February 5, 2007 : The fast I choose
Is not this the fast that I choose: Is it not to bring the homeless poor into your home? (Isaiah 58: 7)
And so my thought turns to Billy not heard from for 6 or 7 months. Homeless and maybe (likely) dead, not incarcerated, I checked. Last he called, he was as desperate as he ever was: on the street, seat of pants torn out, police seeking him (or so he claimed; even Billy loved a fish story to fill out his meager life). Billy was brought into many homes, the only one that could reliably hold him without bringing ruin on itself was the Georgia Department of Corrections, that and under a bridge somewhere (where, I suspect, he died). And thoughts turn to the poetry of Milosz away from his Book of Luminous Things (though Billy was a luminous thing, not many knew) and to his poetry of an alcoholic at the gates of heaven:
Not suspecting you had picked me from the Book of Genes
for another experiment altogether.
As if there were not proof enough
that free will is useless against destiny.
And so it must be, that those who suffer will continue to suffer,
praising your name.
His voice is heard only in the psalms of the exiled, alienated, and disenfranchised. His voice is not heard in the Book of Laughter and Forgetting, though he is forgotten by all but a very select few). His name is listed only in the Bible of Sad Things. Billy had a son. One wonders knowing this if this son has quoted from the Book of Genes.
Is not this the fast that I choose: Is it not to bring the homeless poor into your home? (Isaiah 58: 7)
And so my thought turns to Billy not heard from for 6 or 7 months. Homeless and maybe (likely) dead, not incarcerated, I checked. Last he called, he was as desperate as he ever was: on the street, seat of pants torn out, police seeking him (or so he claimed; even Billy loved a fish story to fill out his meager life). Billy was brought into many homes, the only one that could reliably hold him without bringing ruin on itself was the Georgia Department of Corrections, that and under a bridge somewhere (where, I suspect, he died). And thoughts turn to the poetry of Milosz away from his Book of Luminous Things (though Billy was a luminous thing, not many knew) and to his poetry of an alcoholic at the gates of heaven:
Not suspecting you had picked me from the Book of Genes
for another experiment altogether.
As if there were not proof enough
that free will is useless against destiny.
And so it must be, that those who suffer will continue to suffer,
praising your name.
His voice is heard only in the psalms of the exiled, alienated, and disenfranchised. His voice is not heard in the Book of Laughter and Forgetting, though he is forgotten by all but a very select few). His name is listed only in the Bible of Sad Things. Billy had a son. One wonders knowing this if this son has quoted from the Book of Genes.
posted by Dafath at 3:40 AM
2 Comments:
Funny I never knew Billy and yet I too think of him often. and often along with poetry by Milosz. I wonder if at the time we were discussing both. I hope he is ok.
Well written article.
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