Saturday commute xcvii: Gérard goes underground

  Not since his all-nighter 

  in the loading dock of the 

  Pierre Hotel has Gérard so 

  mystified us, as when he ac-

  cepted a chum's invitation 

  to spend Christmas at Guan-

  tánamo, that exclusive thumb

  of Cuba where our very most         distinguished guests are dom-

  iciled, their distance from 

  our shores renewed in this 

  week's shining Budget Deal, 

  hailed far and wide as the 

  very model, given the alter-

  native, of how to govern.

  And we thought Cromwell's

  New Model Army was austere.

  Probably ours is hiring?

But now, already Gérard succumbs to a whiff of good cop/bad cop conster-nation, such as can beset the best of us, subjected to any instrumentality of protection by our State, whence now and then he ventures to the infir-mary, taking counsel with Abdulaziz, who'd just graduated from Riyadh when we brought him to our beach.

That was 12 years ago.
Here is what he told Gérard:

  Praise God, who placed

  a garden and an orchard

  in my bosom

  so they will be with me

  always.

Abdulaziz

I Shall Not Complain

Marc Falkoff, editor

Poems from Guantánamo

  The Detainees Speak

op. cit.

Oh, no ketchup, please

  Lucky thing, he didn't

  text this. Can you im-
  agine, letting the NSA
  know how to tease you?
  That truly would carry
  bigbrotherhood too far.

Pray for sunshine, and some peace

     Given any weather 

     someone's candy's 

     gonna run.

  

   

  It is to the strength of     this amazing invention we     are to attribute that         unequal'd fire and rapture,   which is so forcible, that   no man of a true poetical     spirit is master of himself   while he reads him. 

     On its face, it seems

     unseasonable this week 

     for one to be remember-

     ing the poem of force,

     as Simone Weil so ex-

     actly saw it, even as

     its most radiant heir

     recited it in English,

     capturing the distur-

     bance, say, the shock

     and awe of genius.

     I make allowances for

     the best, or what are

     holiday wishes worth?

     Peace will never seem

     more perfect, than in

     this recorded absence.

Alexander Pope

Preface

  The Iliad of Homer

  Alexander Pope,

    translation

June 6, 1715

Penguin Classics, 1996©

Origins of Wednesday iii: patriotic activity

My child, when you reach

  strange shores, and your food

Is gone, and hunger makes you eat

  your tables,

  [Anchises said]

Then trust that home

  and rest are there. Be mindful,

Lay buildings out and raise

  defensive walls.

  This is that hunger       [said Aeneas],

  waiting till the end

  To put a limit to our     exile.

    

         

Virgil

The Aeneid

  vii, 124 - 129

19 BC

Sarah Ruden, translation

Yale University Press, 2008©

The People of the United States

The Constitution of the United States

  Amendment iv

December 15, 1791

Richard Leon, J.

Klayman v. Obama

United States District Court

  District of Columbia

December 16, 2013

Itinerant red

  revenons, à
  nos moutons

     Consider how, when sought,
     The cliff-head whales that frequent
     The sunlit radius of Antarctica
     Tail down beneath its fields of rustling ice
     Then 30 minutes later raise
     Their rainbow spouts above a far lagoon.

   

   Information takes

   the whale's tack.

   It will come.

   An intelligent as-
   pect of Logue's i-
   dea rests on hints
   seen in the poem -
   that there is only
   one school of red.

   
    

   

Christopher Logue

All Day Permanent Red

  The First Battle Scenes

  of Homer's 'Iliad,' 

  Rewritten

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003©

   

Cinch

  Some signals

  are like any

  other throw-

  away, priced

  accordingly:

  a wasteline.

  Tautness hid

  with shadow.

Sunday mendicant

   Ho. You wouldn't
   have, I suppose,
   a plaid one could
   believe in?

      
     Shall the dust
     praise thee?
     Shall it declare
     thy truth?






















Psalm xxx
[fragment]
op. cit.