“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.”
Edith Sitwell
The Dancers
by Edith Sitwell
(During a Great Battle, 1916)
The floors are slippery with blood:
The world gyrates too. God is good
That while His wind blows out the light
For those who hourly die for us –
We still can dance, each night.
The music has grown numb with death –
But we will suck their dying breath,
The whispered name they breathed to chance,
To swell our music, make it loud
That we may dance, – may dance.
We are the dull blind carrion-fly
That dance and batten. Though God die
Mad from the horror of the light –
The light is mad, too, flecked with blood, –
We dance, we dance, each night.
The story of Abraham – Sarah and Isaac is a story of belief, so powerful that fathers are willing to sacrifice their beloved sons in devotion to their gods. But the part in Genesis that is equally important, is that God interceded on Isaac’s behalf and sent an angel and saved Isaac from his Father’s zealousness. Peaceful intervention is the moral of that story, not blind obedience. Who are the angels in your midst interceding on behalf of peace?
Sonnet
by W. S. Merwin (1927 – 1919)
Fourteen Lines 