Ruth Blandford: Antagonists

By Ruth Blandford (1902-2004), my maternal grandmother's (Lucinda Ann Strong Long) cousin, from her book, Hewn Like Stone: Poems:

Antagonists

My mind and body they are two,
And never have been one.
Animals never fought so hard
Within a tighter cage.

Ruth Blandford: Like Stone

By Ruth Blandford (1902-2004), my maternal grandmother's (Lucinda Ann Strong Long) cousin, from her book, Hewn Like Stone: Poems:

Like Stone

The mind is such a private place.
Its thoughts are all its own.
Before I dare to cast one out
It must be hewn like stone.

The Book of Counted Sorrows

We have a weight to carry
and a distance we must go.
We have a weight to carry,
a destination we can't know.
We have a weight to carry
and can put it down nowhere.
We are the weight we carry
from there to here to there.

Red Sox haiku

I'm sure this wouldn't catch on here in Boston!

I hate the Red Sox.
They clog traffic WAY too much.
Leave Boston, Red Sox.

apocrypal friendship

A faithful friend is a strong defense.
A faithful friend is the medicine of life.

• Apocrypha

"Dunciad"

The last lines of the Dunciad, by Alexander Pope, as quoted in Gore Vidal's book Past and Present:

Nor public flame no private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, CHAOS! is restor'd;
ight dies before they uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal Darkness buries all.