On Jan 29, 2015, at 2:54, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Thanks, Bill
> Do you know Whitman's "I think I could turn and live with animals"?
>
> I was quite pleased with danked. It's my own invention
>
> L
also in the Whitman line:
The Peace of Wild Things
BY WENDELL BERRY
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
[Lucky old Berry! -
and does it lying down.
M in Seattle]
> On 29 January 2015 at 08:32, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> 'danked' as in unpleasantly moistened, I take it, L. Like it. Reminds me,
>> the poem I mean, of something my wife said to me this morning, dismissing
>> those who would claim that suffering in humans ennobles. If their God
>> exists, would He say that it is good for animals? Or if, she went on, if He
>> is omnipotent, why so design humans? Could have come up with a better model.
>>
>> B
>>
>>
>>> On 28 Jan 2015, at 11:58 pm, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I said once, to myself
>>>
>>> or perhaps to my lover,
>>>
>>> that being close to animals
>>>
>>> will make us more human:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> she sneered at me
>>>
>>> for speaking to a donkey - conversationally -
>>>
>>> on our way to eat,
>>>
>>> my hands danked by donkey tongue...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> it is two way, not magic -
>>>
>>> a rabbit's foot does nothing
>>>
>>> but lames the rabbit --
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> seek out animals
>>>
>>> like one who lost them --
>>>
>>> non-speakers
>>>
>>
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