Saturday commute lxxxii: tossing time

What is more difficult,

to make too much or too

little of the tried and

true temptation to give

tossings to a lake? On

Saturday we hold an an-

cient code, against do-

ing either, playing wil-

ling parts in precious

gravity. We are never

by a lake without infer-

ring the gift, the in-

tention of that body to

dispel any resistance,

to giving it our friend.

    Sure, it's teleology, a

    kind of Whig theory of

    the landscape; or maybe

    Jung or Hobbes has of-

    fered us an answer. But

    we don't lack an answer.

    We answer to the lake.

 

Suppose it were Friday lxx: becoming the field

Mr Nathaniel Perry teaches
at a distinguished small
college in Virginia and he
is an artist in the medium
of the book. I note, a num-
ber of our colleagues in 
Context are expressing al-
arm for its longevity, and
yet I doubt if anyone will
associate the treasures of
Mr Perry's craft with any
other medium. He received
the American Poetry Review
Honickman First Book Prize,
whose printer is the estim-
able Copper Canyon Press, 
publisher of a translation
from Sophocles, I've al-
ready discussed.

Yes, throughout Nine Acres,
there's the distinct press
of a cultivating instrument
in the sequencing of words;
communicable, communicated
belief, and hope for the fur-
rows' tenacity and fecundity
in time. One could not not
want to hold this structure
of feeling, one could not
airily lay aside in the bi-
nary heaven of the web, such
presence in the hand. We see
better what we touch. 

Here one can disseminate, but
not expect to plant, a prom-
ising expression of the heart.
So let us not waste fortunate
experience in demure neglect
of each other; we do not, for
ourselves. This is gorgeous
stuff. We take it, we save it,
we savour it without prejudice, 
as Mr Jefferson observed, in 
usufruct for the living. 

    This rain will fall all day. The boy
    and I are watching it fill the fields,
    which is good for fields. To fill, to feel
    filled will last and be a shield

    against the vacant weeks, the drier
    days. And what are the things that fill
    us up? Little graces, good food,
    the arrows we trade, our small good will?

    We don't know what saves us. Better to be
    a field, the boy and I decide,
    at least he seems to agree. He's filling
    a bucket with everything he finds,

    and he's so pleased when it is full,
    his smile a clutch of raspberries
    in the forest sun - no more worries,
    no more to do, nothing's scary.

Nathaniel Perry
Nine Acres
  Bush and Cane Fruits
Copper Canyon Press
The American Poetry Review, 2011©

Gaining trust

I agree .. that homosexuality is usually a miserable way of life and that it is the duty of society, if it can, to save any youth from being led into it. I think that that duty has to be discharged although it may mean much suffering by incurable perverts who seem unable to resist the corruption of boys. But if there is no danger of corruption, I do not think that there is any good the law can do that outweighs the misery that exposure and imprisonment causes to addicts who cannot find satisfaction in any other way of life.

Lord Patrick Devlin's groundbreaking masterpiece in The Enforcement of Morals (1965) lies heavily annotated in pencil on my shelf, in the timeless companionship of its peers, from Hart, Mitchell, Berlin and others. At least from the time of Harold Laski's brilliant correspondences with Justice Holmes, the British academic meritocracy has invigorated American jurisprudence beyond the sight of most of our citizens, indeed most of their leadership, only to be discovered by schoolboys seeking models of rational inquiry. How often that misery to which Devlin so movingly avers did lead to preserving him in print at $2.50, for acquisition a decade later on the distant farm of Stanford, is less interesting to us today than his empathy for the crisis of exposure, weathered calmly now.

Devlin's is one of the most bracingly companionable intellects a library can domicile - one cannot say, contain - and his history of Wilson's diplomacy is a glory of the craft, which I've long expected to consider here. I would rather endure the glare of his mistakes than the shelter of all the condescension propagated so uncritically today in the United States, and echoed from its highest bench this Winter, because of the constancy of his poise between morals and their rôle in the law. One learns to trust the fairness of a man who's not an idiot or a sloth, who still would not have dinner at one's table.

