Post by ronprice on Jul 23, 2005 5:33:29 GMT -5
NEW GOLD 
When the life of the streets perplexed me long ago I attempted to find an answer to it for myself by going literally into the wilderness, where I was so lost to friends and everyone that not five people crossed my threshold in as many years. I came back to do my days work in its day none the wiser. -Robert Frost(1913) in Robert Frost On Writing, Elaine Barry, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1973, p.86.
Why I know some people, Robert,
who are not able to enjoy their own company
for more than a fleeting moment;
some actually get quite disturbed
by the silence of their own thought
or its absence and, eventually,
by the television.
They’re the sort of people who could not
sit on a middan and dream stars*,
if you know what I mean.
It’s not so much solitude, privacy, some need,
as the time and opportunity to sink their teeth
into some harmonious silence of the spheres,
some momentary sense of transcendence,
some replenishing philosophy, some new life,
a sense of the miracle of being alive,
some simplicity, humility, peace,
an awareness of their oneness,
an indissoluble bond, oceanic:
they seem denied this gift, this station.
And others still in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,**
I may feel like this upon a midnight
when I my labours done and some,
I call it, chemical exhaustion sets in,
but now in these last of middle years
I’ve found new gold to take me to
the final track where I will lay my head
one day in some celestial company.
Ron Price
20 December 1995
* Joseph Campbell tells the story of meeting a man on a desolate waste of bogs and he said to the man, “It’s rather dull here.” The man said, “Faith, ye can sit on a middan and dream stars.” ** John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale.”
When the life of the streets perplexed me long ago I attempted to find an answer to it for myself by going literally into the wilderness, where I was so lost to friends and everyone that not five people crossed my threshold in as many years. I came back to do my days work in its day none the wiser. -Robert Frost(1913) in Robert Frost On Writing, Elaine Barry, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1973, p.86.
Why I know some people, Robert,
who are not able to enjoy their own company
for more than a fleeting moment;
some actually get quite disturbed
by the silence of their own thought
or its absence and, eventually,
by the television.
They’re the sort of people who could not
sit on a middan and dream stars*,
if you know what I mean.
It’s not so much solitude, privacy, some need,
as the time and opportunity to sink their teeth
into some harmonious silence of the spheres,
some momentary sense of transcendence,
some replenishing philosophy, some new life,
a sense of the miracle of being alive,
some simplicity, humility, peace,
an awareness of their oneness,
an indissoluble bond, oceanic:
they seem denied this gift, this station.
And others still in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,**
I may feel like this upon a midnight
when I my labours done and some,
I call it, chemical exhaustion sets in,
but now in these last of middle years
I’ve found new gold to take me to
the final track where I will lay my head
one day in some celestial company.
Ron Price
20 December 1995
* Joseph Campbell tells the story of meeting a man on a desolate waste of bogs and he said to the man, “It’s rather dull here.” The man said, “Faith, ye can sit on a middan and dream stars.” ** John Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale.”