Hi Dean,

I’m not finding it easy to work my way through your poem. But I’ve been 
trying!
This is what I’ve come up with (so far!).

I link the title with the first two stanzas. I paraphrase what I find as: 
there’s irony in celebrating an event where so many got slaughtered, but in 
a subtle way it can be sacramental (interesting blend of Jewish & Christian 
belief here! Is the Wisdom you mention also a Jewish theological concept?)

Then I read a change in the poem – and I’m not too sure if what I’m reading 
is about today, ie about 2003, or about 1st September 1939 (when Auden wrote 
about the immanent outbreak of War from one of the dives on 42nd Street). (I 
also believe the Auden poem was whizzing around the US just after September 
11th and Geo Bush declared "war" on terrorists - but I can't make that link 
work so I'm disregarding it...)

Then I want to make a link between these two parts of the poem. But I can’t. 
So I keep on reading…

But I can’t quite make the final two stanzas link into anything I’ve read. I 
guess the “fighting men,” the “victors” and the “heroes” might allude to 
people involved with the “Passover” or the “war” you mention but what about 
the star travellers and the goddesses? I’m at a loss…

(And it might be that the first part of the poem is about the past, the 
miuddle part is about the present, and this last part is about the future 
(when there might be starmen! But godesses???) - So thinking about it all 
like that doesn't seem to help me either!).

Sometimes with poems I sense it’s possible to get a feel for the poem before 
all the things it mentions become clear (it’s the same with songs) and 
sometimes it’s even possible to be captivated by a poem by the sheer sound 
of it. But, here, I keep wanting to make it make sense. Perhaps that’s 
because there are parts of the poem that are telling me things – about irony 
– so I want to understand more about the other things I’ve read as well.

So... I'm thinking, first two parts: interesting, nay intruiging! But what's 
happening next?

Maybe someone else will read all of this and think, "That Bob! He's a real 
thicky! He can't he see it's raining when he's wet!"

Bob


>From: RDL <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: submission
>Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 10:39:59 -0500
>
>Clear Day               Passover
>
>Were there today, munificence in heaven,
>Silent roofs might well divert the god
>who trains his sight on posts and lintels,
>less concerned with all the agony inside.
>
>The irony is in true wisdom's subtlety
>that may reveal a sacrament
>within a tyrant's spree.
>
>The war came silently to Fortysecond Street,
>and then a strange epiphany;
>for as we watched the dancing words
>in promenade above Times Square,
>I saw a grown man cry.
>It was a double irony:
>he didn't know how much I needed that.
>
>Star travelers
>and goddesses,
>and fighting men
>might all do well to look beneath the rooftops
>where the secret places lie,
>
>where lovers bleed,
>where victors drop their tears,
>where heroes go to die.
>            ~
>
>Comments and critiques of all degrees eagerly solicited.
>
>                       In what kind of world do we wish to live, my
>                                         friends?   Will it be a world 
>preoccupied
>                                         with imperial domination, 
>corporate profits,
>                                         and arrogant national 
>self-interest,  or will it
>                                         be a world passionately searching 
>for peace
>                                         ...a world which focuses on 
>understanding,
>                                         cooperation, and love for all of 
>humankind?
>                                         Might we choose to speculate about 
>which one
>                                         our creator has in mind?
>
>
>Yours in peace,
>                          The concept of "we....they" must be expunged
>                          from our consciousness.  The day we succeed
>                          in doing that will be the day when peace comes
>Dean                 to the earth.
>                          
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Dean                  (ask me about    Dennis Kucinich      for President)
>**********************************************************************************************
>
>"It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the
>environment."        ~Ansel Adams, photographer (1902-1984)
>
>
>
>

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