Horace at your back viii: footholds

We mark an anniversary of
our earthquake, yours and
mine; one never hears the
San Franciscan say, You
couldn't understand it.
Rather, he believes we
do. He is, himself, a
constant, continuing mi-
grant toward settlement.

    What did you think of Chios,
    Bullatius, or of famous Les-
    bos, how did elegant Samos
    strike you, or Sardis, royal
    seat of Croesus, or Smyrna
    and Colophon, are they super-
    ior or inferior to their rep-
    utation?

    And you, my friend, accept
    with grateful hand whatever
    hour the god has blessed you
    with, and do not put off plea-
    sures to some unknown time, so
    that you may say .. you have
    lived happily; for if it is
    reason and forethought that
    take away our cares, not a
    site that commands a wide
    sweep of ocean, it is their
    climate, not their mind, that
    men change when they rush a-
    cross the sea.

Horace
20 BC
John Davie
  translation
Satires and Epistles
  Epistles I, 11
op. cit.

April 18, 1906

Let's look into agony

My feeling, I must tell you,
is probably very much like
yours, when I run into a suf-
ferer, en passant. 

    "Oh, yeah, well, I know your
    complaint, but did they never
    tell you about language, grow-
    ing up?"

    "I mean, you know, the drug,
    the cheap posture, the grub-
    by garbage clothes to punish
    your father: didn't they let
    you know poetry, your voice,
    could lift all this away?"

 

    But it never fails, you know,
    much as we'd never want it to,
    that something intervenes, to
    amount to perfect sense.

    And we don't get a poet, but
    we get what we bargained for.
    They notoriously never come
    when we call, anyway, so we
    say, we came out of this OK.

    I, for my part, don't
    believe a word of this.
    It's just a guy thing,
    as we observe in Don
    Alfonso, to cover his
    bets with cynicism. In
    fact we do get a poem,
    every now and again.


















T.S. Eliot
1888 - 1965

Hunting life

Another day he spots what he
supposes to be a wood pigeon
but 'the possibility of its
being an immature male Pere-
grine flashed across my mind'.

'Presumably,' 'possibility':
wish fulfillment is at work
here: the beginnings of a 
longing for the peregrine so
keen that it caused - in the
blurry distance of his far-
sight - dove to morph into
falcon, pigeon to pass into
peregrine. From the start,
the predatory nature of the
falcons, their decisive speed,
their awesome vision and their
subtle killings all thrilled
him. He was enraptured ..























Robert Macfarlane
Landmarks
  5 : Hunting Life
Hamish Hamilton, 2015©

Valéry Lorenzo
Les augures

Lukas Hoffmann

Breakers ii

It was only a small place and they had cheered us too much,
A couple of allies, chance symbol of Freedom new-found,
They were eager to beckon, to back-slap, even to touch;
They put flowers in my helmet and corn-coloured wine in my hand.

The boy from Dakota and I, we had suffered too litle
To deserve all the flowers, the kisses, the wine and the thanks.
We both felt ashamed; till the kettledrum clangour of metal
On cobble and kerbstone proclaimed the arrival of tanks.

Who saw them first, the exiles returning, the fighters,
The Croix de Lorraine and the Tricouleur flown from the hull?
Who saw us moving more fitly to join the spectators,
The crazy, the crying, the silent whose hearts were full?

It was only a small place, but a bugle was blowing.
I remember the Mayor performing an intricate dance
And the boy from Dakota most gravely, most quietly, throwing
The flowers from his helmet toward the deserving of France.

Paul Dehn
1912 - 1976
St Aubin d'Aubigné
1949

Jon Stallworthy
  editor
The New Oxford Book
  of War Poetry
Oxford University Press, 1984
Revised, 2014©

The single cloak

Stay put where I hung you

  above the door, my garlands.

  Don't hurry to shake your petals,

  watered by my tears.

Lovers' eyes rain easily. But when

  you see him open the door,

  let my rain drip on his head;

  that way at least

his blond hair will drink my tears.

