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?

   

   

    

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?

It's working

Phenomenal

virtuosity

stirs in a

thumb, and

all day no

one senses

reminding.

Don Hunstein 
Glenn Gould

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

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