A Senseless Sacrifice

Well. That didn’t do what I wanted it to do, did it? You can force words to say things they don’t intend to say but you really cannot force the formatting tools to do what you think they should. I give up… the two quoted segments/stanzas of the poem should be italicized. I’m trying to complete this edit and go. And it is still raining nonstep with a steady drizzle that is saturating the ground and flooding the creekbeds.

When we crossed the Missouri, there was flooding for more than a mile either side. The spring thaw is on… the plight of the poor farmers is already the biggest concern around here. All politics is local.

I am saving this and whatever ends up in the formating just ends up that way. I work in this new medium called pencil, paper, hand and eye and if I want to emphasize something I draw a line under it and decide what to do later.

There are many species of sacred cow.

Substitute “disabled veteran” for “worthy poor.” They are not equal but the money’s all fiat anyway.

I am trying the blockquote feature above just to see what happens… for now, I’m pasting the pullout quote from below, which is now bolded. Or, everything else might be bolded except for the quote I pull. Either way, you don’t have to read it all unless you want to read it all. (The poem nor my comment but it is mostly a quoted poem worth perusing. For convenience, I’ve ploppled the six line nutgraph or point here. My summary? The ladies of the upper crust want to help the poor, but when they actually see what squalor looks and smells like face to face, they decide they may need to lift up their skirts and step carefully through the trash on Admin’s occasional detour on his way to work, get back into their private conveyance and go back to their gated communities and sip tea poolside.

The poor are always around and they are always needy. But the ones who are worthy of the attention of the well-intended guardians of the public monies and trust are always fighting with various factions of the poor who are more or less worthy than others. And, do you know what? Eventually, they will all become Entitled to the public monies controlled by Congresscritters.

I am really happy my stepson married a young woman of Hispanic descent. Seriously, it proves I’m not racist.

Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor–passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is–something less than derelict or dull.

And, just to give credit to Gwendolyn, who understood when and when not to use commas well but overdid the double dashes in my opinion but that was when em and en meant “m” and “n.” This is the horror the ladies discovered in the ghetto.

The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they’re told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Note homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.

(Ahem… MC? Not Overland Park either. The Soccer Moms of the Jr. League Soccer Mom association of Overland Park may let their kids get dirty at the big new sports complex but they stayed at the same luxury resort I stayed at last Saturday night and let their kids take over the indoor pool and jacuzzi. Lucky me.)

http://www.famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/gwendolyn_brooks/poems/20577

The Lovers of the Poor by Gwendolyn Brooks

The Ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment
League

Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You’d better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
Perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor–passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is–something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle’s bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it’s all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they’re told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Note homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.
Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,
There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no
Unkillable infirmity of such
A tasteful turn as lately they have left,
Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars
Must presently restore them. When they’re done
With dullards and distortions of this fistic
Patience of the poor and put-upon.
They’ve never seen such a make-do-ness as
Newspaper rugs before! In this, this “flat,”
Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich
Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered . . . ),
Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . .
They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin “hangings,”
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter
In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,
When suitable, the nice Art Institute;
Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter
On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.
Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre
With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings
Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers
So old old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies’
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!–
Where loathe-lover likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.

“Thanks to the terrible power of our International Banks, we have forced the Christians into wars without number. Wars have a special value for Jews, since Christians massacre each other and make more room for us Jews. Wars are the Jews’ Harvest: The Jew banks grow fat on Christian wars. Over 100‑million Christians have been swept off the face of the earth by wars, and the end is not yet.” (Rabbi Reichorn, speaking at the funeral of Grand Rabbi Simeon Ben‑Iudah, 1869

A tribute to REAL heroes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWrdAyP5aO0