This is a poem that is pretty reflective of my feelings, intensely negative, about the industrial and post-industrial world we all inhabit. It has do with the dehumanizing tendency of the mechanization of manual work. One might also include the computerization of cerebral work. In my case, I work as a stone cutter, and have done for a good many years. The point of the poem is that the objects and spaces we choose to create, either individually or collectively as a society, are indicative of particular spiritual states; sad to say, they are frequently destructive ones.  You could say that this is a vision of a world in opposition to Faerie, to enchantment and to beauty.  The world from which I look for refuge.

OBJECTS ARE SPIRITUAL FORMS

Jesus! I hate these corpse-gray, moldy walls,

That bellowing air-compressor and the reek

Of ruptured stone! The bridge-saw spits and bawls

And shudders like a lunatic all week.

Cold slabs of stone lean by the ton in racks;

Dust in a fine mist clogs the stinking air.

A radio blares. A router coughs and hacks

Shaking this wall of noise I cannot bear.

And yet I bear it, dwelling on the germ

Which, multiplying, framed this roaring tomb;

'Til glimmers on my inward eye the form

That avarice assumes in matter's womb.

Now set the subtle tissues of you hand

Down lightly on the shell of this machine:

Indifference should burn you like a brand,

And cynicism cause your soul to keen.

- Tod Jones

My daughter, Eliza (20 yrs. old), is a student at a wonderful little university up in Massachusetts. She has taken advantage of their study-abroad program to spend this year in Japan where she is doing some intensive language studies. Though this is her third year in college, it is the first time we have been separated over the holiday season. Those of you who are of a certain age will know, and others of you will learn, how strange it is to share eighteen years of familiar routines in intimate proximity to someone you love, and then to have to let them depart from all that, knowing that however loving and friendly your relationship may be, the old day by day closeness can never come again.

It makes me reflect on the tension between solitude and intimacy, love and loneliness. Few things are more intolerable than the person who will give one no space, silence or privacy. But to be long separated from those we love best is also intolerable. I do not think that separation is merely an illusion. Freedom demands it. Nor do I believe that those who truly love one another are ever utterly parted. I think that there is a medium which in a hidden manner binds together all that is apparently scattered and sundered in the fields of time: namely, Divine Love. And I mean that I believe quite literally that we are present to one another in that Love.

Here is another poetic offering.

GOOD-BYE

Over and over into the pale meadow,

Onto the icy puddles and bird-bearing boughs,

This quick, steady snow keeps me from you;

Sinks into the black, sliding river; good-bye.

These blue, holy shadows radiate silence.

I soar out amongst the hypnotic, heavy flakes

On wings of ecstatic loneliness,

Over the river and the steep, wooded hill.

- Tod Jones

Friday at last after what seemed a very long week!  Snow was falling quite heavily for a while in our corner of New England this afternoon, making all beautiful except for the mood of those of us who had to drive home through it.  Drat the internal combustion engine!

Last Saturday I had the most wonderfully lazy day;  just what I hope to have again tomorrow with a little luck!  I may have to do one or two useful things but I intend to keep them to a minimum.  Anyway, while I was busy being useless, this popped into my head:  I think perhaps a faery whispered it to me...

              I NEED

I  need a whole month

To wander around inside

This pearly raindrop!

It has so many

Doors, so many glass hallways!

I'll surely get lost.

Someone is laughing,

And I see bright, gleeful eyes

Peeping round corners.

Here's a comfy room...

Full of peace and rainbow light!

Just time for a nap!

- Tod Jones 

Sorrow plays such a large role in all our lives... especially in the lives of those of us who truly search for beauty and love in a society which offers mainly counterfeits of the same.  We who love Faery are homesick, I think, and that is the source of our sorrow.  We sense that those gleamings of beauty which ravish our hearts from time to time come from a place beyond this mundane existence, a place from which we are somehow  in exile, and for which we long.  Surely the imagination is a key to this reality, this home of ours which we seek.  And surely it exists in the hearts of those who truly love!  But how few do!

Here is a poem about that sorrow.

   PLANETS OF RAIN

There are planets, really,

Of pure rain, where the sun

Never shines, where the dove

Finds no place to set her foot...

Everyone dies there and

The bookshops fill with water

And the banker drifts past

His vault with shellfish eyes.

There are planets of pure rain

Spinning in the darkness of certain

Closets, shooting through the long

Loneliness beneath the blouses of

Certain women...

And in the creases of certain

Hands that starve for

Tenderness, I tell you, there

Are planets of rain.

And everything secretly withheld,

And everything not truly given

Goes there to stay with

Breasts under glass and

Slowly swaying lovers in

Gardens of blind algae...

Sundials wrapped in eel-grass...

The green and endless roads.

- Tod Jones 

The Scene: Morna, a Queen in Faery, sits in a great cavern mouth, which is the entrance to her realm, with a company of her loyal subjects. They overlook a prospect of distorted and chaotic nature. After sending guidance to those seeking to escape from thence into her kingdom of peace and joy, they conduct their ancient ceremony of love and mutual fellowship, then return by secret paths to their home under the earth.

O mossy, pillared caves where Morna sits

Silvery-pale and placid in the hushed

And fragrant gloom. Outside, in hectic majesty,

The scarlet moon lifts from the writhing sea,

Crossed and recrossed by shadows. Far-off shrieks,

Strangled weeping, groans of twisting souls

Confuse the darkness. Here, peace is: and we

Keep holy vigil; guiding with prayerful thought

All harried wanderers unto these guarded halls.

Then our sweet sovereign, gracious and serene

Begins to sing, lighting her golden torch

From the low watch-fire, and we ours from hers.

Just as one wakeful robin trills her verse

Among the budding leaves as Venus fades,

And, in a moment, every grove and hedge

Echoes and rings with birdsong- even so

First one and then the next of all our company

Joins in the melting music. Morna then

Dips down her jeweled goblet in the spring

Which wells in amber radiance from the rock

And drinks; and each to each the blessed cup

Is passed in solemn rite. At last, with arms

Entwined and singing clear with torches high,

Around our Queen in festive throng, all we

Through winding halls enveined with precious stone,

Down to her hidden kingdom do descend.

- Tod Jones