Machines

Dearest, note how these two are alike:
This harpsicord pavane by Purcell
And the racer's twelve-speed bike.

The machinery of grace is always simple.
This chrome trapezoid, one wheel connected
To another of concentric gears,
Which Ptolemy dreamt of and Schwinn perfected,
Is gone. The cyclist, not the cycle, steers.
And in the playing, Purcell's chords are played away.

So this talk, or touch if I were there,
Should work its effortless gadgetry of love,
Like Dante's heaven, and melt into the air.

If it doesn't, of course, I've fallen. So much is chance,
So much agility, desire, and feverish care,
As bicyclists and harpsicordists prove

Who only by moving can balance,
Only by balancing move.

—Michael Donaghy

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- W.B. Yeats (1919)

A Good Love

They say 
a good love 
is one that sits you down,

gives you a drink of water, and
pats you on top of the head.

But I say 
a good love
is one that casts you into the wind,
sets you ablaze,
makes you burn through the skies
and ignite the night
like a phoenix;

the kind that cuts you loose like a wildfire
and you can't stop running simply because
you keep on burning everything 
that you touch!

I say
that's a good love; 
one that burns and flies, 
and you run with it!

― C. JoyBell C.
(arranged quote)

Sacred Rite of America

American life is
based on a reassurance

that we like one another
but
won’t violate one another’s

privacies.

This makes it a
land of
small
talk.

Two people greet each other
happily, with friendliness,

but might know each other
for years before
venturing
basic questions about
each other’s
backgrounds.

In the East, there's
intimacy
without friendship;

in the West, there's
friendship
without intimacy.

Why is it so many Americans
so value friendliness
with commerce?

Perhaps the exchanging of cash is the
sacred rite
of American capitalism -
of American life.

As a newly minted American,
I feel oddly depressed on a day
when I don't spend money,

for it is my main form of
social interaction -

as it is for millions of other Americans
who live alone, or away
from family.

- Karan Mahajan
  [arranged quote]