Saturday Rave: The Donkey by G K Chesterton

 T S Eliot wrote that G K Chesterton:

was importantly and consistently on the side of the angels

and there is actually a campaign to have him beatified (a step towards having him made a saint).

Here he is at work:

Two things to note: first, he was famously bulky, and so to keep on the side of the angels he is going to need a considerable width of wing; and, second, you never thought the company of saints was going to look anything like that, did you?

(I love that picture. It displays the quotidian gloom of the career of writing.)

Anyway, apart from all his radio broadcasts, novels, philosophy and theology (which all tended to come comfortingly wrapped in the literary equivalent of plain brown paper), he wrote some verse, too. 

This is one of his:

 The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked

And figs grew upon thorn,

Some moment when the moon was blood

Then surely I was born.

 

With monstrous head and sickening cry

 And ears like errant wings,

The devil’s walking parody

On all four-footed things.

 

The tattered outlaw of the earth,

Of ancient crooked will;

Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,

I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;

One far fierce hour and sweet:

There was a shout about my ears,

 And palms before my feet.

**

A poem with some autobiographical elements, I'd say. 

Bless him!

Word To Use Today: donkey. This is a rather mysterious word that first came to be used in the 1700s. Theories of the word's origin range from: short for Dom, because the donkey has a serious face like a Spanish lord; meaning small dark thing (dun-coloured,     with -key on the end, as in the word monkey); and a little Duncan. Dick, or Dominic.

photo by Gazebo

But all the same, donkeys can be rather beautiful, can't they.