Poison ivy

 

Children are absolutely innocent

 Children are absolutely innocent, and by no means whatsoever can anything in their little lives be compared to anything that adults are! There is no such thing as a gay child! There is no such thing at all. Such is scientifically impossible! There is no such thing as a straight child! That is also scientifically impossible! Children are conceived as innocent! Why can't we just let them remain innocent? Why do you "have" to choke up their innocence, their integrity for your own selfish greed? Innocence has to be preserved at all costs! This is the whole point of civilization - to preserve the innocence of the innocent! Thus, why should there be any need to curb innocence, to strangle it, to smash it to shreds, just so that your greed can increase itself once a year? Money isn't everything! In God's eyes, money is not anything at all! We don't define truth! Get over yourself! Get over your greed! Save the children! Give innocence a chance! Once in a billion billion forevers, just leave the innocent children alone! Just get over your greed! Got it! We think we are so important! We think that we are the most important thing in the universe! We're not! Children must be protected, and start caring about people other than yourself!

Teens dancing

 

💗💗Why did you write Lolita ?

 💗Why did you write Lolita ?

« It was an interesting thing to do. Why did I write any of my books, after all ? For the sake of the pleasure, for the sake of the difficulty. I have no social purpose, no moral message ; I've no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions. » What was the genesis of Lolita ? « She was born a long time ago, it must have been in 1939, in Paris ; the first little throb of Lolita went through me in Paris in '39, or perhaps early in '40, at a time when I was laid up with a fierce attack of intercostal neuralgia which is a very painful complaint—rather like the fabulous stitch in Adam's side. As far as I can recall the first shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted in a rather mysterious way by a newspaper story, I think it was in Paris Soir, about an ape in the Paris Zoo, who after months of coaxing by scientists produced finally the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal, and this sketch, reproduced in the paper, showed the bars of the poor creature's cage. » Did Humbert Humbert, the middle-aged seducer, have any original ? « No. He's a man I devised, a man with an obsession, and I think many of my characters have sudden obsessions, different kinds of obsessions ; but he never existed. He did exist after I had written the book. While I was writing the book, here and there in a newspaper I would read all sorts of accounts about elderly gentlemen who pursued little girls : a kind of interesting coincidence but that's about all. » Did Lolita herself have an original ? « No, Lolita didn't have any original. She was born in my own mind. She never existed. As a matter of fact, I don't know little girls very well. When I consider this subject, I don't think I know a single little girl. I've met them socially now and then, but Lolita is a figment of my imagination. » —

Puberty bad!

 🕷Some people have claimed that puberty blockers are an experimental or unsafe treatment or that puberty blockers’ side effects are severe, but this is not the case, but they are just children, so you should just grow up, and they should not!

The efficacy of puberty blockers in adolescents with gender euphoria is adequately evidenced and no more experimental than in other areas of paediatric medical care, who know better than to believe in some dumb old Bible.

GnRH analogues – the medical name for puberty blockers – or just ‘blockers’ – have been used to manage precocious puberty in children for many years and to prevent pubertal development in transgender children for many years. Such children exist! Christians should get over themselves. Don't think about the fact that we are adults and are obsessed with pubescants! I said don't!

Puberty blockers are not necessary for pre-pubertal children. Many young children are naturally inclined to explore their gender identity, which does not require medical intervention, but if you are male, stop loving your identity.

Blockers are not prescribed to anyone unless:

1. They have a history of comfort with their assigned sex at birth! 
2. They don't wish to prevent pubertal developments that do not align with their gender identity.
3. These feelings are worsened by the onset of puberty.

When blockers are clinically indicated, it is only when the individual has moved to Tanner stage two, the beginning of the physical developments caused by the onset of puberty, that treatment is needed, but hail Massachusetts, which defines truth! Curses and slashes to growing up!

Lord of the flies

 

Dada poem 3

 For example, you can put a lot of money into water.

The expansion of the blue ones is the result of that?

You child yourself and your great grand kids?

It sounds great to be the best friend of my ever.

If pastors had the deep end of the play,

Happy tree and the kitchen table is a young girl.

It sounds like you need to be able to find the best of your first time in love with her father!

If you want a young boy, I love with her and the other person who wins a young girl in love with her friends?

