This is kind of a lonely poem for a lonely day hiking. Not lonely, exactly, but very alone. I spent probably five hours and saw, maybe, three human beings. It was good. I like to be alone.
Sometimes. I also like to be with those I love. When I am with other people, I think about them. I am a person in society. When I am alone, I think about God, or nature, or poetry and art, or all of those things. I think about myself in relation to all those things.
### TEXT OF POEM
"The Preacher Ruminates Behind the Sermon" by Gwendolyn Brooks
I think it must be lonely to be God.
Nobody loves a master. No. Despite
The bright hosannas, bright dear-Lords, and bright
Determined reverence of Sunday eyes.
Picture Jehovah striding through the hall
Of His importance, creatures running out
From servant-corners to acclaim, to shout
Appreciation of His merit's glare.
But who walks with Him?—dares to take His arm,
To clap Him on the shoulder, tweak His ear,
Buy Him a Coca-Cola or a beer,
Pooh-pooh His politics, call Him a fool?
Perhaps—who knows?—He tires of looking down.
Those eyes are never lifted. Never straight.
Perhaps sometimes He tires of being great
In solitude. Without a hand to hold.
Episode 4.17 Kay Ryan’s “This Life”
Episode 4.16 Three Poems by Stephen Crane
Episode 4.15 Wordsworth's "Lines Written in Early Spring"
Episode 4.14 Walter Scott’s “Innominatus”
Episode 4.13 Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain"
Episode 4.12 W. H. Auden’s “Musee des Beaux Arts”
Episode 4.11 Jim Harrison’s “I Believe”
Episode 4.10 E. E. Cummings “sweet spring is your,” “old mr ly,” and “pity this busy monster,manunkind”
Episode 4.09 An Easter reading of Rudyard Kipling’s “A Nativity”
Episode 4.08 Mark Gibbons’s “My Life as a Capitalist”
Episode 4.07 John Donne’s “Good Friday 1613, Riding Westward”
Episode 4.06 Dylan Thomas’s “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”
Episode 4.05 Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”
Episode 4.04 The anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem “The Battle of Brunanburh”
Episode 4.03 John Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
Episode 4.02 Czeslaw Milosz’s “And Yet The Books”
Episode 4.01 John Ashbery’s “Just Walking Around”
Episode 310: Alexander Pope's "Ode on Solitude"
Episode 309: Karl Shapiro's "Interlude III"
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Esquire Classic Podcast
The Federalist Papers
A Tale of Two Cities
The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll