26 April - Roger Zelazny Poetry Month - Deus Irae

Moving through the backlog.

Today, we have Deus Irae (among others, heh)

I mentioned in my review that I can take or leave the book, but I do love the cover art.

Scanned in from my 40 year-old paperback. Sorry for the image quality, guys

Tibor McMasters navigates a post-apocalyptic landscape full of ruinous weirdos on his pilgrimage to paint a mural of Carleton Lufteufel.

I chose God's Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. I'm sure Philip Dick would have preferred something more German, but we can't always get what we want. But there is something perfect, something grand about those first two lines.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.