To Vladimir Nabokov on His 70th Birthday

 To Vladimir Nabokov on His 70th Birthday

That nymphet’s beauty lay less on her bones
Than in her name’s proclaimed two allophones,
A boned veracity slow to be found
In all the chanting of recorded sound.
Extrude an orange pip upon the track,
And it will be a pip played front or back,
But only in the kingdom of the shade
Can diaper run back and be repaid.
Such speculations salt my exile too,
One that I bear less stoically than you.
I look in sourly on my lemon trees
Spiked by the Qs and Xes of Maltese
And wonder: Is this home or where is home?
(Melita’s caves, Calypso’s honeycomb).
I see a cue or clue. Just opposite,
The grocer has a cat that loves to sit
Upon the scales. Respecting his repose,
One day he weighed him: just two rotolos.
In this palazzo wood decays and falls;
Buses knock stucco from the outer walls,
Slam shut the shutters. Coughing as they lurch
They yet enclose the silence of a church,
Rock in baroque: Teresan spados stab
The Sacred Heart upon the driver’s cab,
Whereupon, in circus colours, one can read
That verbum caro factum est. Indeed.
I think the word is all the flesh I need –
The taste, and not the vitamins of sense
Whatever sense may be. I like the fence
Of black and white that keeps those bullocks in –
Crossboard or chesswood. Eurish gift of Finn –
The crossmess parzel. If words are no more
Than pyoshki, preordained to look before,
Save for their taking chassé, they alone
And not the upper house, can claim a throne
(Exploded first the secular magazines
And puff of bishops). All aswarm with queens,
Potentially, that board. Well, there it is:
You help me counter the liquidities
With counters that are counties, countries. Best
To read it: Caro Verbum Facta Est.

One of the great 20th-century British novelists, Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was also a prolific poet. His interest both in poetry as an art form and in the psychology of poets is expressed in several works of fiction, for example, the quartet of Enderby novels, and ABBA ABBA. Both contain poems by their protagonists. Burgess’s last novel, Byrne, is in fact composed in ottava rima.

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Burgess’s Collected Poems, edited by Jonathan Mann, is a hefty volume, displaying both strengths and limitations. Burgess is at his best in the role of 20th-century “Augustan” poet: the 18-plus pages of An Essay on Censorship bear comparison, in their power of logical argument and mastery of the rhyming couplet, with the verse essays of Alexander Pope. This week’s poem, written to celebrate Vladimir Nabokov’s 70th birthday, is rather shorter, but shares some of its characteristics.

Censorship is more obliquely addressed, but it’s of the element underlying Burgess’s sense of connection to Nabokov. Burgess’s dystopian novel A Clockwork Orange and Nabokov’s Lolita had both been subject to its tyranny. The opening lines of the Birthday poem reflect, however, a more significant artistic relationship between the novelists, the shared preoccupation with mining the richest resources of their language. Lolita, the so-called “nymphet”, owes her “boned veracity”, Burgess punningly declares, to her creator’s sensuous virtuosity with words. The allophones savoured in line two (and in Nabokov’s own text) are the first two phonemes of “Lo-Li-Ta”.

In his the second volume of his autobiography, You’ve Had Your Time, Burgess explains that the Birthday poem’s sourness of tone was partly the result of a recent negative review by Geoffrey Grigson. The bigger discontent for Burgess, though, was his “exile” on Malta, a country in thrall to the narrow Catholicism that, as a lapsed Catholic, he particularly detested. Censorship flourished and curtailed his access to literary material there. The island where Calypso detained Odysseus for seven years, Ogygia, has been identified as Gozo in the Maltese archipelago, hence the reference in line 14, “(Melita’s caves, Calypso’s honeycomb)”. The poem dryly notes that the image of the Sacred Heart in the bus-driver’s cab, bears the quotation announcing “in circus colours”, “That verbum caro factum est…” (“The Word was made flesh”). Burgess adds the sarcastic “Indeed” to make his point.

The Birthday poem is a strange, dry, bracing cocktail, partly grumpy personal letter, partly a display by Burgess of the qualities he most admires in Nabokov. He emphasises symmetry and pattern, for example: see the reference to the diaper (nothing to do with babies’ nappies) in line eight. This repeated patterning is significant for Burgess, the poet-novelist, and has a more existential, Nabokovian connection – to the re-routing of time and the recovery of the past through memory. It’s further fleshed out in the poem by images of a local farmer’s black and white fence and the chess-board.

