Edward Kennedy Is Now History

HEROIC

When that last remnant of the Baha’i heroic age (1844-1921) died on 15 July 1932, Ted Kennedy, a man who would become what might very well be called the last remnant of a heroic family was five months old. (1)
(1) Fatimih Sultan was entitled "Varaqiy-i-'Ulyá" or "Greatest Holy Leaf".  She was the only daughter of the Prophet-Founder of the Bahá'í Faith. Also known as Bahiyyih Khanum, she died on 15 July 1932 and Ted Kennedy was born on 22 February 1932.  He died yesterday. This prose-poem will serve for me as a quasi-eulogy. I hope this short piece of writing is enjoyed by a few at this internet site.-Ron Price, George Town, Tasmania

You were in office, Ted, from
the age of thirty when I was just
beginning my own office as that
pioneer-traveller for that young
Canadian Bahá'í community....(1)

You became the third longest
serving senator and I became
the longest serving international
pioneer in Canada.  But, Ted, it is
presumptuous to compare my life
to yours, but I’m going to do it....

You had back pain all your years
after ’64 and I had to deal with
bipolar disorder after ’63.  You
ran off a bridge in ’69 and I ran
off the rails in ’68 due to...BPD.
Some never forgave you, Ted
and some never understood me.

You had a long history of public
service stretching until your very
death, just yesterday........Energy,
what energy you had! You’ve got
33 pages now at Wikipedia, Ted,
one of the modern literary monu-
ments and what a list of stuff, Ted!

You were the youngest of nine
children and I was just an only
child. All those schools, Ted...
how did you survive it all? It was
a miracle that you got through
your education.  I could go on
and on with this comparison, this
contrast.  I’m really not in your...
league, not any where near you.
Here I am at 65—had enough of
meetings, conversations, but still
have little forays into public space.

“Congratulations,” Ted, “goodonyer,”
as they say Downunder. May you live
in peace in that Land of Light, that un-
discovered country, that hole as some
call the place where those go who do
not speak any more.  You did enough
talking for a dozen men in that dynasty
of Kennedys who are gone from us now.

(1) Ted Kennedy was in office since November 1962 and I was a pioneer from September 1962.

Ron Price
26 August 2009

I'm sure, by now eaglecap, the news has reached you. I leave you with another prose-poem for your possible pleasure.-Ron in Tasmania
---------------

RIGHTNESS

 "There is no music in the literature," writes Harold Schonberg, "that has Bach's kind of rightness." There is rightness in an inevitability, an intelligence, in an organized sequence of notes, in a relation with religion and divinity, in a new harmonic language, sense and intensity which sets Bach off from his more timid and less inventive contemporaries. Nothing could interfere with his vision of music and his drive, nor his compulsion to saturate himself with his art. Even so, he expected the bulk of his music to disappear after his death. Death was a subject which obsessed him. -Ron Price with thanks to Harold Schonberg, The Lives of the Great Composers, W.W. Norton, NY, 1981, pp.35-46.

We all die and there
is, yes, a rightness
here in this endless
poetic of existence:
politicians, poets,
priests, power people,
paupers, pundits--
they all go into a hole
for those who speak no
more. Would you want
togo on here forever??

Do they pray for you and
can you pray for them?
Does any of it have some
relation with religion-divinity,
mysterious, inevitable,
harmonic,visionary,
obsessive, compulsive,
all this, with a strange
attraction to that very
undiscovered country
and its breezes, trees,
sunshine and roses and,
yes, light upon light.....
I wish you well, Edward.

Ron Price
For Edward Kennedy
and Others with an
Interest in the Afterlife...
if there is one.....??!!