Rationality

At the bridal shower, one of the games was “how well does the bride know the groom?”  And Nicole had to answer a bunch of questions about my favorite things (she passed with flying colors!).  Anyway, I randomly remembered Blake’s poem, which is easily my historical if not all time favorite:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

I probably first liked this poem just because it’s about tigers, but it really is something special.  There is, of course, also another version of it, which I believe was created by Sam: “Tiger, tiger burning bright / Burning forests down at night”.  Less artful, yes, but vastly superior in comedic value.  I picture this particular tiger as Smokey the Bear’s sworn arch-enemy.  But Smokey was kind of overweight, if I recall correctly, so he’d better just let the tiger keep on burning.

Koch recalls his stream of thought in the trenches during WWII:

“I can’t be killed — because of my poetry. I have to live on in
order to write it.”
I thought — even crazier thought, or just as crazy —
“If I’m killed while thinking of lines, it will be too corny
When it’s reported” (I imagined it would be reported!)
So I kept thinking of lines of poetry. One that came to me on the
beach at Leyte
Was “The surf comes in like masochistic lions.”
I loved this terrible line. It was keeping me alive.

- from “To World War Two” by Kenneth Koch

Maybe it is a terrible line, but it gets the image right.  We saw some frightful waves at Waimanalo Beach that might qualify, though most of the trip I think the surf was not really violent… we had something more like ‘clumsy’ lions.