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RonPrice
Junior Member
since 2006-05-10
Posts 12
Tasmania Australia

0 posted 2006-05-11 11:33 AM


The city is the embodiment of nightmare, of terrible visions, of some blank and dead spirit. Dostoevsky describes this urban jungle in a style full of life’s immediacy and authenticity, with a sense of the vastness and indeterminacy of human motivation. His writing career began after he gave up his ‘dull as potatoes’ military career in 1844.
    -Malcohm Bradbury on ‘Dostoevsky’, The Modern World: Ten Great Writers, Penguin, Ringwood, Victoria, 1989, pp.27-52.

Attainment unto this City quencheth thirst without water, and kindleth the love of God without fire.    -Baha’u’llah, Gleanings, USA, 1952, p.269.


It was a year when careers took epochal shifts:
exploring darkness and light,
old crimes and new punishments,
books, so many new books, that would
change the face of fiction and the world’s
spiritual sensibility forever.
Tragic figures, so very tragic, but
ultimately an exploration of the inner man
that the world had never seen:

Worship thou God in such wise that
if thy worship lead thee to the fire,
no alteration in thine adoration
would be produced.*

Different cities found expression under
your pens: heavenly and earthly,
earthly and earthly where, at last,
the Mystic Herald, bearing the joyful
tidings of the Spirit, shine(s) forth from
the City of God,** from Your book, like
some trumpet-blast of knowledge,
resplendent as the morn, awakening
hearts from the slumber of frenetic passivity.

And this city of multiforms is taking shape
up there, over there, like a pregnant mountain
and in a thousand other places, slowly,
gradually, confering new life on seekers
as they penetrate the hidden mysteries
of the soul and inhale the fragrances
of a new morning in some wondrous
utterances in which the channels of
their souls are cleansed by new perfumes.***

Ron Price
27 October 1995

* The Bab in Selections from the Writings of the Bab, p.77.
** Baha’u’llah, Gleanings, p.267.
***Dostoevsky wrote many books before he died in 1881.
      The Bab and Baha’u’llah wrote a massive number of books before Baha’u’llah’s death in 1892.



© Copyright 2006 RonPrice - All Rights Reserved
sandgrain
Member Elite
since 1999-09-21
Posts 3662
Sycamore, IL, USA
1 posted 2006-05-11 03:26 PM


The imagery in this piece definitely makes it explode with meaning.  Thank you for sharing this delight.

   Rae

Musicmaker1969
Deputy Moderator 5 ToursDeputy Moderator 1 Tour
Senior Member
since 2000-06-25
Posts 589
Peterborough, Ontario Canada
2 posted 2006-05-14 02:36 AM


This poem makes me think of the New Jerusalem that awaits those who live for the Lord today.  It is full of vivid images that embrace the mind.  I very much enjoyed it.

Sheri Adams

Jesus lives in my heart!  He can in yours too!!!
Sheri Liegh Adams
sheriliegh@sympatico.ca

Poet4Christ
Member
since 2003-02-19
Posts 211
Oklahoma City
3 posted 2006-05-15 01:23 PM


Wow Ron -
so much to take in here - I feel a lot of strength in these words...a building of the holy spirit into a gradual birth of majesty.
good stuff - Tim

He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered. Proverbs 28:26

RonPrice
Junior Member
since 2006-05-10
Posts 12
Tasmania Australia
4 posted 2006-05-15 10:32 PM


Thanks for the feedback folks. I wonder how, and if, one can tell what a good poem is. Subjectivity is so crucial. I find it pleases me to know someone enjoyed a poem of mine. But after more than 40 years of writing poems and getting feedback, I'm really not that interested in people telling me I should do x or y or Z. It's not a question of being too old to change; it's rather a question of wanting to know I've pleased someone.  I don't mind my wife telling me to do x or y or z differently because I have to live with her and pleasing her as much as possible is crucial to my well-being.

In appreciation for your reactions.

Ron Price, Tasmania

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