Where Flames in Flamings Burn Back to the Trees

• Earthgirl on trail yesterday.
• My favorite two weeks of the year, the ochre-ing. Post peak, pre-dearth.
• On Richard Wilbur, a new biography, and on Richard Wilbur and his contemporaries.
• I have not read a biography since made to, I'm not starting today. I'll never read one. Make me.
• Hecht taught Wilbur, said Wilbur's faith animating his poetry shouldn't penalize the poetry.
• If I put a mirror behind the otterbox maybe selfie potential.
• Hecht said, Jeff, you wouldn't know honest faith if it blessed you.
• Thanks to Dave for the Cat Stevens' ochre song. 
• All I want to do is hike with Earthgirl.

• It amazes me how thoroughly collective memory of Cat Stevens' music has been erased then forgotten.
• Eternity is the only boundary.
• Ask, who's benefiting from the great predator unmasking?
• Fucking warlords, fellow motherfuckers. Motherfucking overlords.
• Chronicler of revolution.
• The demise of dissent on the web.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Dan's got VERY good links to VERY good reads.
• The Neglectful Poet.
• Simic on a new Milosz biography, which I won't read, you can't make me.

A WORLD WITHOUT OBJECTS IS A SENSIBLE EMPTINESS

Richard Wilbur

The tall camels of the spirit
Steer for their deserts, passing the last groves loud
With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the arid
Sun. They are slow, proud,
 
And move with a stilted stride
To the land of sheer horizon, hunting Traherne's
Sensible emptiness, there where the brain's lantern-slide
Revels in vast returns.
 
O connoisseurs of thirst,
Beasts of my soul who long to learn to drink
Of pure mirage, those prosperous islands are accurst
That shimmer on the brink
 
Of absence; auras, lustres,
And all shinings need to be shaped and borne.
Think of those painted saints, capped by the early masters
With bright, jauntily-worn
 
Aureate plates, or even
Merry-go-round rings. Turn, O turn
From the fine sleights of the sand, from the long empty oven
Where flames in flamings burn
 
Back to the trees arrayed
In bursts of glare, to the halo-dialing run
Of the country creeks, and the hills' bracken tiaras made
Gold in the sunken sun,
 
Wisely watch for the sight
Of the supernova burgeoning over the barn,
Lampshine blurred in the steam of beasts, the spirit's right
Oasis, light incarnate.