# Another Song, Another Season: Poems and Portrayals

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Roger White, Another Song, Another Season: Poems and Portrayals, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> Another Song, Another Season:
> 
> Poems and Portrayals
> 
> Roger White
> 
> Oxford: George Ronald, 1979
> 
> 1. Image-scan PDF with OCR text (see uncorrected text below)
> 
> Click to download: white_another_song_season.pdf [17 MB].
> 
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> 
> FOREWORD
> 
> Another Song, Another Season is the first selection of Roger White's
> poetry to be published in book form, although single poems have
> appeared before. The selection has been made with a view to
> maintaining homogeneity, a difficult task when confronted with the
> prolific and wide-ranging promptings of his muse.
> The frequently observed dichotomy in individuals between outward
> circumstance and inner spiritual truth is a valid poetical subject;
> these poems, notably the 'Portrayals', go beyond exemplifying the
> fact and disclose the reality of unity in diversity. The unifying
> spirit is the response of widely varied individuals to the Revelation
> of Bahá'u'lláh. The portraits are of real people, heroes and martyrs
> and servants of the Bahá'í Faith, many of them our contemporaries,
> which increases our interest a thousandfold. Keith, 'a looker', but
> 'brainy' too; Martha, dowdy and unimpressive outwardly, but able to
> set aflame the hearts of men with that divine love which consumed
> her; Fred Mortensen, the dropout boy who hoboed his way to see the
> Master and achieved eternal fame. The theme fascinates our poet.
> He has the remarkable gift of knowing how to present high
> themes--nobility, dedication, the beauty of sacrifice, the eternal
> battle of the soul--in modes of common speech and everyday concepts,
> an ability rooted in his revulsion to the meretricious, the
> sanctimonious and the pi. His poetry is spiritual and religious but
> neither didactic nor obscure.
> The inclusion of a few poems in lighter vein is felicitous, for it
> leads us to hope that in further volumes his predilection for shying
> tomatoes at top hats will be indulged--to our delight and his.
> 
> Haifa David Hofman 1978
> PART ONE PORTRAYALS
> 
> O ye apostles of Baha'u'lIah! . . . Behold the portals which
> Bahá'u'lláh hath opened before you! Consider how exalted and
> lofty is the station you are destined to attain; how unique
> the favours with which you have been endowed.... I fervently
> hope that in the near future the whole earth may be stirred
> and shaken by the results of your achievements.... Be not con-
> cerned with the smallness of your numbers neither he oppressed
> by the multitude of an unbelieving world ... Exert yourselves;
> your mission is unspeakably glorious.
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá
> MARTHA ROOT
> 
> 1872--1939
> 
> A dowdy girl, was Martha, and a real gadabout . . .
> (remark by a contemporary)
> 
> Have patience, Martha, we shall forget the hastily-hemmed
> hand-me-downs the laddered hose the horrent hair shall
> understand you yet, cease to care whether virtue be
> photogenic, dare see in your eye's lens the apocalyptic
> images ineffaceably etched there-- the poisoned air the
> towers afire the maimed trees the human pyre--these which
> sent you hurtling in exquisite arc across the blackening sky,
> your life a solitary warning cry against engulfing dark and
> ultimate night. Your eyes were dippers used against the fire,
> purchased brief respite
> that on the ramparts might arise -
> the legioned guardians of light.
> 
> Be patient: we may yet ourselves become God's gadabouts,
> meteoric, expire Martha-like, in conflagrant holy urgency.
> A LETTER TO KEITH
> 
> Now Keith, she was a looker ...
> (remark by a contemporary)
> 
> Why did you do it, Keith, And you a looker? Not your
> usual religious dame in need of a good dentist and a
> fitted bra. Not one of those skinny ones who make it
> their painful duty to love mankind and purse their lips
> a lot to let you know it isn't easy. Not one of those.
> Sharp dresser, too. And brainy. Not every man's kind of
> woman but a looker. And a real good talker, too. It
> makes no sense, Keith. You could have put your passion
> to another use.
> 
> We grow them odd here in Michigan, but you were an odd
> one even for us-- why, just your name, for starters. And
> all your mooning about the library, reading too much,
> making notes in little books. And your preaching. I
> suppose your life was full enough but your interest in
> God--was that normal? We always said you could pray the
> paint off a barn door at twenty paces, but we meant no
> harm. It was as though you were always looking for
> something you hadn't found.
> 
> And gallivanting around the world like you did, visiting
> the Maoris and savages like that, which we had only ever
> seen in National Geographic. In those days we thought we
> were doing pretty good if we made a trip to Chicago.
> Nobody faulted you for going to the Holy Land, you
> always were the studious kind and they've got a helluva
> lot of religion there.
> 
> We heard you were sent on a special mission to fight for
> a good cause. Well, you'd be just the girl for that; but
> why Persia, Keith? Life still isn't worth a nickel there
> and what do they know about plumbing? With a tongue like
> yours, I'll bet you told those folks a thing or two. And
> when word got back that you had died there's some as
> said you'd found what you wanted at last. I'm one who
> thinks you did, Keith, who thinks you did.
> 
> All these years later standing at the marker they put up
> for you here at home and reading those words and
> listening to what these decent people are saying about
> you being a glorious martyr and all-- I'm bawling, me a
> grown man, three sons and wife in the grave and not what
> you'd call sentimental.
> 
> Why did you do it, Keith, and you a looker?
> LOUIS G. GREGORY
> 
> 1874-1951
> 
> He is like pure gold; that is why he is acceptable in any
> market, and is current in every country.
> 
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá
> 
> Across the angry decades that separate
> us from him may there still be found
> true and stainless words unwarped by
> the suppositions and suspicions of
> these hurtful times to honour this
> gentleman of colour?
> 
> We need the lesson of this lite; need
> know that the alchemy of service and
> obedience mints coin of purest gold.
> In his modesty he almost eludes us but
> we will know him yet.
> 
> Travel, the Master said, I want
> them to see you; you are very
> dear to me.
> 
> And dear to us, Louis, who see
> you now and love, as He, O Louis,
> love, even as the beauty of your
> dusk, your gleam.
> 
> VISIT TO A VETERAN
> 
> I often thought that Horace Holley might have been a bit of a
> rake when he was young, but he straightened up real good.
> 
> (remark by a contemporary)
> 
> Wilmette, 1953
> 
> You had a mandarin's tranquillity, A Jesuitical poise, but I
> was keen to see If the legends of you held validity. You knew,
> of course, but smiled and offered tea.
> 
> 'The ego our sole, our deadliest foe . . .' I nibbled cake and
> mused it might be so. 'This battle is the bravest act I know .
> . .' I feigned agreement and arose to go.
> 
> Homage to homily! Cliche well spun! A wasted meeting--and this
> our only one-- The gift then not seen (my struggle scarce
> begun) Your face: archive of victory sorely won.
> 
> 'ABDU'L-GHAFFAR OF ISFAHAN
> 
> What fish is this that struggles to the shore,
> For whom this absence is a fiery death, And,
> plunging, finds but anguish all the more, Each
> scorching wave a torment to his breath?
> 
> What lure aland inspires this frantic flight? Toward whose
> strong skein turns he his questing eye? The poet told this
> knowing fish's plight: Here sea; here hapless, burning
> lover, dry.
> 
> MASTER CRIMINAL
> 
> From every land Thou hearest the lamentations of
> them that love Thee, and from every direction Thou
> hearkenest unto the cries' of such as have
> recognized Thy sovereignty . . Thou knowest full
> well, O my God, that their only crime is to have
> loved Thee.
> 
> Tell, Duarte Vieira, kindly tell, What crime won
> you a prison cell?
> 
> Your testament, a biscuit tin-- What, Duarte
> Vieira, was your sin?
> 
> What was the error of your ways That heaven's
> Concourse sings your praise?
> 
> What offence did you commit? Tell, that we may
> follow it.
> 
> Reveal your secret so that we May, too, gain
> immortality.
> 
> Our skulking fears by you allayed, We seek a
> crime so richly paid.
> 
> All Africa now vastly blessed: Baha's felon laid
> to rest.
> 
> Tell, Duarte Vieira, kindly tell, What crime won
> you a prison cell?
> 
> MARION JACK
> 
> 1866--1954
> 
> Let them remember Marion Jack . . .
> Shoghi Effendi
> 
> We are not menaced by this one in our
> silent, steely rise to power. The
> unseen worm sleeps blissfully in the
> silver apple.
> 
> This is not a master. The world
> justifiably ignores the conventional
> inept daubs and we affirm that
> charitable neglect. Our hand will not
> tremble as we reach for our brush; no
> standard born of her rebukes our
> palette.
> 
> Not even as a woman does she
> intimidate. The body is a
> commonplace, the domestic bulk
> foreshadowing varicose veins. We see
> her as a cardiac. The face, an
> artifact, looks homemade. If our
> glance lingers it is to find
> confirmation that fat people are
> jovial. Observe the open grin that
> cannot imagine refection or
> destruction.
> Let us pass her by, one of those useless
> people drowsing on park benches who would
> embarrass our friends. We need not dignify
> her paintings by affording them critiques;
> history in its mercy will dispose of them.
> We deal in success, we understand these
> things.
> 
> But what is this achievement looming
> indestructibly from the acme of another
> arc? Mourn loss immortal heroine . . .
> greatly loved and deeply admired by Abdul-
> Baha shining example pioneers present
> future generations East West . . . The
> worm stirs. Precipitately the apple
> tumbles forward. Holding it in the mind's
> blue light the teeth engage-- but this
> shall taste of ashes. Envie not greatnesse
> . . . Be not thine own worm How chill the
> murk behind our opaque, earthbound eyes.
> Regard the larger canvas: a masterwork.
> 
> Marion! Guide us as we seize the brush!
> Teach us the colours of immortality!
> 
> E A G L E
> Lua Getsinger
> 1871--1916
> 
> Mother-teacher of the American Bahá'í Community . . .
> Shoghi Effendi
> 
> Studio of Juliet Thompson
> New York
> 13 June 1912
> 
> Here at the giddy summit of our acute and secret need,
> above desire's burning desert and ambition's
> treacherous bog, in this perch gained painfully by the
> heart's frail ladder and reason's faulty bridge-- all
> means by which ~e sought approach-- we nestle in the
> dappling light in His love's green and leafy warmth.
> 
> We who think we know Him, who found in Him more than
> we could have known to want of the Good of goodness,
> who see Him as Father, our Christ-need dream fleshed
> out and fruit of every creche made real, Son of the
> Eternal Sun, Perfection wrought ideal, whitest white
> of White, the rosest Rose,
> prismatic fire of diamond, honey's
> amber inmost essence and flower's
> unseen core-- now are given more.
> 
> Despite our pain and vertigo the
> goal not gained ! Our understanding
> sags and sighs beneath the blue and
> reeling loft we must claim else die
> on this flint and lonely precipice.
> 
> If eagle will know sky it must
> trenchantly seize air in plumate
> frenzy, pummel, conquer, rise,
> soL~r -
> he eagle.
> 
> In the throbbing hiatus
> as we mutely cower He
> reads one heart:
> 
> I am the Centre of God's Covenant He
> said.
> 
> You must understand this. I am the
> Centre of the Covenant in your midst.
> 
> Lua I appoint you the Herald of the
> Covenant.
> 
> In tears the fledgeling lunges toward a
> chaste and unknown splendour: 'O Master_
> re-create me for this task!'
> 
> We see her earthfree in avian ascent sweep toward
> heaven's arch; her receding joyous cries flake down
> faint as echo's echo.
> 
> We would have this azure authority, ask strengthening,
> wing and tendon, for this flight.
> 
> THE PURCHASE
> Haji Ja'far-i-Tabrizi
> 
> Afflictive woe unbearable; they grieve. One uncalm
> mourner cannot reconcile to this And through unreasoned
> act buys their reprieve, Below his drooped mouth carves
> a scarlet grin of bliss. Egregious deed attended by
> reward, He lives and, exiled, gains reunion with his
> Lord.
> 
> If madness purchase immortality
> Grant compounded madness, love's full insanity
> HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY
> CONDUCT THE ROBBERY OF
> A LITTLE OLD LADY
> 
> To ard the end of herlife, u*ileservingasaBaha'~'pioneer in
> ~he Canary Islands, Prudence Ceorge (189~1974) of the British
> Baha'l' community had her handbag snatched b~ a young thief.
> Upon her calling aloud the Greatest Name the boy dropped the
> purse and ~!ed in confusion. Prudence uas left calling him
> back in order to listen to the Message of Bahá'u'lláh.
> 
> I am the first to admit that William Carlos Williams is the
> ultimate authority on how to conduct a funeral but I'm glad
> you came to me about this matter.
> 
> Mine was the perfect crime, you see, I retired wealthy at an
> early age and my victim and I have become the best of
> friends. We sometimes sit around of an evening and reminisce
> about the robbery. What could be nicer, more civilized? I'm
> able to say with some little pride that I'm something of an
> expert in my field. Williams couldn't help you here; you did
> well to come to me.
> 
> I'm afraid you handled your little affair rather poorly, my
> dear chap. Admittedly you chose your victim well. She was an
> obvious mark, of course, conspicuously a foreigner moving
> through the town with the curious innocence and vulnerability
> of the stranger. Her age was in your favour-- older ladies
> can rarely run very fast.
> 
> You never know about their lung power, of course. Some seem
> to have waited all their lives for a chance to indulge in
> some justified high-decibel screaming-- but that's a chance
> you take.
> 
> Yes, she seemed a good choice, as victims go, but you bungled
> it, young fellow. There was little excuse for it-- you slim
> as a jack-knife, capable of moving fleetly and with stealth--
> not that these were necessary qualifications for the job.
> 
> No, it was your mistaken judgement. That's how you muffed it,
> my boy, in going after the handbag. No value there. If you'd
> given her half a chance she'd have offered you a pearl beyond
> price. If you'd handled it correctly it would have been a
> piece of cake as we used to say in the trade.
> 
> Now next time, my lad, here's what you do. Forget about
> handbags--they're usually filled with bus tokens, hairpins,
> photographs of grandchildren, throat lozenges, theatre
> programmes, shopping lists, shredding facial tissues, grubby
> pencil stubs and astonishing quantities of lint-- rarely the
> sleek travellers' cheques you imagine sprout there.
> 
> So forget the purse. Instead, approach the victim eagerly
> wearing a friendly smile.
> Extend your hand in a warm greeting and say:
> Madam, have you anything to tell me? And the
> pearl is yours! There, you see, as easy as taking
> candy from a baby. Duck soup, as it were.
> 
> For heaven's sake, lad, take a little pride in
> your work.
> 
> Go now, I think you are ready.
> 
> T H E D A N C E R
> 
> Catherine Rudyerd (Heward) Huxtable
> 
> Knight of Bahá'u'lláh (Gulf Islands, Canada
> 1932 1967
> 
> This Irailest seated girl who'd choose to dance,
> Yet cheats ungracious nature's cumbering trial,
> Gallops her mount without a backward glance,
> Knows well she will be with us but a while And
> undeterred by body's withering blight Achieves
> the valorous victory of a Knight.
> 
> Wariest bird, the shadow ever near, Outpours her
> song--we would not have it end-- Lavishes joy,
> nor deigns to squander tears, So imminent reunion
> with the Friend. Departing then, example left as
> trust, To Africa consigns her fragrant dust.
> 
> She dances now, enthroned in love's fair keep. We
> see her vacant chair and do not weep.
> 
> FUJITA WITH PILGRIMS
> 
> Dearly loved tireless steadfast Saichiro Fujita . . .His rank in van-
> guard, first Japanese believers his labours World Centre his dedication
> humility sincerity love will forever be remembered . . .
> 
> The Universal House of lustice
> (Cablegram of 7 May 1976)
> 
> What was 'Abdu'l-Bahá really like? The Master was always very kind to
> me. But what did you hear Him say? Everything He wanted to teach us is
> in His Writings and His example. To think you had the bounty of serving
> Him ! I never felt that I could do very much for 'Abdu'l-Bahá. One thing
> I did was perhaps acceptable-- sometimes I made Him laugh. And what did
> He say to you? He told me to be a good boy.
> 
> There is a rightness in our meeting here. He is proprietorial in the
> garden, the dwarfing verdure seems to nuzzle him. Acquitted of
> triviality by a pain and loneliness that might instruct us, rescued a
> halo's-breadth from isolating sainthood by an exonerating intolerance
> and his need for us but still a holy man he accepts our homage not in
> full innocence yet more in his Master's right than his own, mikado of
> mirth, the Servant's servant.
> Impaled upon our need for validation, (Approve us, you by Him
> approved!) above our pity or patronage, with a rare awareness of
> his assured immortality, he offers for our Polaroid delight a
> harlequinade, inattentive to the dignity he has unassailably
> achieved. Against our expectation of dogmatic declamation or
> prescription for joy his pantomimed haiku attests: There is no
> mystery here; only fidelity and service. The children accept the
> sage as secre~less, admit him to their world, converse in a
> language we have lost. We chafe at the edge of their enchantment.
> We are aspiring esoterics, giddy with statistics and formulae,
> swooningly obsessed with apocrypha and eschatology; our questions
> swarm through the mute garden like raucous insects. Sedated by
> sunlight the geranium gape in crimson consternation. His certitude
> is chivalrous, does not accuse; it is older than the garden.
> 
> Our anguish cannot hold him. Eluding our slender claim he
> turns from our doubt to the flowers and silent concerns,
> ambling away with a wink and a wave betokening our
> affirmation. He courts annihilation; a fairer garden
> calls. Beyond our view his comic stance is shed; he is
> listener, suppliant, awaiter. His yearning towers with
> the patience and solemnity of trees.
> 
> We had not thought the journey such a lonely one. In the backwash
> of his inviolate renunciation we stand, waist-deep in the dumb
> geranium disconsolately tracing our distance from the goal,
> churning the weightless air with our questions and our words, our
> endless words.
> 
> Someone asks: Did you take his picture?
> 
> Haifa
> April 1975
> 
> A CUP OF TEA
> 
> Persian Muslims will tell you often that the Babis bewitch or
> drug their guests so that these impelled by a fascination
> which they cannot resist, become similarly affected with uhat
> the aforesaid Muslims regard as a strange and
> incomprehensible madness.
> 
> Neu York, 1912:
> 
> No more tea, Emma dear, you have been more than kind and the cake
> was most delicious. The strawberries are extraordinary this year,
> are they not . . . sweet and plump; like small red hearts.
> But returning to your question, yes, I have been seeing dear Miss
> Thompson and her friends; Juliet is a charming and talented girl and
> her friends are kindly.Many of them are well placed--somehow one
> doesn't quite dare hope for that among the religious, if I may say
> so. I try to warn Miss Thompson to hold little hope for me--as you
> know, I'm essentially pragmatic--but she does insist so sweetly that
> sometimes I attend. She is always gracious at the meetings though
> I understand little of what she says--since her visit to Palestine
> she has seemed--how shall I say--not quite of this world; she lives
> in a state of ecstasy. She talks of nothing but the one she calls
> the Master---an occult-sounding term; I quite dislike it--but I
> confess he does intrigue me; I mean, a prisoner for forty years and
> now at an advanced age coming to America teaching a message of
> brotherly love and peace--it's like a fable. The newspapers are full
> of it, of course.
> 
> Miss Thompson has been beside herself since learning he would come
> and I naughtily allowed her to persuade me to meet him, not giving
> her false hope by permitting her to see how avidly curious I was.
> You can picture it--my pretending indifference yet half fearing she
> would cease insisting. and then my casting about for some means to
> accomplish this without upsetting my husband. Wingate is an avowed
> agnostic, as he eagerly informs anyone who will listen, and no doubt
> would disown me. His conception of my social role outside the home,
> I'm afraid, extends no further than my service on the Opera League
> and my charities; and he has always been embarrassed by what he
> calls my brother's Episcopalian delusions. Charles studied for the
> ministry, you know, until he contracted tuberculosis. After he
> regained his health Wingate rescued him and gave him a place in the
> business.
> 
> But where was l? Oh yes, the Master--how queer that that name should
> come so readily to my lips; 'Abdu'l-Bahá or ~Ahhas Fffendi would be
> proper forms of address, I suppose. Despite my subterfuge, arranging
> an appointment was not so eas11y accomplished; there were many
> meetings but all were crowded--devotees pouring in from as far away
> as California, I hear. But at last we succeeded in finding a
> mutually agreeable time and I was Miss Thompson's guest at a
> gathering at someone's home--a rather good address--though what
> Juliet told the hostess I cannot think, and indeed I never met her,
> so great the crush. A strange assortment--some orientals-- Persians,
> I suppose--a coloured gentleman--Wingate would use another term bul,
> you see, one can in the South without offence--two Chinese, and some
> of what one might describe as the labouring class; a struggling
> artist or two, and one who might have been a poet, from Miss
> Thompson's seemingly endless circle of co-enthusiasts. Others, too,
> of course, who appeared both charming and distinguished. but on the
> whole one was struck both by the ordinariness of the people in the
> group and fascinated by the idea of their being linked together
> through curiosity or devotion. And the Master was present --'Abdu'l-
> Baha--and he appeared--how shall I say--oh, noble, majestic, serene-
> -it was rather as though a great light had entered the room---do you
> find me sentimental? One felt an overpowering need to win his
> approval--like a child with an adored teacher. And he spoke. Not at
> length, but with extreme simplicity and power. His voice is gentle,
> hypnotic, one might say irresistible. I scarcely remember the
> words--it was rather his presence which compelled--but something of
> his father's sufferings and his message, and a few words about his
> own imprisonment--the words seemed the least part of it. One could
> not resist feeling a sympathy, of course, but for me what he said
> was not the central point. How can I say this and be sure I am
> understood--as he spoke I asked myself: why is he here; what does
> he want of us; he is not young--what can possibly come of this
> journey in the West?
