nobody hears the voice of Death.

Savage Death just cuts mankind down.

Sometimes we build a house, sometimes we make a nest,

But then brothers divide it upon inheritance.

Sometimes there is hostility in [the land],

But then the river rises and brings flood-water.

Dragonflies drift on the river,

Their faces look upon the face of the Sun,

(But then) suddenly there is nothing.

Courtesy of humanistictexts.org and translated by Stephanie Dalley.

From my little compilation of Heany poetry to the left

From the Republic of Conscience

When I landed in the republic of conscience
it was so noiseless when the engines stopped
I could hear a curlew high above the runway.
At immigration, the clerk was an old man
who produced a wallet from his homespun coat
and showed me a photograph of my grandfather.
The woman in customs asked me to declare
the words of our traditional cures and charms
to heal dumbness and avert the evil eye.
No porters. No interpreter. No taxi.
You carried your own burden and very soon
your symptoms of creeping privilege disappeared.
Fog is a dreaded omen there but lightning
spells universal good and parents hang
swaddled infants in trees during thunderstorms.
Salt is their precious mineral. And seashells
are held to the ear during births and funerals.
The base of all inks and pigments is seawater.
Their sacred symbol is a stylized boat.
The sail is an ear, the mast a sloping pen,
the hull a mouth-shape, the keel an open eye.
At their inauguration, public leaders
must swear to uphold unwritten law and weep
to atone for their presumption to hold office ?
and to affirm their faith that all life sprang
from salt in tears which the sky-god wept
after he dreamt his solitude was endless.
I came back from that frugal republic
with my two arms the one length, the customs
woman having insisted my allowance was myself.
The old man rose and gazed into my face
and said that was official recognition
that I was now a dual citizen.
He therefore desired me when I got home
to consider myself a representative
and to speak on their behalf in my own tongue.
Their embassies, he said, were everywhere
but operated independently
and no ambassador would ever be relieved.

Humanistic Texts

An amazing collection.

[ via wood s lot ]

The Heritage Foundation: Research: Middle East: wm225: “Coalition of the Willing” Already Larger than the 1991 Gulf War coalition.

This report from The Heritage Foundation, a hawkish research instutute in the United States, lists as many as 54 countries now identified with the “coalition of the willing.” As a result, I’ve updated the paper detailing human rights issues in most of these countries. Version 3.0 of “Human rights issues in the coalition of the willing” is now online.

Welcome Rwanda, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and other bastions of democracy and freedom!