An ill-bred divorce

Russia's seizure of the Crimean

peninsula is a revanchist move

by an incurably degenerate em-

pire; but Russia has the power

to do it, and not least because

it conforms with local tastes.

It is simply the case, that the

jingoists in this country are

greatly more responsible for an

adventure they hadn't the power

to stop, the wit to foreseee, or

the judgment to avoid, than the

hapless wisp we elected on the

silly pretense of curing them

with compromises. The triumphal-

ist idiots of the Right eventu-

ally must answer for the delu-

sion which they, alone, inhabit,

that the Cold War ended in any-

thing other than a divorce.

These events need explanation

to those we raise hopefully to

avoid their repetition. There

is no other excuse for public

comment on them, but mischief. 

There are times in the history of man

when the elements of civilisation are

so adjusted that their relations form

naturally and effortlessly of a consis-

tent pattern, and a perfect unity seems

to enclose the whole; but these are

short times, of rare and distant occur-

rence, like the brief flowering of a

centenarian aloe. The elements change,

and their relations cannot be preserved.

   

The Palladian front cracks, the plas-

terwork peels, and the wild foxglove

and the rosebay seed in the inter-

stices; the trim lawn is overgrown,

the topiary yews thrust out shapeless

limbs, the fluted sundial sinks awry

on its pedestal, and where then are 

the classical world and the essential

unities? 

For it is of the relations of elements

not of elements themselves, that intel-

lectual worlds are constructed.

And yet a classical relationship is 

the final justification of a whole

world, the brief moment of its per-

fection, when the moving elements 

(and if they live, they must move)

stand to each other at last in per-

fect symmetry.

The pattern cannot be frozen; the 

elements must move on, and the sym-

metry is lost; but it may be regain-

ed with other elements. And perhaps

our new world, the world of Marx and

Freud and Einstein, that seems now so

harsh and disorderly, will one day as-

sume such a classical harmony before

it too crumbles, against a pink sunset,

into romantic ruins.

Hugh Trevor-Roper

  Major

  H.M. Secret Intelligence Service

The Wartime Diaries

  April, 1945

Richard Davenport-Hines

  Editor

I.B. Tauris & Company, Ltd, 2012©

  

Burnishing days

Mr Ramsay could climb the rope just with
his hands. It was a wee bit like showing
off. I would love to have done it. He 
had his legs straight together at one side 
and sloping out. The rope went through his
wrists and his hands different, just like
his wrists jutting out. How did he do it?
He did not show us how. He just walked back
to his seat and looked at his book. Boys
were talking about it in the changing room.
Ye needed strong muscles to climb that way.
Mr Ramsay's arms were like that. I tried to
do it but it was right enough how yer arms
were no strong enough. But maybe I was fast-
est. 

The best thing was the swimming.
Except it was Monday morning, so
after ye got it ye had all the 
whole week to come and ye were going to be at school, it was just agony.
In the scheme I was a good swimmer and a fast racer with Mitch and the  boys. But here at school I was slow, I was no even a real swimmer. It was just like I was starting. Boys done it different. No them all but just
some, posh ones. Donald Shields especially. He was just the best racer ever. He done the butter-fly. I never seen anybody do it except on television. I tried it, I could not. I only done four strokes then that was that. But Donald shields just done it. We all were looking. Oh that is smashing. Oh jees oh he is great ..

                 Monday morning and it was all 
                 to come, all just horribleness. 
                 People talked on the bus but I 
                 did not, just looked out the win-
                 dow. My pals were at their own 
                 school. Here I did not have any 
                 pals. I did not care. I did not 
                 want any. One day I would not be 
                 here.


  
  


  So Kieron was a Pape's
  name. I did not care. I
  did not care about my name.
  If people said Kieron and
  gave a wee look, well that
  was just them. One was one,
  then the other one. That was
  just me, that was what I           thought.
                              







James Kelman's books are controversial
among critics and judges, who sometimes
award them a Man Booker or a Whitbread
Prize, and sometimes a good sharp chop
at The Guardian. On St Patrick's Day, I
don't think about that. I think about
Jonathan Swift's merry essay against dis-
establishing Christianity, on the ground
that it wouldn't do any good. What I mean
is, the empire has a language of such per-
fection for disintegration, it can achieve
all the separation any heart could crave.
It isn't its hegemony that rankles. 

























Jonathan Swift
An Argument Against
  Abolishing Christianity
1708
A Tale of a Tub
  and other Satires
Kathleen Williams
  editor
op. cit.


James Kelman
Kieron Smith, boy
Hamish Hamilton, 2008©

Saturday commute civ: That, and a very good eddy

  I always feel the 

  thing to go for 

  is speed.

                        

P.G. Wodehouse

  Interview with Gerald Clarke

  Paris Review©

    The Art of Fiction No. 60

  Winter, 1975

iii  Hermès, 2012©

An inconvenience

       I know, it's late.
       Please understand,
       it's why I'm here.

Once a hobbledehoy

  ..
  and just as our way is flat across
  Dales and gulches, as though our train were a pencil

  Guided by a ruler held against a photomural of the Alps
  We both come to see distance as something unofficial
  And impersonal yet not without its curious justification
  ..

  Only the wait in stations is vague and
  Dimensionless, like oneself. How do they decide how much
  Time to spend in each? One begins to suspect there's no
  Rule or that it's applied haphazardly.

Right in the middle of a

stately, searching poem,

one will feel release to

laugh where the phrasing

or the tempo says, "OK."

Is this because, we know

a poem wants more of us,

and is a merry vengeance

part of what it expects?

I honestly happen to be-

lieve, thinking strictly

as a rower, such release

is the finer moment of a

blade's recurring sweep. 

In the assimilation of a

new work of sound, more-

over, it's irrepressible

to pursue its adaptation

to one's own conditions,

adventurously to own it, 

even as its autonomy re-

veals itself. Poetry has

it easy, and yet nothing

else can have it harder.

What one can envy in the

poet, is that he's where

we like to be, composing

invitations to his home.

That needs gorgeousness.

Ah, where is it, for me,

except inside a rule ap-

plied haphazardly?

  In the wearying and world-weary clouds of steam like great

  White apples, might I just through proximity and aping

  Of postures and attitudes communicate this concern of mine

  To them? That their jagged attitudes correspond to mine,

  That their beefing strikes answering silver bells within

  My own chest, and that I know, as they do, how the last

  Stop is the most anxious one of all, though it means

  Getting home at last, to the pleasures and dissatisfactions

    of home?

John Ashbery

Houseboat Days

  Melodic Trains

  [fragment]

op. cit.

Come up, Southern Cross

  

News is of New Zealand
reconsidering the flag
again, the famous uni-
on jack in the canton,
stars of that southern
cross on the fly, out-
lined white over blue.

  For young people in
  wine there remain 2
  paradises, and both
  of great linkage to
  the seas. I hear, a
  Prime Minister fav-
  ours a silver fern,
  on a black field. I
  don't see paradise,
  in obscure foliage,
  much less radiance.



What is a country for,
I often wonder, if not
the fulfillment of the
patience of its stars?

  

They took an hour from my weekend

  

   they said I'd

   see it again,

     all the while

     pretending to

     keep it safe.

i  Hedi Slimane

Negotiations we recall

   Don't let me be happy  

   I agree to be secure.