> 
> And it came to me that his being here represents an unvoiced
> invitation--perhaps I should say command, for it is his presence which
> expresses it rather than what he says--a command, then, that we make
> an adjustment in our lives--am I making sense? I almost exclaimed
> aloud: 'He wants us to be like him!' Not in an imitative way--not
> that--but to step into his world, and to somehow transform this one.
> And I wondered if the others knew this too--perhaps this is what Miss
> Thompson has been telling me all along and I simply have not
> understood. But it bore in on me there in his presence--profoundly
> bore in--that he asks us to make an adjustment of the soul, if I may
> use that term--to become spiritually renewed.
> 
> This all happened in a flash, as these things do, Emma, and there was
> more. In that moment I knew I might--if I were free--what shall I
> say--follow him, in the sense Miss Thompson uses that term. Oh, not
> on my knees in the dust as she doubtless would--though perhaps that
> too--but, in my own way, follow him; that I might become one of those
> women who weep at his mention; that he might represent a standard to
> which one could devote one's life--forgive me if I ramble, but I
> scarcely know words to describe this and if I embarrass you I'll stop.
> It's just that there is no one to whom I have been able to tell it
> all. I'm inhibited in speaking to Miss Thompson--she's so hopeful of
> my being won over and in fairness I must not encourage her. There I
> was--in my mind--throwing myself at his feet, sobbing, and covering
> them with kisses. It was most unsettling.
> 
> But in the same moment of realizing this truth about myself I felt a
> sense of deep loss--a heart-piercing loss. I heard myself saying--not
> aloud, of course, though I scarcely knew at that time what I might
> have done--heard myself saying 'It's too late for me!' And tears stung
> my eyes at that instant. Pictures of Wingate and the children flashed
> into mind, and a picture of our house and myself presiding at one of
> Wingate's functions. And I looked about the room and thought, how can
> I open my home to all these people? How can I present them to
> Wingate's mother? In following the Master, you see, you open your door
> upon the world. My choices have been made, I realized. And in my
> feeling of loss I saw the faces around me suddenly as alien,
> hateful--in that moment I felt a loathing even for Miss Thompson who
> has been the essence of kindness. The people appeared--how shall I put
> it--smug and conspiratorial, a closed circle. I felt excluded and I
> detested them. I saw them as Wingate might see them, as pitiable
> objects of derision--as calf-eyed and fawning, mooning about like
> biblical figures at the feet of Christ in a shabby tableau. They
> seemed naive, even incredibly stupid. Of what use are any of these to
> him, I thought? He is of a different world ! What can possibly come
> of this journey he is making, these talks, this pathetic handful? How
> can any of this matter?
> 
> All of this in a split second, as I said. And then I closed my eyes
> against my tears. It is perhaps as well I had not met the hostess
> because then, unforgivably--I blush to say it--I fainted. The room was
> stifling and I had unwisely worn a velvet frock. I have never in my
> life engaged in that deplorable female diversion--Wingate's mother
> faints at every conceivable opportunity--I despise the practice,
> always having supposed it to be an artifice. But there it was--picture
> it, if you can, Emma. I must have blacked out for only a
> moment--someone was fussing about and making well-meaning but clumsy
> efforts to loosen my collar, and my eyes opened to see the Master
> rising and coming towards me bearing the cup of tea someone had just
> placed in his hand. He came to me urgently--and, yes, tenderly--and
> handed me his cup. 'Drink! Drink!' he said, and his voice and eyes
> were almost stern. Wherever he is the Master is the centre of
> attention so of course all eyes were upon me as I took a timid sip.
> No offence to you, dear, but never have I tasted such tea as from his
> hand. And then he smiled dazzlingly and leaning down to me whisDered
> in English--his
> tone was so pitched that no one heard 'It is acceptable.' His eyes
> appeared to lend a significance beyond what the words conveyed. And then
> he turned and the others engaged him. I was happy no longer to be the
> focal point of the room. Soon it was over and we all left. I have not
> seen Miss Thompson since, nor answered her calls. And I will not discuss
> this with her-- isn't it strange, but I feel this is private, in some
> acutely intense way it is mine. Obviously I must extricate myself from
> her group--gently, of course, for I have no wish to hurt her. However
> laudable or desirable the objectives of her circle, it is too late for
> me; perhaps it is even too late for all of us. How my husband and my
> parents would scorn all my gushing--all the emotional tumult that
> meeting hasunleashed--though perhaps I do not really know them at all,
> and Wingate least of all. Do you ever feel that those you love are
> strangers? I cannot imagine how I appear to my own husband and children
> or explain the sense of remoteness from them I sometimes experience. It
> is odd to feel divorced from one's own life's centre.
> 
> But, anyway, too late, you see, too late. As Wingate says, this is the
> age of reason and enlightenment, the century of prosperity and progress
> and peace, and the world struggles along well enough without its seers
> and sages. He may well be right--he makes a study of these things. But,
> Emma, the Master! If only you could see him!
> 
> Extraordinary, wasn't it, his saying what he did? I wonder whether I
> shall ever understand it.
> 
> MARK TOBEY: A LETTER AND
> TWO SNAPSHOTS
> 
> t is one thing to paint a picture and another to experience it.
> Mark Tobey
> 
> 24 April 1976
> Haifa
> 
> I came along too la.e to know you well, Mark-- geography and our
> ages against it, an ocean between-- so, learning of your death,
> I sift for photographs and memory serves up only two. Others
> must have many; I am content with mine. Both speak to me of
> courage: you will not find that strange.
> 
> The Temple in Wilmette is background to the first. It was 1953,
> in spring. I came, new to conferences and the House of Worship,
> excited, claiming it all, drunk with seizure. You were on the
> stairs looking curiously lonely in the bubbling crowd. I saw the
> wistfulness. Someone whispered your name and I broke away,
> rushing at you in adolescent ebullience, bristling to possess my
> first celebrity. You were a Bahá'í--public--minc like the Temple
> and the nine-pointed star. I saw your momentary wince, the flash
> of what I knew to be a customary irritability, saw you as
> victim, as target, as too often possessed and made, trivially,
> an unwilling familiar. Meetings and martyrs are of many kinds.
> In that moment I could have wept for your vulnerability.
> What name do we give the process that translates private pain
> into human service? We clutch the ready cliche 'he did the
> Bahá'í thing' and hope we're understood. I do not know what need
> you read in me but instantly you took that step. Ieaned towards
> my abashment. I cannot measure your cost, saw only the warm
> smile, the reaching out, the bestowal of the gift. You would
> have me be your fellow-conspirator, pretended rescuer, playmate
> for Peck s bad boy. 'Let's escape and have some tea', you said,
> and led me away, appointing me your shield, feigning to be led.
> The crowd would have held you but for the perfection of your
> pantomime: two established friends hastening through the jostle
> to the deserved privacy of a longstanding, self-promised tryst,
> the venerable one acknowledging greetings on the fly, the
> younger appearing the more eager to be off. Do not suggest it
> was mere expediency-- we know when we are used.
> 
> The stratagem succeeded. Companionably seated in the cafe', in
> snug anonymity, I was dizzy with expectation: what would be
> revealed? Soon I knew. You spoke of the weather in Seattle, the
> food in Switzerland, of arthritis, of growing old. And not a
> word about painting or the Faith. I was not long puzzled. In
> that pedestrian flow I was given access: Mark Tobey was
> revealed. You are a painter--you paint: there, on canvas, your
> words. You are a Bahá'í: befriending the young stranger,
> offering tea, presenting the Faith in transaction. Even then I
> was grateful to be spared discipleship and a gratuitous verbal
> tour of those landmarks that trace the outermost fringes of the
> stronghold of belief, or a recital of those polite bywords we
> erect as barriers at the remotest courtyard of identity to
> discourage rather than invite entry or homecoming.
> 
> We separated smoothly; 1, your debtor, not made to feel one. It
> was as though we had spoken many times and grown secure in our
> partings.
> 
> More than twenty years have passed; the picture does not fade. I
> have my own Mark Tobey, unretouched, and often I consull it when
> courage is the prize. I would not trade it and no, Mark, it is
> not for sale.
> 
> London, 1963: spring again, the Jubilee, another picture, an
> even larger crowd. I did not look for you among the thousands
> but found myself seated again at tea with you in a random
> gathering, you winking p1ayful recognition of a long-ago ruse.
> When, by chance, we were alone you spoke of the weather in
> London, the food in France, of arthritis of growing old, of
> loneliness. Again I was not puzzled: By then had seen your
> paintings, had trembled, had heard and seen you in the white
> writing, knew your themes, your swoon.
> 'Martyrs are not popular subjects', you once remarked. I did
> not ask why you painted martyrs, Mark, though I marveled at
> your valour. Martyrs bear witness to belief; they are the
> supreme lovers; they die for love. Who would paint martyrs
> in an age that debases the word to a tag of parlour-game
> psychology? Who would dare paint love in a world that has
> forgotten it? Who. indeed, would frame and hang his soul?
> 
> AND ALL THE ANGELS LAUGHING
> Bernard Le~ch
> In Memori~m
> 
> 7 Mcll 1979
> 
> Bernard beckoning shyly at the door. Mark beaming now and
> Reg agog with glee, and all the angels laughing welcomingly.
> Does Juliet excitedly scatter the rrisky cherubs, pour
> equivalent Or tea, maternally attentive to the chatter Or
> thc reunite(i ~hr ~
> 
> boyish, how incorrigibly boyish! even in their
> immortality, speaking delightedly of palette,
> glaze and brush, chuckling companionably, till
> Juliet cries 'Hush! One at a time!' and Mark,
> the wag, exclaims the tea's di~ ine, dear
> Bernard, but Juliet's a nag!' and the air is
> warm with laughter.
> 
> Does this amaze? Would we ask more of
> celestial matter, or know that heaven peopled
> by such folks can well accommodate their
> jokes? Can love's Kingdom be less domestic
> than the glimpses we are given? Need we strain
> toward etheriality? Perhaps. Still,
> domesticity even there must have its lot.
> God's economy would will that it's the known
> good we regain at first, and His surprises
> after. which earth's grief but restrain. Leave
> them to their laughter and discussion of the
> circle and the dot. See! Bernard tells an
> anecdote, describes a favourite pot. It is we
> who speak Or pain.
> TH E A PPO INTM ENT
> 
> In 19~7 Corinne True carried to ~kka a parchment scroll
> containing the names of more than a thousand American
> Baha is who asked permission to erect a House of Worship.
> Hiding it behind her on the divan she first presented the
> gifts sent by the friends. But the Master strode across
> reached behind her and grasped the parchment and held it
> aloft: This is what gives megreat joy. Go back and
> workfor the Temple it is a great work. Deuote yoursey to
> this project. Make a beginning and all will come right.
> 
> Pilgrim notes of Corinne True
> 
> Wilmette Illinois: I May 1912
> 
> There is another kind of clock
> its cogwheels fixed in the
> unknowable convolutions of
> God's mind, perhaps our
> galaxies its smallest jewels, a
> clock that marks some celestial
> piecing of eternity, one that
> runs silently, invisibly,
> forever, fluidly forward or
> back, cancelling our time, its
> tick perpetual, attuned to the
> omniscient and eternal heart.
> It is respectful of the
> boundaries we erect
> 
> against the terror and the mystery;
> humours our pasteboard timepieces; is
> charitable to our insolent need to
> feel, invulnerably, that our measures
> are solid and docile to our will,
> that real is real and then and now
> stay put and our world does not slip
> or warp or wobble.
> 
> Coincidence is the uneasy name we
> give stark mom~nts when intervention
> rises up to melt our mathematics or
> intersect our schemes. Our departure
> inexplicably delayed, we read of the
> sunken ship, the crippled, flaming
> plane, with congratulatory
> satisfaction and a faint contempt for
> others' luck and planning. The
> fortuitous arrival of a letter we
> glibly assign to impulse and hold
> hope that horoscopes foretold the
> sudden meeting that brought love
> there on the ugly, accustomed street
> under the stranger's shared parasol
> in an unseasonable shower.
> And so we are waiting inflexibly
> correct under the canvas marquee for
> the Master to take His part in our
> rehearsed pattern, faint with
> excitement, flush with historicity,
> adjusting our impeccable neckties,
> fingering our fashionable pearls,
> stroking the gold watches that pulse
> in the vest pocket or wilt, pendent
> on slender chain, at the bosom,
> their claim negated by another Time.
> We long for authority to check the
> uncontrollable lakeborn breeze that
> chills the perspiration heading in
> our palms.
> 
> Enthralled, loving Him, we see His
> radiance approach, mirror to the
> sun. His rreely vigorous stride sets
> the shining robe twining and
> swirling into eloquent motion. His
> head is raised to drink the wind-fed
> air. Unfaithful to our plan
> 
> He leaves the carriage, comes on
> foot in perfect grace. Soundlessly
> we gasp at humility and majesty in
> peerless balance.
> 
> The pouer which has gathered you here
> today notwithstanding the cold and
> uindy ueather is indeed mighty and
> uonderful. It is the pouer of God the
> divinefavour of Baha u 11ah uhich has
> drawn you together . . .
> 
> Appropriate to our expectations are
> His simple words. Our souls drift
> like somnolent fish in the warm tide
> of His approval. We do not strain to
> understand. Secure in our ritual we
> may not see, as in His eye, the
> Temple risen, long since risen,
> lighted, a pulsating refuge, peopled
> . . . and beyond that, and beyond.
> 
> He makes a gesture with the golden
> trowel,
> graciously accepts that emblem-toy as He
> does our childlike love-- but service is
> His Call. With axe and shovel, then, the
> soil is turned, as unresisting to His hands
> as our hearts to His words. Compliantly the
> earth parts before that force; perhaps we
> only imagine that it pulses with
> expectancy. Under our heavy hats of felt or
> feathers the brows throb: what seed does He
> plant here?
> 
> VII
> 
> The Temple will have a spiritual influence
> a tremendous effect upon civilization. From
> this beginning thousands of Temples will
> rise . . .
> 
> Again the schedule is sundered. Beckoned by
> His smile the solemn, silent friends surge
> towards His upraised hand, open the earth,
> each a spadeful, in the name of all
> mankind, for this Temple shall be Mother.
> Our doubt dissolves in the calm assurance
> of His words as we crane toward His vision.
> 
> VIII
> 
> We had politely grimaced
> ~~ ~hP wPll-known tale
> 
> of Nettie Tobin's uoices instructing her to
> bring a stone; we pictured her squat,
> bustling, inelegant, middle-aged and
> panting, her red-faced frenzied scuttle,
> weaving her course in shabby, tilting shoes
> across uneven ground, trundling the child's
> cart with a splintered rock rejected by a
> builder, her contribution of a cornerstone.
> New to love we smiled indulgently upon her
> zeal and did not know our condescension.
> 'Now all is in readiness', she had said, as
> a complacent housewife might remark
> surveying her set table, but wondered, too,
> at her impulsion as she stood alone at the
> bleak and vacant site.
> 
> And now His hands are on the stone. He
> turns to it as to an expected guest, His
> eyes caressing the jagged shape as they
> would a dear friend's face, this
> appointment longingly awaited. He gently
> nestles the rock to rest in the raw brown
> loam where we yearn to take its place and
> earn the light smile that
> plays across His face. He turns and speaks:
> The Temple i.~ already built!
> 
> We almost understand. 'What a wonderful
> lesson! How kind and utterly sweet He is!'
> we say, glancing at our watches, gathering
> up our programmes and our rustling wraps,
> edging irresistibly closer to His gleaming
> form, loving Him and wondering--past reach
> of names by which we know Him-- wondering
> what clock or calendar keeps Him and Who He
> is.
> 
> THE PIONEER
> - for all the lovely ladies -
> 
> Ye are . . the soft-ftouing uaters upon which must depend the
> 17ery l.J~e of all men. . the breezes of spring that are uafted
> over the world . . Through you the countenance of the u orid
> hath been u reathed in smiles, and the brightness of His light
> shoneforth.
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh
> 
> You will meet her anywhere,
> the river, market, roadside, bus, in Carcross, Nairobi,
> Liverpool, Duluth and the old girl will be smiling: she knows.
> The sincere costume, the workworn hands, say little. Satin or
> leather, the good, earnest face
> belongs on a chocolate box, affirms,
> could endorse nutritional causes on billboards or in glossy
> magazines;
> but she has far greater power than Westinghouse or General
> Mills. I warn you, she is dangerous.
> In her bag there is a weapon
> more potent than a gun.
> If her lips move noiselessly she is not litanizing her
> grievances nor reading subway signs.
> She carries more than recipes in her head.
> 
> It is fatal to speak to her, no comment so mundane she cannot
> bend it to her own design. Chance a remark about the weather
> and she may tell you of The Tempest,
> leave you re-examining the roots of social unrest and
> worrying about the fate of the House of Hapsburg. She is not
> dismayed by headlines, calls them as her witness, carries
> answers like neat balls of coloured yarn, familiarly handled,
> spun of truth. The mysteries are few and she lives with them
> companionably, sibyl or saint, mystic or madwoman, in ready-
> made dress and sensible shoes.
> 
> She has faced it, reconciled it all, the whole human
> struggle, the journey from the cave, the love and the ashes,
> the song and the blood, the suffering, the stillborn, the
> greed, ordered, forgiven, reconciled it all. Her compassion
> spans eras and epochs, finds room for Luther King, Lenin,
> Lao-tse, all our lost leaders, sorted, accommodated like the
> memory of good or wayward children she has known; finds room
> for the Aztec, Ibo, Tlingit, Vietnamese-- she might be one of
> them. Fashions in indignation puzzle her. It did not come as
> news that black is beautiful (may be herself black); - knows
> Eskimos ~or is one); calls the Kalahari Bushmen brothers;
> counts the Maoris as friends; would have shielded the hapless
> of Nagasaki, Warsaw, Buchenwald, with her own body, if she
> could. Long ago she wept and worked for causes
> 
> not then named, knows symptom from disease and is not
> resigned to evil.
> 
> No, you do not imagine her authority; dynasties might
> dissolve before it or her concern melt mountains. She is
> dangerous; she cannot be dismissed. Your eloquent despair
> does not dissuade her: 'The fu~ure is inestimably glorious,
> and when one considers the life to come . . .' You will want
> to hurt her, destroy her dream but her words hang like heavy
> golden pears and she knows your hunger. Even as you strike
> she heals you and in so doing heals herself. You may crush
> her but she will not die-- she yields like grass and is as
> indestructible. She knows what you defend; many times a
> midwife, she understands rebirth. Your credentials don't
> impress her; she tinkers with souls.
> 
> Do not accept the invitation to her home to meet her friend
> from Adelaide, Tihran, Kaduna; they are conspirators and
> drink from the same well. Her own certitude is baked into the
> cakes she serves with tea tasting of her own contentment that
> leaves you crazed, thirsting forever for assurance. Be
> warned, she is dangerous.
> The moment is selected. You will not see all
> heaven's angels, all ancient good, the very
> weight of history rush to her support as she
> gathers breath (her smile never more gentle)--
> ~fal~e r ou heard the Message of Baha u llah?--
> nor will you know that God Himself throughout
> all worlds gives ear to your reply.
> 
> I tell you, she is dangerous!
> 
> GRAVEYARDS ARE NOT MY STYLE
> 
> Thornton Chase
> 1 847-l912
> 
> This rer~recl p~~r onage uas ~he fir.~l Bahá'í in Ameri~a ..
> his .~erli(es 14~i/l el~er be remember ~ hroughou fulure ages
> and ~y~les. For Ihe presen/ his uorlh is no l.noun hul in
> Ihefulure il uill be ineslimably dear . . .
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá
> 
> L(J.~ Ange/e.~: Oetol~er 1912
> 
> That's a good woman you've got there. Paddy, a good
> 
> woman. I like the way she knows how to come and go, if you f
> ~ u ml~ Like her lettin~ you have me round for a good meal
> 
> every Thursday and then setting out the stout and cards and slipping off
> to see her mother and leaving us to have a quiet game and talk. A man
> needs that, he gets lonely on his own
> I wish I weren't so clumsy with words, I'd like to tell your Rosie how
> much it's meant to me, coming here so often. I know she can tell by the
> way I dig into the food that I'm grateful and she probably thinks they
> starve me at my lodgings --Mrs D'Arcy, bless her, would die of shame if
> she thought Rosie believed that about her, and it isn't true because the
> old woman runs a good place and is a generous soul.
> But it's more than that--it's the friendship you and Rosie give me and I'd
> like you to find a way of letting Rosie know I appreciate it. I know Rosie
> and I joke together and I like to make her laugh, but you know how I am
> with words when I try to be serious, they never come out the way I mean
> them. So try to let her know.
> Since I left the old country I haven't made many friends-- I'm not what
> you'd call a mixer--and you people treating me like family has meant a
> lot. Now with us, it's different; I can talk to another man, and a soul
> needs that--at least I do. And the truth is, Paddy, if it's all the same
> to you, I'd rather just sit a minute before we deal the cards because I
> want to speak my mind.
> You see--well, I might as well come right out with it, like-- I'm thinking
> of getting married--I mean I am going to get married--to Lil. Not right
> away, of course, but--well, I mean I asked her last week, on the
> nineteenth, to be exact--and she's accepted and now we're betrothed. No
> surprise to you, I guess, after all my talk about her. I knew the first
> time I met her at the shop that she was all I ever dreamed of. But there
> was the problem of religion--well, you must be sick of hearing about that,
> and all the fights we had, and her trying to make me see the light and
> crying at her failure. I guess I used hot words but you know how I stand.
> I mean, what would my people say, me coming to the new world and getting
> mixed up
> in some queer religion--they might think of it as heathen. My poor old
> mother couldn't hold her head up in the village and the priest wouldn't
> take it lightly. As far as he's concerned the Church has a monopoly on
> God and he isn't one to divide the spoils with the competition. You
> should hear him go on about the Protestants--thinks they're the devil's
> own. Not that I'm religious or care what other people think, you
> understand, but it is a consideration, don't you see, and my mother in
> frail health. She wouldn't understand if Lil and I got married and had
> children and they weren't baptized. My mother's a simple good soul but
> fierce in her faith. In every letter she asks me have I been to ~lass.
> Well, I never miss at Easter, as you know. She makes novenas for me
> too, God bless her.
> And more than that, I'm jealous of Lil and I can't see why I'm not
> enough for her. Religion shouldn't come between people, as I see it.
> But my point is, why isn't it enough that we have each other? You know,
> sometimes I've even called for her with a drop on my breath just to
> have her take me as I am, to make her see it my way. A shameful thing
> for me to torment the poor girl, but dammit what's a man to do, and me
> half crazy with the love of her. And anyway religion is really a
> woman's business in the end; she has to give the children a decent
> start in life and some kind of training and see that they go to Church.
> But with Lil, religion's such an important matter--she's always
> trotting along to some meeting or other. Not that she doesn't invite
> me, but I'm uncomfortable with crowds and a man should be careful in
> choosing his friends. The truth of it being there are all kinds at
> these meetings--even Japanese. Not that I've anything against them, but
> what do you say to people like that? Words come hard with me at the
> best of times. And some of Lit's friends are comfortably off, you know,
> a little on the lace-curtain side, if you follow me. Not that they make
> an issue of it, but I feel a proper fool sitting on their fancy chairs,
> my fingers feeling like buttered sausaFs, balancinP a daintY teacuP and
> little sandwiches you could park
> 
> in your cavity, and not having enough hands to hold it all, and
> worrying am I going to spill something on the Turkey carpet. And not
> a drop of spirits served, either, that might give a man courage. And
> all the talking that goes on and me not understanding the half of it.
> 'Why can't they have Churches like everybody else?' I say to Lil and
> she always answers 'Just try to understand'--as if I was working at not
> understanding--and then we usually wind up with me yelling, hot-
> tempered as I am, and her crying, and it'S the longest time before she
> lets me hold her hand or peck her cheek and make our peace. And it
> leaves us both feeling sad and kind of hopeless and strained in our
> talk, like there was a sheet of glass between us.
> Well, I've told you some of that before and maybe you've guessed that
> it wasn't all roses between us--that's why I brought her here just the
> once. She liked your Rosie a lot--I should tell Rosie that--and I saw
> them talking between them with their eyes over the teacups the way
> women do. But Lil would soon be dragging her off to meet her cut-glass-
> andcrystal friends. Maybe Rose would like that for all I know because
> they are good people, in truth, and they love my Lil and her being in
> a shop and me in a factory isn't held against us or anything--at least
> most of them really feel that way about us and the rest seem to be
> honestly trying to feel there's no difference. But I still can't see
> why Lil's friends don't just go to Church on Sunday like everybody else
> and say their prayers when they remember to, like the rest of us.
> So after all the times I've told you how impossible it seemed between
> Lil and me--and sure there were some bad times-- you must be wondering
> how we got it sorted out, our differences I mean; well, not really
> settled, but more or less, anyway. And to tell the truth I don't really
> know myself except that it began with Lil in tears--a change in pattern
> because it usually ends that way--and ended with me in tears. I don't
> mind admitting that to you, Paddy--I cried; blubbered like a baby I
> did, at the end. I thought I'd forgotten how to cry--a man outgrows
> that unless he's well into his cups and feeling homesick.
> What happened was I picked Lil up at the shop to take her for a bit
> Or an outing like we planned and she asked me to take her to the
> graveside of one of her friends--a nice old fellow named Thornton
> Chase I'd met and liked who died just the end Or last month and was
> laid to rest all the way out in Inglewood. You know me, Paddy, I don't
> mind a good wake but I don't like funerals, and graveyards are not my
> style at all. Well, that was just a part of it. She wanted to be there
> because of the Master--that one she's always talking about with the
> name I can't pronounce. I find it easier to call him Master much as
> I dislike the term--it jars, foreign like. And he is a foreigner. as
> you know--you've heard me go on about him before and how he was in
> prison all that long while, and now he's come lo America to see his
> followers; and after being in the East a bit he's come all the way to
> the West Coast and him an old man. Soon as she mentioned him I got a
> bit feisty. I landed in New York from the old country and came west
> too, I thought to myself, and I'll bet he didn't have to cross the
> country hard-timing and hoboing it like I did on my way wcst thinking
> to myself you know. So I was a little heated up beforc I even opened
> my mouth and of course the words tripped me up and within minutes Lil
> was crying. The fact is, Paddy. I was jealous and I felt tricked and
> I knew there'd be a gathering with all Lil's friends, and speeches and
> sermons and hymns. and we'd not have a minute alone; and she'd been
> to Chase's funeral but a few weeks before. So I had good reason, in
> a way, for flying off the handle.
> It was a kind of grim journey I can tell you but I got through it hy
> being quiet. Even when Lil wanted to stop and huy flowers I didn't
> make a fuss. It wasn't the expense of them. you mind; it was the way
> she took so long selecting them that mi~h~ havc bothered me. But it
> didn't. It was watching the
> 
> careful way she chose them, like a bride picking out her bouquet you
> might say, that made me see how important this meeting must be to her
> and I saw it through her eyes so to speak. Meeting the Master must be
> one of the joys of her life, says I to myself, and so I really tri~d
> to make it up to her by speaking softly and telling her that I knew
> it was a special thing for her to be seeing him for the first
> time--why, I'm sure she'd follow him across the country if she had the
> money--and I told her that I appreciated the fact that she would
> honour me by allowing me to escort her to the meeting, and things like
> that. And you know I meant it--it was all true--and she smiled and
> her eyes took on that secret dreamy look they do and--well, I never
> felt closer to her ever before.
> Don't take offence if I don't drain my glass, Paddy,--you've a kind
> heart and a generous hand--but I need my wits about me to tell the
> next part and I swear I don't understand it myself; but it would in
> truth seem a strange thing to be taking a drop and talking about this
> at the same time, like cursing in Church, do you see.
> The thing is, it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Of course,
> I'm always more at ease out of doors to begin with but it was more
> than that. I suppose I have to say it was the Master. What a fine old
> gentleman he is. Oddly dressed to be sure, and looking like a bible
> figure in the stations of the crossand yet so natural, as though you
> always knew him. So I didn't feel so out of place. The old gentleman
> walked to the grave with great dignity and laid some flowers on it and
> took Lil's flowers and the others' and scattered them, too, and spoke
> a few simple words. Not the least unusual in a sense, but it was the
> way he leaned down to the ground with tenderness like a father bending
> to his dearest child to pat and comfort it. And I thought to myself
> ~hat I would give my life to have him look at me that way. Well, says
> I to myself, this should tell Lil's friends something--that this old
> man would come all this way to do this simple thing at the grave and
> say what he did, that
> Mr Chase would never be forgotten. The old gentleman seems to expect
> great things of Lil and her friends and no doubt they all well know
> it. I cannot bear to think they might disappoint him. If they broke
> his heart they'd hear from me about it, I swear it, Paddy, by all
> that's holy.
> Then the Master turned to the people and said a few words to each
> so I hung back not wanting to spoil it for Lil. Her face was glowing
> and she looked so beautiful it took my breath away. And the old
> gentleman did the strangest thing--took her hand, as he had the
> others' too, and then reached for mine, drawing me forward. And there
> we were, him holding our hands in his, all three joined and touching,
> and he looked at each of us slowly and deeply and he said in English
> 'Yes'. Just Yes. It was eerie, as though he were answering a question
> --no, more than that--as though he were blessing us in marriage. I
> felt as though Lil and me were the only people in the world at that
> moment. And then he smiled a lovely smile and turned away.
> We didn't speak on the way home--I guess we were both lost in thought;
> I know I was. And then suddenly I was sobbing my heart out with Lil
> patting my hand and saying 'It's all right, dearest, I know,'--like
> I was a child; and that's just how I felt to be sure. But I had been
> thinking of that look on the old gentleman's face when he was leaning
> towa~d the grave and wondering if ever I would be loved in that way
> by anyone. And I guess that's where the proposal came in because I
> couldn't help myself--I asked Lil if she loved me. And she said that
> she had always loved me, and that because she loved me through her
> love for God, as well as loving me for myself, her love would last
> through all this life and beyond it, too.
> So I said to her--and it wasn't easy to say it and my eyes were still
> running with tears and my voice was cracking: 'Mavourneen, I want this
> for you if this is what you want. I want you to be his follower and
> I want you to be a good one, the best you can. And I'd be proud if you
> were. I don't know if I can be Part of what you and your friends are
> doing, but I'll try to understand. All I can offer you is this: I know
> that this is good; I know he is a Holy Soul.'
> 'Well, my dear,' says she with one of those smiles that would melt a
> man's heart, 'that's a beginning, a very fine beginning.'
> So you see, Paddy, that's how it was, the beginning, the real
> beginning with Lil and me. And now we're getting married. What puzzles
> me is that she's so calm about it all--goes about smil1ng and singing
> to herself as though she always knew it would come right.
> There's no understanding women, is there, Paddy?
> 
> SIEGFRIED SCHOPFLOCHER
> 1 877--I 953
> 
> 'When Ifirsf heard of the Bahá'íFaith, I said to mysey
> "Freddie, if you get involved with this, it will cost you a
> fortune." Well, I did. And it did.'
> 
> (remark attributed to him)
> 
> Ach, Freddie, mein lieber Kerl, make light of it if you
> will, malign your munificence, we are not taken in. But have
> your little joke; assume the wry smile, the classic shrug,
> ask: 'What's a nice Jewish boy doing in a Cause like thisr
> Extend the jest, say: 'I surrendered profit and loss to
> Prophet and Laws'-- still, we are not deceived.
> 
> Freddie, you walked in with eyes as open as your heart,
> knew it to be the deal beyond compromise;
> survived the imagery accommodated to
> nightingales and roses endured our pious
> vagaries and poor arithmetic loved the goyim
> were loved made of heart and palm a purse and
> emptied both and learned (or always knew) that
> God does not strike bargains.
> 
> T.~* ! Freddie splendidly generous, your private
> charities betrayed you; we only pretended to
> accord the anonymity you sought. What man builds
> a shelter for mankind? The Mother of Temples
> casts no greater shadow than that of your
> humility; how can you hide from us? Daring to
> have loved us you must suffer now our love, and
> having given all accept our gift, your modesty a
> magnet to our admiration.
> 
> Ac~l Freddie mein lie~er Freund make light of it
> if you will-- you, inspired.spendthrift, lavish
> legator; we your grateful heirs left solvent in
> the knowledge that we need fear only bankruptcy
> of God. A c 11 Fr~ddie ! A~l~ nl~'i)1 liel~er
> Freund!
> 
> VERDICT OF A HIGHER COURT
> 
> [also available in Microsoft Word format]
> 
> In the interest of posterity we are asked
> to review the case. The dossier is before
> us. Shall we get on with it then?
> 
> Transcript of Proceedings of the District
> Court of the Fourth Judicial District State
> of Minnesota, held on the 8th day of August
> in the year of Our Lord one thousand nine
> hundred and . . .
> 
> Well, so that's how it is. Not yet a decade
> into the twentieth century and life is just
> a bowl of cherries. Live on your wits and
> cover all the exits.
> 
> The prisoner, Fred Mortensen, will rise
> while the Court pronounces sentence.
> 
> Hot-shot, aren't you, Fred? All set to
> highstep it into the years of the Greatest
> War on Earth and then to go twentythree-
> skidooing into the Jazz Age--if you live
> that long--with a bottoms-upboys-for-
> tomorrow-we-may-die and all that
> razzmatazz.
> 
> In considering the evidence before it the
> Court has given due weight to the extreme
> youth of the Defendant . . .
> 
> About twenty-one or so, are you, Fred~ But
> then, mugs must make an early start if they
> are to amount to anything--with a down-the-
> hatch-
> fellows and a chug-a-lug-a-lug and don't
> take any wooden nickels.
> 
> Before passing sentence the Court expresses
> regret that one of such obvious potential
> should have launched himself upon a course
> of action that can only blight his future,
> brand him an enemy of the public good and
> break his mother's heart . . .
> 
> So you found yourself in prison with a gee-
> there-ain't-nojustice and a blast-itI've-
> been-framed? Well, Fred let's review the
> facts.
> 
> Although he has taken the path of a common
> ruffian the Court appeals to whatever
> tender feelings may yet stir within the
> Defendant's bosom . . .
> 
> Easy does it, Fred. Florid oratory is a
> hazard to which most Judges display little
> resistance. But we take it you will concede
> that even tough guys have feelings?
> Remember how you cried a little in the
> darkened theatre during one of Mary
> Pickford's films and had to quickly conceal
> it from the gang with an improvised
> coughing spasm? And how a lump came to your
> throat each time you heard Eva Tanguay sing
> 'Mother'?
> 
> At an age when the Defendant's mother is
> entitled to his comfort and assistance, she
> faces the tragic and humiliating
> consequences of her son's iniquitous
> 
> - conduct. The Court is satisfied on the
> evidence that the Defendant's mother is an
> upright, decent, God-fearing. . .
> 
> Patience, Fred, he's only doing his job.
> Admittedly he does get a bit carried away.
> But the docket is light today and his gout
> is under control and perhaps he Is
> pontificating out of boredom. But maybe the
> old boy has a point there. We confront you
> with your own testimony:
> 'My dear mother had done
> everything in her power to make me a good
> boy. I have but the deepest love for her
> and my heart has often been sad when
> thinking how she must have worried for my
> safety as well as my future well-being.
> Through it all and in a most wonderful way,
> with godlike patience, she hoped and prayed
> that her boy would find the road which
> leads to righteousness and happiness. But
> environment proved a great barrier to her
> aspirations and every day in every way I
> became tougher and tougher . . . '
> 
> Come now, Fred, is that how tough guys
> talk?
> 
> The Court is charged with the
> responsibility of protecting society from
> those who wilfully disregard its laws.
> Equally, the Court has the responsibility
> of imposing sanctions which will afford the
> maximum opportunity of moral rehabilitation
> . . .
> 
> Relax, Fred, and don't let the hi~h-
> flown language get you down. Look at it
> this way--the judiciary has a vocabulary
> just as specialized, though somewhat less
> colourful, than that of budding thugs. But
> on the subject of rehabilitation, that
> came later through a man with gentle eyes.
> Remember Bert Hall, Fred? One of the
> finest lawyers in Minnesota, it was said,
> and a remarkable human being. Do you
> recall what the Hennepin County Bar
> Association said of Albert Hall?
> 
> 'He was essentially the poor man's lawyer;
> no client was too mean, nor was his cause
> too small, but that Bert Hall gave him his
> untiring and unstinted effort.'
> 
> Well, you were a mean one, all right, and
> whatever had been your cause you were
> presented with a new one, a cause of
> intimidating magnitude, as the Judge might
> say. Let us read into the record your own
> words:
> 
> 'Albert Hall told me, hour after hour,
> about the great love of 'Abdu'l-Bahá.
> Honestly, I often wondered then what Mr.
> Hall meant when he talked so much about
> God's love, Bahá'u'lláh's love, 'Abdu'l-
> Baha's love, love for the Covenant, and so
> on. I was bewildered. Still, I kept
> returning, and I wondered why. Later I
> realized it was the power of the Holy
> Spirit drawing one who wished to be
> drawn.'
> 
> Fine talk for a tough guy, Fred! It is
> lamentable that one of the Defendant's age
> should have amassed shall we say, so
> impressive a recvrd of criminal activity .
> . .
> 
> Euphemism is the backbone of courtroom
> wit, Fred. One gets used to it, though
> developing an appreciation of verbosity is
> another matter. For mstance, 'Learned
> Judge' is sometimes a euphemism for old
> windbag. But let us hear him out.
> 
> . . . disturbing the peace, using abusive
> language, harassing members of oppressed
> minority groups, being drunk and
> disorderly, assault, theft, escaping from
> custody, aiding the escape of a fellow
> prisoner, violating parole, resisting
> arrest .
> 
> Well, all that must have kept you pretty
> busy, Fred. But one impulse you could
> neither resist nor arrest, remember? Will
> you disavow your own incriminating words:
> 
> 'I felt urged by the Holy Spirit to go to
> see 'Abdu'l-Bahá at Green Acre, Maine.
> When I heard the rumour that He might not
> come west, I immediately determined to go
> and see Him. So I left Minneapolis for
> Cleveland where I attended a convention of
> printers for a few days. But I became so
> restless I could not stay for adjournment.
> As my finances were low, I of necessity
> must
> hobo my way to Green Acre . . . '
> 
> We note that euphemism is not the exclusive
> indulgence of the Court. But to continue:
> 
> 'I rode the rods . . . '
> 
> Now that's more like it:
> 
> ' . . . to Buffalo, then to Boston, then to
> Portsmouth. I was exceedingly happy. A boat
> ride, a streetcar ride, and there I was, at
> the gate of Paradise . . . '
> 
> An interesting destination for one of your
> proclivities!
> 
> Do you remember first entering His presence
> and His asking you whether you had a
> pleasant journey? Let us examine your own
> account of this: 'Question: "Did you have a
> pleasant journey?" Of all the questions I
> wished to avoid this was the one! I dropped
> my gaze to the floor--and again He put the
> question. I lifted my eyes to His eyes and
> His were as two sparkling jewels which
> seemed to look into my very depths. I knew
> He knew and I must tell. I answered: "I did
> not come as people generally do, who come to
> see You." Question: "How did you come?"
> Answer: "Riding under and on top of the
> railway trains." Question: "Explain how?" '
> 
> And you explained while His eyes twinkled.
> He gave you fruit, kissed both your cheeks
> and touched to His lips the soiled hat you
> had worn. And after that, at His invitation,
> you spent a week in His presence at Malden.
> 
> What are we to make of that, Fred?
> 
> The Court invites the Defendant to consider
> that in a land of limitless opportunity one
> of his age might, by pursuing the proper
> course, make his mark on its history . . .
> 
> Restrain yourself again, Fred. There might
> be something in this. There has been entered
> in the record, and marked Exhibit A, a
> Tablet addressed to you from Ramleh, Egypt,
> bearing date 12 September ~913. The
> signature is that of 'Abdu'l-Bahá:
> 
> 'That trip of thine from Minneapolis to
> Green Acre will never be forgotten. Its
> mention will be recorded eternally in books
> and works of history . . . '
> 
> Annexed to Exhibit A is a copy of God Passes
> By. We are asked to note the reference on
> page 290. Let it be so noted.
> 
> The Prosecuting Attorney dwelt at
> considerable length . . .
> 
> He means excruciating length, Fred.
> 
> . . . on the circumstances in which the
> Defendant was apprehended at gunpoint, in a
> barrage of police bullets, his capture being
> accomplished a~ a
> result of breaking both legs in scaling a
> wall while attempting to elude the police,
> and has repeatedly emphasized that for four
> years the Defendant was a fugitive from
> justice . . .
> 
> Easy, there, Fred. Why not relax and read
> Exhibit A?
> 
> The Court cannot view lightly the
> Defendant's contempt for the rules which
> must govern a civilized society. It emerges
> from the evidence before the Court that the
> pattern of the Defendant's behaviour is
> determinedly antisocial . . .
> 
> He does turn a vivid phrase, doesn't he?
> Fulgurant, it might be said. We toss that
> word in to see whether we still have the
> knack--we abandoned grandilo4uent rhetoric
> a long time ago; too time-consuming.
> Actually it has never been determined
> whether Judges are expected by lawyers to
> talk like that or only think they are.
> 
> But speaking of patterns emerging from the
> evidence which seems to be the point the
> good udge was making--another pattern
> emerges. Will you deny that over the long
> haul you laboured diligently--sorry, it is
> so easy to lapse into the jargon; but the
> following words mean just what they
> convey--for the establishment of the
> Kingdom of God on earth and that
> 
> until the eve of your death on 13 lune 1946
> you were so engaged?
> 
> Tendered as Exhibit B is an outline of your
> service on the Bahá'í Temple Unity, your
> pioneering to Montana, vour service as a
> national travelling teacher and as a member
> of the Chicago Bahá'í community, your
> preparations for a journey to Austria, to
> name a few. Let the Exhibit be marked.
> 
> Although ever inclined toward leniency on
> the basis of what has been adduced before
> it the Court must be satisfied in
> considering the question of sentence that
> the interest of justice will be fully
> served. With that in mind it is the opinion
> of this Court . . .
> 
> And yes, one final piece of testimony. Let
> there be marked as Exhibit C a document
> described as a cablegram sent from Haifa in
> June 1946 to members of your family:
> 
> 'Grieve passing beloved Fred. Welcome
> ~ssured Abha Kingdom by Master . . . His
> name forever inscribed Bahá'í history.'
> 
> The evidence, we submit, is irrefutable.
> Let the verdict be recorded: Guilty of
> spiritual recidivism.
> 
> Next case.
> THE COURIER
> 
> O Son of Love! Thou art but one step awayfrom the . . .
> celestial tree of love. Take thou one pace and with the next
> aduance into the unmortal realm and enter the pavilion of
> eternity
> Bahá'u'lláh
> The Hidden Words
> 
> How many steps, Salman, Salman, To world of God from world of
> man? How far, how far, untutored fool, From Land of Ta to
> 'Akka's Jewel?
