Large Fierce Mammal

I believe in the spirit of Man as well as the matter. I have seen great courage in men, and women, too;seen them do great things for each other, for their nations, for the world, with a kind of selfless vision that cannot be accounted for by the base, brute self-interest of the body. But why that greatness must spring from some supernatural source. some origin beyond our most subtle sense and understanding, is more than I can see. I respect and revere the spirit of Man all the more because it is of earthly origin. We have a purely natural potential for good that owes nothing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a thousand thousand parish raconteurs belabouring poor half-awake souls of a Sunday morning with the potential wages of their ranked and catalogued sins. If you would make a planet of saints and angels, begin by seeing that no person need struggle against his fellow, nor steal from him, nor even kill him, for his food and his shelter. Give him the means to communicate with others, and to read and hear what they would communicate to him. Let him seek the work that suits him best, work that he can see in a moment is of benefit to himself and his fellows. Let him combine with others in his community and his nation to shape and revise the laws he will then live under, so that he knows they serve him, and he them. And give him, at last, leisure to rest, to love his spouse and children, to make, if he chooses, something of beauty only for its own sake. Then you will see Paradise … then you will see the New Jerusalem, and you will never need to call upon a god to ratify it. ~ Freedom & Necessity, Steven Brust & Emma Bull

I’ve written and spoken aloud many times that the true measure of one’s stated and demonstrated belief lies in sincerity, for only sincerity will hold you to your faith when put to ultimate test. This is because sincerity is the key to faith in the self, which in the end, is faith’s ultimate expression, freeing the self to no longer wonder what one would do or consider right in a given set of circumstances, but instead, to know.

In Book 2 of his Republic, Plato puts forth a set of arguments based around a mythical magickal object called the Ring of Gyges (pronounced “GY´-jeez”). The possessor of the Ring can render himself invisible at will:

For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.

The back story goes that a shepherd in the employ of the King of Lydia enters a cave that he finds to have been exposed by an earthquake. Entering therein, he finds it to be a grand tomb containing a variety of exciting grave goods including – you guessed it – the Ring of Gyges. Learning what it can do, the shepherd seduces the Queen of the realm, murders the King, and takes his place. Why is the road to power always paved with corruptible pussy? But I digress.

The counter argument is, “… that justice does not derive from this social construct: the man who abused the power of the Ring of Gyges has in fact enslaved himself to his appetites, while the man who chose not to use it remains rationally in control of himself and is therefore happy.”

This set of circumstances has been explored, albeit using a different mechanism, more recently by H. G. Wells in his tale of The Invisible Man, and though there is no actual evidence of any direct causal link by way of inspiration, and the parallels are certainly not exact, the concept of a ring of power that grants its wearer invisibility while every wearing of it corrupts has seen more than ample treatment by J. R. R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings.

Today we know the Ring of Gyges as “plausible deniability”, and “the Internet”, but these are only the most recent names for something that has existed as far back as the first unwitnessed malicious act of one man against another. Whether its outcome is simply annoying as with insults hurled at strangers from the presumed anonymity of a speeding car or a paper bag full of Dog shit left burning on someone’s doorstep, more insidious as represented by the wonderful 21st century phenomenon of cyberbullying, all the way to individually perpetrated random assaults or thrill killings and government covert actions launched to facilitate agendas that may not fit any definition of being good, just, or even truly in the national interest, the Ring of Gyges is far from being a mythical thing. It adorns many a finger as we speak.

Today’s Dark Sentiment may or may not be appropriately titled, but no matter. What follows was inspired by SFM, and led to me turning an old joke I heard a long time ago from a Bermudian broadcaster into a poem that ends with poop. Before that though, it has a near death experience, rescue, bad manners, betrayal, infidelity, black magick, and shapeshifting; so it belongs here. Besides, by this point, you all deserve a laugh.

First off, a few days ago I was inspired to write this while changing SFM’s diaper:

He shits in his pants
Then near cries out a lung,
But we grant him forgiveness
Because he’s so young.

Even as this shitty little ditty came to mind, I had already resolved to recite it whenever provoked by people who were performing at a level of maturity that was deserving of ridicule, age notwithstanding. You hereby have my permission to use it for the same purpose.

And now, to Story Night With the Colonel. This is the second time I have written a poem based on a joke I heard in my travels, the first one being A Codger’s Lament, which you can read by clicking its title.

