Like a Circle in a Circle

One of the things I like most about my job is that whilst toiling away, my mind is free to roam. Certain songs have been tripping through the corridors of my cerebellum. Mostly, those I know the lyrics to by heart, a few selections from REM and th 10,000 Maniacs.

Today, I found myself singing one of my favorite hymns...

And did those feet, in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pasteurs seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine upon these clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my sword of burning gold;
Bring me my arrows of desire;
Bring me my shield;
Ye clouds, Unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I shall not stay from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Until we build Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

I may have some of the word wrong there, it's all from memory.

While I was singing it, I had this image of some nineteenth century cabinet maker in England--Norwich or Titterington or some such place--singing the same hymn to himself while he worked. It's like I've become part of some great lineage, Men Who Work With Wood. Love that.

And a poem I memorized when I was in college came back to me, whole cloth:

Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.

Great poem, huh? It's Wallace Stephens, To a High Toned All Christian Woman. It's not from memory, it's from the internet. I wanted to do justice to it. I could recall the words, but not quite the line breaks.

Great poem. Wonderful poem. And all that whipping and flagellation. Go figure. I couldn't quite understand what Wallace was getting at back then. Could whipping be... sensual?

Poetry is the supreme fiction, Madame.

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