> 
> Coarse of mien and taint of breath, In each pace might have
> lain your death. Companioned by lone wheeling bird You
> brought the lovers Love's Own Word.
> 
> How lonely were your many miles Fuelled by onions and
> friends' smiles? If dust leapt up to kiss your sole Had it
> not guessed and blessed your goal?
> 
> To hostile eyes not once revealed The treasure in your hat
> concealed. Behold, a stricken world knows now What safely
> rode above your brow.
> 
> By some, scorned as unlettered oaf, How educated was your
> troth ! So trained to scan, your simple heart Chose who
> attained, who stood apart.
> 
> How many are the steps that bring The loutish vassal to his
> King? Tell this halt, fugacious son In what steD is the
> soul's home won?
> 
> How many steps, Salman, Salman, To world
> of God from world of man~ Lend him your
> courage who has none And treads all paths
> save one. Save one!
> 
> EA R LY Wl NE
> 
> Thomas Breaku~ell, ~hef rst English Baha'l', accepted the Faith
> in his twenties in the summer of 1901 as a result of meeting
> May Ellis Bolles Startled by a mystical experience whlch
> followed upon theirfirst mee~ing he asked her whether she
> ~houghr he uas parting with his senses. 'No,' she replied, 'you
> are just becoming sane.' He made a pilgrimage to 'Akka not long
> thereafter and within a short time died of consumption. Abdu'l-
> Baha reuealed in his honour a eulogy of unparalleled beauty.
> 
> For you was May detained that you come sane And in the wind
> hear Christ has come again, In your life's doomed May, in the
> oblivious air Of inattentive Paris. What mute prayer Brought
> you to the waiting singular door Of one--of all the
> servants--frailest; core And mother-soul of Europe?
> 
> My Lord, I believe. . .
> 
> Now could your cask decline and you not grieve; But 'Akka
> gained, the lover will exclaim:
> 
> Let life endure that I taste more of pain !
> Your Spring s brief yield, love-wine immortals drink; None
> mourns to see the slender goblet sink.
> 
> O Breaku~ell O my dear one! Th~~ Lord hath verily
> singled thee out for His lot~e . . .
> 
> First grape of Albion, fruit of fragile vine, Not ours
> to stay from King this early wine. The pain-perfected
> vessel God lets slip, But first had raised that sweet
> draught to His lip.
> 
> PA R T TWO. CLIMPSES OF
> 'A BD U 'L- BA HA
> 
> adapted from the diary of Juliet Thompson
> 
> No word of mine uould sufhce to express how in*t~mtl~ the
> ret~elation of Abdu l-Baha s hopes expectation.s and
> purpose. . . electr.ified the minds and heart.s oJ those uho
> uere pril~ileged to hear Him uho w ere made the recipients
> oJ His inestimable blessings . . . I can neter hope to
> interpret adequatel~ the Jeellngs that .surged u ithin those
> heroic hearts as thel .sat at their Master:s Jeet . . . I
> can net~er pay sul: hc~ent trihute to that ~spirit of
> unyielding determinatlon uhich the impact of a magnetic
> personality and the spell oJ a might~ utterance kindled in
> the entire company oJ- those returning pilgrims these conse-
> crated herald.s of the Godenant of God . . .
> 
> Shoghi E~endi
> 
> GLIMPSES OF 'ABDU'L-BAHA
> Adapted from the Diary of Juliet Thompson
> 
> [also posted separately at bahai-library.com/white_season_glimpses_abdul-baha]
> 
> Akka: July 1909
> 
> We drive along a wide white beach. Sea waves curl
> about our carriage wheels, Camels approach on the
> sand, cloaked Bedouins attending. Palm trees in a
> long, long line and in the distance domes and flat
> roofs, dazzling white.
> 
> Walls. Walls within walls. Menacing walls. Tall,
> prison-like, chalk-white houses, leaning together,
> rising towards a rift of sky, slits of barred
> windows set here and there in their forbidding
> fronts. Streets so narrow that our wheels graze
> buildings on either side-- streets sometimes
> bridged by houses meeting in an arch at their
> second stories. Pervading us, a sense of the divine
> joy towards which we travel, here in the Holy City,
> the New Jerusalem.
> 
> Before us, suddenly, a broad expanse: a garden, the
> seawall, the sea, and then the Master's door. Too
> soon we have arrived, too suddenlv. and unprePared.
> He bursts upon us like the sun with His joyous
> greeting:
> 
> Welcome! Welcome!
> 
> His effulgence strikes me blind!
> 
> Are l~ou u~ell? Are you happy?
> 
> I cannot speak.
> 
> He takes my hand in His-- in His so mysterious
> hand-- delicately-made, steely-strong, currents of
> life streaming from it:
> 
> Your heart ~~our spirit speak to Me. I hear. I knou.
> Do not think ~~our serl~ices are unknoun to Me. I
> hal~e seen. I hal e ~een u ith ~~ou. I knou them
> all. For these ~ ou are aceepte~l in tlle Kingdom.
> 
> My services! Their pitiful smallness! And my lack of
> love! Pierced by shame I cry: 'Forgive my failures!'
> 
> Be sure of this. Be sure of this.
> 
> My knees yield; my heart draws me down to His feet.
> 
> Later, my eyes upon His white-robed Figure, I listen
> as He dictates Tablets, see Him pace about a room
> grown suddenly too small. A force born of the energy
> of God-- restless, uncontainable-- spills from Him.
> The earth cannot contain Him,
> 
> nor yet the universe. When He pauses by the window I
> sense His spirit free as the Essence Itself,
> brooding over regions far distant, looking deep into
> hearts at the uttermost ends of the earth consoling
> their secret sorrows, answering the whispers of far-
> off minds. Often in His leonine pacing He gives me a
> long, grave glance. And once He smiles at me. He
> smiles at me!
> 
> Thonon-les-Bains LakeCene2~a. August
> 
> A great white hotel, set amid oleander flanked by
> mountains overhung with clouds. Beyond the green
> terrace and marble balustrade the lake. In the halls
> and through the grounds the artificial, dull-eyed
> people stroll and chatter. Silently, majestically,
> unrecognized but not unfelt, He passes among them,
> the cream robe billowing, light glinting in His
> silver hair. The metallic voices break off. The
> shadowed eyes lift and follow, lighted for a moment
> with wonder. His presence is an affirmation,
> stirring them to recall their lost vision of a
> higher world and their own beauty. The eloquent
> assertion of His silence! His magnetic power! His
> holy sweetness!
> At a country inn I see Him in a half-circle of
> children, girdled with children, festooned with
> them, waist-deep in children with violets to sell,
> the small ones, themselves a bouquet, pressing
> about Him, waving the purple clusters, their faces
> raised with grave astonishment, His own a
> benediction as He bends to buy their blooms, buy
> all their blooms, drawing from His pocket handfuls
> of francs, giving to each child bountifully. They
> beg for more. 'Don't let them impose!' At the edge
> of the swaying crescent, a newcomer, the smallest,
> stares up in awe, timid as a fawn:
> 
> To this little one I have not given . . .
> 
> And the Master gave.
> 
> On the road back, suddenly, spectacularly, a
> waterfall, rolling from a great height, scattering
> diamonds as it froths down a black precipice. Full
> of excitement He hurries forward, alone, to sit in
> silence at the very edge, the swirling water far
> below. I see Him in profile, kingly against the
> cascade, intense rapture on His upturned face, and
> my tears flow. After a time, smiling:
> 
> yl come to America will you inuite Me to see such
> uaterfalls?
> 
> I promise Niagara ! 'But surely, my Lord, Your
> coming to America does not depend upon my
> invitation!'
> 
> My invitation to America will be the uniry of the
> believers!
> 
> A heavenly day of charming informality, taking tea,
> He talking gaily or tenderly, taking little notice
> of me. But in spite of this I glimpse something
> vaster than before, feel a new awareness of His
> unearthly power, His divine sweetness.
> 
> Coming upon Him as He stands talking with a friend
> the sweetness of His love, that celestial radiance,
> again bring tears: If He never gave me so much as a
> word if He never glanced my way, just to see that
> sweetness shining before me, I would follow Him on
> my knees, crawling behind Him in the dust forever!
> 
> New York: ll April 1912
> 
> April I Ith! Oh day of days! I awaken before
> daybreak with a singing heart, the moon's waning
> sliver framed low in my windowpane. I hasten to the
> pier. The morning is crystal clear, sparkling. I
> have a sense of its being Easter--of lilies, almost
> seen, blooming at mv feet.
> A mist settles over the harbour but at last, at
> last, I see a phantom ship, an epoch-making ship,
> coming closer, closer, ever more substantial, till
> it swims into the light, a solid thing. He sends His
> love and asks us to disperse-- we are all to meet at
> four. Obedience is overruled by love: three of us
> conceal ourselves and wait. Stepping into the
> limousine, the Master turns and smiles at us! Three
> frozen statues dissolve in that bestowal, no love-
> born child-prank ever so rewarded. Oh the coming of
> that Presence! The mighty commotion of it! The
> hearts almost suffocate with joy and the eyes burn
> with tears at the stir of that step! Our skyscrapers
> had delighted Him:
> 
> Tll e Minarets ol 111e We.s t !
> 
> What divine irony!
> 
> Neu~ York. I~)April
> 
> Hc shines in whi~e and ivory, His face a lighted
> lamp illumining the Bowery Mission:
> 
> Toni~lt~ I am rer! 17app~
> Jor I llal~e eome here to mee~ M! friends.
> I eonsider ~~ou M~ relaf i~~es
> M!~ eompanions and I am ! our
> eomrade . . .
> 
> A sodden ~nd grimy procession streams down the
> aisle, perhaPs three hundred men in single file--
> derelicts, failures, broken forms, blurred faces--
> and here 'The Servant' receiving each outcast as His
> beloved child. Into each palm, as He clasps it, He
> presses His little gift of silver-- Just a symbol
> and the price of a bed. None is shelterless this
> night and many find a shelter in His heart; I see it
> in their faces, and in His face bent to theirs.
> 
> We drive up Broadway, aglitter with electric signs.
> He speaks of them, smiling, much amused. 'It is
> marvellous to be driving through all this lighl by
> the side of the Light of lights.'
> 
> T11i. i.- onl~ e l)eginnin~. We u ill he lo~e~11er
> in all tl1e u f~rlfl.s ot Gol You eal1not reali_e
> 11ere ul1at tllat mea)1.s. You eannot im(l~inf_7 it.
> Yf~u ean lorn no eonef_Jption 11ere in tl1i.s
> elen1ental u orl(l o/ ul7at it i.s to l~e 11'itlt Me
> in
> tlle Eternal Worlfl.s.
> 
> Neu York. 5 June
> 
> I am to paint His portrait! Surprise, dismay, fear,
> joy, gratitude, flood me. He sits before me in a
> dark corner His black 'aba melting into the
> background. I quail.
> 
> I uant l ou to paint Ml .serl itufle
> 
> t~f~ C(~fl
> 
> Only the Holy Spirit could do so, no human hand.
> 'Pray for me, or I am lost. I implore You, inspire
> me!'
> 
> I will pray and as you are doing this onlyfor the
> sake of God you will be inspired.
> 
> Fear falls away. It is as though another sees
> through my eyes, works through my hand. Rapture
> takes possession of me. My hand is directed in a
> sort of furious precision. The points, the planes in
> the matchless face are so clear my hand cannot keep
> pace with the clarity of my vision. Freely, in
> ecstasy, I paint as I never have before. In half an
> hour the foundation is perfect.
> 
> Once, bidding Him rest, I find I cannot paint-- what
> I see is too sacred, too formidable. He sits still
> as a statue, eyes closed, infinite peace on that
> chiseled face, a God-like calm and grandeur in His
> erect head. Suddenly, with a great flash, like
> lightning, He opens His eyes. The room seems to rock
> like a storm-tossed ship in the power released!
> 
> Wes~ Englewood: 29 June
> 
> A luminescent summer day green countryside, and He
> our host. The Unity Feast has ended and the darkness
> settles in, gently smudging the outline Or the
> mi~hty trees.
> 
> Many of us linger, unable to wrench ourselves away.
> Cncket songs--the scent of grass-- a breathless
> expectancy in the soft, warm air. He sits in a chair
> on the top step of the porch, some of us surrounding
> Him. Below, dotting the lawn, on either side of the
> path sit others, the light summer skirts of the
> women spread out on the grass, lighted tapers in
> their hands. In the dark, in their filmy dresses,
> they become great pale moths, and the burning tips
> of the tapers, flickering fireflies. Knowing our
> thirst, He speaks to us again, words of consuming
> tenderness. Rising, He starts down the path, still
> talking, passing between the weightless, dim figures
> with their lighted candles, talking, still talking,
> till He reaches the road. He turns and we no longer
> see Him. Even then His words float back to us, the
> liquid Persian, and the beautiful, quivering
> translation, the sound and the echo hovering and
> drifting, an exquisite note almost unbearably held:
> 
> Peace be with you. I will ptayforyou.
> 
> Oh that voice that speaks out of His invisibility,
> when He has passed beyond our sight! May I always
> remember. May I always remember and hear that voice!
> 
> New York. 5 December
> 
> The last morning.
> I stand at His door, my brimming eyes
> fastened upon that divine Figure as He moves
> about the room. Taking my hand, He consoles me:
> 
> Remember I am uith ~ou alua.ys.
> Baha u llah u ill be uith ~ ou alua~ s . . .
> 
> And then the ship, and His last spoken message,
> the Master pacing the crowded cabin filled with
> flowers and broken-hearted friends:
> 
> . . . ~our ef~orts must be loft~. Exert
> ~~ourselves u ith heart and soUl .so that
> perchance through ~our efforts the light of
> Unil~ersal Peace ma~ .shine. . . that all men
> mal hecome as one family. . . It is Ml hope that
> ~ ou ma~ hecome .succ es.sful in thi.s high
> calling. .so that like ~~rilliantl~lmp.s ~oumcl~
> castlight upon the I~ orld oJ humanit~ and
> quicken and .stir the bod~ ol exi.stence like
> unto a spirit of life. Tlli.s is eternal g/or!
> This is el~erlasting telicitl . Tllis is
> immortal life. This is hearenly attainment. This
> is heing created in the imuge and likeness of
> God. . .
> 
> I sit opposite Him at a little distance, weeping
> quietly. At each parting I was left with the
> hope of another meeting, and now my question
> must be answered or I shall have no peace. 'Will
> I see You again, my Lord?'
> 
> Tllis i.s Ml hope.
> 
> 'But still You don't tell me, my Lord. Not
> knowing, I feel hopeless.'
> 
> You mu.st not feel hopeless.
> 
> Only that. That is all He said to me.
> 
> It is death to leave the ship. I remain on the
> pier, in the grey light, with the impervious,
> stolid pigeons and the anguished gulls. Tears
> blur my eyes. Through them I see the Master in
> the midst of the throng, waving a patient hand
> to us.
> 
> It waves and waves-- that beautiful patient
> hand-- till the Figure is lost to sight.
> 
> Haifo. 9 Decembcr 1956. In Memoriaot
> 
> Deplore los~s much lo~ ed greatl~ admired Juliet
> Tllomp.son out.standing e~remplar~ handmaid Abdu
> l-Baha. 0l1er half c entur~ record ntanitold
> meritoriou.s .serl~ice.s emhracing concluding !
> ear.s Heroic opening decades Formati~~e Age
> Baha; Dispen.sation ~I on her em1iahle position
> glorious compan~ triumphant disciples he/ol~ed
> Mas~er Abha Kingdom. Adl1ise hold memorial
> gathering Masllriqu I-Adhkar pa~ befitting
> trihute imperishahle memor~~ one .so ll*o//~ cc
> nsecrated Faith Baha u ll~ih fired .such
> consuming cdel1otion Centre His
> Col1enant. Slloghi
> PART T~REE.
> LINES FROM A PERSIAN
> NO TEBOOK
> 
> The cause of the rejection and persecution of the Bab u~as
> in its essence the same as that of the rejection and
> persecution of the Christ.
> 
> Shoghi Effendi
> Introduction to The Dawn-Breaker.s
> DR CORMICK DECIDES
> 
> Tabrl- 1848
> 
> Well, not an auspicious beginning to this day, the tea
> undrinkable and Ah. mad in a sulk for one of those
> mysterious reasons no mere Englishman could understand--
> an advantage we unfeeling barbarians have, I suppose,
> over these excessively sensitive Persians.
> 
> And the beastly report to be written of that curious
> interview. I have little heart for that. How to find the
> balance between my observations and what the ears of
> power might hope to hear about the poor wretch, or to
> know the disposition of my Persian colleagues and what
> might sway them from detachment to a devious or dictated
> course? They could be agents of an ill-wisher. At best
> they are Western only when it serves them to be. Sane or
> mad, the authorities will bring about this death if that
> be their wish. Exercises in futility weary me; the
> examination I suspect was merely a token nod towards
> justice, some aspect of the unfathomable and interminable
> face-saving ceremony. Can one ever understand their ways?
> 
> As for my part, what can I say? I found myself admittedly
> disposed most kindly toward the Bab-- his courtesv and
> di~nitv of bearin~~ struck me much.
> Attractive, mild of manner and melodious of voice--nothing
> offensive there. I might remark upon his delicacy of
> stature and his tender youth--but what relevance has that?
> 
> No surprise that he, knowing the purpose of our attendance
> upon him, should have been loth to answer our questions,
> merely regarding us with a gentle IGok, continuing with his
> chanting-- hymns or devotionals, I suppose. And this the
> one who claims to be the Mahdi of the Mussulmen! What to
> make of it all?
> 
> I shall weight my report in his favour, no doubt; I see no
> other way. It would please me well to think his life were
> spared. 'Frankly,' I shall say, 'I am impelled in the
> circumstances to recommend the utmost leniency in this
> difficult matter . . .' The words will come as I apply
> myself to it.
> 
> I cannot take sides in these affairs, of course, and it
> would appear to be of appalling significance that this
> young man should have subverted the religion of the realm
> and convulsed the populace with his cry: 'I am the Promised
> One.' The Promised One indeed! Well, no doubt he believes
> it. An infernal nuisance, the whole affair. And what to
> make of his assertion that Europe will espouse his cause--
> the intensity with which he regarded me as he said it?
> Extraordinary, really. Most extraordinary. I suppose my
> part in it is over and I shan't see him again.
> 
> One wonders what might become of such a fellow. Perhaps, of
> course, it's just another tempest in a teapot. Ah well,
> with the Persians, it is always something.
> 
> Today--yes-- I think, today, the grey cravat.
> 
> A CRIMSON RAIN
> 
> And there shall be martyrs and saints
> 
> T. S. Eliot
> Chorus No. 6 from The Rock
> 
> Fort of Tabars
> Ma~ indara'n
> May 1849
> 
> His head now cushioned against my breast, I see how lightly
> his closed lashes shadow the soft cheek; even in death my
> friend is beautiful. He has met his end with a startled,
> gentle courage, his recumbent form assumes the chaste and
> artless grace of a child or dancer. So must his mother have
> held him, and so wept, but wept for his bright promise.
> With what joy would I have led him to his wedding in a
> season less sanguine. Never, now, will I dandle his
> gurgling children on my knee. Never again will we fatigue
> the aghast stars with our chanting and our laughter, or
> huddle, chilled and yawning, as t'le last candle fails,
> talking of honour. These slender hands--do they supplicate
> for the accustomed book and pen? My tears do not erase the
> bruises.
> 
> How young, how pale he is! This pallor is not earned by
> dissipation. What had this sheltered scholar need know of
> soldiering or death? It was no feat to kill him. What
> resistance might this frail vessel offer or rage this
> bosom store? That delicate shattered cage held no aptitude
> for hate.
> 
> See how timidly his blood now stains my tunic. Comrade-in-
> Faith, would that this thin, reluctant trickle might brand
> your name upon my flesh for all to know. His name? Ah world!
> you would not care, nor does he need your tawdry accolades.
> Lavish them upon your athletes, your fawning princes, your
> debased divines. God keeps his name! And 1, his friend, shall
> keep it while I draw breath, though that may not be
> long--Husayn felled, Quddus injured, our number dwindling. But
> in this moment this death, this name, are known, and God's
> moments are eternal.
> 
> The siege resumes, and now I fight for two. Weeping, I
> leave you, my gallant-,n-God, even my grief sacrificed to
> this awful hour.
> 
> Seminal your death, little brother-- all our deaths. O
> Persia ! Pitiless Persia ! One day you shall, v.~,. shall
> know what vou have done.
> 
> Though the~~ go mad they shal/ be sane.
> 
> Dylan Thomas
> Death Shall Haue No Dominion
> 
> Fort of Khajih
> Nayrlz
> Autumn 18S
> 
> Yes, certainly I knew him. The man was a fool, I say, and
> worse, a heretic. Ask the townspeople, they all revile him. I
> grant you he knew the Qur'an well and once had my respect. He
> was honest in his dealings and had honour. ~ut to disgrace his
> family as he did, and at his age! Life was comfortable for
> him-- small merchants do well enough-- and he threw everything
> away, bewitched by a green turban. God spare us the snares of
> senility and keep us safe from the persuasion of roses and
> women ! Ah, my friends, let us pray the years will bring us
> wisdom, if not piety--too much to hope for, eh'.~-- and a
> dignified death.
> 
> He fell with the fort, of course, his head carried aloft
> through the street with the others'-- the grey beard tinged
> gruesomely scarlet-- while the crowd jeered. I daresay the
> vultures dined well. His brother turned to me for comfort,
> sick with shame. 'He was a fool', I told him; what more could
> I say? A degrading, grisly end, but just what he deserved. I
> am a reasonable man and give religion its due
> but it excites unseemly passion. Certainly one can hope God
> winks at human foibles, but to flout authority and violate the
> Faith is madness. God and His Prophet deal with those!
