Saturday commute clxxix: No rush

The idea that Pasternak knew these 

lines, and had perhaps carried 

them around in his head for twenty-

five years, really thrilled me,

more than any review I've ever read.

I think the parrotlike way in which

people say there is no 'communica-

tion' nowadays is rubbish really;

communication is having the faith

that if you do your utmost someone

somewhere does and will understand

this and sometime somewhere you 

will know it.

Stephen Spender

1959

Matthew Spender

A House in St John's Wood

  In search of my parents

Farrar, Straus & Giroux

2015©

Origins of Wednesday cix: An acquittal worse than the crimes

                   I've just been clearing my ears

                   from the proceedings in the US

                   Senate, and I must say, I'm sor-

                   ry I bothered. What posturing I

                   have heard, has been enough to

                   persuade me that the staggering

                   leap into denial on display, is

                   grossly worse than the betrayal

                   of the national interest under

                   prosecution. The President's

                   Party gives every sign of being

                   captivated by a perversion giv-

                   ing ordinary Constitutional in-

                   terpretive casuistry a halo of

                   innocence: oh, we forgot to tell

                   you, we've always believed in

                   absolute Executive power. How

                   comical it now seems in retro-

                   spect, to have seized power on

                   the pretexts of tiny government.

                   Credit an Annunciation arriving

                   under deprivation of legality

                   and reason, for exposing to this

                   Party the true, latent, revealed 

                   rights of its disorderly organs.

                   It's bathed in shining awe, to be

                   wringing no longer its hands, but

                   its own neck, out on Fifth Avenue.