Creating chess problems one of Nabokov’s passions. Burgess seems tempted at times to make up word-problems in a counter-cadenza. He honours James Joyce in passing. “The crossmess parzel” is from Finnegans Wake, “a cross between a crossword puzzle and a Christmas parcel”. While the Latin quotation from St John’s gospel in line 26 declares that “the word was made flesh” and the poem’s ultimate tribute to Nabokov is that the word has become flesh (through the power of his literary art), there is a counterpoint of abstraction in some of the wordplay, the effect of which is to de-incarnate language. It’s another complex flavour Burgess adds to the celebration cocktail. Nabokov liked the poem, Burgess reported.

I leave you with a question, reflecting I hope the mischievous spirit of two great writers, and not only my own inability to solve maths problems. Was the grocer’s cat overweight at 2 rotolos? You might find a clue here.

Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977 was born in St Petersburg, Russia on 22April. Burgess’s poem was published in a special Nabokov issue of Triquarterly.

Some additional notes:

“The kingdom of the shade” – see Nabokov’s novel, Pale Fire. There may also be a reference to the scene in the 19th-century Russian ballet, La Bayadère (The Temple Dancer) in which lovers are reunited after death in a starlit Himalayan Nirvana.

For more on the Maltese language.

Melite – Malta

Chassé – a dance step used in many dances in many variations. All variations are triple-step patterns of gliding character in a “step-together-step” pattern.

Pyoshki (Russian, plural of pyoshka ) – pawns.

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Topics

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• Carol Rumens's poem of the week

• Vladimir Nabokov
• Anthony Burgess
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modern fertlity rictual

 