Story Night With the Colonel

By LFM

Source: http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3521/3216771458_603ac31478.jpg

The old Colonel sat in his usual chair,
His pipe and his whisky glass filled.
We all gathered near as, with clearing his throat,
All sound in the club room was stilled.

The Colonel had hunted more days in his life
Than most men alive have spent still,
And the tales of his hunting brought hearts into throats,
At the daring he brought to each kill.

But this story differed from any before,
Though it told of a hunt, that is true.
But the quarry became the good Colonel himself,
When he picked the wrong woman to woo.

In the northlands it was, there to hunt the white Bear,
That the Colonel would near meet his death.
O’ercome by the creep of a long, frozen sleep,
He awoke warm, and still drawing breath!

Beset by a storm, he’d been snowbound and lost,
And took shelter in lee of a log.
Slowly slipping away, that is where he was found
By an Indian Hunter and Dog.

The hunter who found him was Chief to his Tribe,
And his wife nursed the Colonel’s sick bed.
It took many weeks, but in her gentle care,
The Colonel came back from the dead.

A beauty was she, and the Colonel admits
He became less a mannerly guest
When returning of strength caused an increase in length
From allure of her rump and her breast.

He said, “I’ll admit, t’was the work of a shit,”
“Being saved, sheltered, cared for, and fed,
“But in my defense I will say I was young,
“And my thinking was with the wrong head.”

So, dashing and handsome, he charmed the Chief’s wife,
And whispered such things in her ear
As led her to join him in sport through the night
That I’d rather not talk about here.

But the Chief found them out and was wroth in extreme,
And he set his best men to their finding.
He’d torture them both, then he’d burn them to ash,
And he’d torture their ashes by grinding!

But before he could catch them they’d run to the woods,
And they hid there twelve nights and a day,
The sounds of pursuit ever fainter until
They decided they’d got clean away!

Deep in the forest they killed there a Moose,
And they made a small tent from its hide.
Not much of a home, but inflamed by their love,
They nestled and rutted inside.

But the thing of it is that the Chief wasn’t done,
And his vengeance he’d not have denied.
He cast him a spell to turn love into hell,
And he aimed it at his faithless bride!

Now the Colonel took pause to draw sip from his glass,
And not one of us there drew a breath,
As he told us of passions, the sort that are shared
But by lovers who’ve cheated sure death.

Now he told of the morning, so frosty and still;
He awoke in the warmth of soft furs,
Then leapt out of the tent when his eyes found the truth –
That the furs that enwrapped him were hers!

In the dark snowy night, the Chief’s magick had come,
And it turned his wife into a Bear.
As for the Colonel and love she once held,
There wasn’t a trace of it there.

His cry woke her up and she bared all her teeth,
And she shredded the tent like a shroud!
He told how she came and stood over him there,
And he mimicked her battle cry LOUD!

“AAAAARRRGH!!!!“ he cried, then he puffed on his pipe,
And he looked at his glass and was still.
Nobody moved but the barman who crept
To his side, there to pour a wee fill.

“I shit myself,” were the next words from his mouth,
Spoken thoughtful, with dark furrowed brow.
“What? Then?” did I blurt, for I couldn’t hold back.
“No no,” said the Colonel, “Just now!!!“

Let’s begin today’s Dark Sentiment with a word from Agony, courtesy of the inimitable Katy Towell.

A bit of shameless self-promotion on the part of Agony, I agree. We all know that human suffering, as rivetingly horrible as it may be to those experiencing it, and as flavour enhancing as it may be to bystanders with cel phone cameras, usually only has a lasting impact on those directly affected by the events surrounding it. We see evidence of this in people of the current generation snickering through the minute of silence at Remembrance Day ceremonies, the proliferation of Holocaust denial, and teenagers with swastika tattoos, to name but a few examples the average person can find on their own with little effort.

On a world scale we can have friendly relations and do booming business with nations whose governments perpetrate genocide, openly incarcerate or execute people for the crime of loving a person of the same sex, or publicly flog women for having the temerity to drive a car. Business is business and … well … none of that is any of our business. After all, we need Chinese made products to get through every hour of every day, so who cares what they do, or how toxic their factories are?

