Shakespeare on Ice*

puck on ice 1

“Thou speak’st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.”

*Taken at the Kohl Center at the opening game of Wisconsin Badger’s basketball season. They played Northern Kentucky University, whose coach happens to be the husband of a good family friend. At any rate, the NKU “Norsemen” lost to the Badgers, 31-62.

Et in Arcadia sumus.

by Valentine Green (c. 1770); Wellcome Library via The Public Domain Review

by Valentine Green (c. 1770); Wellcome Library
via The Public Domain Review

by Valentine Green (1769); Wellcome Library via The Public Domain Review

by Valentine Green (1769); Wellcome Library
via The Public Domain Review

 

Pantoum for the Fifty Percent

tom and viv
The dinner détente dies, the candles fade,
The tension mounts, a cat that climbs the stairs.
Like clowns out of step in a sad parade,
The wind and rain repeat, but no one cares.

The tension mounts. A cat that climbs the stairs
Connotes the awkward moment’s masquerade
The wind and rain repeat. But no one cares
When love grows still and breathes contagious airs.

Cannot the awkward moment’s masquerade
Expend emotion’s capital like tares
Our love still grows? To breathe contagious airs
We hum the minor chords of Scheherazade.

We spent emotion’s capital. Like tares,
The dinner détente dies. The candles fade.
We hum the minor chords of Scheherazade
Like clowns out of step in a sad parade.

“I have no talent.”

greene

It’s the birthday of novelist Graham Greene (books by this author), born in Berkhamsted, England (1904). He described the citizens of his hometown as “slitty eyed and devious,” and he had an unhappy childhood. He came from a prominent local family, and his father was the headmaster of his school, where Greene was bullied and attempted suicide several times. At the age of 16, he tried running away. His parents sent him to London to be treated by a psychoanalyst, an experience he thoroughly enjoyed. He decided that his biggest problem was boredom, and he began playing Russian roulette.

He went on to Oxford, where he published his first book, a book of poetry called Babbling April (1925). It was a flop. He got a job as a copywriter for The Times of London and spent years working as a journalist. He said, “A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.”

Greene was an obsessive traveler. At Oxford, he offered his services to the German government as a propagandist if they would pay his expenses to travel in France. During World War II, he joined MI6, the British Intelligence Service, and was posted to Sierra Leone. He visited Prague during the Communist takeover, Kenya during the Mau Mau Uprising, Haiti under the reign of brutal dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier, and covered the Vietnam War and the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict. He wrote 24 novels, many of them set in the places he had visited. He said: “I travel because I have to see the scene. I can’t imagine it.”

His first big success was Stamboul Train (1932), published as Orient Express in America. It is set onboard the Orient Express headed to Istanbul, and follows the fate of the passengers, including a Jewish businessman, an exiled Socialist doctor, a lesbian journalist, a chorus girl, and a murderer. Greene said: “In Stamboul Train for the first and last time in my life I deliberately set out to write a book to please, one which with luck might be made into a film. The devil looks after his own and I succeeded in both aims.”

Greene wrote The Heart of the Matter (1948) about an English colonial policeman stationed in Sierra Leone. He is passed over for a promotion, his marriage is failing, his love affair makes him feel guilty for betraying his Catholicism, and a local diamond smuggler constantly manipulates him. Greene described his main character, Scobie, as “a weak man with good intentions doomed by his big sense of pity.”

The Comedians (1966) was set in Haiti under Papa Doc’s rule, narrated by a hotel owner named Brown. The novel upset Papa Doc so much that he published a pamphlet accusing Greene of being “a liar, a cretin, a stool-pigeon … unbalanced, sadistic, perverted … a perfect ignoramus … lying to his heart’s content … the shame of proud and noble England.”

A Burnt-Out Case (1960) was the story of a depressed architect who traveled to a Congolese leper colony.

Greene said, “I have no talent; it’s just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.”