> 
> I dreamed for long of the head, the expression curiously
> peaceful-- one might almost say smiling. I confess it rather
> rattled me. But that was last summer and life again is normal.
> You see, it came to nothing, as these things will. Come, let us
> enjoy our tea; why spoil a pleasant day with talk of this? One
> has said it all in saying he was mad.
> 
> Well, now, have you ever seen such pomegranates! So large and
> red, and yet so strangely bitter; 1, at least, have no taste
> for them. Is it age?
> 
> .pa~hetic seenes Uolloued] upon the di~ision of the
> inhal~itants of Zanjan into tuv distinct camps, by order of its
> gorernor. . . uhich dissoll~ed ties of uorld/y interest and
> afrection infavour of a mightier loyalty. . . Shoghi E~endi God
> Passes By
> 
> For~ of 'Ali-Mardan Khan
> Zan.jan
> Deeemher Is50
> 
> In this interval of silence, mother, we count our dead or find
> solace with our loved ones, and so I write to you with but
> faint hope my words will reach you. The scribe assures me that
> a
> 
> kinsman may find a way to carry this beyond the walls. How
> weary these stones must be of our long struggle here! It has
> not been easy--food and fodder in short supply, brackish
> water--and the cold is constant. Death and suffering are now
> familiar, but still I am not reconciled; only my own death will
> cause me to forget what I have seen.
> 
> But I do not forget you, mother dear, no matter what befalls.
> Twice we are divided, by marriage and by faith-- you must
> observe my father's will, and I my husband's; and as I adopt
> this as my own will, are we thrice separated then? Oh ! may we
> all drown in the will of God ! The times twist us but behind
> these walls I love you. Though heaven be in upheaval let me
> reach across and speak--there may not be another time for this!
> Attend me with your heart, mother, for I carry your grandchild
> and hope this news will bring you joy. One day you may receive
> us with smiles. So, you see, life continues, even here.
> 
> Rumours will have reached you. Too large for reality seem the
> people here-- even the women garb as men and seize the sword.
> It is all too strange and troubling. But God inspires what He
> will in this great day. You may find me somewhat changed but
> you will know me--what has the governor's decree to do with our
> love? Am I not still your child, your jigar-gushih? Offer me
> your hal~~a and you will know! I am better suited to prepare
> the samovar or dawdle among the girls over some light task with
> chitchat and melon seeds than to live in the camp of heroes;
> yet God has brought me here. And, yes, your own good life has
> set me on this path. These fingers which you guided towards
> gulduzi now tend the wounded. I am slow. My friends show great
> patience with my awkward ways; they give, I think, more than
> my share of food. I have cut my hair to bind the muskets but
> find dressing it is simpler. My hands which were your pride
> when daintily patterned with henna now wear a more vital,
> deeper dye-- but still they would hold you to my breast. And
> with it all, your place in my heart is unchanged, nor must you
> worry. I move with care, watchful of my trust.
> 
> The one called Hu.Liat is here and the enemy will soon be upon
> us-- once more the noise and the blood. Birth cannot be
> soundless or without stain. Though mucll and many will it wash
> away I do not fe.lr this crimson rain for cvery drop must tell
> and all shall be fed of the heavy harvest.
> 
> If 1 live I shall ag.lin take up this letter and, if not, may
> you one day rejoice, mother, that mine was not an idle death.
> 
> I a~k little in a world that shows slight mercy but this I bcg
> of you: Speak gently to my father and win him back to me!
> 
> ii.c~-r~ Icrm orcndearmenl. equivalenl lo your hearl'~ remnanl'. t
> il kin-3 or~mhroi~ery.
> 
> COMMAND PERFORMANCE
> 
> Ablaze like a theatre, voice upraised in song, one
> comes dancing in the dust, costumed in candles, his
> performance lighted with flames fed by his own flesh.
> 
> The crowd jeers, not knowing this to be solo by royal
> command, spectacle beyond applause; this the music of
> Am I not your Lord? this the choreography of Yea
> verily thou art!
> 
> A MOUSE AMONG HAWKS
> 
> The uomen and children uere ~aptured and subjeeted to
> brutalities u*ieh no pen dare deseribe.
> 
> Nabil
> The Daun-~reakers .
> 
> Nayrlz. June IsSO
> 
> Qamar is a beauty, her skin unusually fair; it did not
> go well with her after they seized us and we were
> given as playthings to the troops, the soldiers drunk
> and brutal. mocking us in our disgrace. God alone
> knows our sufferings, the indi~nities we bore.
> I was spared much, being older, the cast of my eye
> thought an evil mark. But Qamar, unmarried, slender,
> with the quick grace of a gazelle, lovely as the moon
> whose name she bears-- what can I say? She was a mouse
> among hawks. Her virtue and shyness incited them to
> shameful conduct. One officer singled her out for his
> attentions and won her stern rebuke. Glancing at the
> lance on which her father's severed head was held aloft
> she called: 'Beloved Father, had you thought me worthy
> of so brave a suitor?' Even some of the men tittered at
> her audacity. The humiliated offficer struck her face
> and turned her over to the regiment. For all her tears
> and pleading they showed no mercy. She was silent then,
> woodenly compliant, as if removed to another world, as
> they led her away. I cannot think it gave them pleasure.
> 
> When it grew dark she crept to me, bruised and sobbing.
> I freed her wrists and wiped the men's spittle from her
> face, rocked her in my arms till she grew calm. We
> chanted softly, clinging together. Here and there a
> child whimpered, a sleeper cried out. In the distance
> the men revelled, cursed and made lewd boasts. I felt
> that God saw our misery, heard our prayer.
> 
> Later we slept, though fitfully, cramped and crowded as
> we were. The ni~ht was chill and we had not been given
> rations. When I awakened the sky was growing light.
> Qamar stood with her back to me and with a small blade
> was hacking off her hair which fell soundlessly in black
> drifts to her feet. Her hands worked in measured
> precision across her scalp among the jagged tufts and
> bristles. 'Qamar! Your lovely hair!' I gasped. She
> turned then to silence me and I saw the oozing stripes
> her nails had raked across her cheeks and breast--these
> she'd daubed with mud to staunch the bleeding. As I
> again cried out in horror she advanced toward me like
> one moving in a trance. 'Rejoice for me,' she said
> softly. 'Now only God may find me pleasing.'
> 
> THE CONJURER
> 
> These eyes hal~e gazed upon llis coun~enance . . .
> Mirza Muhammad-~Aliy-i-Zunuzi (Anis)
> 
> Tabri_, 18S
> 
> It is the way of boys to lie brooding in their shaded
> rooms languidly conjuring the heroic images or the
> nippled voluptuousness by which budding men assert their
> dreams and annul the dull existence
> of the practical furniture that sombrely
> clamours to define their life by diminution;
> their way to weep over H. afiz or Rumi for our
> fleet hour, the mortality of roses, song so
> soon ended, and to sigh for the fragile
> throbbing flesh which can yet but imagine love
> nor know its tyranny.
> 
> It is the need of parents to deny these
> tremulous flights which in anarchial, merciless
> privacy annihilate our lives disclaim our
> features and demolish our decisions; our need
> to call the youth to the substantial meal, the
> headlines of the day, the unpaid bill and the
> educated compromise. We who are good at sums
> and court no scandal foresee the poem
> forgotten, have known the tender yielding lips
> and slender slanting thigh coarsened, grown
> flaccid with boredom and trivia.
> 
> And so, Anis, we too would have summoned you to
> our reality here in the secretless glare of
> sunlight, bidden you select the prudent career,
> embrace cautious choices; would have had you
> marry.
> 
> replicate our worth with children, watched your
> waist thicken and your hair pale, responsibly,
> respectably, resigned to the dulling of your
> eyes, and left you at the end ungrudgingly,
> content that you would tend our grave.
> 
> And for all our wisdom would not have known how
> idle was our hope, Anis, who in that tearful
> hour moping alone among the unaccusing
> dustmotes in your shuttered room conjured God's
> very face, were pledged to lay your cheek's
> childbloom upon His target breast, your atoms
> elevated to eternally commingle with Dust of
> dust.
> 
> THE BLUNDER
> 
> .Tihran, 1852
> 
> Some blunder into history by a simple act
> without the panoply of the punctilious marriage
> that secures a dynasty, without the
> calculatedly outrageous flourish or
> unconsidered heroic feat.
> This nameless crone, for instance.
> She purposefully hobbles through the
> street's loud and roiling crowd
> toward her goal. Care was never
> lavished upon her face, teeth, hair;
> she needed no cosmetic art for her
> role in this affair.
> 
> There is a magnificence in her rage.
> Stooped arthritically, slowed by age,
> yet she seizes up the stone, strains
> to keep pace. Swooning with
> imminence, inebriate with
> righteousness, she hurls the missile
> toward the mark. Indignation and
> triumph stain the dignity of her
> punctate face. Now we know God
> accepts even intended virtue; the
> gentle, clement target turns to aid
> her blow. Sluggish with its burden of
> finality the stone describes a
> languid arc.
> 
> There in timeless tableau we see
> Archetype and archetype: but how to
> read its sense? Does the hag know she
> enacts our rejeciion (who have not
> her innocence)?
> 
> CA SE STUDY
> 
> As psychologists, gentlemen, you may wish to consider this
> study. By all means take notes.
> 
> The subjects are unexceptional in the context of the excep-
> tional times. The youth, an only son, conventionally handsome
> and doted upon; the mother, simple and pious. In another period
> she would not likely have imagined a world more complex or
> demanding than her kitchen. What could be asked of one who has
> so little?
> 
> There were disturbances in Zanjan, one might say, not to put
> too fine a point on it. The boy, then, handed over to the mob,
> is led to certain death. He has a noteworthy aplomb but
> countless youth have shown an equal valour in causes less than
> this. Ratner, gentlemen, observe the mother, summoned to the
> place of execution. She strides impatiently toward this
> appointment so long foreseen. Familiar with giving, she had not
> thought to withhold this last token; gifts are given once and
> this was all decided long ago.
> 
> The enemy, relying heavily on the predictability of mothers,
> urges her to extend to her child the impertinent, the
> unforgivable invitation. Her life cannot purchase his nor her
> tears save him, so she rescues him from regret, sweetens his
> departure: I will disown you as my son if you incline your
> heart to such evil whisperings and allow them to turn you away
> from the trulh.
> 
> The boy's choice condoned, he yields gladly to the sword. Dry-
> eyed with pride, approbation and knowledge of compensation, the
> mother sees the severed head roll toward her. She turns slowly
> from that sad souvenir--had never attached strings to her gifts
> nor asked receipt.
> Well, gentlemen, there you have it; admittedly not a conven-
> tional domestic situation. Now, learned doctors, do you care to
> expatiate on sacrifice and resignation? Explain if you will,
> what is asked of us.
> 
> AT HER LOOKING GLASS
> 
> T hran
> August 1~52
> 
> No rings, then. I have almost done with symbols; the
> white silk is enough. The face a little flushed, I
> think-- no colour needed there! But even this becomes a
> willing bride. How eagerly the blood goes to its task,
> and this but the beginning!
> 
> Ah, little mole that always troubled me, today you are
> my jewel. Let me go to him flawed,;human. And oil of the
> rose--roses for love!-- for am l not a lover?
> 
> Yes, this will do. I like the spare economy of this;
> this plainness pleases me. Beauty (and they have said I
> have that) is best achieved by discarding all but ~he
> essential. (Do you not see, my sons, the Bridge of Sirat
> must be crossed alone?) Is there an ode here? Ah well,
> no time for that: l have sung my songs and thev succeed
> if thev brin~ me this!
> 
> Yes, this will suflfice-- there is no room for vanity
> in this meeting, this appointment kept but once! Let
> them hurry! Or does my unseemly haste offend my
> beloved? My fast has made me giddy ! How well heknows
> my joy!
> 
> Foolish woman! Would you forget the scarf? choose
> carefully now!-- yes, nuptial, the finest, softest,
> and draped just so? Or carried? I kiss you, lovely
> thing, in anticipation of your sweet purpose !
> 
> Ah, how easy all this is. Now let them come!
> One more journey, one last garden.
> 
> Soon, my unborn sisters, we shall see what
> comes of this!
> 
> HOW STILL. THE CENTRE
> 
> We are not astonished after the star-strewn
> career the drunkening drama the dark
> turbulence noisily tumbling her from
> periphery toward the wet sucking maw
> of the angry vortex to find in the still and absolute
> centre this bland and yawning domesticity: the woman
> pacing her room, sorting, arranging, consigning a few
> trinkets to a wooden chest for memento or bread-and-butter
> gift and, as housewife to greengrocer, milady to backstair
> maid, issuing the calm order My last request is that you
> permit no one henceforth to en~er my chamber . . . in the
> confident excluding tone born of the assured, rare and
> unsunderable marriage.
> 
> LULLABY
> 
> Are you infants that you will not sleep without my tales! I swear
> you turn my poor head grey; I have been far too soft with you. If
> your mother knew we spoke llke this your poor old nurse would
> pay, my little tyrants. Would you have your nanu disgraced that
> way? Ah, but what harm--we are children only once and that is
> brief enough. Let me close the lattice against the laughter from
> the banquet. The nightingales are still tonight.
> 
> So, you would have the story of the secret stone-- do you not
> tire of that old tale yet? I fear to give you morbid dreams. But
> yes, we all love secrets and it satisfies me well to tell it; I
> do not have an endless store, for all my years.
> 
> It was long ago, in Tihran, in the time of your father's father,
> cousin of the Kalantar. I came as a young girl into the service
> of his wife. My people were honest and my home decent. I was
> clean in my ways, swift and soundless on my feet and quick to
> learn. Fate was often cruel in those harsh days but I found a
> good life and pleased my mistress. My hands could move gently as
> brown doves across her silks, and I was skilful with the comb.
> 
> The day when one of high birth, a man of Nur, was taken to the
> Siyah-Chal, in chains, the household was abuzz. A festival was
> made of it, the servants watching from the roof as he was led
> through the rabble of the streets. I was glad enough of the
> event--not every day one of my station can see a nobleman in such
> a plight, and we had few entertainments.
> 
> A strange sight indeed--like seeing a white rose in a swarm of
> gnats. He walked in dream-like majesty as though he did not hear
> the curses and abuse-- his head bared, his feet unshod, his
> garrnent soiled with refuse pelted by the mob. In excitement I
> seized up a white pebble--sharp it was-- and raised my hand to
> hurl it. And then he looked up at me, as though the better to
> receive its full force. I froze. It was his eyes, I think.
> I turned and fled, sobbing and shaking. Afterwards I was
> much teased by the others for being an hysterical girl.
> In shame I hid the pebble. And that was all.
> 
> Later he was exiled, I heard, but what became of him I
> cannot say. Some said he was an enemy of God, and some a
> holy man. I do not know about such things-- it was enough
> to have seen that face. Perhaps I should have cast it,
> but my hand was stayed. I took it as an omen.
> 
> I keep the stone in this small pouch about my throat--
> you may touch it if you promise you will sleep-- see how
> smooth it is worn. It grows. I think, more white each
> year. The silly amulet of an old fool, I suppose, but
> when I am ill or sad it comforts me.
> 
> Did I not close the window? I smell the heavy breath of
> roses!
> 
> So there you have it; it was his eyes, you see. It was as though
> they gazed beyond us to another world.
> 
> Now will you sleep, my little ones?
> 
> A DREAM OF FIRE
> 
> Mission of the Good Shepherd
> Tihran
> I 5 September I 852
> 
> My dear Edwina,
> It is not yet dawn and the house is still. I have wakened
> from a troubling dream and am too agitated to successfully court
> sleep. Therefore I have lighted a lamp, drawn a light shawl about my
> shoulders and taken up my pen to write to you. You will realize at
> once, my dearest sister, that I am shamelessly using you--I hasten to
> admit it at once--but the dream (about which I shall say more later)
> has left me not only sleepless but intensely homesick. For the first
> time since I so eagerly consented to accompany Aunt Edna on this
> adventure, begun now so many months ago, I am engulfed in homesick-
> ness--it is a keenly felt physical sensation, like waves of nausea,
> one might say, or the occasional distress one experiences on a sea
> voyage.
> It must be that the night air and the stillness of the hour are
> conducive to confession--your intrepid, unorthodox little sister feels
> homesick! But with it I enjoy a delicious sensation of guilt and the
> small conceit in which I suppose all insomniacs indulge--the notion
> that I am the only one in the world awake at this hour. I picture you
> and Thomas as having long since retired to a deserved and blissful
> sleep, and th~ children folded into innocent dreams, their pink faces
> as swe~t and mysterious as unopened blossoms. Your house in London I
> see as a warrn refuge in the large impersonal city, a harbour from
> which sails forth in all weather the stable ship of the goodness of
> your lives whose cargo of genuine Christian charity and graoe enriches
> all who enter the wake of your argosy. That last sentence, as I read
> it over, strikes me as being affected and preciously poetical--and in
> truth I have of late excessively exposed myself to the scant English
> library here in part no doubt to counteract the strangeness of this
> setting, to assuage my boredom and Perhaps to cultivate and invite the
> homesickness I
> am now experiencing in such full measure. But despite the extravagance
> of my flight of fancy I hope you will understand and accept the
> sincerity of my thought which I expressed, alas, so inadequately.
> What I intended to say is that you and Thomas demonstrate
> your religious feelings so fully and naturally in your lives whereas for
> me, despite my struggle to achieve a sense of peace and to live a
> Christian life, faith of the quality I hope to acquire seems often an
> unattainable goal. I long to have been able to inherit faith, as you
> have, with an unquestioning humility and gratitude (and must now, I see,
> add envy to my growing list of sins!) The minor mortifications of the
> flesh I impose upon myself (such as not spending quite as much time at
> my toilet as my vanity invites me to) do not bring spiritual attainment
> but do, I hope, serve to ward off apathy and self-satisfaction. In my
> darkest moments my Spirit chafes against my desire to believe and to
> experience the reality of religious truth; indeed I sometimes feel that
> whatever degree of faith I have is of no more consequence to my soul
> than a mosquito bite to my physical body. Perhaps, I tell myself, I have
> only willed myself to believe. In you and Thomas I do not see such a
> conflict--you wear your beliefs as comfortably and unselfconsciously as
> you do your skin. Will I ever achieve that wonderful condition? It
> saddens me unbearably to imagine I might not.
> I know you would attempt to console me at this moment by making kind
> allusions to my serving as companion to Aunt Edna on her visit to Cousin
> Robert's Mission and my willingness to serve here temporarily as a nurse
> but I must perforce dismiss your charitable observation at once, it
> being swept away before the cold onrushing re~ognition that I was
> prompted in this instance, as in so many others, not by a desire to
> serve our Lord but by a crasser motive--my vile curiosity and selfish
> wish to see foreign lands. An even more difficult admission is that the
> dreadful sin of vanity played no small part in my making this
> journey--my vain hope of proving to myself that I am the eoic woman I
> thought myself to be when I was a child--and the perhaps equally sterile
> hope of meeting the challenge of some great and mysterious destiny.
> I suppose--no, I must say I know, for I try to be honest with myself (at
> least in important matters!)~I know that I have set aside the question
> of marriage until some of my questions are answered. Surely marriage is
> not the highest destiny of a woman ! Oh dearest, I do not mean to hurt
> you for I have nothing but the deepest love and admiration for you and
> Thomas and I believe with all my heart that you perfectly fulfil God's
> purpose in your family life--I mean only that I have not been able yet
> to find established in myself the sure foundation of belief you have
> achieved on which a family and home, in the fullest sense of those
> words, must rest. Mama always complained of my wilful and headstrong
> ways and I am sure she is convinced that I have barred myself from the
> Garden of Eden (she so clearly sees marriage in that light) and have
> dealt unfairly with Stephen. What is important to me is that I have
> never lied to him. I have resisted his suit with a cool aloofness,
> although I admire him very much, and it delights me on the one hand that
> he should endeavour so earnestly to understand, and on the other it
> vexes me to distraction that he should consent as he did to await my
> return from here to give him my final answer. My heart and head continue
> their battle for domination of me ! Do not think that I shall never
> marry--I may yet marry Stephen--for I long for a home and children but
> these things must be, for me, a part of a more imperative destiny, if
> only I may find it.
> Will you chide me for pouring out these rambling thoughts in
> this letter rather than confiding them blushingly to my journal as well-
> bred romantic young ladies are expected to ? The truth of the matter is
> that my diary has remained untouched for days and I cannot bring myself
> to write a line. Recently I glanced over the entries and they seemed to
> me to be of excruciating triteness. I had thought the record I proposed
> to keep would be the means of my entertaining you and Thomas and the
> children with exciting tales when we gathered around the fire after tea
> upon my return to England (it would
> be raining outside, of course, and we would b~ a cosy warm circle near
> the hearth) but I find the words flat and dull and perhaps not even
> true. Since the journal does not interest me I cannot imagine that it
> will be a source of interest to anyone else, no matter how dear they
> hold me in affection. I was bored by my tedious descriptions of our
> voyage, my enthusiastic account of the strange sounds and sights and
> scents of Persia, the trivial details of life at the Mission and the
> dull recounting of our side trips to centres outside Tihran and what
> we saw and ate and whom we met and what we said, my superficial and
> probably inaccurate dissertations on the subtle mind of the Oriental
> and the morals and manners of the Persians--none of it now strikes me
> as being of any significance. It is all so banal, like those countless
> journals I have read by travellers in Europe which I seized up so
> eagerly because they held out so much hope of answering the need of the
> soul but which contained, after all, nothing but descriptions of
> mountains. I do not feel myseywhen I write in my journal--who am I
> addressing when I write in it~.--and because it intimidates me I become
> formal and conventional like a school girl composing a 'correct' letter
> to Mama. I am dissatisfied, too, with the watercolour sketches I have
> made here; they are pallid and smugly proper and cannot possibly convey
> what I have seen or experienced in this curious country.