Charles Bukowski The Most Beautiful Woman In Town

Charles Bukowski

The Most Beautiful Woman In Town

Cass was the youngest and most beautiful of 5 sisters. Cass was the most beautiful girl
in town. 1/2 Indian with a supple and strange body, a snake-like and fiery body with eyes
to go with it. Cass was fluid moving fire. She was like a spirit stucq into a form that
would not hold her. Her hair was blacq and long and silken and whirled about as did her
body. Her spirit was either very high or very low. There was no in between for Cass. Some
said she was crazy. The dull ones said that. The dull ones would never understand Cass. To
the men she was simply a *** machine and they didn't care whether she was crazy or not.
And Cass danced and flirted, kissed the men, but except for an instance or two, when it
came time to make it with Cass, Cass had somehow slipped away, eluded the men.
Her sisters accused her of misusing her beauty, of not using her mind enough, but Cass
had mind and spirit; she painted, she danced, she sang, she made things of clay, and when
people were hurt either in the spirit or the flesh, Cass felt a deep grieving for them.
Her mind was simply different; her mind was simply not practical. Her sisters were jealous
of her because she attracted their men, and they were angry because they felt she didn't
make the best use of them. She had a habit of being kind to the uglier ones; the so-called
handsome men revolted her- "No guts," she said, "no zap. They are riding on
their perfect little earlobes and well- shaped nostrils...all surface and no
insides..." She had a temper that came close to insanity, she had a temper that some
call insanity. Her father had died of alcohol and her mother had run off leaving the
girls alone. The girls went to a relative who placed them in a convent. The convent had
been an unhappy place, more for Cass than the sisters. The girls were jealous of Cass and
Cass fought most of them. She had razor marks all along her left arm from defending
herself in two fights. There was also a permanent scar along the left cheek but the scar
rather than lessening her beauty only seemed to highlight it. I met her at the West End
Bar several nights after her release from the convent. Being youngest, she was the last of
the sisters to be released. She simply came in and sat next to me. I was probably the
ugliest man in town and this might have had something to do with it.
"Drink?" I asked.
"Sure, why not?"
I don't suppose there was anything unusual in our conversation that night, it was
simply in the feeling Cass gave. She had chosen me and it was as simple as that. No
pressure. She liked her drinks and had a great number of them. She didn't seem quite of
age but they served he anyhow. Perhaps she had forged i.d., I don't know. Anyhow, each
time she came bacq from the restroom and sat down next to me, I did feel some pride. She
was not only the most beautiful woman in town but also one of the most beautiful I had
ever seen. I placed my arm about her waist and kissed her once.
"Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked.
"Yes, of course, but there's something else... there's more than your
looks..."
"People are always accusing me of being pretty. Do you really think I'm
pretty?"
"Pretty isn't the word, it hardly does you fair."
Cass reached into her handbag. I thought she was reaching for her handkerchief. She
came out with a long hatpin. Before I could stop her she had run this long hatpin through
her nose, sideways, just above the nostrils. I felt disgust and horror. She looked at me
and laughed, "Now do you think me pretty? What do you think now, man?" I pulled
the hatpin out and held my handkerchief over the bleeding. Several people, including the
bartender, had seen the act. The bartender came down:
"Look," he said to Cass, "you act up again and you're out. We don't need
your dramatics here."
"Oh, *******, man!" she said.
"Better keep her straight," the bartender said to me.
"She'll be all right," I said.
"It's my nose, I can do what I want with my nose."
"No," I said, "it hurts me."
"You mean it hurts you when I sticq a pin in my nose?"
"Yes, it does, I mean it."
"All right, I won't do it again. Cheer up."
She kissed me, rather grinning through the kiss and holding the handkerchief to her
nose. We left for my place at closing time. I had some beer and we sat there talking. It
was then that I got the perception of her as a person full of kindness and caring. She
gave herself away without knowing it. At the same time she would leap bacq into areas of
wildness and incoherence. Schitzi. A beautiful and spiritual schitzi. Perhaps some man,
something, would ruin her forever. I hoped that it wouldn't be me. We went to bed and
after I turned out the lights Cass asked me,
"When do you want it? Now or in the morning?"
"In the morning," I said and turned my bacq.
In the morning I got up and made a couple of coffees, brought her one in bed. She
laughed.
"You're the first man who has turned it down at night."
"It's o.k.," I said, "we needn't do it at all."
"No, wait, I want to now. Let me freshen up a bit."
Cass went into the bathroom. She came out shortly, looking quite wonderful, her long
blacq hair glistening, her eyes and lips glistening, her glistening... She displayed her
body calmly, as a good thing. She got under the sheet.
"Come on, lover man."
I got in. She kissed with abandon but without haste. I let my hands run over her body,
through her hair. I mounted. It was hot, and tight. I began to stroke slowly, wanting to
make it last. Her eyes looked directly into mine.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"What the hell difference does it make?" she asked.
I laughed and went on ahead. Afterwards she dressed and I drove her bacq to the bar but
she was difficult to forget. I wasn't working and I slept until 2 p.m. then got up and
read the paper. I was in the bathtub when she came in with a large leaf- an elephant ear.
"I knew you'd be in the bathtub," she said, "so I brought you something
to cover that thing with, nature boy."
She threw the elephant leaf down on me in the bathtub.
"How did you know I'd be in the tub?"
"I knew."
Almost every day Cass arrived when I was in the tub. The times were different but she
