Our gun creeps are out en masse

Not the wielders of guns
but their idolators; not
out in the outdoors, but
exposing themselves with
social media, less as a
dorm of helpless twinks,
than as twigs fermenting
in the dank undergrowth.

They claim to speak for
a nation great and, can
you stand it, fearless.

They call for a cartoon
kind of carnage, fanta-
sy obliterations, sala-
cious sufferings, you'd
think they'd had by now.

I suppose the first law
of defaming lust, is to
pursue its misdirection.
Or was this why we read
The Bacchae in daylight?

        A racket of jackdaws, the serrated call
        of a falcon as I walk out onto the lake.

Robin Robertson
Sailing the Forest
Selected Poems
  Signs on a White Field
  [fragment]
ibid.

i   Daniel Hasselberg, photo
ii  Tim Heatherington, photo

In the language of Robin Robertson

Poet, translator
of the most re-
cent edition of
The Bacchae cit-
ed above. 

  I climb to the seeing rock
  high over the pines; a blown squall
  of rooks rises and settles like ash.

        

             I saw the hay marry the fire

             and the fire walk.

             The sky went the colour of stone.

                               

Robin Robertson
Sailing the Forest
  Selected Poems
  The Language of Birds
    [vi, vii]
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014©

ii  Evgheny Mokhorev, 2004

Miraflores download

      Hey, cool. Another
      Bush wants another
      war to save Chris-
      tians from savages.

      And why not, if it
      will shelter a tax
      cut with the flag?

      Did you ever hope,
      against such odds,
      to catch a differ-
      ent bus? Or is an-
      other vehicle for-
      bidden to a patri-
      ot? They will try.
      They are, already.

  

Nice genes

         We have a hearth with a fire that's always going,
         Fed with resiny pinelogs from the woods;
         Doorposts black with soot; we're bothered by
         The winter cold no more than wolves by sheep
         Or torrents by the banks that try to hold them.

 We've juniper trees and chestnut trees, and such
 Abundance that the ground is covered with
 What falls from the loaded boughs; a smiling scene;
 But if Alexis should desert these hills,
 The flowing streams would shrivel and run dry.

Virgil
Eclogues
  VII, 9-10
  Thyrsis & Corydon
ca 35 BC
David Ferry
  translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999©

ii   Pasolini
iii  Pierre de Fennoÿl

Is a tough guy born

   Or forged?

            Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget

            falls drop by drop upon the heart

            until, in our own despair,

            against our will,

            comes wisdom

            through the awful grace of god.

Aeschylus

Agamemnon

  Speech of the Chorus

ca 458 BC

  Robert F. Kennedy

  Eulogy for Martin Luther King, Jr

  Indianapolis

  4 April 1968

Acropolis

Ivan Terestchenko

  Panache

None of our business, of course

  Yet, just where are

  these promised hordes

  of miscreants, these

  foreign-tainted inter-

  lopers, leaping at

  our pristine Chris-

  tian throats? Are we

  to be denied an Irish

  menace, a Red Scare,

  a slave revolt, crime

  in our streets, and a

  tidal wave of malignant

  STD's in the general

  population, only to 

  lack insidious Mexico,

  to get us to the polls

  to salvage inequality?

  

  Mr Cruz esteems this

  quadrennial habit as,

  "the rule of law." So

  do we all. A conveni-

  ence of dealing with

  xenophobes is, they

  never beg the ques-

  tion, never flag in

  their despair, but

  compulsively confess,

  exulting in umbrage

  at being found out.

And for my next trick

          I think a pret-

          ty wall, don't

          you, that they

          can pay for as

          they leave our

          fatherland.

   

Charles Chaplin
  director, writer,
  composer, pro-
  ducer, leading man
The Great Dictator
United Artists, 1940©

Flint Louis Hignett

A call from David Ferry

Mr Ferry has figured here
repeatedly, as a transla-
tor so gifted in the Clas-
sics as to allow reliance 
on him as if he were cox-
swain to our crew (is this
not love?); and as a poet
in his own right, captur-
ing synapses of the mind
as we tend ourselves, ten-
tatively, to know it. But
is the mind alone in that
lithe and questing boat?

Probably the German langu-
age has a noun for a ves-
sel straining with deter-
mination and delight. I
wish I knew it; or maybe,
I do.

We climb into this season
with our sinews polished
by the last, to figure why
there's still a question,
only to exult in complica-
tion. 

   Now the tree 
   that had been stone
   is stone again.

   Another age
   With notice none
   Of what had gone

  And come again,
  And every tide
  Registers on

  The roaring page
  The change of bone
  To ice, and stone

  To flower, and sea.

David Ferry
Of No Country I Know
  New and Selected Poems
  and Translations
    By the Sea Shore
University of Chicago Press, 1999©

i  Kris Kislop