Be Donne, unconverged [poem]

The right good and proper narrative says that this is the best poem of last year. It is quite converged, and celebrates the lies of the narrative.

Good Bones

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

Maggie Smith

Maggie is trying to deal with her own evil. But sin is that which cannot be named. This is the convergence: that we need to make a series of lies. We cannot say that we have sinned, and we need to be shriven.

Because that means the Christians may be correct. Particularly if they are better poets.

Holy Sonnets: I am a little world made cunningly

I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite,
But black sin hath betray’d to endless night
My world’s both parts, and oh both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres, and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more.
But oh it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

John Donne.

If you don’t seek truth, you will not do great art. Great art reflects truth. And the converged have forgotten this.

Do not be them. Be instead like Donne.