Titanic Revelations
Posted on | January 14, 2013 | 2 Comments
Sometimes we don’t know where certain messages come from as we muse, fingering some words to give our intuitions substance. I think this poem comes from the haunting reverberations of the Newtown massacre, but also the dim sense that the nation may have been shocked a little out of its worship of the Great God Gun. While a Congress corrupted by the armaments lobby may yet disappoint us, the voices are still there, calling us to a new birth. So I share it with you, somewhat raw, somewhat incomplete perhaps.
Tomorrow we leave for seven weeks in the Western Cape of South Africa and the central deserts of Namibia. I’ll try to report on some observations and reflections while we are there, but my postings may not be as frequent. On the other hand, this country that we love, with so many contrasts and mirrors to our own, may provoke me to more thoughts. Stay tuned.
Here is the poem, whose tentative title reminds us of an arrogance that led to disaster a century ago.
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In the catastrophe
the end
the fall
they only knew of evenings
full of entertainment
flickered images
of food and guns
and singers
holding microphones
but deaf.
No ears
to hear
the drums
the bang
the bang
the heartbeats
breaking out of nowhere
babies screaming
to be born
again.
Titanic Revelations
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William J. Everett
In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to a poetically written novel to probe the issues of ecological and human reconciliation.
When I am not writing, I create furniture for worship settings. For more about my work, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River. READ MORE...
TURNINGS: Poems of Transformation
Like works in
wood upon a lathe, these poems are word-turnings that reveal the inner grain of our human experience. They are bowls to catch our turnings of memory, conversion, falling in love, and passing through our seasons and the wrenching turns that mark our lives. Above all these turnings are a shout of praise, a murmur of wonder, a turning away from life as usual, a merciful re-turning to the songs, images and stories that move our lives.
You can get TURNINGS at:
For More on TURNINGS:
Red Clay Blood River
Red Clay, Blood River is a story told by Earth about two brothers from Germany and an enslaved South African woman whose lives bind together America’s “Trail of Tears” and South Africa’s simultaneous “Great Trek” of 1838. You can get Red Clay, Blood River at:
Booklocker--also in ebook version (PDF)In South Africa at: www.Loot.co.za and www.Kalahari.net
January 14th, 2013 @ 7:38 pm
Are you going under a particular institution or on your own? I forget what you may have communicated on that.
January 15th, 2013 @ 3:20 pm
May your beautiful and compelling words awaken us to deeper levels of choice, caring, and responsibility.