Someone other guided me to act
Deep inside my voice had been unlocked
I sang the psalms and then a lullaby
Not aware in thought  that you would die.
I fed you with a teaspoon the mashed fish
From a  plate as good as one might wish
Like a little child you tried your best
You winked at me and gazed  like one who’s blessed
You sat up with  a  brighter  face at last
Then lay back and  God knows all the rest
Oh, don’t go yet ,my darling,I am here
The floor of heaven came down  among my tears
Made of sumptuous satin  golden,dear.
For a little moment it hung low
Then it rose and  took you in its glow
I saw your soul like that of a wild bird
Taken by the Power  who  sent the  Word
A sheet of tears fell down from my closed eyes
It’s hard ,too hard when those you love  must die

https://www.rt.com/uk/

‘Bloody hell’: English police could patrol Northern Ireland border after no-deal Brexit

Photo by Mike Flemming copyright

https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_RHR_2261_0032–from-reformation-to-renaissance.htm

Extract

Two undeniable facts remain: the Anglican Reformation did not actually lead to any form of poetic engagement nor did it produce the sort of politically inspired poetry that is associated with the French epic poems of Agrippa d’Aubigné.[1]  One of the rare exceptions was a sonnet by Milton “On…[1] It was not until the beginning of the seventeenth century that the first poems bearing the spiritual influences of the Reformation appeared. This is a result of the transposition whereby England is neither the birthplace nor the promised land of the Reformation, but a significant hub where the continental prototypes were adapted under Anglicanism and subsequently exported in its new idiosyncratic form to the New World, the chosen land of the Puritans. A complete overview of the subject would also include the Puritan literature of New England,[2]  See Perry Miller, ed., The American Puritans. Their…[2] but this would merely highlight the rarity of poetry amongst a generation of pragmatic colonists, who were far more preoccupied with establishing permanent settlements than making an epic gesture that would aggrandize them in the eyes of all posterity.

6

However, back in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century, poetry was undergoing a reformation. The long reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) was conducive to political stability, to the flourishing of the arts, and a literature enriched by court poets such as Philip Sydney (1554–1586) and Edmund Spenser (1552–1599), who embroidered versions around the myth of the Virgin Queen that were both epic (The Faerie Queene, 1590–1599) and pastoral (Arcadia, 1590). At court there was a throng of fine and erudite minds whose rhetorical education drew not only on the Greco-Roman culture brought back into favor by the humanists, but also on the Bible, the core text for the schools of rhetoric based on the reformation of knowledge initiated by John Colet (1466–1519, a friend of Erasmus and Thomas More, and founder of St. Paul’s School in London). Many of these poets were no longer alive when the translation of the King James Bible was published in 1611 (Sydney died in 1586, Spenser in 1599). Nevertheless, as humanists, the poets were highly knowledgeable and were able to translate, gloss, or imitate the Psalms without fail.

7

By the time the great metaphysical poets (Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw) provided spirituality in English poetry, with its real momentum during the first years of the seventeenth century, these rhetorical exercises around the Psalms had already become great classics, thus allowing a young poet to shape his style through his juvenilia, before embarking on original creative works. Thus, the English were initiated at the same school as Racan, Corneille, and Racine, or again Gryphius and Angelus Silesius. In addition to Sydney, it is worth noting: the Scotsman and Lutheran George Buchanan (1506–1582), author of a Latin Paraphrase of all the Psalms (written in 1566), a work which was re-published twenty-six times in the course of one hundred and fifty years; the court poet Thomas Carew (1594–1640) who wrote his paraphrases in English; and the sacred epigrams rendered in Latin by two metaphysical poets, the Anglican George Herbert (1593–1633: Passio Discerpta – Rendings from the Passion, and Lucus – the Sacred Grove) and the Puritan-born Catholic Richard Crashaw (1612–1649, Epigrammatum Liber, 1634). All these examples are in fact more interesting from a linguistic rather than a stylistic point of view in that they are the last remnants of neo-Latin[3]  See Pierre Laurens and Claudie Balavoine, ed., Musae…[3] literature of English origin. Having left these schoolboy exercises behind, a seventeenth century English poet would henceforth write in his mother tongue, and especially so when he sought to move nearer to God.

