Minefield

       

    a row of awful ideas

        

Burst of the technocratic bubble

It hasn't been unamusing to see the editors of The New York Times framing reports from Athens this week as representing the "return of politics" to the otherwise chaste preserve of monetary policy. Der Spiegel, naturally, has been apoplectic. 

Policy is political, or the term is a non sequitur. The very assertion, that a possible referendum in Athens amounts to an incongruous intrusion, is not without merit, however: it's a concession that the wrong people might exert an influence in the shaping of policy. 

What is a non sequitur, is the assumption that a technocracy can be apolitical, much less technically disciplined. It's why Henry V consulted his monks on Salic Law; he wanted Burgundy, whatever the excuse. A technocracy is merely an interpolation, of one set of voices, insiders all, into a game which was never theirs. Show us a technocracy in finance which is not a handmaiden of plutocracy, and we'll show you an invisible hand.

William Shakespeare

King Henry V

 Act I, Scene ii

1599

J.H. Walter, editor

The Arden Edition of

  the Works of William

  Shakespeare

Methuen, 1954©

Scotch hopper

Having established the existence

of this figure last year on this

date, I welcome the freedom to 

recall elements of our play, so

often - as befitted our sharing

of an academic class and the in-

terests it cultivated - conduct-

ed in the surrogacy of words.

A figure of volatile spirit and

irresistible radiance, he manif-

ested the deepest obliviousness

to clothes; and became infamous

for navigating among us in the

broodingestly inapposite shade

of outer coat, which I dubbed

his coat of storms. The laugh

with which he accepted this

tease, the first time he heard

it, led all of us to doubt its

irony; but it was the lever,

the laugh was, that let us see

him better. And this was not

the case with most of us. His

was our acquaintance with that

kind of laughter.

We did play, and gratefully

with words. We would eat fid-

dleferns at the Four Seasons

together, for their coiled wit,

and oysters, too, as everyone

does. On my marriage, his gift 

to me was the entire Oxford 

English Dictionary, pieces

we'd known and hadn't known,

to be there when I need them.

scotch hoppers. A play in

which boys hop over lines

or scotches on the ground.

Samuel Johnson

Dictionary of the

  English Language

op. cit.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jog

The defect of a referendum

is that it presents a bin-

ary question, crafted by a

magistrate and polluted by

demagoguery. But they have

seen such things in Athens

where the frame is not the

question.

                     

We don't get much call for hibiscus down here

Hallowe'en greetings

This festival comes rather naturally

to the Old Dominion. A xenophobic 

culture gives one plenty of practice, 

it can safely be said, in surprise by 

the frightful and extortion by the oc-

cult. Equally, our children's susten-

ance on sugar and salt is so advanced

that the frenetic orgy this night is 

in healthy places would make it almost 

courtly, here, but for our vigilance

against menace, per se. Yet you may

count on us to carry it off in that

accent we have made world-famous.

The passive-aggressive negative

is the default voice of Virginia.

Every fratboy has mastered this

dialect before matriculation;

and this accounted for a good

deal of George Bush's natural

popularity here. One began to

lose count of the wars he started

with the phrase, Ah doant much

appreciate.. But it has its uses.

It keeps the place mercifully

ignorant, because its rhetor-

ical structure is rejection. If

something is not absolutely in

one's face universally in Vir-

ginia, it is resented. A squint

forms, the jaw sets, a glance

around the room for recruiting's

sake ensues, and an arch soft-

ness wafts the admonition, We

don't get much call down heah

for hibisciss.

Like pilgrims in Chaucer, I can see

your Hallowe'en parade receding in-

to time, whilst Virginia must always

be with us, encouraging even the

sweetest costume to take heart: 

Don't worry, you scare us.

A grape at the beach

I wash the grapes I have brought with me. They are the little early grapes, delicately freckled green, and of a pouting teat shape. The sun has penetrated their shallow skins and has confused the sweetness with its own warmth; it is like eating something alive.

      

      Then after Eden,

      was there one surprise?

      O yes, the awe of Adam

      at the first bead of sweat.

      Thenceforth, all flesh

      had to be sown with salt,

      to feel the edge of seasons,

      fear and harvest,

      joy that was difficult,

      but was, at least, his own.

O Sea, give me news of my loved ones.

Were it not for the chains of the faithless, I would have dived 

into you, 

And reached my beloved family, or perished in your arms.

Lawrence Durrell

Prospero's Cell

  Landscape with Olive Trees

Faber & Faber, 1945©

Derek Walcott

Sea Grapes

  New World

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971©

Ibrahim al Rubaish

  Ode to the Sea

  Poems from Guantánamo

  Mark Falkoff, editor

University of Iowa Press, 2007©

Steeped

                      
     We say of the disseminating
     effect of infusions, that
     they are steeped. But what
     is the substance that is
     steeped when we say one is
     steeped in learning, or in
     bigotry? Is it dissolved, 
     or embodied?

     On the occasion, however, 
     of being second to fall
     asleep, it amounts to the 
     same thing. I don't know
     what to call this suspen-
     sion, but I have known it.

Terroir

I saw the reflection in the mirror

And it doesn't count, or not enough

To make a difference, fabricating itself 

Out of the old, average light of a college town,

And afterwards, when the bus trip 

Had depleted my pocket of its few pennies 

He was seen arguing behind steamed glass, 

With an invisible proprietor. What if you can't own

This one either? ..

      For it seems that all 

Moments are like this: thin, unsatisfactory

As gruel, worn away each time you return to them.

Until one day you rip the canvas from its frame

And take it home with you. You think the god-given 

Assertiveness in you has triumphed 

Over the stingy scenario: these objects are as real as meat, 

As tears. We are all soiled with this desire, at the last moment, 

the last.

   I am always in Hanover,
   New Hampshire, in the old
   college town, when I read
   this poem. Such associations
   are illegitimate grounds
   for criticism, and arbitrary
   to confide. But the isolated
   vitality of the place fits 
   the imagery, and the immedi-
   acy and distance in this poem, 
   very well. I have grown to
   admire the shocking final
   phrase unreservedly, the more
   I've understood how the last
   reflects the most precious and
   constant, persistent and con-
   sistent, likely and quotidian,
   in a contingency always at the
   last. What we call a masterpiece 
   we would love, anyway. Sometimes,
   it is.

John Ashbery

Shadow Train

  Drunken Americans

Penguin, 1981©