There is a Flemish proverb that goes, “En de boer hij ploegde voort,” – literally, “And the farmer he ploughed forward,” – used in reference to the normalcy of willful ignorance to the suffering of another. Proving, as if we needed it, that none of this is new news, we see this sentiment graphically expressed in a version of Landscape With the Fall of Icarus, attributed with some controversy to having been painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in 1558. The version I refer to appears below, and a larger, more illustrative version can be viewed here.

For those few of you who’ve never heard of him, Greek mythology relates that Icarus, the son of Master Craftsman Daedalus, escaped Crete by air using wings made by his father out of wax and feathers. Ignoring his father’s advice not to fly too close to the sun, the wax on his wings melted and so he plummeted into the sea where he drowned. Sounds like a Darwin to me, but that’s not today’s point.

Getting back to the painting, you will note that there is a lot happening in it – the Ploughman indeed ploughs on, the Shepherd and his Dog are otherwise engaged, the ship holds to its course – and … oh yes! We can just see the legs of poor, stupid, disobedient, doomed Icarus sticking out of a small splash just to port of the stern of the ship. Even the splash he made is unimpressive, and clearly, nobody else in the picture gives a shit. I might also point out that the Sun appears to be a fair piece away from his trajectory, implying that Icarus might be drowning more because he figuratively stole the keys to dad’s car.

Lisa St Aubin de Terán once wrote, “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.'”

Lest my point be lost, I would never advocate that everyone is, or should be, worthy of your friendship, love, or support. What I reserve my disdain for is the expression of those sentiments retroactively. The gnashing of teeth and rending garments that comes in a tidal wave a day late and a dollar short, echoing hollowly in its tardiness as it so passionately cleaves to its breast a bill that will conveniently never be paid. Refusing to accept the bill in the first place is nobler than accepting it in the hope its purveyor will die before it comes due.

This sets the stage for an upcoming Dark Sentiment that will look at a recent horrific event involving the death of a man and a community’s reaction to it. While I await developments in the case, stay tuned.

“Mourning Picture” by Edwin Romanzo Elmer (click the image to enlarge)

In 1890, American artist Edwin Romanzo Elmer (1850–1923) painted the family portrait that is the subject of today’s Dark Sentiment. It depicts the artist, his wife, and their daughter Effie, who died shortly before it was painted. Even a cursory examination reveals the mother  to be shrouded in shadow while the child and everything associated with her in the foreground is bathed in sunlight. Far from being a thing born of the invention of photography, the Memento mori genre includes a significant component of painted portraiture, as we will see in more detail as this year’s season of Dark Sentiments unfolds.

Today renowned for his attention to detail, Elmer is best  known for this particular piece of work which hung in his local post office from 1890 until it was taken down at some point in the 1950’s. It was not until a niece brought it to the attention of the director of the Smith Museum in Northampton, Massachusetts that the artist achieved any kind of notoriety, and the painting remains on display in the Smith College Museum of Art.

In 1965, Adrienne Rich (1929 – 2012) wrote a poem that was both inspired by and titled “Mourning Picture”, addressing the scene in Effie’s words.

Mourning Picture

By Adrienne Rich

They have carried the mahogany chair and the cane rocker
out under the lilac bush,
and my father and mother darkly sit there, in black clothes.
Our clapboard house stands fast on its hill,
my doll lies in her wicker pram
gazing at western Massachusetts.
This was our world.
I could remake each shaft of grass
feeling its rasp on my fingers, draw out the map of every lilac leaf
or the net of vines on my father’s
grief-tranced hand.

Out of my head, half-bursting,
still filling, the dream condenses—
shadows, crystals, ceilings, meadows, globe of dew.
Under the dull green of the lilacs, out in the light
carving each spoke of the pram, the turned porch-pillars,
under high early-summer clouds,
I am Effie, visible and invisible,
remembering and remembered.

They will move from the house,
give the toys and pets away.
Mute and rigid with loss my mother
will ride the train to Baptist Corner,
the silk-spool will run bare.
I tell you, the thread that bound us lies
faint as a web in the dew.
Should I make you, world, again,
could I give back the leaf its skeleton, the air
its early-summer cloud, the house
its noonday presence, shadowless,
and leave this out? I am Effie, you were my dream.

A motivational poster by Katy Towell. Click to enbiggen. (Source: http://skary.com/)

Katy Towell’s Childrin R Skary website describes its creator as, “… a graphic designer, writer and illustrator in Portland, OR with dreams of one day being the scary old lady in the house about which all the neighborhood children tell ghost stories.”

Katy Towell (Source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2750251.Katy_Towell)

I don’t personally consider children to be skary, regardless of spelling, but then again, I’m a fine one to talk. None of that stops me from appreciating the divine work of the woman who is the subject of today’s Dark Sentiment.

Ms. Towell’s work speaks for itself in a style that is stripped down to the essentials without the risk of ever being labelled simplistic. If you have an imagination, a sense of humour, and an appreciation for Darkness, she will find you where you live.

Her animated short films include such characters as Death himself, an elephant killed by human cruelty whose ghost, while elevated beyond the pain, still bears the marks of the wounds it bore in life, an old Ash Tree that everyone is warned not to go near, and an assortment of dangerous, dead, and damned children that includes, among others, a girl who never woke up.

Today I will share with you three of Katy Towell’s films that have caught my eye. When you’re done, you’d be well advised to haunt her YouTube and Vimeo channels a while, and see what else she has to offer.

Katy Towell also pens “Spooky Novels for Brave Children“; most recently, Skary Children and the Carousel of Sorrow. The world needs more brave children, and those are most readily raised by brave parents. Here’s the trailer … yes, books have trailers now.

For your further delectation, here’s a sample reading of Chapter 3. I think I’ve been to that town several times.

I’m going to conclude with a delightful piece of Ms. Towell’s art work. As the saying goes, we were all young once, and this one’s titled “When Charon Was Small“.

Click to enlarge.

Get the T-shirt! Available in eight colours, the only proper one being BLACK. (SOURCE: http://www.bathroomwall.co.uk/store/warren-zevon-tshirt-p-roland-the-headless-thompson-gunner-p-799.html)

The title of an article by Hadley Freeman published last August in The Guardian refers to Warren Zevon as “… the man behind the demons”. I will be forever grateful to Ms. Freeman for the revelation because I was wondering who to blame for that.

The title of today’s Dark Sentiment is taken from that of my own favourite Warren Zevon song. Co-written with former mercenary David Lindell, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner is described in this backgrounder from the Warren Zevon Wiki:

Zevon met co-writer Lindell in Spain, where the latter was running a bar after a stint working as a mercenary in Africa. Typically interested in the darker side of life, Zevon decided to collaborate with Lindell on a song about a mercenary.

Roland is a Norwegian who becomes embroiled in the Congo Crisis of the late 1960s. He earns a reputation as the greatest Thompson gunner, a reputation that attracts the attention of the CIA in foreign conflicts. Roland is betrayed and murdered by a fellow mercenary, Van Owen, who blows off his head. Roland becomes the phantom “headless Thompson gunner” (reminiscent of the Headless Horseman) and eventually has his revenge on Van Owen, when he catches him “in a bar room drinking gin.” After this Roland continues “wandering through the night” as a sort of revolutionary spirit.

Besides the historical references to third-world conflicts around the globe, the ‘Troubles’ in the Six Counties in Ireland, and the often shadowy involvement of the CIA, the song is a sort of bittersweet rallying cry to the “revolution” in America. The final line of the song, “Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland’s Thompson gun, and bought it..”, referring to heiress Patty Hearst’s kidnapping and subsequent involvement in the Symbionese Liberation Army, throws a cynical twist into the song’s portrayal of a mercenary come back from the dead for justice and revenge.

First released in 1978 on Zevon’s album Excitable Boy, Roland is the last song he ever performed in front of an audience. The performance I’ve chosen for you today is that very one, done at the request of David Letterman. Warren Zevon died of cancer in 2003.

Carnage, betrayal, beheading, and a return from the dead for justice and revenge. Add to that the last performance of the song as the final performance on Earth by Warren Zevon, and you’ve got a perfect Dark Sentiment indeed. Enjoy this time honoured LFM campfire song.

Before you run too far with that, study the poem below.

The lore surrounding iron goes back into antiquity, and many are the beliefs that trust it to have the power to ward off evils from the supernatural realm. The intention to keep the dead at rest is why cemeteries, and even individual graves of a certain age, are often contained within iron fences – both to keep their ghosts from leaving, and to shield them from the troubles of the living world that no longer concerns them. In this, the efficacy of the barrier works both ways.

This being the season of Dark Sentiments, and as a student of steel myself, my playful nature got the best of me, and so this. I offer it up in dedication to a living, breathing Dark Sentiment in his own right – my Esteemed Friend Jim Keating – who is, in no small part, to blame for inspiring it.

