October 27, 2006

Bestial.

Sometimes, on an impulse, I set up a Google alert for a word that strikes me for some reason or another. I'm looking for some random input, just to shake things loose. The other day -- I can't remember why -- I set up the word "bestial." This word drags in the weirdest stuff, mostly garbage, but today, it brought this.

7 comments:

JohnF said...

That was interesting, and oddly moving, though it is hard to pin down why.

BTW, the new Firefox does cure the non-refresh problem.

Anonymous said...

How interesting! That poem inspired the subject of my first-ever blog post, something I had written on the death of Arafat.

Revenant said...

I've always liked that poem.

KCFleming said...

A great poem.

And "Because It Is Bitter, And Because It Is My Heart" a mostly forgettable book by Joyce Carol Oates.

paul a'barge said...

Bestial

wchzd

Bob said...

One time as an experiment I set up the key word "doomsday" in a Google Alert, and got all sorts of demented stuff from left-wing sites about Bush.

David Foster said...

If you had searched for "beast" instead of "bestial," you might have gotten another Stephen Crane poem:

God lay dead in heaven;
Angels sang the hymn of the end;
Purple winds went moaning,
Their wings drip-dripping
With blood
That fell upon the earth.
It, groaning thing,
Turned black and sank.
Then from the far caverns
Of dead sins
Came monsters, livid with desire.
They fought,
Wrangled over the world,
A morsel.
But of all sadness this was sad —
A woman's arms tried to shield
The head of a sleeping man
From the jaws of the final beast