From The Writer’s Almanac

It’s also the birthday of Wallace Stevens.

from ‘Mystic, Comic, Everything’ — Chapter 1 of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: Her Family, Her God, Her Message

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 We are still at the dawn of the third great crisis of our civilization: it is no longer merely man confronted with his weakness (with the Greeks); no longer merely man confronted with his guilt (with Luther, at that tragic time for Europe, after the black plagues at the end of the Middle Ages); man today finds himself confronted with his solitude and with the desperate quest for a meaning to his life, confronted with the need to search for what would be an “authentic existence”, “true life”, which he fears never being able to enjoy. Among the innumerable witnesses that could be called to the stand in this interrogation, such as Rimbaud, Van Gogh, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, or Kundera, I have intentionally kept two cries, because they seem to express the question that was Thérèse’s own: “Here is my old anguish, right there in the hollow of my body, like a bad wound that every movement irritates; I know its name, it is the fear of eternal solitude. And I have the fear that there may not be any answer” (Camus).

I implored, I begged for a sign, I sent messages to the heavens: no response. The heavens do not even know my name. I wondered at every moment what I might be in the eyes of God. Now I knew the answer: Nothing. God does not see me, God does not know me, God does not hear me. You see this void over our heads? That is God. You see this hole in the earth? That is God. You see this opening in the door? That is God again. The silence is God. Absence is God. God is the solitude of men. [(Jean Paul Sartre, Le Diable et le bon Dieu, tableau 10, scene 4.)]

Thérèse was familiar with this anguish:

When I want to rest my heart fatigued by the darkness which surrounds it by the memory of the luminous country after which I aspire, my torment redoubles; it seems to me that the darkness, borrowing the voice of sinners, says mockingly to me: “You are dreaming about the light, about a fatherland embalmed in the sweetest perfumes; you are dreaming about the eternal possession of the Creator of all these marvels; you believe that one day you will walk out of this fog which surrounds you! Advance, advance; rejoice in death which will give you not what you hope for but a night still more profound, the night of nothingness.” (SS 213)

snip

I have experienced it; when I am feeling nothing, when I am INCAPABLE of praying, of practicing virtue, then is the moment for seeking opportunities, nothings, which please Jesus more than mastery of the world or even martyrdom suffered with generosity. For example, a smile, a friendly word, when I would want to say nothing, or put on a look of annoyance. (LT 143, GC 2:801)

To understand her secret as a warrior, we might go back to Nehru’s admission to Malraux: “I have three enemies: the Chinese, famine, and myself. But, of the three, the most difficult is myself.” Very quickly she learned that nothing can be done on the path of what for her was the true life without fighting against herself, against illusion. She, who, up to the end, had the childish fears of a little girl, would never fear the truth, never fear to “do the truth”, as Saint John says: whether about herself, her faults, her own limits, about her family, her community, her sisters, or one day about death itself. She did not fear that the truth would diminish her. Quite the contrary. It was never a malicious truth. For she found here the true way to be victorious: by disarming, by never resisting. Instead of sidestepping an issue, cheating, trying to justify herself, telling herself stories, she disarmed, and she disarmed from the very moment when the truth was at issue. Then she found something greater: a confidence that opened up freedom to her.

Her sister Céline, older than she, who entered Carmel six years after she did, reported that one day, in watching Thérèse live, she experienced a moment of discouragement and said to her: “Oh, when I think of all I have to acquire.” And Thérèse answered her at once: “Rather, how much you have to lose” (CSG 23).

— excerpted from ‘Mystic, Comic, Everything’, Chapter 1 of  Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: Her Family, Her God, Her Message by Fr Bernard Bro, OP; posted on Ignatius Press’ Insight Scoop; link via Amy Welborn.

Oath and Abundance

visitationFor Elizabeth, on her birthday

Elisheba, young Aaron’s wife, saw
The scorching sun and torrid sand
On Israel’s treck avow no shadow
Nor soothe the azure sky – such land
Where all the colors drained from Eden
And drowns a rainbow’s hope for heaven…
The voided desert shades refuse,
In justice, spectrum’s seven hues.

Elizabeth, though, aging wife to
Old Zachariah, sits and rests
And waits to see her promised guests
Descend the everlasting hills now
From heaven’s blue – her mantled earth,
An advocate for mercy’s birth.