> Instead, I think what may be of more lasting interest are
> my letters. I hope you have kept them. It occurs to me that I shall
> enjoy reading them again some day. They constitute, I daresay, a more
> honest record of my journey--I almost wrote 'quest' and I do not
> dispute the accuracy of the impulse that led me to that substitution.
> Perhaps if I read my letters at a later time I shall find some key in
> them to what I have searched for all my life; perhaps my own destiny
> is written into them in some cryptogrammic fashion as yet inde-
> cipherable and veiled from me.
> Alas, another flight of fancy! You will be impatient with my musing in
> this aimless way. To aid you in your ever-forthcominR for~iveness of
> me, reflect on the fact that I have changed so little since you last
> saw me--always consulting the tea leaves and the Tarot, tearing apart
> the flower to find its invisible heart, searching for the unknowable
> secret of existence. Do you remember how I would waken in the morning
> as a child bitterly sobbing because I could not remember the beauty and
> mystery of some dream that had been interrupted by sunlight flooding
> the room or by nanny's call? I was always certain that the meaning
> would have been revealed if I had not been disturbed.
> I have said little in my previous letters about Cousin Robert but it
> is a comfort to speak of him now under cover of secret darkness for I
> am troubled by what I see. Although I saw him but infrequently at home
> and knew him not well I find him strangely changed and cannot believe
> he finds that life here has met his expectations. He is a saddened,
> disillusioned and almost embittered man. If Aunt Edna has observed this
> she has not revealed her thoughts to me nor is she likely to do so. As
> many rigid people do she demands propriety in life rather than
> happiness. I sense in Cousin Robert no joy but instead a kind of grim
> obstinacy, and feel that he remains here through some personal need of
> his own. I can even imagine myself adopting a similar attitude of
> resignation if I were to remain here long. He truly needs our prayers!
> And privately I pray that I either find a living faith and joyful
> conviction or else lose faith altogether, for I should not want
> religion to become for me a spiritless habit or a formula clung to
> through loyalty or fear. Forgive me, dearest, if I seem to stand in
> judgement; we may be sure that God well knows what is in Cousin
> Robert's heart and blesses his service. I simp~~r wish he were happier
> than he appears to be and long to know what he really feels about God
> and faith. We cannot spealc together of these matters because he treats
> me rather patronizingly, perhaps to conceal from me the weight of his
> failure, and he firmly assigns me the role of 'visiting distant
> relative'. Even his many kindnesses seem designed to create distance
> between us. (How unchari~able of me! But it does seem so. There is, in
> all the kind things he does, the laboured and elaborate quality
> of one who does not like children extending himself for a child out
> of a sense of form or duty.)
> No doubt there are reasons for all this. As I told you
> in an earlier letter this is not a fertile field for Mission work.
> The Muslims are incurious and indifferent to the Christian message
> and pick their way among the various Missions as disinterestedly as
> they do among the competing stalls in the bazaar, whilst the Jews
> view us with an ill-concealed hostility. How strange we must seem
> to both groups, divided as we are in our own faith! I am able to
> sympathize in some degree with what is, I suspect, the amused
> disgust with which even those who pose as friends or converts view
> us.
> Cousin Robert's friends--if they may be so designated--are for the
> most part associated with other Missions, vague and dispirited
> people who hold each other in tepid esteem through sheer loneliness.
> European, British and American, Christians of all persuasions are
> united in an unaffectionate, formal and uneasy fashion through a
> shared contempt of the barbarous Orientals, and most of our social
> engagements are given over to their despairing accounts of Persian
> intractability, deviousness and unredeemable savagery. I have grown
> so weary of it I could scream! And even these dismal gatherings have
> been curtailed in recent weeks due to the unrest that is sweeping
> some areas of the country because of the activities of the Babi
> movement about which I wrote to you.
> A veritable holocaust of fury has been unleashed against them by the
> Muslims. The reports of the indecent and gruesome tortures and the
> ferocious slaughter of which they are the victims are so heinous
> that they cannot bear repeating. I cannot sift through the
> conflicting accounts of their doctrines to determine what it is they
> believe or why they should be the object of such furious attacks.
> They include in their number men of important standing, great lords,
> members of the clergy, military men and merchants; and the Muslim
> community is seething with rumours and accounts blaming or approving
> the Babis, exalting them or heaping upon them maledictions and
> 
> the vilest curses. The view generally held among Cousin Robert's
> friends is that they are heretical and politically dangerous. It is
> said the Babis--men, women and even children!--go to their deaths
> bravely, chanting the praises of God and singing hymns. What a
> strange and powerful vision must inspire or delude them. I confess
> I am both intrigued and horrified and in a curious way envious{~h!
> to be able to believe so deeply in anything! And yet I recoil from
> the idea unlikely though it is, of such an uncontrollable force as
> animates the Babis overleaping the borders of this country and
> sweeping Europe and the rest of the world into a maelstrom of chaos.
> I would hope in such event to shield you and Thomas and the children
> from it with my own body if need be; I could easily die to protect
> and secure the virtue and tranquillity of your good lives. No doubt
> the ferment here will gradually dissipate, though one of Cousin
> Robert's friends remarked that it is certain the martyrdom of the
> Babis will win them new adherents and admirers and that it is great
> unwisdom on the part of the authorities not to let the movement die
> for lack of momentum .
> In my earlier letters and perhaps at wearisome length I
> have raged and railed againt the plight of women in this country.
> I was deeply stirred to learn that among those who in past weeks
> were caught up in the turmoil surrounding the Babis was a woman
> named Qurratu'l-'Ayn who, I am told, was one of outstanding beauty
> and intelligence and a poet of considerable merit. She was put to
> death in a most horribk fashion, strangled with her own scarf. She
> seems by all accounts a most unusual figure to emerge in this
> land--the women I have met are vapid, fatuous and bovine--and one
> would least expect a woman of her calibre to be affected by this
> movement unless she saw herself as a suffragist or was a visionary
> like Ste Jeanne d'Arc. Already she is something of a legend among
> the Muslims. I am desperate to know more about her--the information
> which reaches us is so garbled and sparse (and, I may say, coloured
> by the bias and contempt of the narrator) that one cannot ever be
> sure one has possession
> of the facts or understood them. My interest in the Babi movement
> seems somewhat to embarrass Cousin Robert and his associates and more
> than once they have furtively interrupted their conversation when I
> entered the room. It is almost as though they were jealous of the
> rapidity of growth of the Babi movement measured against the scant
> fruit of their own sincere, often sacrificial but seemingly unrewarded
> efforts. The massacre of the Babis seems of interest to them only as
> an illustration (rather welcomed!) of the innate and insatiable
> savagery of the Oriental nature.
> It is likely that these unsettling events gave rise to the
> dream from which I arose tonight trembling and excited beyond recall
> of sleep. I shall tell you what I remember of it for I shall be
> interested in reading this record when I return to London and have
> long since forgotten the details. As is often the case I seemed both
> to witness the dream and participate in it and I remember that I saw
> colours. I stood, it seemed, on a high mountain at the utmost tip of
> the earth, or perhaps even was suspended above it for I could see the
> globe below me, the mountains and oceans clearly defined. Before me
> stood a woman--in the dream I did not question but that it was
> Qurratu'l-'Ayn clad in a dazzling white gown and a veil of the kind
> worn by Eastern women. I was wearing my ordinary clothes--my garnet
> muslin, in fact, for I remember thinking how dull the fabric looked
> compared with her gown--and I, too, was veiled in the fashion of women
> here in some grey diaphanous stuff. The woman gazed at me in silence
> and with great intensity as though probing my soul. She then drew from
> behind her a small book exquisitely illuminated in Oriental motif and
> with a resolute and deliberate movement removed her veil. As she cast
> her eyes upon the book's open pages the little volume burst into
> brilliant flames. I knew, as one does in dreams, that it was the book
> of life and that it held the answer to my heart's deepest question and
> I was overcome with a longing to read it. As I approached to do so the
> woman again looked into my eyes. With a solemn deliberation she
> touched the book to the hem of her lovely robe and then, as she placed
> the book in my hand, she became a column of gold flame. It was flame
> without heat or smoke--like the fire in the heart of a jewel--and it
> gave forth a wonderful fragrance. There was no horror in any of
> this--it seemed a most natural event though I was shaking with
> excitement.
> I looked upon the book's pages and could see nothing but the brilliant
> fire and knew I must remove my veil. It would not yield ! I tore at
> it firmly and then with frenzy, my heart bursting with anguish.
> Dropping the book I clawed frantically at the thin obscuring gauze,
> screaming aloud in vexation and awoke hearing the echo of my own cry
> to find my fingers beating the air and my face wet with tears. It was
> so vivid that I shiver to remember it!
> And so I began this letter in a mood of desolate deprivation and
> homesickness in the dark hours and see now through the window that the
> sky has lightened and the pale stars of morning mock my foolishness.
> It will be another warm day. Life stirs here at an early hour. The
> gardener in the courtyard below is moving about raw with sleep and is
> indolently fussing about the tuberoses. He is a slow-moving man, mean
> in spirit, and has, I think, no love of flowers; but Cousin Robert
> tolerates or is indifferent to him.
> The spell of homesickness has not yet fully left me but it will give
> way to the trivial routine of the day. Soon I must prepare Aunt Edna's
> tea and coddled egg; she does not entrust so delicate an undertaking
> to the staff. No doubt she would ask this of me even if we were guests
> in the palace of the Shah. I think she feels that the English invented
> tea and the coddled egg!
> I neglected to tell you that Aunt Edna's lettter of introduction to
> Lt-Col lustin Sheil has resulted in our being invited to tea next
> week. I understand that his wife is charming and attractive and I
> eagerly look forward to meeting her. She has, I am informed, followed
> the Babi movement with considerable interest and is thought to be well
> informed. Perhaps she can satisfy my curiosity or throw some light on
> the confused and conflicting reports that have come to us. If
> anything
> interesting comes of it I shall write in detail, you may be sure. I
> plan to wear a wonderful turquoise silk you have not seen-- you cannot
> imagine the beauty of the silk here.
> Greet Thomas with deep affection and kiss the children for
> me. May God keep you well and in good spirits until we are reunited.
> I remain your ever-devoted and loving sister,
> 
> Veronica
> 
> TH E SA LT
> 
> Tell us, young man, outstretched upon the rack, Is hot brand on your
> soft flesh felt as kiss, And butcher's cruellest blow a lover's act,
> His searing touch a source of rapturous bliss? Speak to us, lad, of
> pure love's highest use-- (Pain, cherished bride to whom your hands
> uplift?) Do you translate as song the foe's abuse And vilest gesture
> welcome as a gift? What school, unruly boy, did you attend And what
> diploma win to qualify As rare salt of the Tablets of the Friend--
> You, truly crowned, as those who never die?
> 
> Tell, tell, Badi', before fiend stills your tongue, Is rashness virtue
> only in the young?
> 
> RUBABIH
> 
> Yazd 1903
> 
> This bed-wise woman has known too many
> men, lives beyond expectation of
> kindness in a sad knowledge
> unameliorated by surprise.
> 
> Interrupting a yawn she now moves to
> her window, watches impassively the
> man dragged through the street; sees
> the mob wrest from his body his
> sobbing, clinging wife who is beaten
> unconscious, left torn and bleeding,
> obscenely exposed, as the perverse
> procession moves on. In the hushed
> sector the shutters close
> indifferently on the still form of the
> wounded woman and her whimpering
> children. Not even the prurient or
> idly curious remain in the deserted
> street. Rubabih, who knows the world
> to be this way, sighs heavily at
> recognition of yet another variation
> of rejection.
> 
> Even stereotypes make choices. Let's
> not be astonished that it is she who
> descends,
> gathers the children, carries
> the victim on her back to house
> and heal her: Outcasts, one
> remembers, have nothing to lose;
> have, in every age, come highly
> recommended.
> 
> PA R T FO UR:
> SO NG S A ND SO NNE TS
> 
> A tender tumult stirs meek dust to motion
> A green and gentle ~~iolence ueights eaeh bough
> Strained the net uouldst banquetfrom this oeean;
> Another song ano~her .seasan n/~u
> LINES FROM A BATTLEFIELD
> 
> Ponder auhile. Hast thou ever heard thatfriend andfoe should
> abide in one heart? Cast out then the stranger, that the
> Friend may enter His home.
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh
> 
> Come, let me fete you, beloved foe, for I tire of this old-
> born war. It would shorten did I not so ruinously adore each
> endearing stratagem your consummate cunning devises; your
> enamouring intransigence enchants me, your very implacahility
> an aphrodisiac. In this moment when fatigue calls truce let
> me say it: if I loved you less I should not plot your end as
> we embrace. Clasped to your bosom I gauge it for my blade's
> dark use. Beware the honey posset and my proffered kiss!
> Caressing your unloosed hair I plait a noose and with a
> traitor's hand I stroke your face. May it be said I loved my
> enemy but sought the Friend.
> 
> In these graceless hours when faith strains feebly against the
> unbelieving night I am alienated from angels and celestial
> concerns, unmoved by the testimony of flowers. Locked in a
> grief so ancient as to have no name, in this dimming light,
> even magnificence menaces, estranging me from excellence,
> trivializing my pitiable trophies--minor virtues garnered in
> a sweeter time-- my nurtured imperfections not so epically
> egregious as to embarrass the seraphim ruefully yawning at
> their mention; nor will my shame, as once I thought, toDDle
> the cities, arrest the sun's climb.
> What assault on heaven guarantees attention? Inured to the
> banality of pain and the ordinariness of suffering (sanctified
> or plain!) it is joy that is remembered.
> 
> Ah well, not every day can witness an anabasis and 1, a sorry
> soldier, camp in ruins, speak from weariness of battle far
> prolonged. From shining names on scattered tombs I fashion a
> paean; to vanquish dread, invoke the victors:
> Breakwell/Brittingham/Blomfield/Benke/Bolles/Baker
> 
> Barney/Bailey/BackwelllBourgeois/Bosch
> (Do I presume? I swear a radiant rank appears, assuring as
> sunlight, familiar as bread!) Dunn/Dole/Dodge sterling
> Esslemont! rare Wilhelm! unrivalled Townshend of the silver
> pen! imbiber of the scarlet cup, Badi' ! shield of the Cause,
> Samandari ! brilliant Keith! immortal Lua! steadfast Thornton!
> courageous Marion! incomparable Martha! constant Juliet! noble
> Louis of the golden heart! selfless Sutherland! Duarte Vieira,
> ebony prince! Johanna Schubarth! Conquerors of continents,
> movers of hearts, they are a legion stretching to horizon's
> end, champions of the Peerless, the darlings of the Friend.
> 
> A beachhead beckons. I read auguries of triumph in my
> campfire's dwindling plumes. Remove the garland, still the
> Iyre, my love. It is dawn: the engagement resumes.
> 
> IN THE SILENT SHRINE AN ANT
> 
> It beho~~eth the people of Baha to die to the world and all
> that is therein . .
> 
> Bahá'u'lláh
> 
> In this sovereign and articulate silence Will faith seize the
> dull, recalcitrant heart, Beat down the truculent will and
> cleanly part The passionate mind from violence, The stratagems
> and dogma of our curtained lives? We court a miracle and see
> the candles fail, The petals rust. What do our tears avail?
> 
> No sword of vengeance cleaves us as we stand, Our supplication
> brings no answering shout. An ant crawls by persistent as our
> doubt And in the comprehending hush we understand Our
> mediocrity and godliness: We are the question and its own
> reply. The heartbeat thunders: Here, Lord, here am l!
> 
> But stillness gives us back with scented breath, Who chooses
> love of Me must first choose death.
> 
> WHO HAD NO CANDLE
> 
> He Who had no candle has here, ensconced in circled circle,
> amid adoring flowers and green deferential trees, this whitest
> marble taper tipped with gold. It gleams serenely from Carmel,
> inextinguishably lights the world,
> our reverential hearts the willing wick.
> 
> This light will melt remotest snows, outlast the
> names by which we know it.
> 
> See, Adhirbayjan, this constant flame which casts
> no shadow.
> 
> ASK IN PERSEPOLIS
> 
> Why should we honour these who spurned our world,
> Our exhortations, prizes and our praise, Turned
> their back on prudence, reason's pearl, And solid,
> vital commerce of our days?
> 
> Persepolis tell out your tale.
> What shall fade and what prevail?
> 
> Why should we honour these who held no hope For our
> fastidious scholarship, our power; Who sought a
> kingdom past our mortal scope, Held cheap the
> fleetness of man's salient hour?
> 
> Ask crumbling Crecian marble bust:
> What shall endure and what leave dust?
> 
> Why should we honour these who held the earth As
> less than pebble sinking in the mire? We gladly
> would have tutored them in worth, Shown all to
> which deserving men aspire.
> 
> Ask slave in market-place of Rome:
> Who leaves trace uho tomb and bone?
> 
> Why should we honour these who scorned our gold,
> Dismissed as insignificant our dream? In future
> times our history will be told, Theirs be erased as
> written on a stream.
> 
> Ask in Chile Chad and Khmer: Does life but lead to
> sepulchre?
> 
> Why should we honour these of no acclaim Who
> followed vapoury image as thing real; Who found
> flamboyant deaths and left no name, Proved deaf to
> cogent logic's stern appeal?
> 
> Ask the wise ones of Tabriz: Did darkened sun at
> noon bring ease?
> 
> Our lofty errands could not stay their course, Nor
> woman, wine nor wisdom cause to veer; Perversely
> doomed, accursed by evil source, They turned from
> all the beautiful and dear.
> 
> Stones vf Akka be our eyes. On u*at Beauty does sun
> rise?
> 
> We shall not honour these who did not see The
> scheme our cautious wisdom would apply, The
> ordering of the world our destiny And theirs, who
> follow phantoms, but to die.
> 
> Ask on earth ask in heaven. Which the loaf which
> the leaven?
> 
> Then leave the world to us, who steer by star
> Anciently fixed by will and intellect; We design
> the wars and spires, course afar, Posterity
> inherits the effect.
> 
> Historian pray judge it well: what path heaven what
> path hell?
> NEW SONG
> 
> And he hath pu~ a neu song in my mouth
> Psalms 40:3
> 
> It was comfortable in the smalltown smugness of your childhood.
> You were born securely into salvation's complacent trinity, a
> Catholic, Protestant or Jew. In a spasm of spiritual megalomania
> you praised His good judgement in selecting such eminently
> deserving souls for the gift of His exclusive One True Faith.
> But only on Sundays. The world was small and safe and familiar.
> And very white. No red or black offended our prim steepled vaults
> of self- congratulation. Indians were the bad guys who got licked
> in movies, dying copiously amid candy wrappers and the popcorn
> smell of matinees. Amos and Andy probably lived in sorne far
> place, like Hollywood, or maybe in the radio. And there was no
> proof that God spoke Negro. You knew that He loved
> Canadians--they didn't start wars. He would approve our thrift
> and industry and seeing our virtuous sunlit wheatfields, our
> unpretentious brick, He would agree with the Chamber of Commerce
> that ours was a good town in which to live. Yes, it was
> comfortable then.
> 
> Of course there were a handful who found soiace in the medicinal
> doctrines of Muriel Sweetbun Udder, or the burnished tablets of
> Myron J. Hammerschmitt; a few who gathered in tents or behind
> vacant storefr(3nts with
> 
> ~
> 
> ambitious titles attesting orthodoxy or reformation; but then
> every town has its malcontents. A small brave band scorned our
> comicbook catechism, our insolent litany of insularity, and made
> a kind of faith of not-believing. Still, God did not strike them
> dead. He was said to be extraordinarily patient with sinners and
> heathens. When you heard that God had died, you wondered whether
> it was f~om sheer boredom-- all that joyless music and our
> impudent prayers. Your sophomoric selfrighteousness would have
> been enough to do Him in.
> 
> So you would have described it then, the frightened child
> striving against acne and Auschwitz and an anger that sought
> release in a word powerful enough to shake the universe,
> intimidate the stars, blind to His love of the people ~f your
> town for the innocence of their aspiration blind to their genuine
> virtue and power and beauty.
> 
> The tempest came in your twelfth or fifteenth year, a clean cold
> wind, and you were left like a stripped young tree in autumn with
> a cynical winter setting in and nothing large enough to house
> your impulse to believe. The need lay as quiet, unhurried and
> insidious as a seed snowlocked in a bleak and 1onely landscape.
> But forgiveness came, an unselective flooding rain, and the seed
> was there, a promise kept. Even your rejection was forgiven and,
> in the burgeoning, lovesap slowly stirred. God hadn't died, of
> course, abandoned us for Russia, ndr moved to Uganda.
> 
> "7
> You caught a glimpse of Him in the clearing smoke of the rifles in
> the barrack-square of Tabriz; heard a whisper in the soft silk dress
> of Tahirih, bridally white. His fragrance was carried by the wind
> startling the wildflowers of the fields of Barfurush where Quddus was
> felled. The stones of 'Akka saw His beauty and His pain and cried
> aloud. On Carmel's sandy slope you traced the outline of His tent
> and saw, in its tall cypress, the talisman of His triumph.
> 
> There is a new song. Up from the Siyah-Chal it rose, breaking the
> Shah's dream; the Sultan turned in terror as its sweetness grew. It
> echoed through the palaces of Europe, empty now. The bells grew
> silent, the minarets fell mute; the full-risen sun embarrassed our
> disputatious sputtering candles. Our doomed and desperate dissonance
> was stilled, trickling out like the dismal incense rising from our
> saddened, separate altars. The dust of Shiraz throbbed as Thornton
> Chase took up the song and all the roses of iran spilled their musk
> triumphantl~ at Lua's peal. Martha heard the music; its accents
> captivated May. Westward it moved, and worldward, rejoicing the trees
> of Adrianople as the chorus grew-- Esslemont, Breakwell, Dreyfus--
> and grew and grew. Now the earth is flooded with the felicity of this
> new song, this Godsong.
> 
> I falter, Lord, I quaver; yet I sing.
> 
> SONNETS FOR THE FRIEND
> 
> To whom am I to sing if not to You Who know, well
> know, the singer and the season And listen still
> and know the verse be true Who are Himself the
> music and its reason. My barren fields lie
> parched beneath the sun Nor orange and olive
> yield in arid earth And fallow stay till
> husbanded by One Whose pledge embodies all of
> death and birth. Of what then shall I sing if not
> of this: I learn the ancient patience of the
> land, Mute witness to misfortune's scorching kiss
> And reach for rain, as reached I for Your hand.
> When I but sound Your name in prayer or dream
> Behold! My rivers run, my orchards teem.
> 
> Why would You have my feeble, feckless love?
> Another's charm compellingly holds sway.
> Inconstant, from Your kiss I'd turn away Often
> and often to him, the mated dove Truer than 1,
> more passionately whole. I share another's wine-
> cup and embrace. Encouched with You, I'd
> helplessly extol The enslaving power of that
> other's grace. Your song would not hold me. With
> half my heart I'd hear You and at faintest first
> call flee Truckling and grovelling to my sweet,
> tart And jealous love who asks fidelity. Yet,
> faithfully, You call this faithless one And
> stumblin~. halt. at last to You I run.
> What love exacts I had not thought to yield, Nor guessed the
> crazing dart the Hunter hurled, Or might have found indifference
> a shield And built of gold and pride a dullard's world. But sure
> the Marksman's aim and keen His sight; I could but dress His
> raven locks the night. I might have fled His perfumed, silken
> tent But for the madding blandishment of grape; Heart ravished
> by His voice, resistance rent And, flagon drained, I could not
> seek escape. In passion's sweeping tide I lost all fear And
> could but stroke my Captor's brow the year. What love demands
> I had not thought to give Who, dead of this, am yet left here
> to live.
> 
> A M ETROPOLIS OF OWLS
> 
> Il ~ta. nol the Black Dungeon of Thran, for all ils 11orrors
> and ehains, u*ieh Ne (Bahá'u'lláh) named the Mosl Creat Pri.~on.
> He gave that name to 'Akka.... Nol He Himseyalone but the Cause
> of God uas in prison.
> George Townshend
> 
> Named by her past suitors 'Akka, Ptolemais, St Jean d'Acre,
> she is no beauty, this aged courtesan, meanly rouged by sun,
> squalidly abandoned to beg her bread with perversely tasteless
> baubles ~and tawdry bits of tarnished brass, her historically
> frequented bed the nest of roach and rodent.
> 
> The moon's cosmetic kindness does not erase the horror-hollowed
> haggardness of her pocked, stone face. The enthusiastic stars
> fail to cajole nor can the soaring birdsong raise in her joyless
> breast an answering trill. The wafting apotropaic perfume of the
> Bahji rose, seeking to condole, pleads for entry at her
> unrelenting gate, but is turned back, its forgiveness spent
> among children playing on Napoleon's Hill.
> 
> With disconsolate dusk the carnival of her bazaar subsides
> leaving her in darkness, with no warming fire, leaning toward
> the water's edge where the mortified day will expire. Low-
> squatting, knees clasped to her thin unsuccouring chest, she
> does not raise her bat-encircled head at the hawk's cry, nor
> heed the querulous questions of the owl. The pale paste jewel
> of her lighthouse beckons wanly but the senile, impotent mosque
> can only lewdly smile. She does not see the stricken night
> huddling comfortlessly by her garment's soiled, unfastened hem
> nor hear her own demented keening echoed in the lamenting surfs
> low moan, much less gaze adoringly at Carmel entreating greenly
> from across the bay. Indifferent to the lascivious mist
> obscenely fingering her lank hair her stare is inward, fixed
> upon her private stunning grief, turned from the world, consumed
> beyond self-pity or contrition.
> 
> She knows the moment when she chose her death, knows it, lives
> it, nightly as the murmurous sin-whispering waves pile in,
> forty upon forty, restless with accusation: the Cargo of
> cargoes ignominiously spewed ashore; the metallic futile
> protest of the rusted chain; the thickening indignation of the
> sordid, misled mob; the unwilling lock-key turning in a prison
> cell; the infamousfarman piously read (she knows it well, the
> parchment crackling wildly in her reeling brain); the
> shattered skylight and the frail youth's twisted frame; the
> mother's sob and then and then
> Oh then, unbearably, the scratching of a Pen!
> 
> The dawn releases her to trinkets, plastic wares, the haggling
> of housewives, and leering merchants' trivial affairs.
> 
> She rises shivering, and disfiguring her face, rehearses a
> grotesque, coquettish smile for her reeking market-place; but
> leaving, looks back to where the denunciatory waves recede,
> her unspeakable, lip-locked, bosom-buried crime (till their
> eve's retelling) a secret aqueously kept: To have seen the
> loneliness of God and not have wept!
> 
> ALWAYS IT IS WOMEN
> 
> It is women, always women, who reveal the way, who see and
> understand what well serves life. Forced from prehistoric day
> to yield in love and birth, to bend and stoop to cradle, fire
> and field they gazed to earth were befriended by what nurtures
> and grew wise.
> 
> Men went gladly whooping to the hunt happy with the power to
> devise schemes of war, instruments of death and magic to hold
> congress with the stars. If the rich game thinned or weather
> turned adverse they might placate capricious spirits, blame
> illest luck or totem's curse and range afar. But women knew.
> Leaning and listening they learned what in stillness is
> acutely earned. Crouched closest to the soil they saw the
> berry sicken, the water fail, the sweet clay spoil, knew
> incantation would not avail nor sacrifice behoove. Soon the
> camp would move.
> 
> It was the Magdalene who as she pored over the dust that held
> her Lord read the message of the Nazarene and knew for what
> the men must cast their nets. Always it is women who reveal
> the way and who, conceiving, conceive what fosters life. But
> man for~ets.
> Again it is a woman. At Badasht, prostrate in
> prayer, she hears the shrilling trumpet pierce the
> air and knows the Nightingale is listening. Rising
> she tears off her veil, steps blazing, glistening,
> from her tent-- the past is rent. Men groan in
> consternation, constellations pale, the age
> shudders, reels and dies.
> 
> Slowly the camp moves toward the world that she
> espies.
> 
> THE CAPTIVE
> 
> There uas one name that always brought joy to theface oJ
> Ba/la'u /lah. His expression would change at the mention
> of it. That name uas Mary of Magdala.
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá
> 
> You, Mary of Magdala, there in your garden of pleasure,
> amid the jasrnine and the sweet, green figs, going your
> perfumed way, secure in your Roman's love, knowing the ways
> of men, but waiting, waiting; your dreams cool as your
> pavilion's marbled floor, contained, guarded,
> 
> blanched and rustling like the gnarled olive, your
> heart testing the coils of love, remembering your
> village home, your heart captive, captive.
> 
> You, scer.ted and oiled, your glistening hair a
> dark cascade, smooth-armed, gold-bangled, fingers
> slender, turquoise-laden, stroking the ivoried
> lute, your smile dawning, tentative in trust, or
> flashing and accomplished in guile, often alone,
> waiting, waiting, or, not alone, practised in words
> men wish to hear; sometimes weary of the songs, the
> wine, the dice, all games of chance; and sometimes
> sad, your thoughts an echo of the mourning dove,
> pensive, bleating, alone in a world of men, your
> mind captive, captive.
> 
> You, marking one man, unlike, apart, one beyond
> your art, your wiles, one knowing, accepting as
> none has, true as sunlight, one to warm the marble
> dream, to still the dry and rustling tree, to hush
> the dove's lament, one who is for ever, his words
> a soft rain on that stony hill,
> you, listening, listening, starting in anguish at the augury
> of the red anemone there on the sanded slope parched in the
> slanting sun.
> 
> You, learning one kind of death, seeing your Roman go, go
> baffled, bronzed and glinting in the sun's last rays, go to
> his legion and to other loves, go in anger, jealous, proud,
> not knowing how, alone in the chilled and darkened villa,
> you fill the lilac dusk with sobs; and he, wondering,
> wondering, why you should will him go, why his wealth nor
> power not hold you, and why his gods have failed.
> 
> You, in simple robes, coarse against the pampered flesh,
> following the other the long miles through the dust, with
> the faithful women and the few and urgent men, unmindful of
> discomfort, your peasant source remembered, his smile your
> nectar, his word your bread, thrall to his will, learning,
> learning, giving alms, growing in grace, resuming humble
> ways, your will captive, captive.
> 
> You, with fragrant spices, lavishing unschooled kisses on
> the unshod feet, your tears their true anointment; and are
> not done with weeping but will kiss that head that bea, s
> the bitter garland hanging above you on yet another barren
> hill you, waiting, waiting, while love dims and ebbs and the
> world goes on, uncaring.
> 
> Vll
> 
> You, seeing the voiceless vault and seeing more, oh more,
> the light dazzling, dazzling, the hurt dissolving in the
> balm; then hastening, hastening to tell the gentle, grieving
> friends, you, radiant with seeing, the first to know, to
> see.
> 
> Vlll
> 
> You, now brimming with the vision, ignited, a gladdener of
> ears, telling of love's kingdom, lip to lip, town to town,
> making many journeys, calling, calling, breast to breast,
> land to land. An Emperor will hear you--but stone, but
> stone. Only jaded Rome, darkening, doomed and sinking,
> will still your voice; but none will still your song.
> Others call: the spires of Europe will rise.
> 
> And you, Mary of Magdala, dying for him at the end,
> triumphantly dying, rejoicing in this death, your
> Roman looking on, puzzling, puzzling, who still would
> save you had you not abandoned all love's lesser
> claims and are dying, dying, ecstatic in this death
> for love, your soul captive, captive. You, Mary of
> Magdala, so magnificent your thraldom that down the
> centuries at sounding of your name, Love Incarnate,
> God's Own Thrall, smiles.
> 
> SUPPLIANT: BAHJI
> 
> Is this then all there is, a simple garden, And a
> silence that displaces need for words? What portent
> in the blood-red wayside poppy? What message in the
> music of the birds?
> 
> The hero's heart is hoisted on a cypress, The saint's
> is softly folded as a rose; But mine lies shattered
> here among the pebbles On the only path the fainting
> coward knows.
> 
> RAINY EVENINGS IN GREAT CITIES
> 
> Always on rainy evenings in great cities when I am
> passing on a bus I see beneath a brightly lit marquee
> a slender girl clasping a pathetically inadequate
> umbrella a rippling crowd floating about her on a
> crest of animated chatter on which they glide out of
> the black through the submarine light into the theatre
> swirling to either side in twos and threes
> gregariously grouped, companionably coupled, selected,
> grown insolent, she parting them like an apologetic
> boulder her hair a little damp forehead glistening
> with rain or stigmata face pale and straining. I watch
> her pantomime of anticipation as she consults her
> watch with unnecessary frequency establishing
> credence, purpose, her eyes eagerly scanning the faces
> lips, lifting, parting in what would be for him a
> familiar smile if he existed. The cruel light exposes
> her unanswerable loneliness asifbyX-ray.
> Always I wonder how she can be seen on rainy
> evenings in each great city when I pass on a bus
> and how I know that she will see the play or film
> alone. Inexorably my bus moves on a mindless
> mastodon to an unknown destination and the windows
> look on darkness. Her picture stays with me forever
> a slide arrested in projection. Overhead the bus
> ads pitilessly postulate that loneliness is cured
> by choice of toothpaste. It is the girl's umbrella
> that enrages me: Never has it shielded her from
> disappointment.
> 
> SONGS OF SEPARATION
> 
> Are l~ou interesled in renuneia~ion?
> 'Abdu'l-Bahá
> 
> Love would suffice me, I'd have bade it stay, And
> sinned, if this it be, implored our God In mercy
> cast His eyes another way To win my will, and not
> have thought it odd. But you who are much less than
> I a fool Knew rootless tree could not survive the
> frost And, leaving, drank renunciation's gruel, So
> loved me as to pay the torn heart's cost.
> 
> Though blade to breast would be an easier death And
> meagre comfort's found in sage advice, Though
> separation tortures with each breath And roses in
> my hands now turn to ice, Yet what you dared
> foresee I've come to know: I claim you still
> because I let you go.
> 
> Our love will pass unnoticed into time And history
> not record our names or cause, Nor future lovers
> weep to read this rhyme, The hastening crowd not
> give it thought or pause; Yet must I write these
> lines for my heart's ease, Recall our perfect hour,
> taste again The wine pressed from a berried moment
> seized, Joy's lavish-yield even, yes, the pain. Had
> I but known that exile were the toll Still would I
> offer that committed kiss, Release you then to God
> for His Own role Though death itself were paler
> deed than this. In banishment, I learn that this is
> true: I gave Him all, thus gives He ever you.
> 
> I hold you in my mind and think of death As ever it
> was lover's wont to do, Would bar~er every spoil,
> my very breath, To be empowered to stay that hand
> from you. Were our devotion but the only stake I
> might betray it for a lesser prize; With heaven
> ours, the covenant we make Exalts our trust beyond
> all compromise. Love outgrown proof, it now remains
> to find Acceptance of our parting for the feast;
> Our final fear, when this to one assigned, Survivor
> be endowed to bear it least.
> Host chooses guest, yet does this coward pray Soul's
> strengthening, lest he be bidden stay.
> 
> Would that the times were tame and lovers free To savour
> life's most brief and scented hours Oblivious of history,
> besieged towers, The chaos and the unmoored stars; but we
> Are wrenched, torn, flung as unremembered leaves Driven in
> doleful patterns the wind weaves. Glad days are gone. A
> bastion given each The long nightwatch begins. From fitful
> dreams I waken wet-lashed, racked by choking screams, Seeing
> you fall, alone, beyond the reach Of my caress and comfort,
> dying there-- Your lifeless hand extends in lifeless air--
> Hurled down, as hero, without last softening kiss. O dearest
> love, I did not ask for this.
> 
> WHO SHALL TELL THE SPARROW?
> 
> So blind halh become the human heart that neither the
> disrup~ion oSthe city nor the reduction of the mountain in
> dust nor euen the cleauing of the earth can shake off its
> torpor.
> Bahá'u'lláh
> 
> She awakens to the ordinary terror of the day, hand trembling
> at the saucer's edge, the tabulated, headlined horrors of the
> sleeping hours waiting, folded, complacent,
> 
> to be consumed with Cheerios and orange juice; and, fresher still,
> by radio excitedly magnified in chilling, urgent precision:
> framework of the morning.
> 
> The toast has burnt. She abandons it uneaten, swallows vitamins
> against the lethal level of the smog and the reading on the
> Richter scale, adjusts an ear-ring, selects the perfect scarf and
> pin (only their absence would be noticed) and clutching the
> unnecessary leather case races into the subway's cargo of
> psychotic, kin~~ and mediocre men, in equal fear of all.
> 
> The man in the lift, with sad and burnt-out eyes, failed saint,
> mugger, suicide, or hero maimed by executive compromise does not
> see her. She chooses another car, welcomes its brisk ascent to the
> cool, chrome chaos of her familiar working day, its humiliations
> balanced by a sense of salaried kinship with the power of its
> suave and flannelled men. She has been invisible for years:
> indifferently they accept her crisp presentation, the knowing
> poise. She moves through susurrous corridors of the polished
> concubines of corporate avarice, enters in a bright sprinkle of
> efficiency, metallic 'good-mornings' spilling like paperclips
> under the brutal neon tubes. Her glossy smile conceals a scream.
> She is numbed by dictation, wounded by telephones,
> submissive to the accomplished sadism of the typewriter.
> Decisions are made, stratagems rehearsed, appointments
> arranged, but they change nothing. The sumptuous carpet does
> not stain though she bleeds mutilating a notepad during the
> conference where her promised recognition aborts under top-
> level intrigue. B.J. beams at his promotion, calls for a
> round of drinks, modestly confesses it came as a total
> surprise. He surreptitiously pats her with a lasciviousness
> made innocent by ritual and absent-mindedness, delights in
> her programmed cringe and does not know she might respond
> to need.
> 
> She struggles against migraine to compose a memorandum in
> the meaningless marital chitchat of commerce in which
> nothing is revealed. It goes badly for some reason her
> horoscope does not explain. She crumples the paper with
> sudden viciousness, flees to the cloakroom to blot her
> streaming eyes and smooth powder on her hysteria. Rage has
> erased the sky; a grey smudge of disapproval hangs in the
> space beyond the skyline. Like a family quarrel the bruised
> morning clatters and chews itself to an unlamented end.
> 
> Vl
> 
> Passing newsboys, palely freckled avenging angels of the
> municipality, shriek accusations of pollution, infanticide
> and political corruption.
> 
> I ~4
> 
> In the crowded luncheonette ordering an impersonal salad,
> she tyrannizes the oppressed waitress-- insensitized by
> bunions and coffee-scalds-- resolves to withhold the tip
> and weeps o~~er her hired novel. Her stomach burns.
> Repairing her mouth she curtails the hour to return to
> imagined crises amid the litter of her desk but the Oracle
> has not written and the irresolute afternoon yawns itself
> away in disappointment.
> 
> Her unloving lover whom she does not like has furtively
> planned a concupiscent suburban evening with his wife and
> does not call. Gratefully hurt she hurtles home in feverish
> fatigue to her selected emptiness and her Klee prints, the
> untasted, convenient dinner and calculated chores. Her hair
> is set and stockings drip dolorously in the bathroom. In
> conspiratorial concession to insomnia she pours the earned,
> luxurious drink and gathers the comforting loneliness about
> her. The door is double-bolted against fears accustomed as
> her bathrobe.
> 
> A wailing siren cuts the sun's throat- it sinks beyond
> her window in a hazed fug - acidly orange. She pulls the
> shade, - tries to remember the sound of crickets - on
> fragrant summer lawns, but the memory was lost with the
> doomed elms of childhood, has seeped away with all she knew
> of poetry and music. The philodendron gasps for breath on
> the bookshelf,
> 
> 135
> its leaves layered with a dross of unnamed sorrows that curl
> and settle in the corners of the room like favoured pets.
> 
> Flashing and spurting, the evening news comes on: three
> thousand dead in an earthquake, the dollar devalued, the pound
> skidding, and hemlines dipping in the Fall. She succumbs to
> the fetish for the exalted fatality, is vicariously
> victimized, hears war, murder and other desumed disaster
> dispensed with unctuous unconcern from the lighted, chirping
> box. And among the diffuse, anonymous deaths a cosy local few,
> personalized with individual addresses, illustrated by views
> of draped white forms and resigned or outraged next-of-kin
> gesticulating in bafflement, calamity's celebrities, their
> private griefs immortalized on film.
> 
> Her name is not mentioned among the enumerated casualties.
> With an acceptance blunted by a hidden wish she assumes she
> has survived so cleans her teeth and winds the clock as is
> expected of the living. Beyond the window, the voluble,
> smitten night, exhausted by merchandised desire and rented
> embraces, is pierced by frightened cries and strange fires.
> The heavy air seethes and writhes like a strangling sleeper
> in an anxious dream.
> 
> O who shall comprehend the anguished darkness? Who shall tell
> the sparrow: God has seen?
> 
> WE SUFFER IN TRANSLATION
> 
> Moun~ of Olives Village
> Israel
> 
> Intimidated by the relentless Hebrew sun that oppresses the
> dusty garden the olives have bleached to a silvered insipidity
> and the oranges gleam weakly in their dark, glossy roosts.
> 
> Flushed with their exertions the children press near, wan and
> wobbling in the unalleviated glare. I struggle again.ct the
> urge to reduce them to gauche trivialized effigies in a
> nativity pageant. By now I am a familiar figure, have been
> assigned grudgingly a slight substance, the Canadian uho
> liL~es here-- someone more plausible than a tourist. Tell us
> al70ut Cana~la! they shriek in utter disbelief of its
> existence and still in faint uncertainty of mine.
> 
> And I am precipitated into homesickness that stubbornly casts
> up arrogant contrasts to support my reality, that aggressively
> flaunts images of northness, seasonality, spaciousness,
> magnificence, extravagant teeming abundance-- nothing ordinary
> or moderate. On my mind's canvas Canada is obdurately autumnal
> or gripped intransigently in the hushed or howling drama of
> winter's death; its mountains loom in gargantuan aloofness
> dwarfing these dun and arid fibbing hills.
> 
> I call as eaRer witnesses the confident bravura
> of colour reproductions of the Group of Seven whose violent
> spectrum leaps from the page in eloquent rainbowed
> reinforcement of my words and am reprimanded by the
> children's reproachful silence.
> 
> I have offered too much. Television has conditioned them to
> hope for cowboys and Indians. I squirm under their
> disappointment and helplessly watch them dismiss Lismer and
> the others with a disapproving shrug. Even Emily Carr will
> not be trusted.
> 
> Nothing must challenge their pastel parched experience. You
> should not ~ell lies says one prim boy, his eyes glazing
> with selfrighteousness. Israel is better! Our snow is white
> our trees are green. I captitulate with ease before this
> wrenched credulity. Smiling, I recant: Ken ken! And the
> oranges orange!
