September 17, 2006
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At Midnight
“At midnight
on the Emperor’s pavement
flit
Flames that no faggot feeds,
nor
steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames
begotten
of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot
singe
a sleeve.”– From Byzantium, by
William Butler Yeats“The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre–
To be redeemed from fire by fire.”– From Four Quartets, by
Thomas Stearns Eliot“Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent
Fear and Uncertainty that comes with once reliable faiths and truths
and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in…”– Prepare for the Weirdness, by Hunter S. Thompson, quoted in a sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 2005
“If you passed, you got to live, and if you failed you were burned alive on a pyre that’s now the Transgender Studies Building.”
– Baccalaureate address at the interfaith worship service, Princeton University, on Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 2006
Review:
“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement….”
