Saturday Rave: Carrion Comfort by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

 The fashion nowadays is to seek to destroy anything of which one disproves. In fact, the fashion is to destroy anyone of whom one disapproves. 

Even memories must be obliterated.

But what will happen to our heroes, then? St George is nothing without the dragon, after all.

Here's a poem. It says things with which many of us will not agree, but it's still interesting, and worth thinking about carefully. 

It's about God, but the idea is transferable to other mighty and difficult powers - like, for instance, war, or love.

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man

In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me

Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan

With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

 Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.

Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,

Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.

Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród

Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year

Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

***

Much love to all those wrestling valiantly with mighty powers.

Word To Use Today: carrion. This word comes from the Anglo-French word caroine, and before that from the Latin carō, which means flesh.