Saturday Scraps and Something From My Big Orange Book

     Facebook is a wondrous thing. I'm so grateful not only to have reconnected with many old friends and acquaintances, some of whom go back much further than I'd care to contemplate; I'm grateful also to have made many new friends that I have yet to meet face to face. There is no other social network quite like it. Twitter is fine, but to me a bit superficial. Email and Google+ are fine, too, but neither has the cozy, homey feeling that Facebook has. 

     In just the past three days, I've experienced both the sorrow of losing one of my dearest Facebook friends and the joy of finding yet another friend from junior high. The former was one of those friends I have never met, but with whom I shared a mutual love for the books of Helene Hanff, classical music, and poetry. She was a wise, loving, gentle soul, taken suddenly by a stroke, and though I'll miss her greatly, I also rejoice that she is now finally home. I've never had a pen pal in the traditional sense of the term, but friends whom one meets on social networks are the 21st century equivalent.

    

     These past months, I've been enjoying weekly outings with my oldest friend ("oldest" in the sense of "longest-term"). Since she has just recently returned to this, her birth city, after many years living in St. Louis, she's eager to rediscover childhood places as well as discover places she's never been. Some we've visited so far are also brand new to me, though I've been back in the city since the fall of 2006. Shame on me! Actually, I'm not unique in this. I know there are many people who don't know their own cities as well as they could/should. Maybe it's precisely because they live there and have all the time in the world; if they were merely visiting, they would more likely get out there and see the sights while they can. In my case, until my friend moved back here I had no one with whom to see the sights (I have sisters, but they have lives of their own) and I am loath to wander about on my own.

     I think I have finally finished The Distant Belovèd. (If you don't know what that is, click "Love Poems" at the top of this page.) That is, I've finished it in the sense that I really don't think I can add any more new poems to it. The reason for this is, I think the thing that fuelled and inspired it, the fire that has burned so brightly and steadily since 1995, has finally begun to subside. Yes, the collection is finished, but the editing and revising of it is by no means over. I have a feeling I'll be culling several pieces as well.

     So in honor of this, I'd like to share a poem, not from The Distant Belovèd, but a sonnet by Maurice Baring. This is one of the pieces from my Big Orange Book (and if you don't know what that is, again, click its link above!).

Vale *

I am forever haunted by one dread,
That I may suddenly be swept away,
Nor have the leave to see you, and to say
Good-bye; then this is what I would have said:

I have loved summer and the longest day;
The leaves of June, the slumberous film of heat,
The bees, the swallow, and the waving wheat,
The whistling of the mowers in the hay.

I have loved words which left the soul with wings,
Words that are windows to eternal things.
I have loved souls that to themselves are true,

Who cannot stoop and know not how to fear,
Yet hold the talisman of pity's tear:
I have loved these because I have loved you.

vale - Latin, "farewell", pronounced "wah-leh"

Maurice Baring