Poetry Read

While flying over the vast land of California, from South to the North, I saw the mountain tops change from red and bear to green and wooded, each with immense beauty and deep silence.

I thought whether pilots assume certain air of nobleness because they are blessed with God's view.

And I picked up that little selection of poems from years ago. And these words are there, waiting to be uttered.

* * * *

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Think now history has many cunning passages, Contrived Corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,

Guides us by vanities. Think now

She gives when our attention is distracted

And when she gives, gives with such supple confusions

That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late

What's not believed in, or if still believed,

In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon,

Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with

Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices

Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues

Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

T.S. Eliot