Friday, January 01, 2010

The First Day of 2010

Questionnaire
by Wendall Berry

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

via Pulse

1 Comments:

At 4:44 PM, Blogger autumnleaf said...

FOX FIRE

Remember me
but you cannot remember me

you cannot
remember the first time you saw me
how did you know
me then

how
if you had never
seen me before

where did you think
the light was coming from
the small cloud glowing
dancing slowly
god of the glowworms
above the dark oaks
there in the hollow
behind the hill

behind the rough monument
to a day you had not seen there
never forget it said

at times I watched you
through the daylight
from closer than you
would have believed

I was the moment before
I was the blank in your memory
I was the one thing
you had just forgotten

you never heard me
to you I had no voice
no one else heard me either
but when you saw me you listened
when you watched for me
you listened


you with your many questions
I have none

you ask where I go
even when you see me

you with your names for me
from other voices
times places
serious names saint’s names
mocking names childish names
will-o’-the-wisp I have
no name

no country
and I come to you where I please
seen or unnoticed
wherever you may be

and I have no answer
but you never forget me
whether you know it or not

I have no age
you do not have to
believe in me
living or dead

I like long evenings
in spring in autumn
mist is a friend
I am alien
to expectations
absent from definitions

I am not to be lured
not to be caught
like a poor fish

I was the light when the board creaked
just then
I am not to be called back

when you saw me
I was never
anyone else


W. S. MERWIN

 

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