Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Returning After a Word from Our Sponser - Henry David Thoreau




Back after 5 days without Internet and phones. Spent some time reading Thoreau's Walden, which explains everything you need to know about the Internet.

Not sure if the regular post will make it up today. Perhaps tomorrow.

More soon.



not missing
the spring rain's blessing...
blades of grass
Issa
translated by David Lanoue




best,
Don

"I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have
inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these
are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been
born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might
have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor
in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their
sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt?
Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are
born? They have got to live a man's life, pushing all these things
before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor
immortal soul have I met well-nigh crushed and smothered
under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it
a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never
cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing,
pasture, and woodlot! The portionless, who struggle with no
such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough
to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh."
- Henry David Thoreau

4 comments:

Ed Baker said...

I could say
something towards
this:

however

in my yard
a fine crop of weeds
and little white
flowers

attracting bees

an opened bottle of
beer and

The Ten Foot Square Hut

full moon
requiring
my full attention

Charles Gramlich said...

I was just reading some Thoreau myself last night. If you like thoreau you might try Eiseley's "The Night country."

Issa's Untidy Hut said...

Ed, may I add this full moon poem to the others?

Charles, I'm an Eiseley fan, too, though it's been years. Did you know he wrote poetry, too?

Ed Baker said...

SURE. add away...


and, I am trying my dam-dest to keep track
and triple check of "things" gone where... I got a new system....I now write things down... in a notebook.... date and number things....

got about four 5 foot piles of notes on typing paper to go through should keep me busy for a-while...especially without a 'secretary'


try The Lost Notebooks of Loren Eiselley