Pied Beauty

Andrew Sullivan reminded me of this poem. It seems both personally and universally apt to post it again today. An older woman I know was yesterday explaining to me why, in her opinion, the word "marriage" could not be co-opted by gay couples. I listened patiently, made a joke of it, and it sat with me all night. Love is love is love. Right? The Pope is wrong. God bless all my Catholic friends, but the Pope, this Pope, is wrong and his statements will only incite more hatred towards our homosexual brothers and sisters (ok, ok, Hallelujah!). Today is Christmas Eve and it's a good time to look at the glorious bigness of everything, not the minute things that divide us.

This poem is dedicated to my spotted four-legged friends and to the diversity which makes this world interesting. Now, I shall get back to my mince pies, my cranberry sauce, and salting the bird.

Pied Beauty by Gerald Manley Hopkins (1918)

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:	10
Praise him.