When your best is suck. And other social media DOHs

When your best is suck

And other social media DOHs

by Stan Faryna

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Among the many splendid things to be received from the blogosphere and elsewhere is… beauty.

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Yes, beauty. It glitters greater than gold. It shines brighter than diamonds. And no amount of cash can make a slave of it.

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Recently, Anthony Wilson, one of the bloggers I follow with much enthusiasm, shared a poem by Galway Kinnell. The title is Saint Francis and the Sow.

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Wilson also writes wonderful things. He shares beauty with us. Writing about the goodness of sharing poetry, the blogging poet bemoans the lack of poetry shared.

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My hunch is that the social contract we forge with each other when sharing poems, whether in person, or on email, or on blogs, is vastly underrated as a mechanism for cultural transformation

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Like most complaints, it is a gentle call to action. It is one that spoke to my heart. Thank you, Anthony.

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And reading Kinnell’s poem that Wilson has so generously shared on his blog, I wanted to share it with you. But for reasons different than Wilson’s reason.

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I want to share Kinnell’s Saint Francis and the Sow with you because when our best is suck, when our ambitions, broken promises and failures are a mountain of dirt, we are the sow. As pigs, of course, we may not be deserving of pearls. Just as Christ himself has said. Matthew 7:6

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But as Kinnell’s poem reminds us, even a sow wants, receives and is uplifted by blessings. Beyond it’s intelligence and comprehension. More importantly, beyond all its apparent ugly.

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And I was uplifted and blessed. It is my hope that you shall also be uplifted and blessed by this poem below.

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Stan Faryna
05 February 2013
Fairfax, Virginia

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Saint Francis and the Sow

Galway Kinnell, Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2001)

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The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and

blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

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