On Two Quotes From Ayn Rand ( an almost Villanelle, but I couldn't reduce the first quote to pentameter while keeping the meaning.)

 “The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”

“The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.”

    

The evident is sometimes hardest to explain

When everyone's determined to be blind,

Truth's not for those who hold it in disdain.

The truth's for those who seek it and refrain

From disbelief, despite their turn of mind.

The evident is sometimes hardest to explain.

For what is glaring sometimes brings great pain,

And those who seek may yet not wish to find,

Truth's not for those who hold it in disdain.

The truth's for those who seek it and remain

As wed to it. When truth by all is undermined,

The evident is sometimes hardest to explain.

What mystery allows the human brain

To hide from glaring truth, keep it confined?

Truth's not for those who hold it in disdain.

For it is never best for men to feign,

Pretend, that all is well, as they designed.

The evident is sometimes hardest to explain

Truth's not for those who hold it in disdain.

Burke Quotes

'A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.'

'But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished'

'It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.;

'There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men.'

'Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.'

A State which cannot change lacks the ability

To provide for its own conservation.

The age of chivalry is gone, our age lacks principles, stability,

And sophistry churns up the conversation. 

And yet we have the means of restoration,

We are not lacking in facility

To act with reason, justice, in our nation.

A State which cannot change lacks the ability

To thrive, yet we must value what is good, futility

Lies in attempts to hoard up all in preservation,

In non judgemental imbecility.

To provide for its own conservation

A State must prize what profits the next generation

Yet act with caution and humility

Which knows to act on prophecy can be causation. 

The age of chivalry is gone, our age lacks principles, stability,

And calculators and economists with great agility

In statistical lies, manipulation,

Seem to dominate, abuse our sad docility,

And sophistry churns up the conversation.

But who sets up himself a judge of truth, seeks adulation,

Receives but laughter from the Gods who know the fallibility

Of narcissistic men and in frustration

Bring about their end. We must be wise to our fragility,

Which cannot change.  

Society - Burke Rondeau Redouble

“Society is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead and those who are to be born.“

Burke called society a partnership

In science, art, virtue, all perfection

And thus it must require the membership

Of many an earlier generation.

Our aims don’t ever reach fruition

Within a season, not one haw or hip

Is ripe for either harvest or rejection.

Burke called society a partnership

And the serving of a long apprenticeship

Allowing for sagacious intervention

From voices past, in their instructorship

In science, art, virtue, all perfection.

Society’s not changed by mere election

We guard against the ills of brinksmanship.

Society’s a link a great connection

And thus it must require the membership

Of those as yet unborn, custodianship

Means taking care, not mad destruction.

We needs must spend much time in contemplation

Of many an earlier generation,

Their thinking, and put aside frustration

And childish annoyance, at their wardship.

To teach the future of their wisdom is our obligation,

To keep preserved, in tact, curated, the protectorship

Burke called society 

Zeitgeist

“Whoever marries the spirit of the age will be widowed in the next”

Bishop Welby married zeitgeist,

So we know what to expect,

The Church of England widowed

With the coming of the next. 

We know that it was Jesus Christ

He dumped and whom he sacrificed.

Bishop Welby married zeitgeist

Put a price on what cannot be priced:

We know what to expect,

For whoever weds the spirit,

Not of God, but of the age,

Will be widowed for eternity

With the coming of the next. 

A Contrast

 When days were very long

And nights were filled with stars,

Beheld in wonder through small child’s eyes

And full moon shone upon the reservoirs

And gleamed where crowds of seagulls lay asleep,

Who’d settled with the setting sun,

Whose winter pink had glinted

Where the moon’s path now reflected platinum,

And back indoors

The coal smoke in great clouds 

Went up the sooty chimney breast

Was drawn directly, not inclined to fill the room,

Or drift out gently by the inglenook,

And there were teddybears as gifts from grandmamas

One felt chapped lips and snotty nose

And aching ears and legs and throat so sore,

That one could hardly speak at all,

One woke in terror saw the flowers of the paper on the wall

Rise up as if they grew upon some sheer cliff

Scared, alone, in illness and despair,

And wet the bed and really didn’t care.

Because in innocence there is no guilt,

And no responsibility, just honest pain,

And dread of ghosts and dark and loneliness.

It’s only now, with passing years

And looking through tired eyes which strain

To tell the planets from the twinkling lights

That sprinkle Heaven or the Milky way

On bright, but yet polluted Christmas nights,

Remembered moments from those childhood dreams,

Impose in such a way to stop one still,

And focus on the coming of one’s death,

And symptoms which were taken in one’s stride

And borne, as part of childhood’s grotty state,

Create a kind of terror in the mind,

And thoughts of un-starred darkness and last breath

Conflate, elide.

God or the Great Re Set?

https://youtu.be/dOwDiq1hzkg

 Would you recognise the Devil, if he spoke to you of science,

Would you think him merely rational, a voice of wisdom, sanity?

And what of economics, would you act in shocked defiance

If he said you must accept the latest, ill thought out inanity?

You think you’d act with reason, but that is really not sufficient,

For reason is the basis of our mere, human will,

And the Devil is persuasive and well practised and efficient

And his arguments are pleasing and they’re made with skill.

But that’s not to say our human goodness, is never scientific

Or economic wisdom is not possible for man,

Only that our focus as we try to find a course of action,

To fix the endless holes in the bursting dam,

Created by the state in response to science fiction,

Should not be on Mammon, but on God’s plan.

God Often Comes As A Little Child

 God often comes as a little child

At least we think he does,

And after deep depression,

Like the weather turned quite mild.

He speaks to us,

We listen

And act upon His words,

And sense a great profundity

In all that is around,

The stillness and the balmy air,

The singing of the birds,

The snouts of first spring flowers

Protruding from the ground.

God often comes as a little child,

He has that great propensity,

And speaks to us aloud,

And shocks like electricity,

We sense Him all about,

And we can sometimes see His face

Behind some sunlit mass of cloud,

Before our eccentricity

Is quietly snuffed out.

We take great comfort in the thought

We're being quite conventional,

And feeling as we ought

When faced with this immensity

We act with an intentional

Subservience, a doing as we're taught.

A good example we would set

Till our small children must exert

A counteracting force of will,

And when God leaves us, we forget

To pray, to marvel and distil

The sum of peace we've known

In sudden moments when alone.

And tempers fray

Though we're alert

To all the evil of the day

We have not strength to fend it off

And madness is not far away