Tag Archives: god

POETS Day! St John of the Cross as Translated by Roy Campbell

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Sketch by St John of the Cross with color treatment by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

Happy Easter and Ziessen Pesach, if I have that right. All to all.

There may not be work to get out of, but here’s some pseudo-POETS Day mystic verse.

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When Juan Yepes, ordained John Matthias and later changed to John of the Cross, died in 1591, crowds thronged his viewing, tearing away pieces of the beloved spiritual leader’s burial clothes as mementos. There was impressive competition for his remains.

He was originally buried in Ubeda where he died. Two years later, he was relocated on the sly. The monks at Segovia felt that since he’d been prior of their monastery, they had claim to his remains. They left a leg behind for the Ubeda folks and donated an arm to be venerated in Madrid, but the bulk was whisked away by the Segovian interests. An appeal to Pope Clement VIII in 1596 put the Ubedans back in the game. The pope ordered John’s remains sent back. There was rumbling and arguing. In the end, the Ubedans added the other leg and the arm that wasn’t in Madrid while the Segovians held onto his head and torso.

I resisted saying St John had been the “prior prior” above, so I feel I’m entitled to make an “everybody wanted a piece of him” crack here: Everybody wanted a piece of him. People were different then.

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POETS Day! Anne Bradstreet

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Illustration by Rene Sears

[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is out!

It came out in 2006, but it came out again this week. It’s remastered and pretty and still has the Patrick Stewart voiceover. This was it for a lot of us – the video game that fulfilled the dream of a pixilated Dungeons and Dragons. The guild quests and coliseum fights are still there while the infuriating leveling system that trapped you into confidence and forced a restart because of misallocated experience perks is gone. And it looks great, on par now with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Not everyone cares. I understand. But please be courteous to those of us who do. We’ll be taking a POETS Day to defeat monstrous deadra and save the land of Cyridil. There’s a power vacuum in the wake of Emperor Uriel Septim VII’s assassination (AP, Chicago, and MLA all tell me the “’s” comes after the numerical in a possessive with a numerical name but it only looks mildly worse than “Septim’s VII.” There is no satisfaction.) so we gotta get on that. For the rest of you, Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday for whatever reason draws you. You have my permission as soon to be head of the Assassin’s Guild.

First, a little verse.

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from The Prologue
Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1672)

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue,
Who sayes my hand a needle better fits,
A Poets Pen all scorne I should thus wrong;
For such despight they cast on female wits:
If what I doe prove well, it wo’nt advance,
They’l say its stolne, or else, it was by chance.

That’s the fifth stanza of the first published work of poetry from the English colonies in the New World. Defiant from the start.

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