Curiosity Over Pride (FYI: To comment, send an e-mail to scifidink@gmail.com)

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Loss of Innocence

This one for Dink, but for all of us too, as loss of innocence is the fate of man.
Once the garden's gates have closed shut on you, you can wander many years, many lives, like Franz, (like Thai ?) before finding the back door that will get you back in. (You can get back in...)

From Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of the 20th century's greatest, almost unknown poets who was unpublished (I think) during his lifetime. Hopkins had an idiosyncratic, intimate relation to language, and he knew where he was going with/in his poetry.

Spring and Fall : to a young child


Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving ?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you ?
Ah ! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie ;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now, no matter, child, the name :
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed :
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for. (1880)


Thai, an example of metaphor : Hell's neologism "banksties".


3 comments:

Thai said...

Deb, thanks for the poem.

It really is appreciated as I just so happened to have yet another of those "loss of innocence" days today at work. It seems the knife and gun club is yet again making its best effort to prove our human race does not deserve the title of planet's steward.

... Once upon a time, days like these were really really hard for me. But as they have become numerous, they have become easier to accept- go figure?

Please remember, it is one thing to hear people tell you all the dark thoughts they occasionally think. It is quite another to actually see people act these thoughts out on each other on a regular basis.

... Though I must admit I am also occasionally stunned at the privilege and honor I have been bestowed in being allowed to do what I do. So
I guess it all works out as some kind of "cosmic balanced payment" for the honor of being a "grunt" ER doc. The honor of being on the front lines- who knows?

Still, I think it fair to say that days like today are probably hard for anyone (most?) to witness.

... enough said (and I mean it since this is public and I can not violate patient confidentiality).

Again, thanks for the kind thoughts

Dink said...

@ Deb,
"Spring and Fall : to a young child"

Thank you for the poem. I'm beginning to worry that you think of me as Forrest Gump, though ;)

@ Thai,
"Though I must admit I am also occasionally stunned at the privilege and honor I have been bestowed in being allowed to do what I do."

I once saw one of those "life in the ER shows" where a doctor said that "not many people get to do this". He loved his job. Pretty cool. Hope you get a few easy days next week, though :)

Debra said...

LOL, Dink, don't worry, I don't think of you as Forrest Gump...
How COULD I ? I have never even seen the film...
Thai, you are an ER doctor...
and my dear departed Daddy was a medical examiner.
I witnessed his reaction through some prison riots, a while ago.
The kind where people tear each other into itsy bitsy pieces.
I didn't see it, and he didn't either, but suffice it to say that I have an EXCELLENT imagination...
No one upmanship on this one Thai. You deal with it on a day to day basis, and I don't.
Keep your chin up.

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