8

Why then were these poets so drawn to the Psalms? It was not particular to the English, but to the very essence of the Reformation in its most profound form. By making the human voice heard with its full spectrum of contradictory emotions, they opened the way for lyricism, which had already been heartily encouraged by the devotia moderna, promoting the individual piety of the layman through the ideal of the imitation of Christ (Low Countries, fourteenth century). Subjectivity then would know no bounds. It would be possible for every human being to seek in the voice of David the accents that corresponded to his own voice and then to cry in wonder: “Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one,”[4]  John Donne (1572–1631), Divine Poems, vol. 1, No. 19,…[4] and from this torment draw almost unlimited poetic inspiration.

9

Amongst human nature’s innumerable contradictions carried within this voice, there is the clash of a resounding paradox: to allow humans to speak enables the voice of God to be heard more than ever. What the Reformation poet seeks above all is a dialogue. Perhaps it is the fear of being crushed by the Calvinistic theory of double predestinationism, which would have God isolated in a state of transcendence so distant, indeed so remote, that any communication with Him would be threatened. God would surely then become a complete alterity, to be approached only with fear and trembling (Luther), for this God might only manifest himself in the form of some spiritual death sentence, like the prophetic writing on the wall telling Balthazar of his imminent end.[5]  See Rembrandt, The Writing on the Wall, The National…[5] The hope of salvation (revealed in the inamissible grace of the conversion) transforms a person into an anxious lookout, forced to watch relentlessly lest he be blind or deaf to the signs that God may send to make known his will.

As the heart grows weaker, memory fails
The home familiar made itself feel strange
Although he smiled at me, he was too pale
As the heart grows weaker, so perception fails
The  soul becomes transparent as it sails
Through the heavens   with its candle flame
As the heart grows weaker, memory fails
The home once known,  felt odd, he fled his cage.

My many sins in marriage were disclosed
He taught me Chess,I won, he was  annoyed
Yet did not tell me till his dying days
He must have sulked to cover his dismay
All at once he  poured out my mistakes
I was too brilliant for a  man unwise
Who married me because I had blue eyes 
I knew the villain when we watched TV
Now I see the true villain was me.
Yet he seemed  most  learned as he spoke
His weighed his words that helped so many folk
While I struggled teaching maths, it’s hard
He helped the homeless, addicts and the scared
Then I cooked his dinner, fed the cat
Fit for nothing much,I   darned my hat
Now all that I assumed for forty years
Hid his anger when I thought he cared
Was our love a play within a play
I held  his dearest hands, he passed away

He smiled at me  so broadly I was mazed
He thought I was his mother,not the case
He asked me where I’d spent my honeymoon
I  don’t know.Oh Scarborough,flowers bloomed
Why  did your boss sport a wooden leg?
He got in  in the war,  he lost his head
Mother you look stunning, on he  smiled
Where is Dad? I’m sorry, he has died
So why have you not married since that time?
He gazed on me  entranced, and not by rhymes
No-one ‘s asked me yet;he seemed surprised
Never mind that, is the washing dry?
Mother,  now you ‘re blessed with big  blue eyes
I felt so sad,I  would have sobbed and cried.
If it made him happy,was I  wrong
Being like a mother till  the end?

Would you be more gentle,dear,I cried
She’d pushed my head as if  it were a stone
I only want my hair washed, not to die

And BTW why are you using Tide
Shampoo is much kinder,on I moaned~
Could you be more gentle,dear,I cried

I ‘m glad you don’t  use Ariel,  suicide
She wrote about the Moon, her  love and home
Did she want her hair washed, not to die?

In Spain she  bought sardines so she could fry
In the wilds of Devon left alone
Ted was  getting famous, not his wife

I re-enter time ,I let  her dye
My hair is purple   rinsed  from  the  white foam
Did Plath want her hair  dyed, not to die?

