Battered

Lot on my plate today – lung scan, Little One’s first day at town tennis camp, grocery shopping, hunting for lost car keys – just a few of the highlights. Plus my schedule’s all outta whack. A three-hour nap yesterday and a Coke Plus / milk duds combo at the movie theaters last night means I didn’t get to bed until 3:30 in the morning. It’s gonna be a long, rough day.

That being said … there’ll be a lot of neat stuff here at the Hopper over the next few days. A post on my book scores down in Hilton Head. Two book reviews: Stevenson’s Kidnapped and Wilson’s The Mind Parasites. Two movie reviews: The Crazies and Predators. A cheerful meditation on Death (of the Be Not Proud sort). A hopefully funny and definitely sarcastic dialogue featuring modern-day pharmaceutical execs.

Stuff like that.

Today, however, I just want to note a poem that hit me with some extraordinary weight. Something like ten or twelve gees, where I’m used to only one-point-five or two, max. This is wisdom of a sort I’d like to memorize, and strive to understand, though I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone who patiently wades through it and has at least a little spiritual questing inside him. To me its reminiscent of the “dark night of the soul” of St. John of the Cross, though the poetry is much better. I challenge you to a slow read. It’s by John Donne (1572-1631).



Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.