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March 4, 2021The link you clicked lead you here and Poet Dana Gioia argues, from philosophy and Catholic tradition, that beauty will lead you to God. Do you believe it?
Is the world's end in catastrophe or beauty? In his poem, The End of the World, California Poet Laureate Gioia, an unapologetic Catholic, plays with the end of the world. End can mean finished and done - It can also mean purpose and meaning. Read the poem, watch the video, contemplate beauty in your own life and to whom beauty leads you.The End of the World
BY DANA GIOIA
“We're going,” they said, “to the end of the world.”
So they stopped the car where the river curled,
And we scrambled down beneath the bridge
On the gravel track of a narrow ridge.
We tramped for miles on a wooded walk
Where dog-hobble grew on its twisted stalk.
Then we stopped to rest on the pine-needle floor
While two ospreys watched from an oak by the shore.
We came to a bend, where the river grew wide
And green mountains rose on the opposite side.
My guides moved back. I stood alone,
As the current streaked over smooth flat stone.
Shelf by stone shelf the river fell.
The white water goosetailed with eddying swell.
Faster and louder the current dropped
Till it reached a cliff, and the trail stopped.
I stood at the edge where the mist ascended,
My journey done where the world ended.
I looked downstream. There was nothing but sky,
The sound of the water, and the water’s reply.Fyodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian author of The Brothers Karamazon, wrote that beauty will save the world. Former National Endowment for the Arts chief, Dana Gioia, an unabashed Catholic, Californian and lover of beauty explores the philosophical and theological possibilities of beauty in this First Things sponsored video.