Marriage holds a  breeze but not a storm
The  rose had pricked her finger with its thorn
Could we be more gentle if we tried?
We all need human love or we will  die

In my heart I still  yearn for his gaze
In which I   lived, felt real and was engaged
Critical,  he did not always praise.
In my soul I still  desire his gaze
Driving through  bright summer  fields  all day
Flowers exquisite   yanked me from my page
In my heart I still  yearn for his gaze
In which I   lived, felt real , and  was engaged

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/05/on-poetry-social-change-claudia-rankine-discusses-adrienne-rich-at-new-yorker

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-different-sizes-of-infinity-2013-11?r=US&IR=T

Extract

Infinity is a powerful concept. Philosophers, artists, theologians, scientists, and people from all walks of life have struggled with ideas of the infinite and the eternal throughout history.

Infinity is also an extremely important concept in mathematics. Infinity shows up almost immediately in dealing with infinitely large sets — collections of numbers that go on forever, like the natural, or counting numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on.

Infinite sets are not all created equal, however. There are actually many different sizes or levels of infinity; some infinite sets are vastly larger than other infinite sets.

She lied on the sofa
No. she lay on the sofa.
She got laid on the sofa?
I think she did lie
She had allies  on the sofa
But did  she lie down?
Well,we can’t lie up.
Yet some lie their way up but you don’t need to lie to go down
Oh,I  shall have to lie down myself  but not on myself
I’ll lie low
Why,  are you hiding?
I just can’t lie.I am hiding from G-d
So your words are your song?
I like psalms without stings
Allah  is Lord
Songs without words.

That is the end of today’s lesson from Oxford UK

a

This is a terza rima

The little leaves  are red brown in the sun
The branches  turned out shapes  are   full of joy
Little glitters play on leaves for fun

Eden was not totally destroyed
We return there in these glances rare
As nature and our friendships we enjoy

Living now, we never should defer
The sights, the dreams  we harbour  every day
The future is still fiction, if it’s there.

The  maple does not ask  the quetion, why?
Seek meaning for its life and its affairs
Like it we must now live before we die

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44314/it-couldnt-be-done

Some thinner branches  tremble with desire
Reaching out beyond  the shrub’s wide shape
The sun has drawn them up with its great fire

Yet, without  learning,  there is no Messiah.
No support exists,  they sulk and drape
The thinner branches  trembling with desire

To greatness  and  to height  they  had aspired
Now will they turn  out sullen as they mope?
The sun has drawn them up with its great fire

Like the politicians who conspire
The European  failure stole our hopes
Though  little Hitlers  tremble with desire

Unelected Minister, Prime  liar.
Will he  ever cross the   final tape?
The sun has drawn Men up with its great fire.

As the West evolved through  crime and rape
We were thought Enlightened  in our scope
We  loved the Inquisition,  loved the fires
The  gods have punished  us  and never tire.

I like to go out in the country to see lambs gambling in the meadows  as the horses are racing all day.

I told a  lie once.I  said, I will when I get married.

I must make a will, so I am told.From what?

The sausages are rolling the  pastry. They are just like pins.

I don’t know what language cows speak.Moo,moo.Metoo# I blame the paypal bulls,

The cats are at it now MioawMiaow2#.How did they l earn  about unacceptable behaviour when they don’t  even speak English or read the Telegraph?

Apparently  our soles are black and desperately need someone who can dye for them

I believe in salvation as long as I can pick who gets it.Do you get that?

I’d prefer an immobile phone  but who makes them?

Smartphones implies we are stupid,How did they know?

Nothingness has caught me by the throat
Tossed me  to the innards of  its prayer
Joan of Arc unhorsed in  a nightmare
Burgundy makes  offers for her coat

When we’re real and know the here and now
Do we entertain our thoughts and dare
To let   perception grow in all its  flair
Lamenting   foreign   insights we won’t know

From the mountain, I see Windermere
I see Coniston and Morecambe Bay
I see sheep and  flat  green fields arrayed
The shadows of the hills , the dread, the fear

Where can we be now on this  our March?
The moon, the sky , the aluminium arc
The universal suffrage of the dark
The  rights  of strangers, the Triumphal Arch