Paging Dr. Percy

IMG_20140902_193709

“English poetry and biology should be taught as usual, but at irregular intervals, poetry students should find dogfishes on their desks and biology students should find Shakespeare sonnets on their dissecting boards. The latter, upon reading upon her dissecting board, ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold when yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang’ might catch fire at the beauty of it.”

— Walker Percy, “The Loss of the Creature”

And Have You Heard?

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IN MEMORIAM: CHARLES PEGUY (Jan. 7, 1873 – Sept. 5, 1914)

Athena in reverse, the bullet hits
The pate and pierces deep within the folds
Of reason, music, memory. In bits
And pieces, death releases what it holds
And faith is stopped in mid-stride. While the war
Continues counting on, a mournful muse
Has come to mark her dear lieutenant’s hour:
“He came to speak his mind on flesh, accuse
His blood for God, indict the empty thrones
And cast his songs like crowns.” The western world
Now spills more blood across his heap of stones.
Long after Mars had scattered, banners furled,
His tongue, unflagging, speaks this dying word:
O mon Dieu! Mes enfants! And have you heard?

Upon a Letter from a Friend Which Included Mention of Swans

jack yeats swans of coole

TO B.Y.

Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

– Yeats

The span of years hasn’t helped the eyes
Adjust to beauty’s knot in troubled times,
Nor eased the heart into its frame. Surprise
Is taken wedge by ounce
With gin and limes
We raise to give to Providence its half a chance.

You wrote to say that beauty’s gauge these days
Has been a ratio of swans per wing
To children growing old. – Here lie the ways
That lead to winter, straight
From early spring
To bleeding grapes which fill the untapped tun of Fate….

You said that swans preferred the Danube now
To Rhone or Rhine: in lamentation’s flight
Or drifting flocks of Charon’s candid dhow,
Each freights the stony ken
Of final night
In multiples of starry Cygnus – cob and pen.

How strange to think upon your mated swans
As each a year of moments gliding past us:
Their slender necks submit to clear-eyed Fons
As our own eyes blear with
Tears of Bacchus,
Who keeps us blind to Leda’s fortune – beauty’s myth.

New Dante Canto found! von Balthasar (partially) vindicated! Unitarian Universalists enter Catholic Church in droves! Poor (in spirit) hardest hit!

Sort of.

When You’re a Poet, You’ve Got to Not Know It

Screen Shot 2014-05-03 at 2.06.08 PM

It’s the birthday of Israeli poet and novelist Yehuda Amichai (books by this author), born Ludwig Pfeuffer in Würzburg, Germany, in 1924. He moved to Palestine in 1936 and later became an Israeli citizen. He had a childhood friend in Germany, Ruth Hanover, who died in a concentration camp in 1944. She sometimes appears in his poems as “Little Ruth,” and he calls her his “Anne Frank.”

He was one of the first poets to write in colloquial Hebrew, and he sometimes used an archaic word rather than its modern equivalent, and this gave another, biblical layer of meaning to his poems that is unfortunately lost in translation. He told the Paris Review in 1989: “I’d been raised in a very Orthodox home and the language of the prayers and the Bible were part of my natural language. I juxtaposed this language against the modern Hebrew language, which suddenly had to become an everyday language after having been a language of prayers and synagogue for two thousand years.”

He said: “I think when you’re a poet you have to forget you’re a poet — a real poet doesn’t draw attention to the fact he’s a poet. The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.”

From today’s Writer’s Almanac.

See also.

A Spring Fall, or A Brief Free-Verse Philippic on Political Victory

cicero

UPON THE OCCASION OF A FRIEND’S ELECTION TO THE LA CROSSE COUNTY BOARD

Poets, priest and politicians
Have words to thank for their positions.
-Gordon Sumner

I too hate it, politics. And yet,
there it is. The right and left
the up and down
the over and under
the profit and loss, the heads and tails,
it doesn’t matter.

Winning doesn’t matter.

Losing doesn‘t matter.

Nothing matters except
everything.

So, as you stroll the Lyceum of your mind
with Cicero’s headless ghost, Demonsthenes’ humble pebbles
in your mouth,
watch as polity and equity embrace and kiss,
and remember
what the people ask you to keep in mind,
that the terms and limits of empire
begin with the three primary colors of reality:
first principles,
last things
and
final ends.

