HAVING A LARK(IN)
for those who can no longer wake and grow immeasurably
An utterly beautiful poem by Richard Oxman

Last night, before turning in, Sylvie asked me, “If God made Man in His image, did He make him like Cro-Magnon Man?” Then she put on some nightie.

Only stuff like that can get me to stop reading stuff like Blood Meridian in bed.

Traditional religion is an easy target. Yah, what about those dinosaur bones? Evolution can’t be dismissed so without intellectual woe.

But Science, as taught in our schools and as talked about in common conversation, is just as silly, steps on the Moon and Cymbalta ( http://www.counterpunch.org/rosenberg04142008.html ) notwithstanding.

Mystery must be allowed to breathe. It is where we come from… and where we are going. In fact, to give “Religion” its due, it’s where we are: “the Kingdom…is spread out upon earth, and men do not see it….”

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth’s immeasureable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

That’s the work of one of my favorite Cro-Magnons who ever lifted a pen, Philip Larkin.

Now… to plagiarize from buddy Bryan (A. Stevenson), Executive Director of the incomparable Equal Justice Initiative ( www.eji.org ):

In the U.S., dozens of 13- and 14-year-old children have been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole after being prosecuted as adults. While the U.S. Supreme Court recently declared in Roper v. Simmons that death by execution is unconstitutional for juveniles, young children continue to be sentenced to imprisonment until death with very little scrutiny or review. A study by the Equal Justice Initiative has documented 73 cases where children 13 and 14 years of age have been condemned to death in prison. Almost all of these kids currently lack legal representation and in most cases the propriety and constitutionality of their extreme sentences have never been reviewed.

Most of the sentences imposed on these children were mandatory: the courtcould not give any consideration to the child’s age or life history. Some of the children were charged with crimes that do not involve homicide or even injury; many were convicted for offenses where older teenagers or adults were involved and primarily responsible for the crime; nearly two-thirds are children of color.

Over 2,225 juveniles (age 17 or younger) in our country have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. All of these cases raise important legal, penological, and moral issues. Bryan’s EJI believes that such a harsh sentence for the youngest offenders — children who are 13 and 14 — is cruel and unusual in violation of the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. These children should be re-sentenced to parole-eligible sentences ASAP. Sentences of life imprisonment with no parole also violate international law and the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by every country in the world except the United States of America… and Somalia.

But what do we know about Somalia or lambs that learn to walk in snow or God’s image?

Richard Oxman can be reached at headburg@yahoo.com. The above, so much about the utterly beautiful poetry of Life, was unedited. Btw, was it Shaw who said something about how the measure of how “civilized” a society is can be taken by looking at how its children and prisoners are treated? Howl!!!