28th & 29th November, 2005
Rod in Concert
Holland, December 2005!
San Sebastian Strings
albums now available on CD! Order
now!
|
|
Photo by Edward McKuen 9/24/2005
A Thought for Today
To articulate a certain moment aloud assures its memory.
FROM the¨BOOKS
DRIVING THROUGH DAVIS
I woke up listening
where swallows
had been known to sing
and I heard nothing.
The morning followed the sun
not the sun the morning.
And as the day slipped
from out the last
into the next
nothing happened but the grey
moving in to take the whiteness.
I find any sleep
that claims to be
a sleep of reason
unreasonable and fitful,
yet each night
I fall down in darkness
all the same
wondering what new land
knows the sound
of singing swallows.
I wonder too
at teachers who demand
instead of teach.
One man - a professor now
( a sort of poet once
until his talent dried and died
from lack of any nourishment
or truth or understanding ) -
makes a proper living
out of damning me
because the God that I believe in
lets me damn no man.
He wrote that I
was fostering unrest.
So I am.
And so I am.
Do not rest until you reach
a pair of friendly arms.
That’s radical and wrong for him
but right for those of us who love.
And I say kill no man
nor murder his ideas
before they’ve had a chance
to surface from his mind.
Let men think and speak
even that poor white-haired loser
whose thoughts are lost
on children he would chain
and minds he’d not mind plundering
it even that skill he could master.
Let him help to foster masons
at his school
instead of militants with matches.
Man has learned by building
but even superman
cannot see past a fire.
The clergy
who drum into their congregations
litanies that have
no bond with common speech
have begun to worry me as well.
Until my life began to move
across the hill and down
I was unaware that God
was such a complicated man.
He was never Latin for me
nor Sanskrit till translation.
I want a man
that I can understand
to govern me,
for I need love
and understanding too.
And so I hope that God the friend
and not the father
will come banging at my door.
Were I your preacher
your teacher or your dad
I’d ask that you hate no man,
but yourself sometimes.
That can be of use
if only in putting on the brakes.
Stumble if you need to
but stumble on your own ground only.
Consider any man that you can help
your
friend,
and double friend
that man so selfless
as to offer help to you.
I’ll never be a proper teacher
for I’ve learning yet ahead of me
far beyond my years.
But place my small brain
in the feeble hands
of some white-haired loser
operating still without a learner’s permit
in the love of all mankind ?
Not a chance.
One day I’ll make a pilgrimage
to his dusty desk
if only just to take him
this year’s calendar.
Surely all men need to know
what year it is they’re living in.
- from "Fields of Wonder", 1971
Click
on the Stanyan House logo to buy Rod McKuen books, CD's and lots more
Click on the heart logo to
subscribe to the Rod McKuen mailing list
Catch Rod McKuen live!
Click on the links below for details of
concerts and appearances.
ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
|
