No Room for Unholiness not Cleansed
“ ‘What would a man not give,’declares Plato in the Apology,
‘to engage in conversation with Orpheus and Musaeus and
Hesiod and Homer?’ Can we do something of the sort? If not
to engage in conversation, then at least to glimpse them as they
go about their holy and unholy business?’ ”
~ Michael Schmidt, The First Poets, 21
We watch them singing in the darkness, hear
The notes and words, in darkness and in light,
And sometimes in the smell of lamps, strings clear,
Plucked, sunlight as the background sometimes, spite
Of love and war and murder by the fire,
The phrases of the ancients find their place
In us who need them, those who seek desire
Of holiness. The poets interlace
The tongue and string vibrations. Open voice
And strangest intervals of lyres wipe out
Unholiness since even sins rejoice
In music that is truth. We feel devout.
..We do not want these poets to be seen
….In gutters. We want poems fiery clean.