It's nice the conversation was civilized Max. but I'm with Mark, basically.
Doug
On 2013-10-09, at 2:17 PM, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Know what you mean about squeezing past Americans of ample girth, Max, or them squeezing past you. Some disconcerting line turns: Latin? We too have conservationist roo cullers I suppose.
>
> Bill
>
>> On 9 Oct 2013, at 11:37 pm, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Max Gosh don't know if I have had a civilised conversation with a Mormon
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
>> Behalf Of Max Richards
>> Sent: 09 October 2013 02:51
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: 'My Mormon'
>>
>> My Mormon
>>
>> The seat by the window was filled
>> with a senior American of large build.
>>
>> Another on the aisle slowly stood aside
>> while I squeezed past and in. A long ride
>>
>> San Francisco to Boston lay ahead -
>> cabin staff would keep us watered but not fed.
>>
>> We all had stuff to read:
>> a crime novel on my left, me indeed
>>
>> Tolstoy on Kindle full of typos and freshness - 'The Cossacks and 'Family
>> Happiness';
>>
>> By the window a newsprint weekly
>> all about faith service and Salt Lake City.
>>
>> We clenched for take-off, made survey
>> of the hilly city and the wide flat bay,
>>
>> turned inland towards the rising sun.
>> We seniors dozed off one by one.
>>
>> Stirring I saw my Mormon had woken.
>> He said we're already over Michigan.
>>
>> Then told me how good the hunting was
>> last weekend with his Utah sons.
>>
>> Deer hunters are conservationists
>> stabilising the numbers of these noble pests.
>>
>> I might have said how Tolstoy's men
>> first missed a boar but got a Chechen
>>
>> or was it a Tartar? I get confused.
>> My Mormon mentioned his family pride -
>>
>> on both sides ancestors trekked west
>> from intolerance through great peril to blest
>>
>> Utah and the flourishing of their faith.
>> We both liked separation of church and state.
>>
>> Both deplored the power of priests, with hope for reforms from the Latin
>> American Pope.
>>
>> Religions are good while they stick to Love without dogmas handed down from
>> above.
>>
>> I said I was reading how hard it was
>> when Lutherans met Aborigines.
>>
>> They wanted to respect the Aranda
>> and bring them in onto the verandah,
>>
>> school their kids and teach them hymns - and cover their disconcerting
>> limbs,
>>
>> and lock the schoolgirls up at night.
>> Learning their language to translate
>>
>> the Gospels showed the pastors
>> Aranda knew eternity from the stars,
>>
>> divine powers everywhere.
>> My Mormon thought time will show
>>
>> religions all have judeo-christian
>> foundations, dispersed by migration
>>
>> to the ends of the earth. I should ask
>> my anthropologist friend how that task
>>
>> of research was proceeding. We saw
>> a Great Lake but not Niagara;
>>
>> some upstate New York wildernesses,
>> the golf courses of Massachusetts,
>>
>> Boston's Puritan foundations overlaid
>> with tribal ways and faiths less staid.
>>
>> I used to teach 'The Scarlet Letter'.
>> America now mostly knows better
>>
>> and doesn't need my doggerel
>> to distinguish natives from the devil.
>>
>> My Mormon dreams of a holiday trip
>> in the South Pacific, letting rip
>>
>> on the long journey out
>> amongst New Zealand's deer and trout
>>
>> and basking homeward-bound in Sydney
>> pleasures and multicultural Hawaii.
>>
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Latest books:
Continuations & Continuations 2 (with Sheila E Murphy)
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Recording Dates
(Rubicon Press)
Art is always the replacing of indifference by attention.
Guy Davenport
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