| Descriptions of Heaven and Hell | ||
| by Mark Jarman | ||
 | ||
The wave breaks And I'm carried into it. This is hell, I know, Yet my father laughs, Chest-deep, proving I'm wrong. We're safely rooted, Rocked on his toes. Nothing irked him more Than asking, "What is there Beyond death?" His theory once was That love greets you, And the loveless Don't know what to say.
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Sunday, March 11, 2012
Descriptions of Heaven and Hell
Parents
| Parents | ||
| by William Meredith | ||
What it must be like to be an angel or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner. The last time we go to bed good, they are there, lying about darkness. They dandle us once too often, these friends who become our enemies. Suddenly one day, their juniors are as old as we yearn to be. They get wrinkles where it is better smooth, odd coughs, and smells. It is grotesque how they go on loving us, we go on loving them The effrontery, barely imaginable, of having caused us. And of how. Their lives: surely we can do better than that. This goes on for a long time. Everything they do is wrong, and the worst thing, they all do it, is to die, taking with them the last explanation, how we came out of the wet sea or wherever they got us from, taking the last link of that chain with them. Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling, to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren. | ||
Daddy
| Daddy | ||
| by Sylvia Plath | ||
You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew. I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I'm finally through. The black telephone's off at the root, The voices just can't worm through. If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There's a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through. 12 October 1962 | ||
The Last 4 Things [That hard thread]
| The Last 4 Things [That hard thread] | ||
| by Kate Greenstreet | ||
That hard thread between us. Is it gold? Do I have to be so outshined by my curtain? Opened, especially by breaking. people who would die people who would almost die and who would be injured My dad was in the water. Across an unprecedented space. It would rain for days, they said he'd come home. [lists the father's wounds] That hard thread is a bone. Is made of bone. When I was alone, a girl, the first loss, between tunnels... I didn't need so much. I'd eventually get hungry.
| ||
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. -Dylan Thomas |
knots to km
- 1 international knot =
- 1 nautical mile per hour (by definition),
- 1.852 kilometres per hour (exactly),[4]
- 0.514 metres per second.
- 1.151 miles per hour (approximately).
1,852 m is the length of the internationally-agreed nautical mile. The US adopted the international definition in 1954, having previously used the US nautical mile (1,853.248 m).[5] The UK adopted the international nautical mile definition in 1970, having previously used the UK Admiralty nautical mile (6,080 ft [1,853.184 m]).
| m/s | km/h | mph | knot | ft/s | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 m/s = | 1 | 3.6 | 2.236936 | 1.943844 | 3.280840 |
| 1 km/h = | 0.277778 | 1 | 0.621371 | 0.539957 | 0.911344 |
| 1 mph = | 0.44704 | 1.609344 | 1 | 0.868976 | 1.466667 |
| 1 knot = | 0.514444 | 1.852 | 1.150779 | 1 | 1.687810 |
| 1 ft/s = | 0.3048 | 1.09728 | 0.681818 | 0.592484 | 1 |
fathom
A fathom (abbreviation: ftm) = 1.8288 meters, is a unit of length in the imperial and the U.S. customary systems, used especially for measuring the depth of water.
There are 2 yards (6 feet) in an imperial or U.S. fathom.[1] Originally based on the distance between the fingertips of a man's outstretched arms, the size of a fathom has varied slightly depending on whether it was defined as a thousandth of an (Admiralty) nautical mile or as a multiple of the imperial yard. Formerly, the term was used for any of several units of length varying around 5–51⁄2 feet (1.5–1.7 m).
The name derives from the Old English word fæðm meaning embracing arms or a pair of outstretched arms.[2][3][4] In Middle English it was fathme. A cable length, based on the length of a ship's cable, has been variously reckoned as equal to 100 or 120 fathoms. At one time, a quarter meant a fourth of a fathom.
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