Chip Van Hassel
The hand of charity is not short, but the arm which reserves it genuflects to the miser.
…
After all, it takes the Strength, Wisdom and Beauty of a Free Man to offer charity to a brother in need,.. but only if that charity does not weaken such Free Man or his home.
Where is there a Lodge
Of Master Markers,
Who’s moon-body has surfed
Beyond this already-traversed marble?
Is it from the east?
Is it to the West?
Could it be farther South,
Or even closer north?
Could the albatross
Have already flown across,
Leaving the mariner’s quiver
inclined by the motion of chilled skin?
This building,
A tabernacle to those who seek,
Is both verb and noun,
Word and sound.
‘Tis a corner-cutters’ dream,
That tent,
That rejected stone!
I may not mark it alone!
No longer a symbol,
Lost carving, or word,
The Master’s capstone
Has corners which point directions.
Where hath the path
been beaten to;
and who’s feet
have tamped-down that earth?
No master carves his own name;
No flint strikes against steel.
No building
Raises its own gables.
If the search
Is to build here and now,
than the ashes of the earth
are the edge of this town.