 Sweet for the thirsty

 is a drink of snow in summer,

 and sweet for sailors to run before

 spring breezes at winter's end

 But sweeter still is the single cloak

 that hides two lovers as they honor

   Aphrodite.

 Drink. Asclepiades. Tears? What's

   the problem?

   You're hardly the only one

   Aphrodite plundered,

 Hardly the only one piercing Eros

   sighted with his sharpened

   bow and arrows. Still, alive

   why make your bed on ashes?

Let's drink what Bacchus

  offers undiluted. Day-

  light's a finger's

    distance away.

  Why wait for the lamp

  that signals a night's

  sleep?

Let's drink, sad lover. 

  Not far down the road,

  poor soul,

  we'll have an endless

  night to rest.

Asclepiades of Samos

ca 300 - 270 BC

i, iii-iv  Edmund Keeley

  translation

ii  Bradley P. Nystrom

  translation

The Greek Poets

  Homer to the Present

op. cit.

Last free day for a while?

  On the following day, we are
  promised a multi-media immer-
  sion in excuses for the most
  insatiable political ambition
  ever to be thrust upon one
  generation of Americans after
  another, until the last con-
  ceivable immunity to it has
  been wrung from the merest
  necessary plurality.

  I do not look forward to it,
  but as Rick said at the end
  of Casablanca, we'll always
  have this Saturday.

Elliott Erwitt
1961

Breakers

The Southern Poverty Law Center, whose

address has been in the sidebar here,

as Context for years, bring perspec-

tive to policy announced by the White

House this week as a Presidential ini-

tiative in human rights, lacking pre-

cedent in our politics except as prop-

aganda. The Obama Administration has

recommended the abandonment of the na-

tion's infamous abuse of psychiatry

for the purpose of destroying gay life.

Like many of my generation; no, like

all of us, who must always wonder why

we were not slated to die with friends

in the great health crisis of the 1980s

and 1990s, I see the breakers of the

present as humane footnotes of benumbed

existence. I scan the waves for all the

life they once so exuberantly held, to

pass the word of the torment's disinteg-

ration. Their warfare is accomplished.

I cannot, and would not, remark to the

new people, on the novelties of the day.

Nothing can taint, nothing can elevate

the place they create for themselves.

This month, this page will reach a mile-

stone in readers, I never contemplated.

But there is nothing in that dull sta-

tistic that can mollify the sense of

achieving nothing, to redeem its license

of time, when I think of those I've al-

ways wished to invoke, claim, praise.

However, I can say, it suits me, and

it suits their memory, that the South-

ern Poverty Law Center are in the boat,

and as they pull, I know we don't have

to say, Hurry. They know the tide.

Jeremy Young

Martin Pichler

Isaiah
XL, ii

Reversed jeans

Not the kind of day that brings

one to the web to be useful. We

have held a consensus against 

murder for some time, and so if

a jury in Boston convicts a de-

fendant of 30 counts along that

line, and a cop in South Caro-

lina is dismissed for gunning

a citizen down as he flees for

his safety, these events corres-

pond with what we already believe.

Persuasions to small adjustments

are not amusing, to anyone.

Still, a revealed malice, com-

mon to both instances; a revealed 

perfection of intent of sadistic

destruction, as a recreation to

pursue with likeliest impunity, 

strike our life experience as

very tiresomely familiar, and we

are brought back into the refrain

of an uncomprehending child. What

on earth did I do wrong?

I would not trust anyone who did

not endure this question today.

Irrational as it is, it comes

from the only conscionable pred-

icate: How could the place of my

trust conduct itself so violent-

ly, if I love it so? 

We know, we do begin there, every 

day - after chocolate, of course - 

as if counting up the waking flock 

of our affections and our duties. 

We often find, they are at odds,

and discover what our purpose is. 

It is not, to coin a phrase, to sit 

and wonder why, Babe.

We have reversed our own jeans,

yet we admire the reputation we

then foist upon a God. It was 

good enough for us, and a heap 

better than the one traded for.