Poem for Tuesday

My Own Heart Let Me Have More Pity On
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

My own heart let me have more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless, than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst 's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather -- as skies
Betweenpie mountains -- lights a lovely mile.

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One more poem mentioned by Robert Pinsky in Sundays's Poet's Choice in The Washington Post Book World. He writes, "The Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins opens a poem with words in a super-energized order, muscling 'My own' and 'me' to the beginnings of lines, 'let' to the end, as though stringing a bow or arming a catapult, with the triple-repeated weight of 'tormented' as a missile: 'My own heart let me more have pity on; let/ Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,/ Charitable; not live this tormented mind/ With this tormented mind tormenting yet.'"

Monday we got the haircuts we didn't manage to get Sunday -- what a difference at Hair Cuttery between weekend and weekday, we had no wait at all for four people. Otherwise not much happened worth reporting. I had to read and listen to an intolerable number of Kurtzman/Orci interviews about Transformers, in which they said that the upcoming Star Trek movie 1) either is or is not a prequel, 2) either is or is not a reboot, and 3) is under a veil of secrecy so no matter how many times they get asked, they're going to keep repeating the same stuff about Roddenberry's legacy, Cold War metaphors and blah blah blah. And I went hunting the web for the lyrics to Kate Rusby's "Exile" because the last time I did that, a few days ago, I stumbled across 's Ninth Doctor vid to that song and got completely distracted, because that and her LOTR "Winter" vid are just wonderful.

Had dinner with my parents because we aren't going to see them again for a couple of weeks -- we are going to my in-laws' for the Fourth and a couple days after, then my mother is going with my sister to Canyon Ranch for a few days for some exclusive mother-daughter bonding (with a couple of sister's friends and their mothers) that apparently costs as much as a trip to Paris. (Clearly my priorities are out of whack and this is why my mother and sister are so much thinner and prettier than I am, ha.) Then came home and watched Dr. Who and the Daleks, which remembered that he had videotaped off very late night television while we were living in Chicago in the very early 1990s (complete with commercials -- at every single break we got one for a "meet the girl of your dreams" 900 number, do those things still exist since the internet?) It was -- oh, how to say this -- really quite dreadful, Peter Cushing and all, and gave me a vastly renewed appreciation even for the things I don't much like in the new series!


John Smith's shallop (also here) at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall.


The boat is part of an exhibit on Virginia heritage, as is the F.D. Crockett, a visitor from the Deltaville Maritime Museum in an exhibit on Chesapeake Bay fishing and commerce.


This nautical equipment is from Kent in the UK, where the Jamestown settlement had its origins.


Fragments of stained glass from a Kent archaeological display on recovering and restoring old churches and Canterbury Cathedral.


These children are learning about marine archaeology in Northern Ireland.


There aren't too many places in DC where one can see Scotsmen walking around in kilts.


But one gets a bit of everything at the Folklife Festival, including nice views of the Smithsonian Castle.

To quote a commenter on CNN, when King George II commuted his friend's sentence, and I saw the news headline pop up, I screamed something so inappropriate that my children came running to see what had happened. If we can't make the prison sentences stick on the lackeys, isn't it about damn time to impeach the people actually responsible? Or does George want us all distracted and screaming about Libby so we don't notice the lack of any progress whatsoever in Iraq? Maybe he can pay Paris Hilton to go back to jail and distract America further...