II
Incumbents last as long as the next emotion cycle….
So one by two by three
they fall – and the laurels
that looked so stylish
with broad gestures and
togas gilded with purple piping
(so say the Roman hacks
who lost their bets to Caesar
and hide their heads beneath
the epitaph of obscurity)
went to the next generation.

But what do you expect?
Anyone the age of Christ ought to know
as much about the world,
its modus operandi:

1. Nail down your agenda and crucify the data.

2. Throw your own gods of liberty into the marketplace.

3. Let other gods bleed for their liberty.

III
Usura slayeth the child in the womb.
Thus, Mr. Pound remarked in that way how summer falls
and makes a winter spring

from its sleepy lair, ravenous.
And thus, too, the fool will have had his day
(and so a king too…).

In chasing the specter of usura, though,
and denying error the privilege of rights,
I promise you will find the Son of Mammon’s address.

But if you see the birds of paradise, the sparrow’s nest
and the Son of Man who has no home,
you will know peace as sound as stone among the lilies.

IV
Where yesterday was politics today is policy.
And always the April fools day
with sunlight, and the day
is left to think that spring
promises warmth, acceptance, growth, new creation.

And always the annual portfolio promises
dividends, interest, diversified stock options,
no substantial penalty
for early withdrawal…
Yes, that sense of play lasts all of one day.

Then comes the real work.

The Wisconsin farmer climbs upon his tractor,
ready to spread
the true springtime message
acre by acre, row by row
in a steady stream, like oratory
shoveled out, and like public trust discharged
behind him –
“It’s time for a change.”

And now a new team of factional rivals
grab the rostrum of La Crosse
(by hook or by crook),
spinning at poles like a captain’s wheel
and as the bilge water flows
in their wake each member would augur
as much:
“It’s time for a change.”

V
First, for tactics, we countered the numbers –
then, for strategy, we counted the numbers
and last night, for victory,
we considered with nervous fingers on the tickertape
a mere 18 voted reasons
for overcoming the numbers.

But such integers of population pale
at least compared to what
the world has managed to put up:

And, lo, the City of Man
is like unto a boondoggle
which may make money for a few
but renders many with neither shirt nor honor,
nor bread to rise nor stone upon stone,
nor art its measure, nor craft its purpose,
nor love its gift to man.

And, lo, the City of Man
is like unto a boondoggle
which may spring a virtual Hippocrene of eternal hope
and speciously declare everyone a winner
but puts cliché upon a plinth
and truth in its place,
a white stain beneath pigeon toes.

VI
So don’t fear to scratch the marble
because dirty hands can also mean
honest men earning an honest day’s wages.

Meanwhile, the City of God awaits –
so like unto a certain county district
of unasked and unanswered questions.

So may it be in virtue of a truth
no speech can divide nor words divine
that you help the people find the courage

To ask the questions and find the answer.

Follow-up to previous day’s post

image

From Day by Day by Robert Lowell (probably Jeb O’Brian’s favorite poet).

NB: A first edition of this book was located in Dauphine Street Books in the French Quarter, a good place to ride the train to if you have the chance.

Raskolnikov – Part 1: Chapter 1, Stanzas 14-19

455px-Brooklyn_Museum_-_The_Round_Tower_plate_III_from_Invenzioni_Capric_di_Carceri_-_Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi

One chapter down; forty to go! Today’s post concludes Part 1, Chapter 1 of my attempt to rewrite Crime and Punishment as a verse novel à la Eugene Onegin.

Click here and scroll down to review the story to date.

Thanks to all who have read along so far. As always, your comments — including, but not limited to, negative comments — would be very welcome.

Is the story bogging down at any point? Is the action or setting ever confusing? Are there any trite rhymes? Any syntactic absurdities, prosodic infelicities, or lapses of characterization?

And is there anything that ‘works’ especially well?

1.1.14
He scans the space: a table (smallish),
A sofa (tall), and chairs (a few) —
All cheap and old, yet bright with polish,
Immaculate; the floor gleams, too.
(‘Lizavéta’s work’, he thinks; ‘that’s certain.’)
Here hangs a small icon… A curtain
Hangs there, in lieu of bedroom doors;
Beyond it stands a chest of drawers,
He knows — though he has yet to enter
The shadow of that shrouded cell….
… His hostess pipes up sternly: ‘Well?’
‘I’d like to pawn…’ he says; presents her
A pocket watch (worn silver-plate).
‘Good sir, your payment’s two days late:

1.1.15
‘Your other pledge is past redemption.’
‘I know, Alyóna, ma’am — my ring….
Please give me just a month’s extension.’
‘I’ll do as I please with that thing.’
‘Well…. How much for this watch? It’s silver.’
‘Not even worth the work to pilfer
A piece of trash like that, my friend.’
‘It was my father’s…. If you’ll lend
Four roubles, ma’am, I will redeem it.’
‘I see. Before, I was too nice —
I lent you more than that ring’s price.
As for this watch, now, take or leave it:
A rouble and a half.’ ‘You might —
One and a half, good sir.’ ‘…….. All right.’

1.1.16
She takes her keys out of her pocket;
She takes his watch behind the shroud.
He strains his ears; hears her unlock it —
The top drawer, scraping high and loud….
While he had been discreetly peering
At her (right pocket’s) steely keyring,
One key’d looked larger than the rest:
(‘Not for a drawer…. A trunk? A chest?
… But this is all so nauseating!’)
‘You owe me thirty-five, all told.’
(She’s back!) ‘Here’s one-fifteen; I’ll hold
The watch.’ He stands there, hesitating —
Then speaks: ‘In one more day… or two
… I might… have another pledge… for you…

1.1.17
‘… A cigarette case… silver… fancy!’
‘All right. We’ll talk about it then.
Good night.’ ‘Your sister! Any chance she
Might sort of… sometimes… wander in?’
‘What do you want with Lizaveta?’
‘Oh, nothing, ma’am.’ ‘You want to meet her?’
‘No no, madame, I just… Good-bye.’
He turns, and goes — and starts to cry:
‘Oh God! Can I –? Can I imagine?
How could –? Is my mind capable –?
My heart, so hateful? Horrible!
A month! A month, bent to this passion –!’
His self-disgust is oceans wide….
He sinks, and chokes — and steps outside.

1.1.18
The evening sun continues bleeding
Its dying light upon the host
Of Petersburg, while, all unheeding,
Our Rodya passes like a ghost
Among them, heart and mind encumbered:
He reels, colliding like a drunkard
Along the boulevard, until
His feet and thoughts at last are still:
Up from a dingy basement tavern,
Two tipsy, cursing men emerge;
Raskolnikov now has the urge
To go spelunk that urban cavern.
A sticky table; frosty beer;
A gulp. His thoughts begin to clear!

1.1.19
‘No need to worry any longer,’
He says — and smiles! — with rising cheer.
‘A simple side-effect of hunger;
Just takes a little bread and beer!’
Smiles all around! Lighthearted, hearty,
He beams at one departing party
(Four men; a girl; accordion),
Grins at a fat Siberian.
Above the pale cucumber salads,
Black bread, and kippers past their peak
— Which emanate an evil reek —
Drone mediocre drinking ballads.
An ex-official sits aloof —
Alone, but for his eighty-proof.

Homage to an Empire*

pax-americana

The budget talks have broken down again.
And bliss is ignorant to show what love
Between a man and wife has got to do
With lasting peace. What nature cannot do
Is rendered pointless. We’re at war again –
So power speaks its mind to truth. And sends its love.

The tyrant’s compass spins democracy
Around the globe – what prior to the fall
Had slithered forth – and scales back our freedom too.
While history plays its part for only two –
I and thou – the circus of democracy
Has swords and thumbs enough for all to rise and fall.

Which is fine. Liberty pays the price
And soldiers stay the course. So goes the game:
Your countries are all ours. Your babies – also ours.
(Too many, though, and they stop being ours.)
So empire asks its men to name a price,
To load the dice, enthrone the orb and throw the game.

*With apologies to Philip Larkin.

Raskolnikov – Part 1: Chapter 1, Stanzas 11, 12, & 13

630px-Piranesi03 - Sawhorse

The adaptation of Crime and Punishment into a verse novel à la Eugene Onegin continues.

Click here to catch up on the story.

1.1.11

If you’ll excuse the interruption,
Dear reader — Something in the way
Of a digression on the Russian
For ‘crime’: It’s ‘prestuplénie’,
Which (in more literal translation)
Means (to a close approximation)
Transgression, or ‘a step across’ —
Concision’s gain, nuance’s loss.
(I claim no special erudition;
I’m just repeating what I’ve read,
But this is what I think it said
In Norton’s Critical Edition.)
We here conclude our brief aside
And rejoin Rodya in mid-stride.

1.1.12

He’s in. His hostess glowers sharply —
Sharp little eyes, sharp little nose:
A tiny, desiccated harpy,
Of sixty years, one would suppose.
Her head is bare; her hair is sallow,
Just touched with grey, smeared thick with tallow.
Her neck is yellow, long, and thin —
Much like the leg of some old hen.
Upon her shoulders hangs a mangy
Old capelet cut from yellowed fur,
For even summer’s cold to her.
She coughs, regarding Rodya strangely.
(‘Does she suspect –? Of course, I must
Act all-correct… establish trust…

1.1.13

‘… show some respect — That’s always prudent!’),
He thinks, and makes a little bow.
‘Raskolnikov, madame — a student.
I came last month…. I’ve come back now.’
‘I know, good sir.’ She’s brusque and hurried.
(‘Was she this way before? I’m worried….
Her piercing eyes… her voice’s edge….’
)
‘I’m here about — about a pledge!’
She glares, then points — still coughing, groaning,
‘In there, good sir.’ And so he goes
Into a faded room that glows
With ruby hues before the gloaming…
Stained scarlet by a long, late ray….
(‘The sun will blaze like thisthat day!’)

Raskolnikov – Part 1: Chapter 1, Stanzas 9 and 10

1024px-Giovanni_Battista_Piranesi_-_Prison_-_Google_Art_Project

In honor of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Apostles to the Slavs, whose feast-day was 14 February, here are the latest stanzas in my ongoing project of adapting Crime and Punishment to the sonnet-stanza form of Eugene Onegin. It’s been thirteen-and-a-half months since the last update, but, plot-wise, things are, I daresay, on the verge of getting real.

Click here to read the previous stanzas.

I welcome your comments, whether effusive or abusive.

1.1.9

The stairs he climbs are dark and narrow.
‘Still dark… still safe…. That’s good… but think!
Just now, I’m frozen to the marrow!
How, then, will I feel… on the brink
Of –?
’ Rodya all but crashes into
A pair of porters — two old men who
Are lugging down the furniture
From someone’s flat… Fourth floor! He’s sure
It’s from the old crone’s only neighbor.
‘That German clerk is clearing out
… So no one else will be about
If I…. That’s good! Then why belabor
The point? It’s time. I’m doing well….’
He’s at the door. He rings the bell —

1.1.10

And flinches from its tinny tinkling:
Its feeble chime seems to recall
Some distant, half-remembered inkling.
‘That certain sound…? It’s nothing! All
These flats have bells like that! … I know this!
Why did I cringe? It goes to show this
Is still too soon; I’m still too weak
For now!’ The hinges groan and creak:
A little gap; a glimpse; the glitter
Of wary eyes that peek, then spy
The porters and the clerk nearby.
The hag seems reassured a bit: Her
Apartment door now opens wide —
And now, our Rodya steps inside.

Dept. of Doggerel

I’m sure this has been done, but last night, while in my cups at a party featuring poetry and music from those in attendance, I scribbled this.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in a wood and I
I took the one less traveled by
And that has made all the difference.
– “The Road Not Taken,” by Robert Frost

I am that rambling wanderer who
Took that road that was less traveled by
It made all the difference, it’s true
But not in the way one might like it to
In fact, I think upon that path and cry

For as I set upon that way so lightly trod
I missed the sign that read, “This way be bears”
And soon I learned the painful truth, by God
That there is cause for some to think it odd
For me to walk a road that leads to rips and tears

I lost one arm, an eye, and six of my ten toes
Before I reached the end of that most bearful road
It made a difference, oh yes, cruel heaven knows
So please, dear wanderer, search out where each trail goes
Ere you set out to stride where few have strode