Guest poem sent in by Neville Clemens
(Poem #1613) Temporary Well Being The pond is plenteous
The land is lush,
And having turned off the news
I am for the moment mellow.
With my book in one hand
And my drink in the other
What more could I want
But fame,
Better health,
And ten million dollars?
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I was loitering about New York's Pennsylvania Station about a month ago waiting for my train to arrive when I came across these lines engraved on one of the walls. The station had been renovated a few years ago and the new polished granite walls were liberally garnished with delightful short poems (I suppose one isn't inclined to read epic ballads when there is a train to catch) such as this one, by poets from in and around the tri-state area. From the snippets that I remembered when I got back home, I wasn't able to find the poem on the internet. So last week as I passed by the wall again, I stopped, stared and memorized it the best I could - and here it is. I'm not sure if this is part of a larger poem, but in any case I think it stands very nicely on its own. [verified against a copy on the net -- martin] This poem, to me, speaks out against what I call 'selective renunciation'. It's an argument I've had with my parents on many an occasion. We urban people tend to romanticize the countryside and the hill stations and often express our desire to leave everything behind and retire to some such place and give it all up - only we don't *really* want to give it all up. We still want a nice warm house, a department store nearby, a bank to keep our money safe, a nice school for our children, a car to move about and so on and so forth till we've utterly destroyed the charm of the place, and then we move on to romanticizing the next pristine spot. So let's stop calling ourselves 'nature lovers'. We're urban animals and living in an urban jungle is just the cross we'll have to bear, as responsible human beings. Either that or we go and live by yonder pond in yonder woods like yonder Dead Poet if we truly wish to 'suck the marrow out of life'. Neville [Links] Biography: http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/kenneth_burke.html Review: http://hcl.harvard.edu/houghton/departments/harvardreview/27/giamo.html
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