Now we hear it said, the law can't lead the way, the oppressed have enough friends without troubling our Justices; and, Pilate-like, the jurisdiction over morals is a problem for the satraps in their states. Oh, give me reason, deeply tainted, before gaudy cowardice. The law is the act, opinion is its shadow.

I should not care, any more than

my critics would, to have my per-

sonal morality equated with that

which gains the highest measure 

of popular approval. But the ques-

tion is not how a person is to as-

certain the morality which he ad-

opts and follows, but how the law

is to ascertain the morality which

it enforces.

God save the Queen's Bench, and pro-

tect her Lords of Appeal.

Patrick Devlin

Late Fellow of the British Academy

The Enforcement of Morals

  Based on his Maccabaean Lectures, 1958,

  and debates on the Wolfenden Report, 1957

Oxford University Press, 1965©

An open pander to the southern hemisphere

Having only yesterday celebrated

the seersucker season, I mean to

inflict no more than routine dis-

orientation upon the friends of

this page, in snapping up a wor-

sted for our friends across the

Equator. I did avoid saying, be-

neath, but only because I was on

my mark at the moment. I'm sure,

I've lapsed into that hierarchic-

al frame of reference for which

we would like to deny credit to

discredited imperialisms, espec-

ially inasmuch as we accept Sr

Magellan's hypothesis, that in

a round-ish sort of globe, we

know no up, no down. We care-

fully do not express astonish-

ment, that Australians don't

fall off.

But I have to share with you,

the dismaying failure of this

publication to engage, in any

constant way, the subordinate

hemisphere. You can't possibly

know, my delight to find Peru,

lighting up on my blogger map;

I've already remarked, on south

east Asia. Only the other day,

India reported a sighting, and

I supposed Terestchenko was on

some romantic shoot behind our

backs, or an engineer from Ham-

burg had been called to consult

with Jaguar's new proprietors.

Now, silent, India reverts to

form, and Peru is sealed away.

So I present this stalwart im-

pression of counter-seasonal

attire, in sympathy for the

cooling sector of our orb, in

hope that no one minds if we

have warmth. One can't be too

careful.

Kevin Flamme

Tree, casting

  ..
  The way they quiver
  At the slightest breath of wind,
  The way they thrill,
  And shudder almost individually,
  One of them beginning to shake
  While the others are still quiet,
  Unaccountably, unreasonably -
                          

What am I saying?
One leaf in a million more fearful,
More happy,
Than all the others?

On this oak tree casting
Such deep shade,
And my lids closing sleepily
With that one leaf twittering
Now darkly, now luminously.                            

                                            

Charles Simic

Leaves

  [fragment]

New and Selected Poems

  1962-2012

op. cit.

ii Photo Valéry Lorenzo

Seersucker and at long last, juniper

We remember our first seersucker suit as almost a pair of jammies we'd never leave; but then, one has to, does one not? In this light, the advent of the gin season is mere coincidence, of course, but I still do reckon the dates on their permits as coinciding, in which the demise of the second semester affirms their sense of liberty. 

  You know, 'Fidelio' is       really a pretty shitty       opera.

  Well, that could be. But     it is full of Beethoven.

No preceptors, no deans; drinx and easy dinner now in weather they foresaw.

Bastian van Gaalen

Balmain

And it is always friendly fire

Forgive me.

I would have done the same thing.

French or German .. duty is duty.

Are you in pain?

I would not have believed a bullet in the stomach could hurt so much.

I was aiming at your leg ..

More than fifty yards away, very bad light .. And then I was running ..

Please, no excuses! 

Of us two, it isn't I who should complain the most. I, I'll be finished soon, but you .. haven't finished ..

Not finished dragging out a useless existence.

For a man of the people, it's terrible to die in war. For you and me, it was a good solution.

I have missed it.

Jean Renoir, director

Jean Renoir and

  Charles Spaak, screenplay

La grande illusion

Réalisations d'Art

  Cinématographique, 1937©

Marianne Alexandre and

  Andrew Sinclair, translation

Lorrimer Publishing, Ltd., 1968©

ii  Photo Hedi Slimane

"Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees"

     

  They are always

  civil wars.

Thomas Jackson

Chancellorsville, Virginia

April, 1863