Paul Goodman

Paul Goodman Poems

11.Creator Spirit come
by whom
I'll say what is real
and so away I'll steal.
...

The Best Poem Of Paul Goodman

Pagan Rites/Creator Spirit Come

11.Creator Spirit come
by whom
I'll say what is real
and so away I'll steal.

When my only son
fell down and died on Percy mountain
I began
to practice magic like a pagan.

Around the open grave we ate
the blueberries that he brought
from the cloud, and then we
buried his bag with his body.

Upon the covered grave
I laid the hawkweed that I love
that withered fast
where the mowers passed.

I brought also a tiny yellow
flower whose name I do not know
to share my ignorance
with my son. (But since

then I find in the book
it is a kind of shamrock
Oxalis corniculata,
Matty, sorrel of the lady.)

Blue-eyed grass with its gold hexagon
beautiful as the gold and blue
double in Albireo
that we used to gaze on

when Matty was alive
I laid on Matty's grave
where two robins were
hopping here and there;

and gold and bluer than that blue
or the double in Albireo
bittersweet nightshade
the deadly alkaloid
I brought for no other reason
than because it was poison.

Mostly, though, I brought some weed
beautiful but disesteemed,
plantain or milkweed,
because we die by the wayside.

(And if spring comes again
I will bring a dandelion,
because he was a common weed
and also he was splendid.)

But when I laid my own forehead
on the withering sod
to go the journey deep,
I could not fall asleep.

I cannot dream, I cannot quit
the one scene in the twilight
that is no longer new yet does
not pass into what was.

Last night the Pastoral Symphony
of Handel in the key of C
I played on our piano
out of tune shrill and slow

because shepherds were at night
in the field in the starlight
when music loud and clear
sang from nowhere.

Will magic and the weeks placate
the soul that in tumbling fright
fled on August eighth?
The first flock is flying south

and a black-eyed susan
is livid in the autumn rain
dripping without haste or strain
on the oblong larger than a man.

Creator Spirit come
by whom
I say that which is real
and softly away I steal.

Paul Goodman Comments

Paul Goodman Quotes

Here we have the beautiful British compromise: a man can say anything, he mustn't do anything; a man can listen to anything, but he musn't be roused to do anything. By freedom of speech is meant freedom to talk about; speech is not saying-as-an-action.

There is such a thing as food and such a thing as poison. But the damage done by those who pass off poison as food is far less than that done by those who generation after generation convince people that food is poison.

Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the surface.

What the devil to do with the sentence "Who the devil does he think he's fooling?" You can't write "Whom the devil—"

When the Devil quotes Scriptures, it's not, really, to deceive, but simply that the masses are so ignorant of theology that somebody has to teach them the elementary texts before he can seduce them.

For mankind, speech with a capital S is especially meaningful and committing, more than the content communicated. The outcry of the newborn and the sound of the bells are fraught with mystery more than the baby's woeful face or the venerable tower.

It rarely adds anything to say, "In my opinion"Mnot even modesty. Naturally a sentence is only your opinion; and you are not the Pope.

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