WEEKEND POETRY FIX

The Goat Rope series on the Odyssey of Homer resumes Monday. Meanwhile, here is William Blake's The Divine Image:

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress,
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is God our Father dear;
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face;
And Love, the human form divine;
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine:
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SWEEPS

For several years, El Cabrero taught GED classes at Head Start centers in southern West Virginia. I got more out of it than my students, although several did graduate.

For one thing, I finally learned how to do ratio and proportion problems (cross multiply and divide).

For the literature part of the test, I would often bring in some of Blake's poems from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, which were nearly always enjoyed. There's something very accessible about Blake's style, even if his deeper meaning is hard to comprehend.

It was always interesting to see which poems different students would gravitate towards. One that often brought people to tears was "The Chimney Sweeper" from Songs of Innocence. For some historical background on the nasty, brutish and short lives of young chimney sweepers in Blake's England, click here.

Here is is:

When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!
So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep.

There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curled like a lamb's back, was shaved: so I said,
"Hush, Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare,
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."

And so he was quiet; and that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight, -
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, and Jack,
Were all of them locked up in coffins of black.

And by came an angel who had a bright key,
And he opened the coffins and set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river, and shine in the sun.

Then naked and white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father, and never want joy.

And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark,
And got with our bags and our brushes to work.
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.

I think the thing that really got to them was the image of their daily life as a living death--coffins of black--and that they could only play like children in their dreams.

CHARGES UPGRADED IN LOGAN CASE. From the Charleston Gazette:

Prosecutors upgraded charges on Tuesday against five of the six suspects accused of torturing and sexually abusing a 20-year-old Charleston woman in Logan County.

Each of the six defendants now faces accusations of first-degree sexual assault and kidnapping, which carry maximum terms of 35 years and life in prison, respectively, among other charges.

ANOTHER TAKE ON GLOBALIZATION. Here's former labor secretary Robert Reich's analysis of supercapitalism, its threat to democracy, and what to do about it.

WHO'D A THUNK IT? This Business Week article shows how cell phone technology is stimulating local ecnonomie in the developing world. I just wish mine worked where I live...

OKAY. A Nebraska state senator filed suit against God. Who's going to serve the papers? and how? And wasn't there a movie about that?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

TYGER! TYGER!

What immortal hand or eye...?

The poems from William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience have the ability to speak to all kinds of people and to people of all ages.

When El Cabrero's daughter was only a little thing, she had memorized most of this one:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And What shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Alas, between childhood and adolesence, something happened. When I asked her about the poem in the midst of her "cheerleader rage" years (a term she coined), this is what she came up with:

Tyger Tyger burning bright
In the forest of the night
I wish I may I wish I might
Get the wish I wish tonight...

In the spirit of the scientific method, of which Blake wasn't too fond, I can't say the cheerleading caused the mutation. But the correlation is there...

BLACK LUNG CASES INCREASE. This article by Ken Ward came out last week:

Black lung disease rates among U.S. coal miners have doubled in the last decade, according to new federal government data released this week.

Occupational safety experts say the figures reveal a troubling reversal from a quarter-century of success in fighting the deadly disease.

Ten years ago, about 4 percent of miners with 25 or more years of experience were diagnosed with the disease; now the figure is 9 percent.

Between 1993 and 2002, nearly 2,300 West Virginia miners died of black lung. West Virginia recorded the highest age-adjusted black lung death rate nationwide during that period, according to NIOSH reports.

The United Mine Workers union is seeking tougher regulations on underground air quality.

UPDATE ON THE LOGAN CASE More charges are likely to be filed against those accused of kidnapping, torturing and sexually abusing Megan Williams.

THE MORAL SENSE--Is it innate? And what does it consist of? Here's an interesting article about this scientific controversy.

CHIP VS. VETO. The House and Senate are nearing a compromise on expanding the Childrens Health Insurance Program (CHIP), although a veto threat from the Bush administration still hangs in the air.

ON THAT NOTE, here's an update on upcoming votes in Congress from the Coalition on Human Needs.

ONE MORE THING. Congratulations and a thank you to WV Governor Joe Manchin, who was one of 30 governors to sign on to a letter to the federal Department of Health and Human Services in support of the CHIP program.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A POISON TREE

A while back, El Cabrero received a suggestion from a Goat Rope reader and generally shady character to spend a week writing about the radical mystical English poet William Blake, who lived from 1757 to 1827 (along with links and comments about current events).

I figure you could do a lot worse...

I first stumbled on Blake while browsing through my hometown public library decades ago. I thumbed through a book of weird illustrations and almost nursery-rhyme type poems that hit hard and fast.

The first one that I laid my eyes on was about the fruits of nurturing anger and hatred:

A POISON TREE

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree

I was pretty much hooked after that and remember asking "Who is this guy?" I've waded through a biography or two sense then but keep going back to that question. Suffice it to say that he was a really strange and revolutionary artist who regularly had visions of angels, devils, fairies, ghosts (including the ghost of a flea), and the divine.

Blake left quite a body of poetry and art, much of it very dense and obscure, but I've found enough to mull over for this lifetime anyway in The Songs of Innocence and of Experience and a very strange short work titled "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell."

To quote Bob Marley, they were "light like a feather/heavy as lead."

SPEAKING OF POISON, HATE AND ANGER, people in West Virginia and Logan County in particular are still stunned by the brutality visited on Megan Williams, an African American woman who was kidnapped, sexually abused and tortured for a week. Six arrests have been made in the case and all the suspects are white. For background, check the links in last week's posts.

This Saturday, I attended a public meeting at Cora in Logan County about the case. Speakers included representatives of the national, state and local NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Logan County Improvement League, the Charleston Ministerial Alliance, and others. Here's the Gazette report.

Some community residents were concerned over the apparent decision of the prosecutor not to pursue hate crime charges against the suspects. However, representatives of some of the groups listed above met for three hours with the prosecutor Friday and were satisfied that the suspects would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and that for technical reasons a stronger case could be made for kidnapping, sexual assault, and other charges. Kidnapping alone can carry a maximum sentence of life under WV law.

Short summary of the speakers' key points:

*The law enforcement system worked in this case. Sheriff's deputies investigated as soon as they received a report that a woman was being held against her will. Six arrests were made within 24 hours.

*A $100,000 cash bond has been set for the suspects and it is considered unlikely that they will be able to meet this.

*This action was the depraved crime of a few individuals and not an indictment of the people of Logan County or West Virginia.

*The sheriff's department has established a fund to assist the victim and another fund is likely to be set up soon in Charleston, probably with the help of representatives of the Charleston Ministerial Alliance.

*Local residents should try to unite to respond positively to this tragedy and try to bring about positive changes.

MINING POLL. A new poll shows that two thirds of Americans oppose the Bush administration's rule change favoring mountaintop removal mining.

UNLEASHING WHATEVER. Here are two good op-eds criticizing the cult of the market god as advocated in Unleashing Capitalism. The first looks at its idealized picture of life in the coal camps and the second slams its tax cut mania.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED