David Given Schwarm

The One Mockingbird Only Sings at Night Hannah Sanghee Park Far cars, numerous.Lullaby (by a lull)and I pretend (I-10 as ocean).And dream (DNA remade)and dream. Maker(remake me), better methis time. And waketo a chorus of onecourting throughalarms, beeping,trilling silver, song.Mating call after call(no answers, no takers).And now it collects moreand further from nature. Desperate thing (who is the pitied?),what…

       A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—       A Love in desolation mask’d—a Power       Girt round with weakness—it can scarce uplift       The weight of the superincumbent hour;       It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,       A breaking billow; even whilst we speak       Is it not broken? On the withering flower       The killing sun smiles brightly: on…

The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer My rating: 2 of 5 stars Ugh. This is a tough one… the book covers a topic poorly documented in English–there are not nearly enough books on Italian Fascism. There are not enough papal…

       Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,       A phantom among men; companionless       As the last cloud of an expiring storm       Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,       Had gaz’d on Nature’s naked loveliness,       Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray       With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,       And his own thoughts,…

       Thus ceas’d she: and the mountain shepherds came,       Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;       The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame       Over his living head like Heaven is bent,       An early but enduring monument,       Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song       In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent       The sweetest lyrist of her…

       “The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;       He sets, and each ephemeral insect then       Is gather’d into death without a dawn,       And the immortal stars awake again;       So is it in the world of living men:       A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight       Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when       It…