Solitary Quaking Aspen (Populus temuloides) in open spring steppe, [ click photo for next . . . ]
Above Eagle Valley, South Wallowas

PASSION according to ST. MATHEW--a long-line sonnet
(below), is a slow, somewhat surreal piece that leaps from
one contemporary image to the next as one might flip channels
on an all-news TV, seeing pictures of war, and suffering, and
protest. At the same time, the viewer has the great Passion
by J.S. Bach somehow echoing in his or her mind, or perhaps
more appropriately, as the German Baroque expression has it,
'Heart's House.' For passion comes to us via the heart of
feeling and emotion from the Latin root for "suffering,"
so we also see that com-passion is to feel the suffering
of another as if it were one's own.

The Hermit Thrush(Catharus guttatus)in the background was
recorded at 1800 m.,in an old-growth Grand Fir forest,
Eagle Cap Wilderness, Oregon.


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On the road in the Northwest of America.

TRAGEDY OF THE WEST?

Cut it down.

Dig it up.

Put barbed-wire around the rest.

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PASSION ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW—
a long-line sonnet

Lightning and Thunder, sharp accents, sudden shifts of key.
And the savior says, "Put your sword in its sheath."
Crucifixion, street by street, line after line of riot police in black,
Faceless violence: clubs, guns, spray, dogs, chains, gas.

Two choirs, a perfect symmetry of sound, streams of time, slow,
And fast, braided together in a harmony beyond here and now.
The crowd faces east to pray, and the force in black turns
Its back in respect, O nameless violence without borders.

And the savior says, "injustice to me is injustice to All."
Random shots into the crowd, tank tracks tearing up asphalt,
This hymn in unison, a voice heard around the world,

Priests, Money Lenders, 30 pieces of silver buys a body.
Clouds of smoke, clearing, rising above the states of collapse,
For love. For freedom. For when this needless suffering stops.





| download PASSION ACCORDING TO ST. MATHEW (poem) mp3 [ 4.5 Mb ]
The Hermit Thrush in the background was recorded at 1800 m.,
in an old-growth Grand Fir forest, Eagle Cap Wilderness, Oregon.