I realize, given another Sunday
morning steeped in American car-
nage, to share tales of where
we were when another brigand
bit the dust, is no mere swap-
ping of alibis, but a habit of
sealing the tale in memory for
recital to the heirs of the
Bush family's Supreme Court.
I, for my guilty part, was
scooping up a copy of a slen-
der satire from Wodehouse, The
Military Invasion of America,
and also coming across this
delicious aperçu on Ovid in
McClatchy:
When men would be gods, they pass new laws
and strengthen the Family. Like gods,
Then, they breed contempt and their own betrayal.
Well, what can we expect of
a Classicist: one of the few
things one cannot be, without
having done the reading?
Possibly I have a more self-
indulgent alibi than one should
confess, given the precious turn
in our custom of slaughter. Like
you, I've begun to consider wheth-
er it's even possible to wonder,
if we aren't allowing our way
with murderous rampage to descend
into an exhibition of upper-middle
class shopping sprees gone wrong,
a classic case of Trinkets Envy,
posing the question, who has the
glossiest J-curve of frustration?
Who, among the farm lads in your
little neighborhood, could stock-
pile half the magazines of ballis-
tic ornament that one pale college
boy of means amassed without appar-
ent strain? It truly is enough to
make one savour the negligent hom-
icides of homophobic Reaganism, a
crime wave perpetrated entirely by
thrift and arch oblivion. Now do we
take too much to heart, our warrior
ninny's urgings to go shopping? Yet,
who expects our Red State saints,
hoist by their own petard, to coun-
sel us to save? Remind them of their
mantra, for we've read it well:
Viruses don't kill. People do.
J.D. McClatchy
Ovid's Farewell
Stars Principal
1986
Plundered Hearts
New and Selected Poems
Alfred A. Knopf, 2014©
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