> 
> They accept the vindication passively. The small forms glide
> from my strangeness, rinsed away by the choking heat and
> vengeful sunlight. Behind my eyelids in profuse explosions
> blaze images of the brilliant hoard of Kleinburg defiantly
> reclaiming me in a lush and coolinR incarnation.
> 
> THE CO NFUSED M USE
> MEMO FROM THE CENSOR
> 
> . . . a poe~ get~ing pious is a terrible thing.
> 
> Ralph Gustafson
> The Peng~Jin Book of Canadian Verse
> 
> I've been meaning to speak to you about this
> for some time, White;
> I mean thls tendency of yours to be found
> scribb'ing in a notebook every night--
> Poems, one might suppose--
> A mug's game, as Eliot said, and heaven knows
> He is unquestionably right.
> 
> I concede I sei~e a pen sir
> Not e~-er~ day but nou and then sir.
> 
> A singularly unhealthy activity I should think.
> Why not~ instead, take a wife or take to
> drink--
> Do something uncharacteristically rash,
> Paint the town red, raid the petty cash,
> Get yourself thrown in the clink?
> 
> I ll surely gil~e your plans some thought
> But like my chaste and narrow cot.
> 
> And worse ( how you do compound your crimes!)
> So many of the pieces you write contain lines
> Which have, shall we say, an unfortunate
> religious connotation.
> How can one explain this embarrassing
> infatuation
> So incompatible with these enlightened times?
> 
> Would my verse be more e.~fectual
> If more cerebral intellectual?
> More grim still, the chilling thought
> That reading all your tommyrot
> So--take no offence--unhairy-chested,
> One might justifiably conclude you think
> yourself invested
> With--good grief !--belief,
> Might one not?
> 
> What Ifeel and what I say Are two parts of a
> whole, I pray.
> 
> In conclusion, let me remind you, my lad,
> The spectacle of anyone with spiritual
> delusions is sad, but seen in a poet
> inspires revulsion.
> Do try, old chap, to contain your
> compulsion.
> It's enough that history may charge that
> your poetry is bad--
> But to be thought pious? Egad!
> 
> l~ll urite my poems and hope t~ley re true sir;
> But I'll not show my lines to you, sir.
> 
> SPIRITUAL DISORDER OF THE
> DOMESTIC KIND
> 
> Of all the swains who courted me One lad
> I loved the best; Oft, smiling, sank in
> pleasure, His head upon my breast.
> 
> Golden were his tousled curls And blue
> his pleading eyes. How well I loved his
> slender hands And alabaster thighs.
> 
> I would have wed this fairest man But
> feared his ardour cool And younger loves
> might claim him, Then I be left a fool.
> 
> And so I sent the wight away (To tell it
> my heart grieves) And marked how poorly
> he was shod, How tattered were his
> sleeves.
> 
> I prayed the saints heal passion's hurt
> For these, we know, forswore it. I
> rasted, said a Mass or two, And felt the
> better for it.
> 
> Another beau came calling And sweetly did
> converse. I noted well his melting song,
> Gold gaiters and full purse.
> 
> No beauty this, with hoary head And
> bulbous, warted nose, But in his soul I
> thought might bloom An undetected rose.
> 
> So wed I him and long have lain Beside my
> snoring dear. But Oh ! my arms are empty
> ! And Oh! my breast grows sere!
> 
> I bear my lot with dignity
> Concealing my heart's thirst
> And solaced till my death will be By thought of
> him loved first.
> 
> I rue the day I cast aside. That one who might
> bring shame. In dreams I kiss my early love, My
> dearest what's-his-name.
> 
> JUST ADD WATER AND STIR
> 
> This is the perfect poem, a veritable horn of
> plenty. Note how cunningly it is constructed as
> to contain something for every taste: a
> distinctively contemporary format, one
> 
> example of typographical cuteness,
> and an obscure but fresh and arresting image
> 
> . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .
> 
> to be inserted by the reader, in the space
> provided, to en~ure freshness.
> 
> You may bet your bottom iambic pentameter it
> contains a foreign phrase (tucked in currente
> calamo) to enhance the aura of erudition; a
> naughty word ~ (reader's choice); and a built-in
> zippy clincher. The poem is guaranteed to be
> indistinguishable from others currently
> available on the market and because it is
> biodegradable may be consumed in complete
> comfort without distressing after-effects
> (boredom and nausea excepted). Intensive
> research has proven it cannot linger in the
> memory and will not arouse emotion. The poem is
> offered in three lengths and comes hermetically
> sealed in plastic for your protection. You may
> personalize it by inventing a title and
> ascribing the poem to the author of your choice.
> Be the first in your neighbourhood to own a new
> disposable poem. Easy-to-follow directions are
> included . . .
> 
> Rea-ler, kindly wake up. The poem cannot
> continue with you snoring.
> VISIT FROM A PURITAN
> 
> In my vieu, one of thegrave dangers the Baha'~'Faith rnay
> encounter is the effort, conscio~s or not, of those who have
> nel~er had an authentic religious experience, to impose upon
> the pristine purity and joyousness of the Cause the deadening
> stamp of simpering puritanism, in which the uncourageous,
> thefake and the spirit~ ally dead take refuge, that spectre u
> hich has appeared at the deathbed of all the great religions
> of the past.
> 
> Michael Sears
> Letter to the author
> 
> My dear, I have hesitated to mention this before, but after
> what I can assure you was the most loving consultation the
> Committee instructs me to say that we abhor certain aspects
> of life referred to in your poems. It was the cause of some
> alarm that one of your verses contained explicit reference
> to--was it an arm?.--some part of the anatomy. We
> disapprove, you see, of what one might call the baser
> instincts, the viler passions, although we recognize that
> such references are the fashion. We who have constituted
> ourselves guardians of these affairs (no salacious innuendo
> intended) do not care to have our delicate sensibilities
> offended, nor those of others. We choose to think that human
> sweat--that is to say, perspiration-- does not exist or if
> it does that one should not dwell on the fact that it might
> st . . . I mean that it is malodorous. We believe in the
> utmost purity of thought and since you profess to uphold
> unity
> 
> we know you will agree with us, will you not? No
> doubt the whole nasty human adventure will, in
> future, improve when we are granted wafting, astral
> bodies in which to freely move. Perhaps we shall
> exist on eau de cologne, butterfly wings, rose
> petals, and whatnot-- pure speculation, of course,
> but isn't it a charming thought! We may evolve so as
> to communicate by mental telepathy or sonic
> vibration which one might hope would lead to
> elimination-- no vulgarity implied--of the need for
> poetry. Think of all those books gathering dust on
> shelves! Ah well, enough of that; it is my
> commission to advise you that we know you yearn to
> have us hold you in the high esteem in which we hold
> ourselves and which, if you acquire humility, you
> still might earn. We think it would augur well for
> your development if you were to invite our
> instruction in what to think and feel and write-- _
> not that we for a moment claim to know poetry, but
> we know of it, a fact which gives us considerable
> objectivity. Poetry, of course, is unquestionably
> the product of psychological disturbance or fear,
> and we know that deep down you long to acquire our
> degree of poise and happiness, dear. If we must have
> poems let their themes not be expressed too starkly;
> we like our verses to be
> well tit-willowed, hilled and daled and somewhat
> sky-larky, just as we like our angels to have wings
> and their golden tresses curled, to
> behavepredictably as angels; and we like our
> heavenly gates well-pearled. True poets, you know,
> in any age, do not experience exultation, let alone
> rage. Frivolity and humour have ever been at war
> with piety, for the good Lord--as His friends refer
> to Him-- endorses High-Mindedness and Sobriety. One
> of even so obscure a religious persuasion as yours
> surely cannot avoid conceding that among God's many
> attributes are those we share with Him-- impeccable
> taste and good breeding. Poems should be given over
> to a rarified cerebral devotion and not the
> unseemliness and vulgarity of emotion. We prefer,
> don't you know, reverence of whisper and tippy-toe;
> that is to say, the fluttering wrist as opposed to
> the clenched fist. In your verses we suggest you
> not refer to martyrdoms--they're so essentially
> physical, as it were. Well, much as I know you'd
> like me to stay, my duty done, I must away. I can
> see that you've already profited by this
> visit--well, you've the Committee to thank-- you've
> sat there an hour and conceived a poem so abstruse
> and pure the page is blank.
> 
> FISH STORY
> 
> And plu~k till time and times are done
> The silrer apples of the moon,
> The golden apples of the sun
> 
> W. B. Yeats
> 
> William Butler Yeats went fishing And
> caught a little trout. A silly thing, I
> thought in youth, To write a poem
> about.
> 
> Yeats' fish became a maiden, Danced him
> across the glen; A most unlikely tale,
> thought I Who was but fifteen then.
> 
> I caught a trout at twenty. What use
> was that to me? And though it seemed to
> vent a sigh I ~ossed the thing asea.
> 
> A~ thirty and at forty In each love I
> looked upon A fish form mocked me from
> the depths Then, glinting, darted on.
> 
> Now faint at fevered fifty I cast an
> urgent line And cannot name what I
> would give to land a trout all mine
> 
> To dance across the valley
> And up the dappled hill.
> I'd lead her to the orchard
> To claim at last my fill,
> 
> Feast on gold and silver apples,
> A time and times partake, And know that these,
> alone of fruits, My thirst and hunger slake.
> 
> I make my home along the stream, My mourning trout
> glides by Nor sees the founderous bone-paved shore
> On which I gasp and die.
> 
> SETTLING THE SCORE
> WITH MR OGDEN NASH FOR
> 'THE SEVEN SPIRITUAL AGES OF
> MRS MARMADUKE MOORE' AND
> THEREBY ACHIEVING IF NOT A
> BETTER VERSE AT LEAST
> A LONGER TITLE
> 
> The Balete and others who speak Setswana should
> get along, but they don't wanna. The Afrikanner
> and the !Xhosa are not drawing any !Xclosa. The
> French and Germans hate the Dutch who don't like
> anybody much. The British view is quite
> reprehensible; they find all others
> incomprehensible. Their Empire fell that fatal
> night God proved not Anglican nor white. They
> don't like each other, them's the grim facts (It's
> a matter of 'aitches' and syntax). Cockneys don't
> know a spondee from a dactyl (neither do 1, as a
> matter of factyl). The Irish idea is even eerier--
> 
> 'The likes of them? Sure, we're superior!' No
> doubt amid the Arctic snow someone hates the
> Eskimo. Pity him, in his most important span, only
> the walrus to feel more-important-than. The Congo
> Pygmy's deeply loathed by Africans more fully
> clothed so 'spit in-yer-eye' is the loud retort
> (hard for the Pygmy, he's so short). Canada is a
> hate-free nation but just don't mention
> miscegenation for whiteman's standards one
> preserves by putting Indians on reserves and
> placing Blacks in a sorry plight: 'You are
> equal--I am right!' Americans discard all such
> priorities, democratically mistreating all
> minorities. Some think the Vietnamese are nice
> though it's rather a case of let-'em-eat-rice.
> There are those who have aversion to anybody
> speaking Persian; no doubt one day a foe will
> sunder them pulling their carpets out from under
> them. Persian calligraphy gives Arabs the giggles,
> they much preferring their own strange squiggles.
> The Iroquois and Navaho hate lots of folks they
> don't even know while Polynesians (with which
> little rhymes) say it's best if you're like Heinz.
> Swedes and Finns and other Caucasians suffer each
> other and loathe all Asians. Historically,
> Brahmans detest the untouchable which some find
> rather much-too-muchable. Those whose script is
> Sinhalese quite detest the Japanese who, in turn,
> avoid the sainted Lapplander, thou~h not
> acquainted.
> Samoans feel if you meet a Papuan it's almost a cinch
> it'll be your ruin, while Papuans say if you meet a
> Samoan he's bound to hit you, at least for a loan.
> Time-honoured tongues are declared now extraneous to
> the woe of the Sard and the Alsace-Lorraineous. The
> Tlingit dimly view the Haida and other groups they
> can't abaida. Some feel the Negro freedom fighter
> could come to dine if he were whiter. One view it's
> said there's no appeal from whites exist for Blacks
> to steal from. Yellow hates brown and in addition,
> both deplore the beige Mauritian. Israelis love all
> people, though-- ask the Arabs, they should know--
> but gentile heathens they eschew which seems the
> Kosher thing to do their theory being, if you can buy
> it, that God prescribed the Jewish diet, while
> Orientals think themselves most pious because He
> designed their eyes on the bias. In Latin climes the
> noble Quechua dislike the Spanish you can betchua.
> Loving the Russian is no longer vogue, once hailed as
> hero, now seen as rogue. The problem one gathers is
> largely political, allegiances being essentially
> cyclical. (For a trustworthy guide on whom to vent
> pique consult current issues of Neu~sueek or write a
> best-seller called, let's say, Whom lo Snub on Fiue
> Dollars a Da~s) Mention the British to the Buganda
> and in the hospital you may landa. Cannibals' manners
> are highly reproachable (they want to know if you're
> par-boil-or-poachable). If asked to dine think twice
> or then you
> 
> may find yourself on tomorrow's menu. Their customs
> being so detestable one can only hope to prove
> indigestible. They should concentrate on erudition
> and not so much on deglutition. We race to the
> planets to spread racial blight-- who'll be the first
> anti-Venusianite? Altogether, the world's a mess,
> it's rife with tension, it's in distress. Called into
> being a strange fate awaits you: the moment you're
> born, somebody hates you. Now, none can impersonate
> Ogden Nash but somebody had to settle his hash (his
> skill's a fact over which I'm not wrangling none left
> participles more amusingly dangling) and though the
> result may be deplorable it brings us directly (at
> last!) to the morable and if morals are something you
> just can't endure reflect on the fate of Mrs
> Marmaduke Moore. Dare one pay heed to the heavenly
> call, becom~ a Bahá'í, and love them all?
> SURMISE
> 
> Since Moses was a swarthy Jew some
> maintain that God is, too. I didn't
> think I'd like a god who said Shalom and
> Rega ahad And so I went my merry way; my
> life was brief but oh, so gay. When I
> died and went to hell Old Satan smiled
> and said, Ve/l, l~ell!
> 
> THE GRIM REAPER COUNTERED
> 
> A messenger of joy are you
> Who bring last mortal sleep; Haste
> not to call, if this be true;
> Will not the good news keep?
> 
> Think not my jibes mask fear of you
> Nor yet exemption ask.
> Who dies for love a time or two
> Comes practised to the task.
> 
> PRUFROCK IN SUBURBIA
> 
> About the room the women dash, and talk
> of their ills and diaper rash. Would
> that the women whom I know mi.~ht speak
> of Michelangelo.
> IMPATIENCE
> 
> If I aspire to be a saint
> Think not that this is due To
> predilection for the goal But
> shortness of the queue.
> 
> SHO RTCUT
> 
> I try to love my fellowmen, The Arabs,
> Jews and others, But sometimes wish us in
> the tomb In sleep to live as brothers.
> 
> There tutored by the levelling worms In
> silent, chastening vault, To know
> ourselves, at last, as one Nor care who
> was at fault.
> 
> CONSIDER, MR ELIOT . . .
> 
> If it is true that naught avails, No love
> so strong but that it fails, All beauty
> not for long prevails Nor cure is found
> for sore hearts' ails And none is placed
> beyond Death's reach: Why, Prufrock, then
> resist the peach? The ruthless stalker
> will not care Whether. or how, you part
> your hair.
> 
> A SEAT ON THE SUBWAY
> O Children of Negligence! Ye are even as the unwary bird . .
> .
> Bahá'u'lláh
> 
> I do not remember consenting to this the fading hair, the
> shortened breath, arthritic twinges; not I who honoured his
> father and mother, who paid attention to his choice of soap,
> his tie. This was not the promise of the billboards and the
> silver screen; nothing has prepared me for this ignominy, I
> who have never cared for ruins. Who is this pallid man I
> shave whose inac~essible mirrored eyes look past me toward
> some lost omniscience? What do I know of age and who can tell
> me? My grandparents wcre old, of course, but always old,
> stirring faintly on the edges of my childhood like dazed
> accident-victims whose bandages obscure identity. Kate
> Spottswood beguiled me with her legend but how could I see
> the merry girl from Sligo in that grey and aproned woman
> kneading dough in timeless rhythm, gesture?
> 
> No, I do not approve of this, do not consent; I should have
> been consulted. I shall need time to think about this
> outrage, muster my arguments. Let it be understood that I am
> not without resources; I have responsibilities, appointments,
> and do not like to be nudged into situations. I am at ease
> with the familiar.
> 
> Will elevators still rise at my command and the stenographer
> come giggling at my summons?
> Now will she cross authoritative legs, have eyes only for her
> notebook and the clock, cease paying the compliment of
> challenging my grammar? When she yawns behind her hand might I
> not scream? If I mention an event a decade past will she look
> away as though I had uttered an obscenity or gaze with the
> vacant, incredulous eyes of one reading descriptions of museum
> fossils?
> 
> Let me say I am not paranoiac; I do not go so far as to suggest
> it is a plot. But why on sensuous city nights do I pass
> invisibly, invisibly, the blade-thin stalking boys in clothes
> assertively skin-tight, their flat abdomens, seething thighs,
> threatening like an accusation or dismissal? Can they not see
> that I am a menace to their women? Do they believe they invented
> desire?
> 
> Consider: it will grow worse. I the skilled, manful dangler from
> subway straps, consummate juggler of newspaper and leather case,
> will watch a girl, a shining, hateful child rise and yield her
> seat and call me sir, her smile the one expended on kittens.
> Casually she will turn from my humiliation and slip through the
> door, purring with virtue. She will not know me as the peerless
> dancer of tangos, the prosilient dancing youth with invincible
> limbs-- where has he gone? Is the prostate, then, the seat of
> premonition?
> 
> And ah, the subway, the subway! Dare I guess, at last, its
> destination? Am I to understand that even I shall die?
> 
> NURSERY RHYME
> 
> The game is up at last, old chaps, Come, put away your toys--
> The cannon, bombs and ships and maps-- Have done with blood and
> noise.
> 
> Our sons unnumbered you have slain, Our daughters bowed with
> weeping, Is it such fun to wound and maim You can't see shadows
> creeping?
> 
> Why strut and posture, bluster, bluff, Now looms the day of
> reckoning? Come, children, we have had enough, Maturity is
> beckoning.
> 
> Humpty-Dumpty needs your care, Jack Horner's growing weary,
> Simon longs to taste your ware, Jack Spratt now finds lean
> dreary.
> 
> George-Porgie Pudding-and-Pie, Assisted by some others, Strafed
> the children, made them die, And broke the hearts of mothers.
> 
> Margery Daw, King Cole and Mary, Well see your garden grow, With
> mushroom cloud, quite contrary, And corpses, row by row.
> 
> Behold the black shee-p down the lane, And Blue-Boy's rusted
> horn; Regard the meadow, mountain, plain, And fear what's in the
> corn.
> While Chicken-Little's sky still holds,
> Bake fast your pat-a-cake; Goosey
> Gander's time now folds, Come,
> sleepyheads, awake!
> 
> The ladybug has flown away, Her house,
> her children, burn; London Bridge fell
> in a day, The Rhine has had its turn.
> 
> What say the Bells of Bailey now? What
> nose the blackbird pluck? The mouse upon
> the clock will vow The Hour has struck
> and struck.
> 
> PART ONE; PORTRA YALS
> 
> The opening quotation is taken from Shoghi Effendi, The World
> Order of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 77
> 
> MARTHA ROOT
> 
> See 'In Memoriam', The Bahá'í World, vol. Vlll, pp. 643-8
> 
> A LETTER TO KEITH
> Keith 'Nannie' Bean Ransom-Kehler. See 'In Memoriam', The Bahá'í World,
> vol. v, pp. 389-409
> 
> LOUIS G. GREGORY
> See 'In Memoriam', The Bahá'í World, vol. xn, pp. 666 70. For the opening
> words by 'Abdu'l-Bahá see Elsie Austin, Above All Barriers. The
> italicized words in the poem are adapted from Louis Gregory's pilgrim
> notes published as A Heavenly Vis~a (see Bibliography)
> 
> VISIT TO A VETERAN
> Horace Hotchkiss Holley (1887-1960). See 'In Memoriam', The Baha; World,
> vol xlll, pp. 849-58
> 
> 'ABDU L-GHAFFAR OF ISFAHAN
> 
> See 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Memorials of ~he Faithful, pp. S9-60. cf. Sana'i's lines
> quoted by Bahá'u'lláh in The Seuen Valleys, p g
> 
> MASTER CRIMINAL
> Eduardo Duarte Vieira, 'first African martyr'. See 'In Memoriam', The
> Bahá'í World,vol. xlv, pp.389 go. The opening words are from Bahá'u'lláh,
> Prayers and Meditations by Bahá'u'lláh, 20
> 
> MARION JACK
> 
> See 'In Memoriam', The Bahá'í World, vol. xll, pp. 6747. Admirers of
> George Herbert will recognize his two lines
> 
> EAGLE
> 
> Louisa (Lua) Moore Getsinger. See 'In Memoriam', Star of theWest, vol.
> 7, no. 4, May 1916, pp. 29-30; no.lg, March 1917, pp.
> 
> The introductory quotation is Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 257.
> Other quotations are taken verbatim from Juliet Thompson's diary. An
> entry for 5 July alludes to the Master having made public His station in
> a talk given on l 9 June 1912. The events of 1 3 June are described in
> an entry for 16 June.
> 
> METADATA
> 
> Views6349 views since posted 2021-10-11; last edit 2025-07-12 00:02 UTC;
> 
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> — *Another Song, Another Season: Poems and Portrayals (Used by permission of the curator)*