Reach

      I think of you in black and white

      When we were made of dreams ..

      Just when I thought you were gone,

      you came back

      Just when I was ready to receive you ..

      On the rising curve

      where the waves of Nature will test every nerve;

      I took you close and got what I deserve

      When we were born in time.

Bob Dylan

The Bootleg Series

  Volume 8

  Born in Time

  alternative version

Special Rider Music, 1990©

Banked

        

        And then turning where the last pale

        Lighthouse, like a Samson blinded, stands

        And turns its huge charred orbit on the sands

        I think of you - indeed mostly of you,

        In whom a writer would only name and lose

        The dented boy's lip and the close

        Archer's shoulders; but here to rediscover

        By tides and faults of weather, by the rain

        Which washes everything, the critic and the lover.

Lawrence Durrell

Selected Poems
  Alexandria
  [fourth verse]
1946
Peter Porter, editor
Faber and Faber, Ltd, 2006©

  

Freedom riders

 

   We have so little to say

   about the world where we

   awaken, it is a constant

   trial so much as to ex-

   press a yes or a no. But

   the exercise of even the

   emptiest act is all that

   can preserve the right

   for others.

The New York Times

Upholding Democracy,

  Ballot by Ballot

November 3, 2012©

Saturday commute lxxii: the bright good place

          le jour se lève

Such a constant fall's companion

my classmate

I should say .. that blame for what

happened to me cannot be laid to the

war. On the contrary, the war, I am

certain, might still save me .. All

the war did was to remove my last

scruple about keeping to myself, a-

bout consuming the years and my heart

alone .. The war had made it legiti-

mate to turn in on oneself and live

from day to day without regretting

lost opportunities. It was as if I

had been waiting for the war a long

time and had been counting on it, a

war so vast and unprecedented that

one could easily go home to the hills,

crouch down, and let it rage in the

skies above the cities .. That species

of dull rancor that hemmed in my youth

found a refuge and a horizon in the war.

It almost doesn't mat-
ter if Leon Trotsky ev-
er said, You may not be 
be interested in war,
but war is interested in
you. He's not running.

The war's propagation of
self-calumny has failed,
and now that its objects
and techniques have been
exposed, we are told the
nation has a more urgent,
a higher calling than jus-
tice for her people.

The election in the United
States is about this large
and constant lie. War re-
mains very much interested
in us, and it has a name,
which is not ours.

        Imagine being so
        discouraged, Auguste.

        Imagine wanting
        people to be, Hercule.

Alexander Johansson

Cesare Pavese
The Selected Works
  of Cesare Pavese;
  The House on the Hill
1949
R.W. Flint, translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968©
New York Review Books, 2001©
  

1st November

  There's a guy running

  around out there like

  crazy, asking me to

  ruin my world for him,

  and if I do, he'll let

  me have more m&m's. He

  calls this, my dream.

Fredric Johansson

Tom Guinness

Benjamin Eidem

In their trial

   

  What had happened?

  Had they left some record

  had they made a document;

  what let them trust a soul,

  especially their own?

  The Casement story

  has been written by

  our great imaginer 

  of the Andes from

  London. I don't sup-

  pose this explains

  its strength?

Mario Vargas Llosa

The Dream of the Celt

2010

Edith Grossman, translation

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012©

Tolerable destruction

I think we remember, that what laid

the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina

most scaldingly before us, was a pre-

meditated acceptance of its outcome.

The Corps of Engineers and the gov-

ernments to which it reports were

comfortable with the genocidal dis-

tribution of the storm's damage. As

in the experience of HIV, as the or-

iginal George Bush so memorably stip-

ulated, the general population was

essentially home, free. 

In the present emergency, fair warn-

ing and a broader path restore us to

a more equitable guessing game, each

participant assessing his risks in a

more neutral statistical framework,

and discounting them accordingly. 
Survivors will be touched by fear,
but not by humiliation, and the or-
deal will feel like a struggle, not
a calumny. 

Now there will be suffering and 
death, not just compromised brake 
pads; but our exposure to risk will 
relieve us of lingering fellowship. 

Does that flow only from having no

choice?