( dust devil on mars via fb memories 8 years ago, probably nasa / via )

Poems of lovesickness.

"But first and foremost, I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple—or a green field—a place to enter, and in which to feel. Only in a secondary way is it an intellectual thing—an artifact, a moment of seemly & robust wordiness—wonderful as that part of it is"

-- Mary Oliver via @stonecirclerev

## Holy Hash ##.

"Ballade of an Artificial Satellite

One inland summer I walked through rye,
A wind at my heels that smelled of rain
And harried white clouds through the whistling sky
Where the great Sun stalked and shook his mane
And roared so brightly across the grain
It burned and shimmered like alien sands;
Ten years old, I saw down a lane
The thunderous light on Wonderstrands.

In ages before the world ran dry
What might the mapless not contain?
Atlantis gleamed like a dream to die;
Avalon lay under faerie reign;
Cibola guarded a golden plain;
Tir-Na-Nog was fair-locked Fand's;
Sober men saw from a gull's-road wain
The thunderous light on Wonderstrands.

Such clanging countries in cloudland lie;
But men grew weary and they grew sane
And they grew grown - and so did I -
And knew Tartessus was only Spain.
No galleons call at Taprobane
(Ceylon, with English), no queenly hands
Wear gold from Punt, nor sees the Dane
The thunderous light on Wonderstrands.

Ahoy Prince Andros, horizon's-bane!
They always wait, the elven lands;
An evening planet gives again
The thunderous light on Wonderstrands."

--Poul Anderson [1958, written for Sputnik--the discovery alluded to is that of Vinland]

Invention.