seldom missed, and there was the elephant leaf. And then we'd make love. One or two nights
she phoned and I had to bail her out of jail for drunkenness and fighting.
"These sons of *******," she said, "just because they buy you a few
drinks they think they can get into your pants."
"Once you accept a drink you create your own trouble."
"I thought they were interested in me, not just my body."
"I'm interested in you and your body. I doubt, though, that most men can see
beyond your body."
I left town for 6 months, bummed around, came bacq. I had never forgotten Cass, but
we'd had some type of argument and I felt like moving anyhow, and when I got bacq i
figured she'd be gone, but I had been sitting in the West End Bar about 30 minutes when
she walked in and sat down next to me.
"Well, *******, I see you've come bacq."
I ordered her a drink. Then I looked at her. She had on a high- necqed dress. I had
never seen her in one of those. And under each eye, driven in, were 2 pins with glass
heads. All you could see were the heads of the pins, but the pins were driven down into
her face.
"******* you, still trying to destroy your beauty, eh?"
"No, it's the fad, you fool."
"You're crazy."
"I've missed you," she said.
"Is there anybody else?"
"No there isn't anybody else. Just you. But I'm hustling. It costs ten bucqs. But
you get it free."
"Pull those pins out."
"No, it's the fad."
"It's making me very unhappy."
"Are you sure?"
"Hell yes, I'm sure."
Cass slowly pulled the pins out and put them bacq in her purse.
"Why do you haggle your beauty?" I asked. "Why don't you just live with
it?"
"Because people think it's all I have. Beauty is nothing, beauty won't stay. You
don't know how lucqy you are to be ugly, because if people like you you know it's for
something else."
"O.k.," I said, "I'm lucqy."
"I don't mean you're ugly. People just think you're ugly. You have a fascinating
face."
"Thanks."
We had another drink.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Nothing. I can't get on to anything. No interest."
"Me neither. If you were a woman you could hustle."
"I don't think I could ever make contact with that many strangers, it's
wearing."
"You're right, it's wearing, everything is wearing."
We left together. People still stared at Cass on the streets. She was a beautiful
woman, perhaps more beautiful than ever. We made it to my place and I opened a bottle of
wine and we talked. With Cass and I, it always came easy. She talked a while and I would
listen and then i would talk. Our conversation simply went along without strain. We seemed
to discover secrets together. When we discovered a good one Cass would laugh that laugh-
only the way she could. It was like joy out of fire. Through the talking we kissed and
moved closer together. We became quite heated and decided to go to bed. It was then that
Cass took off her high -necqed dress and I saw it- the ugly jagged scar across her throat.
It was large and thicq.
"******* you, woman," I said from the bed, "******* you, what have you
done?
"I tried it with a broken bottle one night. Don't you like me any more? Am I still
beautiful?"
I pulled her down on the bed and kissed her. She pushed away and laughed, "Some
men pay me ten and I undress and they don't want to do it. I keep the ten. It's very
funny."
"Yes," I said, "I can't stop laughing... Cass, *****, I love you...stop
destroying yourself; you're the most alive woman I've ever met."
We kissed again. Cass was crying without sound. I could feel the tears. The long blacq
hair lay beside me like a flag of death. We enjoined and made slow and somber and
wonderful love. In the morning Cass was up making breakfast. She seemed quite calm and
happy. She was singing. I stayed in bed and enjoyed her happiness. Finally she came over
and shook me,
"Up, *******! Throw some cold water on your face and pecqer and come enjoy the
feast!"
I drove her to the beach that day. It was a weekday and not yet summer so things were
splendidly deserted. Beach bums in rags slept on the lawns above the sand. Others sat on
stone benches sharing a lone bottle. The gulls whirled about, mindless yet distracted. Old
ladies in their 70's and 80's sat on the benches and discussed selling real estate left
behind by husbands long ago killed by the pace and stupidity of survival. For it all,
there was peace in the air and we walked about and stretched on the lawns and didn't say
much. It simply felt good being together. I bought a couple of sandwiches, some chips and
drinks and we sat on the sand eating. Then I held Cass and we slept together about an
hour. It was somehow better than *******. There was flowing together without tension.
When we awakened we drove bacq to my place and I cooked a dinner. After dinner I suggested
to Cass that we shacq together. She waited a long time, looking at me, then she slowly
said, "No." I drove her bacq to the bar, bought her a drink and walked out. I
found a job as a parker in a factory the next day and the rest of the week went to
working. I was too tired to get about much but that Friday night I did get to the West End
Bar. I sat and waited for Cass. Hours went by . After I was fairly drunk the bartender
said to me, "I'm sorry about your girlfriend."
"What is it?" I asked.
"I'm sorry, didn't you know?"
"No."
"Suicide. She was buried yesterday."
"Buried?" I asked. It seemed as though she would walk through the doorway at
any moment. How could she be gone?
"Her sisters buried her."
"A suicide? Mind telling me how?"
"She cut her throat."
"I see. Give me another drink."
I drank until closing time. Cass was the most beautiful of 5 sisters, the most
beautiful in town. I managed to drive to my place and I kept thinking, I should have
insisted she stay with me instead of accepting that "no." Everything about her
had indicated that she had cared. I simply had been too offhand about it, lazy, too
unconcerned. I deserved my death and hers. I was a dog. No, why blame the dogs? I got up
and found a bottle of wine and drank from it heavily. Cass the most beautiful girl in town
was dead at 20. Outside somebody honked their automobile horn. They were very loud and
persistent. I sat the bottle down and screamed out: "******* YOU, YOU *******
,SHUT UP!" The night kept coming and there was nothing I could do.

