Earth’s Immeasurable Surprise
The surprising work of racist, dirty old man Philip Larkin, not the bloody work of “tough as old hickory” Andrew Jackson, should be covered, honored in school. Then again, one shouldn’t go to school… where lovely surprises and readings of our inevitable, manifest abominations are in short supply.
by Richard Martin Oxman

“For real Spring, one must be patient. For political/social springtime, one must rip a rib from one’s body, and then grab up grass from the ground. But people without a poetic bone in their bodies — sheep — cannot do that.” — Philip Larkin, 1956, around the time of the publication of First Sight

This is a proper introduction to http://oxtogrind.org/archive/331 for those who like poetry. For those for whom poetry does not resonate… proceed directly to the link provided, after reading (only) the boldfaced words at the very bottom of this piece.

[Pause.].

Imagine bitter cold snow all around. And you haven’t learned to walk yet.

Now imagine a sunless glare in that setting, you crying your eyes out at the top of your lungs. Or something like that. At least whining, bleating or feeble complaints in that setting.

Before that I have a question. To wit, is a “width of cold” the same (or close to) a ridge of cold?

Fleece, keep in mind, is the coat of wool of a sheep. But fleece, as with other words in the poem I’m about to share with you, can mean other things too.

Enough of my interference. Directly below is one of the very greatest poems ever written in English.

First Sight

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 immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.

Thank you Philip Larkin.

The people around me, like a goldfish in a bowl, seem to think that all is water… and strangely small, confining. That’s simply not the case.

Like at the end of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith, still, embodies much mystery. Man, reaching out in puzzlement, cannot comprehend that mystery. But there is more. More to be born if you have borne the burden of years. If you are open to Spring.

You can leave the world a better place. You must… because it’s possible.

Hope, however, resides in first acknowledging hopelessness.

We must leave the utterly barren landscape made mandatory by the powers that be. For it is truly hopeless in the land where Spring can never come.

That is not the land as this beneath our feet, but the land of America where Andrew Jackson’s abuse of Native American skin is not thought of as being every bit as abominable as Nazi lampshades. Not, in fact, even talked about in polite circles. Which envelop us all in this nation.

Imagination is required to have Spring now. It used to come naturally, effortlessly.

Or… don’t you go back that far?

[Pause.]

One does not bring Spring about with bombs.

Nor through the electoral arena… as it stands.

Nor with articles like this… or lectures. Neither with books nor films.

Or with meetings. Or money.

And with all respect to The Wisdom of the East, it is not enough to simply be the change you want to see. Not nearly enough to labor well in a small corner. Or be quiet.

No, “Earth’s immeasurable surprise” awaits you, but we must melt the mental ice now… first.

And although we cannot completely predict what snowball effects will be set in motion, I can promise you that what happens will be utterly unlike the snow.

And you will be able to call it Springtime.

Richard is ready to speak to you and/or your group* gratis if you contact him ASAP at headburg@yahoo.com. About how to bring Spring about? Perhaps, for some, we will first have to address what is snowy — not pure and innocent — about the present, our ongoing Winter.

“Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee.” — William Blake.

It should be recalled that the American Republic was founded on the principle that there should be a democratic deficit. James Madison, the main framer of the constitutional order, his view was that power should be in the hands of the wealth of the nation, the more responsible set of men who have sympathy for property owners and their rights. And Madison sought to construct a system of government that would, in his words, “protect the minority of the opulent from the majority.” That’s why the constitutional system that he framed did not have co-equal branches. The executive was supposed to be an administrator, and the legislature was supposed to be dominant, but not the House of Representatives, rather the Senate, where power was vested and protected from the public in many ways. That’s where the wealth of the nation would be concentrated. This is not overlooked by historians. Gordon Wood, for example, summarizes the thoughts of the founders, saying that “The Constitution was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period,” delivering power to a “better sort” of people and excluding “those who were not rich, well born, or prominent from exercising political power.”

We can do something about that attitudinal set which has now been imposed on, infected the entire world… to a degree which has become suicidal/ecocidal. Unless your vision is too wetly caked, you should be capable of manifesting the most impossible… surprises. Thank God for Chaia Heller and like-minded souls http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/21898. One does not allow oneself to get used to multiplying U.S. abominations any more than one accepts increasing cancer clusters as part of a natural evolutionary cycle. Oh yes, thanks to Noam Chomsky for his boldface beauty above.