MEMORANDUM (Y V)
“The moral
powers no one would presume to calculate. Suppose we could compare the moral
with the physical, and say how many horse-power the force of love, for
instance, blowing on every square foot of a man’s soul, would equal. No doubt
we are well aware of this force; figures would not increase our respect for it;
the sunshine is equal to but one ray of its heat. The light of the sun is but the shadow of love. “The souls of men
loving and fearing God,” says Raleigh,
“receive influence from that divine light itself, whereof the sun’s clarity,
and that of the stars, is by Plato called but a shadow. Lumen est umbra
Dei, Deus est Lumen Luminis. Light is the shadow of God’s brightness, who
is the light of light,” and, we may add, the heat of heat. Love is the wind,
the tide, the waves, the sunshine. Its power is incalculable; it is many
horse-power. It never ceases, it never slacks; it can move the globe without a
resting-place; it can warm without fire; it can feed without meat; it can
clothe without garments; it can shelter without roof; it can make a paradise
within which will dispense with a paradise without. But though the wisest men
in all ages have labored to publish this force, and every human heart is,
sooner or later, more or less, made to feel it, yet how little is actually
applied to social ends! True, it is the motive-power of all successful social
machinery; but, as in physics we have made the elements do only a little
drudgery for us — steam to take the place of a few horses, wind of a few oars, water
of a few cranks and hand-mills — as the mechanical forces have not yet been
generously and largely applied to make the physical world answer to the ideal,
so the power of love has been but meanly and sparingly applied, as yet. It has
patented only such machines as the almshouse, the hospital, and the Bible
Society, while its infinite wind is still blowing, and blowing down these very
structures too, from time to time. Still less are we accumulating its power,
and preparing to act with greater energy at a future time. Shall we not
contribute our shares to this enterprise, then?”
HDT
Paradise (to be) Regained. A review of The Paradise within the Reach of all Men, without Labor, by
Powers of Nature and Machinery: An Address to all intelligent men, in two parts
by J.A. Etzler (1842).
Memorándum
Salva estas palabras por un rato por
Aquello que te recuerdan
Aunque no puedas recordar
Que aquello que es un sentido es parte
Polvo y parte la luz de la mañana
Ibas a decir un nombre
Y no esta allí, los olvidé
También a ellos, estoy aprendiendo a rezar
A Perdita a quien no dije
Nada aquella vez y ahora ella
No puede oírme al menos por lo que sé
Pero el día sigue contemplando
Los nombres cambian a menudo más despacio
Que los significados, familias enteras
Crecieron en ellos y después se fueron
En el cielo anónimo
Oh Perdita continúa la esperanza
Después que lo nombres son olvidados
Y se termina el dolor del pasado
Cuando se dejan de pronunciar y de cometer aquellas
Traiciones tan repetidas desde antiguo
Que se dan por descontadas
Como el pastor hace con la oveja
W. S. Merwin
(traducción
Guillermo Ruiz)
Save these
words for a while because
of
something they remind you of
although
you cannot remember
what that
is a sense that is part
dust and
part the light of morning
you were
about to say a name
and it is
not there I forget
them too I
am learning to pray
to Perdita
to whom I said
nothing at
the time and now she
cannot hear
me as far as I
know but
the day goes on looking
the names
often change more slowly
than the
meanings whole families
grow up in
them and then are gone
into the
anonymous sky
oh Perdita
does the hope go on
after the
names are forgotten
and is the
pain of the past done
when the
calling has stopped and those
betrayals
so long repeated
that they
are taken for granted
as the
shepherd does with the sheep
W. S. Merwin, “Memorandum”
from The Pupil
