I Mined and Shared from Matchless Mines of Me: Two Sonnets of Job (Apology Box Additions)

In these days when some claim to follow so-called prosperity theology, it's of course good to remember the story of Job.  It is, in fact, impossible to claim that one follows the Bible literally and yet also claim that God will lavish health and material reward on those who follow him. Similarly, suffering does not in and of itself indicate malfeasance. Both experience and Job tell us just the opposite.  We see good people suffer, and we see people who do bad things prosper nonetheless.  Of course, this is not to say that we are not often rewarded for good and that we are not often punished for doing wrong.  Nor is this to say that at least some form of reputational "karma" does not exist.  We of course build and lose reputations based upon our voluntary choices and we reap and suffer consequences of those choices.  However, all this occurs in the context of a world coming at us in countless ways that are also beyond our control and that deliver both bounties and setbacks that we don't deserve.  The best of us can live in poverty and ill-health despite our best efforts and those of us doing the worst can live in great prosperity.  To claim otherwise (1) rejects both experience and the Book of Job, (2) rejects true humanity itself, (3) rejects the compassion and understanding true virtue requires, and (4) demeans grace which, frankly, we all need to appreciate and cultivate more.    

Apology Box Additions: Sampson & Delilah

    

                 

                        Sampson’s Sonnet 

The day misleads.  We’re blessed by losing eyes

Too easily distracted by the rose

That colors over thorns, insects, and blight,

And feigns geometries in petals though

True lines and circles never can be drawn

On warped and pitted canvases of earth.

The very structure of the eye proclaims

That sight has little worth.  Jehovah would

Not make such fragile orbs for vision if

It were a thing for us to treasure much.

Delilah is more proof.  Unseen she could

Not use her outer bloom for treachery.

By losing eyes, I took on better sight

And found more focus in the dark than light. 

                  Delilah’s Sonnet

How could betrayal happen to a man

Who’d made a wager, murdered when he’d lost,

Who knowingly pushed massive pillars down

To crush a child that led him to the place,

Who’d used his trust, dominion over beasts,

To bind their tails and send them off in flames?

(I still can hear the awful yelping of

The twice-red foxes till the fires consumed

Their tiny throats and tongues.)  I had no choice.

He was a monster.  Villainy requires

Containment which we did—yet let him live,
A courtesy he failed to show himself

In taking his own life that we had spared.

Delilah in return should, too, be spared. 

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Razing Babel: Two Sonnets For Too Xenophobic Times

In these Xenophobic times, we should recognize that Razing Babel was a blessing not a curse.   The punishment of imprisonment within a single, narrow tongue proves much, much worse than the inconvenience of dealing with others who don’t speak our native language.  Here’s why:

Sewing & Sowing Words

 

We’re artisans who sew and sow words.  We sew and sow words for, among other things, organizing, molding, and embellishing the world in which we’re thrust and thrust ourselves.  Words are powerful tools that must be handled with care.  And, yet, too often when sewing and sowing language:

Poets and Lawyers: Birds of a Feather

Archive of Blog Originally Posted 12/15/2015 in The Huffinton Post

Three Sonnets in Paint

Of course pigment and its forms cannot translate to word.  Paintings must be seen not heard.  Though we cannot speak paintings, we can, speak about paintings.  Thus, I share three sonnets where I try to speak about three paintings.  I picked these three paintings because they themselves seemed to try the reverse impossibility I note.  They try to be sonnets in paint.

The Old Testament & Same-Sex Separation Anxiety

The Old Testament contains powerful examples of deep affection between those of the same sex.  David tells Jonathan: “very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1:26).  Ruth tells Naomi: “whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” (Ruth 1:16).  As the halves of each pair would enter Heaven at different times, I wondered how they might address the separation and the fear that one or both might not be admitted.  Of course, these sonnets are my words, not theirs.  As such, and being a Wildcat, I couldn’t avoid language suggesting joinder of #DavidsonCollege and light.  Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas!

Cicero and Classical Rhetoric: A Good Man Is Still Fluent Dead

Much needless suffering (including physical carnage) flows from our inability to persuade with words rather than force.  Much of that verbal inability comes from a lack of basic instruction in the rhetorical arts that the Greeks and Romans perfected long ago.  Their manuals (such as the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Artistotle's Rhetoric) lie too often untouched  though freely available online and in libraries all around us.  Ignoring such works makes no sense, and I hope one day the vast majority of us will rediscover and value what the ancient rhetoricians have given us.  I wonder how Cicero might speak to us now about the power of word over sword (of dropping the "s" from "sword" and using the resulting "word"), and about the need to read, ponder, and perfect the teachings his earlier generations have kindly left us.  I've written the following sonnet hoping to capture some wisdom from that man of words who was murdered by men of swords and whose hands and head were cut off and nailed up for public view.

Cincinnatus: The Other Political Archetype

As we watch today's political nastiness, we should remember there is a better political archetype.  There is the Cincinnatus figure who serves out of duty when he'd rather be doing something else. In the legendary case of Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (who died ca. 438 B.C.) that something else was farming which he twice abandoned out of duty to serve.  Can we not find such persons today to serve?  Perhaps wanting a political office should in itself be disqualifying.  Perhaps at Judgment Day all good politicians will speak as I imagine Cincinnatus speaking at his Judgment Day in this sonnet I have written: