When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in 1517...

...he may not have realized that five hundred years later, JD Vance would be called the worst catholic since Martin Luther.

A Mute and Utter Joy

When All the Wild Valley Recovers the Leaf:

When all the wild valley recovers the leaf,
   And you turn to the green land,
The day will be beautiful beyond belief,
   And beautiful you'll stand 
There on the hill with your head in the shadow
   And the whole wild world in your eyes,
With all of her good, and none of her evil
   Dark, seductive lies. 
You will stand on the highest hill forever
   With summer ablaze on the bough;
And you will be beautiful beyond belief.
   You are even more beautiful now. 

William Jay Smith.

Starless And Bible-Black

Needed to hear this for some reason.  Maybe I should watch the whole production again.

the dark that, just past twilight, overtakes a canyon

Entire Known World So Far:

What’s meant to be wind emerges from what’s

presumably a god’s mouth, as if  people

thought that way, once, as I have read they did,

though I have never believed it. Yes,

the stag inexplicably there, on a raft

at sea, how the light catches in the runneled

fur of a dog’s underpaws as he steers

across dream; yes, the gods and their

signs, if you want, everywhere—

but the wind is the wind. The map makes

the world seem like a human body

when it’s been stripped and you can finally

see it for the world it is: plunderable—

almost, in places, as if asking for it—

who wouldn’t want to lay waste to it,

the map suggests, suggest the hands

that made the map, with the kind of

grace that proves grace can

be a sturdiness, too.

Carl Phillips.

В наших глазах звёздная ночь

In our eyes, a starry night.

A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

Theories of the Soul:

Kant says, transcendental

    idealism. In Aquinas,

we exist apart from bodies

    but only on Thursdays

when his famous ox

    flies by the window

wiser at Cologne

    where Albertus Magnus,

his real name, appoints

    Aquinas to magister studentium,

master of students. Aquinas

    is petrified but says yes.

He feels his soul

    sailing out of his head

floating near the roof

    where a blue ox wings by.

On Wednesday, two bodies

    are one soul

waking at sunrise

    thanks to the pineal gland

of Descartes, who thinks

    this node in the brain

is a tiny sugar cone

    or salted peanut,

the seat of the soul

    while Aristotle points

to the chopping

    ax as a teleology

as if the ax were a living,

    breathing person

which it isn’t.

    Heraclitus, air and fire

while Aquinas objects, no

    not an ax but ox.

If you’re a bird or soul

    I am only one mile

from the sea. If you

    are a soul in two bodies

life is more complex

    and we must labor

twice the field of sorrow

    after sleep, bath, and a glass

as Aquinas whispers, the things

    we love tell us who we are.

Karen An-hwei Lee.