Cold Iron and the Veil

By LFM

World of Living. World of Dead.
A veil that lies between.
It bars the Dead from coming back,
Except on Hallowe’en.

I’m troubled that it’s strong and true
A year of days but one,
Then weakens with the setting of
The last October sun.

But all this lies beyond my ken,
Or powers to resolve,
And evil lurks the whole year through,
With constant threats to solve.

I’ll lose no rest o’er what may pass,
Through weakened tattered veils.
Cold iron’s where I’ll place my trust
On ALL the darkest trails!

It may not quench a soul’s desire
That seeks to come this way,
But iron can send souls from here,
And do it ANY day!

The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers is a short film by Beat Pictures, in association with JMM Film and Kompass Pictures, starring Rupert Friend, Tom Mison and Keira Knightley. A darkly comic fairytale set somewhere between the worlds of Hans Christian Andersen, The Brothers Grimm and Tim Burton, The Continuing and Lamentable Saga of the Suicide Brothers is set in a dark forest in a fairytale Bavaria. Brothers Barath (Tom Mison) and Bourbon (Rupert Friend) break up the boredom of their lives by trying to kill themselves each day, forever overlooking the presence of the long-suffering fairy (Keira Knightley) who lives with them.

This little gem of a dark film caught our eye because it combines the creative talents of two British actors who have done the same: Tom Mison who plays Ichabod Crane in the new television series Sleepy Hollow, and Rupert Friend who plays Peter Quinn in Homeland. Both are highly recommended and bear the LFM seal of approval.

First, to the film du jour. Don’t by any means miss the dance sequence at the end. It’s part of the charm.

And now, let’s delve behind the scenes, if only to test how successfully Vimeo and YouTube can coexist on the same page. Best don eye protection.

The infamous Black Dog rides atop a lightning bolt in the Bungay weathervane.

On Sunday (Julian calendar) the 4th day of August in 1577, a thunder storm of wrath of God proportions unleashed its fury between the morning hours of 9 and 10 o’clock over Suffolk, England. Within four weeks of that event, a slim volume titled Straunge and Terrible Wunder wrought very late in the parish church of Bongay was in circulation, penned by the Reverend Abraham Fleming

The cover page of the ripping yarn.

While the good Reverend Fleming described the terrible and deadly spectacle associated with the storm to have played out solely in St. Mary’s Church at Bungay, the affliction was shared with another edifice nearby; Holy Trinity Church at Blythburgh which, one might say, was left indelibly marked by the ordeal. What he describes is a composite of separate events in two locations that transpired during the same storm.

As chronicled, and subsequently compiled in Abraham Fleming: writer, cleric and preacher in Elizabethan and Jacobean London by Clare Elizabeth Painting Stubbs, M. A. (2011):

On Sunday 4 August 1577 during morning service, “… there fell from heaven an exceeding great and terrible tempest sodein violent […] which fell with a wonderful force […] not simply raine but also of lightning and thunder”. The roaring of the thunder and the “rare and vehement” lightening flashes robbed the congregation of their wits while “things void of life […] shook and trembled”. Bungay had been struck by a severe summer storm during which the “whole church was so darkened Yea with such palpable darknesse, that one persone could not perceive another”.

Fleming continued in the pamphlet, “Immediately hereupon appeared in a most horrible similitude and likenesse [a dog] of a black colour”. This apparition struck such fear into the congregation that “they thought doomes day was already come”. Having manifested itself, Fleming’s dog or “the devil in such a likenesse” ran through the church. Then it “passed between two persons, as they were kneeling in prayer, or so it seemed, wrung the necks of them bothe at one instance” and “where they kneeled they straungely died”. The same dog then “passing by another man […] gave him such a gripe on the back that therewith all he was presently drawen together and shrunk up, as it were a peece of leather scorched in a hot fire: or as the mouth of a purse or bag drawen together with a string”. Happily this man “dyed not” which Fleming thought “amasing” and “mervelous in the eyes of men”.

