Saturday, January 9, 2016

Saturday commute cxx: Hue and cry on the hustings






   We appreciate a species
   that strives to please 
   by affirming its breeding 
   and learning. The present 
   campaigns in American pol-
   itics, I regret to suspect,
   portray the same instinct,
   with the same foundations.

   Unnerving similarity in
   them all ought to be dis-
   turbing; their astounding
   appearance of distance
   from us is rather chasten-
   ed by an easy question ..

   Who ignored them so long?



















   
   
    

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Shirtfall





  Why doesn't the
  unbuttoned shirt-
  front assume the
  stethoscopic as-
  pect as it opens
  that we notice
  in the cowboy's
  shirt, unsnapped?









































Wednesday, January 6, 2016

It's working





Phenomenal
virtuosity
stirs in a
thumb, and
all day no
one senses
reminding.


















Don Hunstein 
Glenn Gould


Monday, January 4, 2016

This long campaign




Let's resume study
amidst the devour-
ing clangor build-
ing again and ris-
ing in the people.

























Jean-François-Arthur Rimbaud
Illuminations
  Jeunesse
  fragment
ca 1875




Sunday, January 3, 2016

The respite




. and when I thought
of singing of kings
and battles, the god
Apollo tweaked my ear 
and said to me, 'A 
shepherd should feed 
fat sheep and sing a 
slender song.'






    All of the songs Apollo sang alongside
    The listening river Eurotas who, blessed with the music,
    Commanded that his laurels learn them by heart,
    All these Silenus sang; the echoing valleys
    Echoed them up to the stars, till the Evening Star
    Said it was time for the flocks to come back in,
    Time to be counted, and time for him to set out
    Over a sky reluctant to yield the day.


























Virgil
David Ferry
  translation
The Eclogues of Virgil
  Eclogue VI
  Tityrus
  i    fragment
  vi  complete
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999©

ii  Tim Schuhmacher