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🗓️ 7 July 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Today’s poem is by Thomas Merton OCSO (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968), an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and given the name "Father Louis".[1][2] He was a member of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, near Bardstown, Kentucky, living there from 1941 to his death.
Merton wrote more than 50 books in a period of 27 years,[3] mostly on spirituality, social justice and a quiet pacifism, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Among Merton's most enduring works is his bestselling autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain (1948). His account of his spiritual journey inspired scores of World War II veterans, students, and teenagers to explore offerings of monasteries across the US.[4][5] It is on National Review's list of the 100 best nonfiction books of the century.[6]
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0:00.0 | Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Heidi White, and today is Friday, July 7th, 2020. Today's poem is by Thomas Martin, and it's called An Elegie for Ernest Hemingway. I'll read it once and then offer a few comments, and then I'll read it again. An elegy for Ernest Hemingway. |
0:24.9 | Now for the first time on the night of your death, your name is mentioned in convents. |
0:31.6 | Nekadas in Obscorum. Now with a true bell, your story becomes final. |
0:39.3 | Now, men in monasteries, men of requiems, familiar with the dead, include you in their offices. |
0:48.3 | You stand anonymous among thousands, waiting in the dark at great stations on the edge of countries known to prayer alone. |
0:58.0 | Our fires are not merciless, we hope, and not without end. |
1:04.0 | You pass briefly through our midst. |
1:08.0 | Your books and writing have not been consulted. Our prayers are pro teufuco end. |
1:16.1 | Yet some look up as though among the crowd of prisoners or displaced persons, they recognized a friend |
1:23.7 | once known in a far country. For these, the sun also rose after a forgotten war upon an |
1:31.9 | idiom you made great. They have not forgotten you. In their silence, you are still famous, no ritual |
1:40.3 | shade. How slowly this bell tolls in a monastery tower for a whole age and for the quick |
1:48.5 | death of an unready dynasty and for that brave illusion, the adventurous self. For with one shot, the |
1:58.8 | whole hunt is ended. |
2:04.2 | Thomas Merton lived from 1915 to 1968. |
2:09.1 | He's an American author, and although he was a prolific writer of poetry, as well as many |
2:14.2 | other kinds of writings, he's not primarily known as a poet. |
2:18.7 | In fact, he's famous for being a trappist monk. |
2:22.9 | Merton lived a very wild youth |
2:24.9 | and an unprincipled and rebellious life, |
2:27.2 | and he chronicles his religious conversion |
2:29.6 | in the memoir, The Seven Story Mountain, |
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