I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
Flushed, by the children’s bedtime, level with the shore.

The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want
To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,
I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus
But to keep my eye only on the nearer future
And after that let the sea flow over us.

Come then all of you, come closer, form a circle,
Join hands and make believe that joined
Hands will keep away the wolves of water
Who howl along our coast. And be it assumed
That no one hears them among the talk and laughter.

Louis MacNeice, 1907-1963 – “Wolves” from Collected Poems


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One response

  1. Jennifer Mugrage Avatar

    “philosophic chorus”/”sea flow over us”

    Liked by 1 person

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#231: The mythology of the moon Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 6/1/26: Tonight, we delve into the significance of the moon in mythology, religion, and folklore. I read from the Taschen Book of Symbols, the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, and Mircea Eliade’s Patterns in Comparative Religion.Finally, and most personally, I read about the history of Rosh Chodesh, the monthly Jewish holiday recognizing the New Moon. For this, I read a passage from Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s A Guide to Jewish Prayer.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
  1. #231: The mythology of the moon
  2. #230 – The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic
  3. #229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture
  4. #228 – What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974
  5. #227 – The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem
  6. #226: The Vitality and terror of cities
  7. #225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling
  8. #224: Let's talk about William Blake
  9. #223 – How to write two novels at the same time, with Charles Dickens
  10. #222: Seamus Heaney – 10 Essential Poems

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