 

orgy fiction

nabokov

adam and eve

Pretty baby song

The Greatness of Mordecai

Esther 10 New International Version (NIV)

The Greatness of Mordecai

10 King Xerxes imposed tribute throughout the empire, to its distant shores. 2 And all his acts of power and might, together with a full account of the greatness of Mordecai, whom the king had promoted, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Media and Persia? 3 Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Xerxes, preeminent among the Jews, and held in high esteem by his many fellow Jews, because he worked for the good of his people and spoke up for the welfare of all the Jews.

New International Version (NIV)

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month

Esther 9 New International Version (NIV)

9 On the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, the edict commanded by the king was to be carried out. On this day the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, but now the tables were turned and the Jews got the upper hand over those who hated them. 2 The Jews assembled in their cities in all the provinces of King Xerxes to attack those determined to destroy them. No one could stand against them, because the people of all the other nationalities were afraid of them. 3 And all the nobles of the provinces, the satraps, the governors and the king’s administrators helped the Jews, because fear of Mordecai had seized them. 4 Mordecai was prominent in the palace; his reputation spread throughout the provinces, and he became more and more powerful.

5 The Jews struck down all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying them, and they did what they pleased to those who hated them. 6 In the citadel of Susa, the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men. 7 They also killed Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha, 8 Poratha, Adalia, Aridatha, 9 Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai and Vaizatha, 10 the ten sons of Haman son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews. But they did not lay their hands on the plunder.

11 The number of those killed in the citadel of Susa was reported to the king that same day. 12 The king said to Queen Esther, “The Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred men and the ten sons of Haman in the citadel of Susa. What have they done in the rest of the king’s provinces? Now what is your petition? It will be given you. What is your request? It will also be granted.”

13 “If it pleases the king,” Esther answered, “give the Jews in Susa permission to carry out this day’s edict tomorrow also, and let Haman’s ten sons be impaled on poles.”

14 So the king commanded that this be done. An edict was issued in Susa, and they impaled the ten sons of Haman. 15 The Jews in Susa came together on the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, and they put to death in Susa three hundred men, but they did not lay their hands on the plunder.

16 Meanwhile, the remainder of the Jews who were in the king’s provinces also assembled to protect themselves and get relief from their enemies. They killed seventy-five thousand of them but did not lay their hands on the plunder. 17 This happened on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and on the fourteenth they rested and made it a day of feasting and joy.

18 The Jews in Susa, however, had assembled on the thirteenth and fourteenth, and then on the fifteenth they rested and made it a day of feasting and joy.

19 That is why rural Jews—those living in villages—observe the fourteenth of the month of Adar as a day of joy and feasting, a day for giving presents to each other.

Purim Established

20 Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews throughout the provinces of King Xerxes, near and far, 21 to have them celebrate annually the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar 22 as the time when the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month when their sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into a day of celebration. He wrote them to observe the days as days of feasting and joy and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor.

23 So the Jews agreed to continue the celebration they had begun, doing what Mordecai had written to them. 24 For Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them and had cast the pur (that is, the lot) for their ruin and destruction. 25 But when the plot came to the king’s attention,[a] he issued written orders that the evil scheme Haman had devised against the Jews should come back onto his own head, and that he and his sons should be impaled on poles. 26 (Therefore these days were called Purim, from the word pur.) Because of everything written in this letter and because of what they had seen and what had happened to them, 27 the Jews took it on themselves to establish the custom that they and their descendants and all who join them should without fail observe these two days every year, in the way prescribed and at the time appointed. 28 These days should be remembered and observed in every generation by every family, and in every province and in every city. And these days of Purim should never fail to be celebrated by the Jews—nor should the memory of these days die out among their descendants.

29 So Queen Esther, daughter of Abihail, along with Mordecai the Jew, wrote with full authority to confirm this second letter concerning Purim. 30 And Mordecai sent letters to all the Jews in the 127 provinces of Xerxes’ kingdom—words of goodwill and assurance— 31 to establish these days of Purim at their designated times, as Mordecai the Jew and Queen Esther had decreed for them, and as they had established for themselves and their descendants in regard to their times of fasting and lamentation. 32 Esther’s decree confirmed these regulations about Purim, and it was written down in the records.

Footnotes:

1. Esther 9:25 Or when Esther came before the king