poem notes's video: The Unbeliever - Elizabeth Bishop

The Unbeliever -Elizabeth Bishop He sleeps on top of a mast. - Bunyan He sleeps on the top of a mast with his eyes fast closed. The sails fall away below him like the sheets of his bed, leaving out in the air of the night the sleeper's head. Asleep he was transported there, asleep he curled in a gilded ball on the mast's top, or climbed inside a gilded bird, or blindly seated himself astride. "I am founded on marble pillars," said a cloud. "I never move. See the pillars there in the sea?" Secure in introspection he peers at the watery pillars of his reflection. A gull had wings under his and remarked that the air was "like marble." He said: "Up here I tower through the sky for the marble wings on my tower-top fly." But he sleeps on the top of his mast with his eyes closed tight. The gull inquired into his dream, which was, "I must not fall. The spangled sea below wants me to fall. It is hard as diamonds; it wants to destroy us all." Source: Poems Macmillan 2015 A Thought: …the loss of belief in future states is politically, though certainly not spiritually, the most significant distinction between our present period and the centuries before. And this loss is definite. For no matter how religious our world may turn again, or how much authentic faith still exists in it, or how deeply our moral values may be rooted in our religious systems, the fear of hell is no longer among the motives which would prevent or stimulate the actions of a majority. -Hannah Arendt