DC-Mentality As Seen by Lee Atwater

Lee Atwater (1951-1991), known as a brutal, consummate political strategist and hardball Republican National Committee chair, became a repentant believer and foe of “DC-mentality” before he died of brain cancer.  Before he died, he said, “I acquired more [wealth, power, and prestige] than most.  But you can acquire all you want, and still feel empty. It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. [The leaders of the ‘90s must] speak to the spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society. . . . What is missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart.”

--from A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café by Leonard Sweet, p. 19

One Will Never Experience Or Know Everything

Life Encompassed

How often I have said,
“This will never do,”
Of ways of feeling that now
I trust in, and pursue!

Do traverses tramped in the past,
My own, criss-crossed as I forge
Across from another quarter
Speak of a life encompassed?

Well, life is not research.
No one asks you to map the terrain,
Only to get across it
In new ways, time and again.

How many such, even now,
I dismiss out of hand
As not to my purpose, not
Unknown, just unexamined.

Donald Davie from Collected Poems

Mark Jarman, in Body and Soul: Essays on Poetry, comments: This poem reminds me of the limitations of critical understanding and opinion, and also of the importance and necessity of growth in the life of the mind.

Tired of Speaking Sweetly

Tired of Speaking Sweetly

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear
He is in such a "playful drunken mood"
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

From The Gift by Sufi poet Hafiz, translated by Daniel Ladinsky