The clerk of the church, who was up a ladder clearing the gutter, was “smitten down” by a thunderclap but sustained no further injury. Possibly the inclusion of this detail is an oblique reference to an act of divine displeasure because the clerk was clearing the gutter during a Sunday service and not inside the church worshipping God. The storm raged on. “The Rector, or Curate of the church being partaker of the peoples perplexitie, seeing what was seen and done comforted the people, and exhorted them to prayer”. Lightning struck the steeple, “all the wires, the wheeles and other things belonging to the Clock, were wrung in sunder and broken in peces”. Surely this was a terrifying ordeal for those trapped in the darkness of the church but then the dog vanished as quickly as it had appeared. For those who doubted the dog’s existence Fleming insisted that it had left the stones of the church and the church door “mervelously rented and torne as it were the marks of his clawes or talans”.

The ordeal was over for those in St Mary’s parish Bungay, but the dog’s work was not done. Almost simultaneously a second incident took place in Holy Trinity church, Blythburgh, seven miles from Bungay. Fleming recorded this second attack with vigorous brevity in the Wunder pamphlet:

The like thing entered, in the same shape and similitude where placing himself on a maine balke or beam whereon sometime the rood did stand, sodainly he gave a swing downe though the Church, and there also, as before, slew two men and a lad, and burned the hand of another person that was among the rest of the company, of whom divers were blasted. This mischief thus wrought he flew with wonderful force to not little feare of the assembly, out of the church in a hideous and hellish likenes.

Fleming attempted to give credibility to his account, closing the narration with “These things are reported to be true yea by the mouthes of them that were eye witnesses of the same”.

To this day, the church door, “… mervelously rented and torne as it were the marks of his clawes or talans,” can still be seen and touched at Holy Trinity Church. Touch it if you want. It was probably the lightning hitting the place that caused it. The two images that flank this passage are courtesy of this site, which further states, “The famous north door, which has scorch marks upon it that were allegedly caused by the Black Dog that appeared before the congregation in 1577, is directly opposite if you enter the church via the main porch. The church was struck by lightning on this day in 1577 and the spire toppled, damaging the font below. As the north door is below the spire, it’s possible that the scorch marks may have been caused by the lightning or the falling spire.”

I only bring all this up because I recently received communication from my Esteemed Friend Martin, of Crime Scene Man fame, and who never emerges unscathed from any iteration of Dark Sentiments, that he, his Goode Wife, and Dog were recently on an evening walk that ended abruptly with a dignified retreat when they found themselves hunted by some things that never allowed themselves to be seen, but that he thought to be Coyotes.

Well now, my Esteemed Friend earns his keep rolling about, as it were, in the evil that men do, and so he has naturally (or unnaturally) acquired the kind of scent that can’t be washed off, but that will, by their nature, be attractive to certain … things. I haven’t yet mentioned my reservations to him, but have enlisted the aid of a mutual acquaintance with the purpose of gathering up Martin and taking that walk again. You know – just to be sure.

While you await our report on the outcome of that expedition, I invite you to listen to this audio recording of the aforementioned Straunge and Terrible Wunder wrought very late in the parish church of Bongay, justifiably described by Ms. Stubbs as “A cross between tabloid front-page news and a zealous sermon ….”

“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain”
~ William Faulkner

This poem was inspired by personally experienced actual events that played out way back in the mid 1980’s. I have never been so happy to be in the grip of the worst physical pain I have ever experienced, and the words of William Faulkner were the first that came to mind the instant it roared through me.

Faulkner Was Right

By LFM

Once a dagger pierced my flesh.
It entered from the side.
It pricked my rightmost kidney,
And from this I nearly died.

So little blood there was without,
So much released within.
One liter and a half it was,
That hid beneath my skin.

Rolled before the Surgeon
I remember thinking then
That this could be the end of me.
The stilling of my pen.

The sleeping valve then opened up,
I failed at counting ten.
The Surgeon plied his skill an hour –
But seconds to my ken!

And then I lay upon my back,
In roiling, boiling haze
That quickly cleared away to leave
White ceiling in my gaze.

I knew not where or when I was
But otherwise felt grand!
I learned the truth was otherwise
With my attempt to stand.

I barely had a chance to move
Before a woman came.
She threw herself across my chest,
And cried aloud my name.

“Wait!” she cried, “It’s done! It’s done!”
A curious thing to say.
T’was then I saw her Nurse’s gown
And all sprang bright as day!

And with the knowing came the pain,
That gripped me to the core.
I’ve never known its like since then,
Nor any day before.

But even as it gripped me,
And near took my breath away,
My spirit revelled that I’d lived
To see another day!

For as I walk my Path of Life
And find it split in twain,
With choice of pain or nothing,
I will always choose the pain.