Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

Page 21 text:

M A S M I D And Haber synlhoM od aininonia and the bomb sidled slowly from the rack. And others spoke of I ' art pour I ' arl , building on the non-entity; there in the stagnant night the cobwebs of aesthetics cluttered a symbolistic mind when Paul Verlaine polished his verse and Rimbaud sought the terse, pregnant phrase and decadent ways of achieving form in the mold of le mot juste , as ponderous-phrased Proust and the soulful stream of time did sleep and dream in a cork-lined room, as Hypochrondria and Lesbia did groom their pervert selves for the literary strip-tease; but life is broader than Marcel Proust and the earth does not revolve on the axis of le mot juste . And the old man Sigmund died in London, whispering of Ego, muttering of Eros, and the old man Walt died in Camden dreaming of Peter Doyle and the cosmos delights of the joyful comrades. And in this still, still night the warmth of the waves on the cool sand shore found me chanting with the singing sea, and the song I song was of the dead poet and the dead world, world in the poet —

Page 20 text:

ragnienteci vUof ' ld by ALLEN MANDELBAUM QEMENTING fragments of a world, we shall piece together the shattered with the love of man we bear, that love once there now hidden away with the G-d they chose to forget in their moonless night and their sunless day; it is for us to bask in the future ' s first warm ray of a G-d given sun on a G-d given day. Let us build on the fear; let us build on the hate , they said; and some listened to the drunken bowlings in the stagnant night; there were the hungry and the thirsty and the mystics who slept on the magic mountains and drank 10-pfennig lager in the Munich beer-halls. And Wagner composed far into the misty night, stirring the heady brew. Let us build on the atom; let us build on whirling nuclei , they scdd; and some listened to the hazy lullaby in the stagnant night; there were the hopeful and the starry-eyed gazers and the quanta-curious waiting for the savior who never came; all may be well but if this be heaven — what and where is hell? Eighteen

Page 22 text:

M A S M J D poet in the unpoetic world, with the refrain of the dead echoing along the cosmic cliffs, rotting with the moss of age, Come let us bdthe in the sea . . . perhaps we shall drown in eternity ' The lonely song of the youth, asked to hope, asked to believe, deserted by those who wrote the negative and song of the sordid, but those who sat atop that muck heap, five poetic inches deep, some chose to call — artistic creativity — confusing libertinism with liberty. Fed on a diet of slop — do you ask us to be strong? nursed at cancerous breasts — do you ask us to be fine and pure? Yet on the disillusion we shall build a hope; on the fear, a stirring certainty; no need for unreal slogans with real bread for the free. We shall know our friends, seek the trust and the faith in the blood that has been shed, discard the catch-words of the past, lead — where once we were led. Given the fragments of a world, we shall melt and mold them into one with the fearless heat of man ' s new sun. Twenty