The Trash Collector--On the Poetry Bus

This week's Poetry Bus is from The Science Girl at Have Genes Will Travel. She prompts for a poem about things we like that others don't like.

The Souvenirs

In Guadalajara
I picked up trash:
wrappers from cakes,
cigarette packages,
coasters and matchbooks.

Before dawn I went alone
to a cathedral. I watched
a priest, resigned,
bless a penitente off his knees
then walked to our hotel.

We ordered big breakfasts.
Bank security had machine guns.
Once moneyed, we drove to
exclusive shops, refueling
at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

They took naps after lunch
While I looked at bakeries
and scraped curbs near cantinas.
I heard I was much woman
From men with red-veined eyes.

I drew pictures of buildings
Before returning to the hotel.
We drank whiskey, ate salted peanuts
and cut oranges on toothpicks.
Then to dinners I couldn't eat.

and drinks after dining every night.
One afternoon in the market,
I bought a bright blanket
And wore it like a shawl after dark.
The hotel staff laughed at me
When I went out to hear the singers.

I heard La Paloma. I asked for Jalisco,
for La Malaguena. A young man sat
To see if I wanted company.
I held my purse. In poor Spanish
I told him to move along.

I brought back trash
for souvenirs, now pressed like leaves
in a file cabinet. They thought
What a stranger. Who needs

"El Rey, cigarillos, clase A"?
at once familiar but odd
attractive enough to sell once
then common, with no value
crumpled record of lone adventures.

--Ann T. Hathaway

Poetry Bus: Art Appreciation

This week's poetry prompt comes from Kate of the Emerging Writers blog.
One of the prompt choices was  L'esprit d'escalier. This is a French term I've run into before. It means "the spirit of the staircase", but really it's the moment you think of the Crushing Comment that you would have made, except the moment is gone already. (Oh! I should have said that!) but too late.

So, poor Grandma. She's in for another poetic slam today. However, she was also a fun lady much of the time. This is not a revenge poem--it's the Esprit d' Escalier. No going back to fix this one.


you have to have a man for this

Amid a trendy traffic, my cousin Angel admires

Lichtenstein’s Pop: triadic blue, red and yellow.
We live by design: me in fashion, and Angel, graphics.
Grandmother’s pleased we have such passions. She’s
With us too, and fairly doting. We’re all dressed up
And later lunching: just us girls. Grandma was
Past president of this museum’s Guild. Art is not
The thing that drives her, but without what social
Ladies willed, this building would be dust and stone
So she also feels just right at home.

I’m beguiled by Angel’s exposition, but Grandma’s
Worried over Angel’s dating. And just to take this past the top
Angel broke up with grandma’s pool-boy lately, and this
Is none of Grandma’s business. But in front of comic paintings
Begins a maternal inquisition. When will you marry, Angel darling?
There are men all over as you can see. How about that
Handsome fellow? Now there’s a work of living art.

Her voice has always carried well, and
Angel’s always been so shy. She turns bright red.
The man selected turns his head. He’s standing
In a group of gay. So much for this
Artistic day. If Grandma’s voice is loud enough, her whisper
Carries in the crowd: All you have to do is try.
Angel is about to cry. I intervene:
Grandmother. And she says, What? I only want her
To have a life. It’s so much better as someone’s wife. Angel flees
Under the attack. I glare and say I’ll be right back.

That night, I am still seeing red. Right before we go to bed,
My husband says, You should have laughed
Said you and Angel would find some cuffs
So Grandmother could get her stuff.  
Then you and Angel could enjoy the art
And Grandmother some lesser part. 

The Poetry Bus: Good Housekeeping

This week, The Professor gave three choices in a prompt for the New Year: a. a poem about ten minutes and the progress of feeling during that time; b. a poem about constructive change in the New Year; or c. a version of Auld Lang Syne. (She does explain this better in her post, linked above.)

Thanks to Peader at TotalFeckinEejit for administering the bus station--and all those who have delivered poetry prompts since I have been participating. Their blogs are The Weaver of Grass, The Muse Swings, and now Revolutionary Revelry.
And also thanks to the other participants, who have come by to comment and who have also contributed to the Bus! I have enjoyed checking out new lives, new views, new words. The world of poetry is alive and well, at least in the electronic media. Happy New Year to you all, and many fine words!


                No Escape

      I hide from those I should easily meet;

      Often I wonder where my courage went.

      And when bravery returns and sets my feet

      I find my efforts were mostly mis-spent.

      Many I know dismiss change for the good,

      They want just what they please, and nothing more.

      I recoil from petty injustice and brood

      Amidst petty pleasures behind my doors.

      Often I am angered by an unjust world,

      Along with my failure to prevail in it;

      Sometimes those two are so tightly curled,

      That faulting others makes me a hypocrite.

          To stand for another, to attack all that’s worst

          I must straighten my house; be just inside first.

      -- Ann T. Hathaway

A Book for Poets

I offer this book to poetry writers--

Lewis Turco, The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics. University Press of New England. Available.
Mine is I think a second edition: "The New Book of Forms" but there's a third edition out.

Professor Turco has gathered Norse, Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, Japanese, medieval, modern, archaic forms--as many forms as possible--the complaint, the Blues Stanza, the rondeau, free verse, tanka et cetera. The forms don't all rhyme; they don't all count syllables. Since it's a handbook, it doesn't give you subjects or "ways to be inspired" or even pep talks. I sometimes use it to help me pick a form for the poems I write, or help me remember which sonnet is the English and which the Italianate.

I would never sit down and say, "It's time to write a Welsh englyn today!" (except for practice, maybe).
I look through the book, and see if my verse ideas fits  a form that might further it. Then I try to give my words that form. If the form makes the soul of the poem disappear, then I don't pursue that form any longer.

Other poets I know don't need this book. They have their method of building worked out, their voice, their way of invoking the soul. And their poems are meaningful and lovely to read or hear.

But I recommend it more than any book for writing poetry I've ever seen. It never tells you what to do; it only tells you what you Can do. It describes where others have been before and found a way to pump up the volume.

----also soliciting other recommendations . . . .

from the Popol Vuh

Image via Wikipedia

Page from the Dresden Codex

The Popol Vuh is the ancient text of the Quiche', in territory we now call Guatemala. They were a Mayan people. My favorite part of the text isn't very studious in choice: one of the first men, Jaguar Quitze, had a wife named Not Right Now.

But what follows below comes before the advent of mankind. And at the beginning of the year, nothing better than to start at the beginning of the world: creation.

--
This is the beginning of the Ancient Word, here in this place called Quiche'. Here we shall inscribe, we shall implant the Ancient Word, the potential and source for everything done in the citadel of Quiche' , in the nation of the Quiche' people.
And here we shall take up the demonstration, revelation, and account of how things were put in shadow and brought to light by

the Maker, Modeler,
named Bearer, Begetter,
Hunahpu Possum, Hunahpu Coyote,
Great White Peccary, Coati,
Sovereign Plumed Serpant,
Heart of the Lake, Heart of the Sea,
plate shaper, bowl shaper, as they are called,
also named, also described as
the midwife, matchmaker
named Xpiyacoc, Xmucane,
defender, protector,
twice a midwife, twice a benefactor.

. . . . . .

This is the Account, here it is:
Now it still ripples, now it still murmurs, ripples, it still sighs, still hums, and it is empty under the sky.
Here follow the first words, the first eloquence.
There is not yet one person, one animal, bird, fish, crab, tree, rock, hollow,  canyon, meadow, forest. Only the sky alone is there; the face of the earth is not clear. Only the sea alone is pooled under all the sky; there is nothing whatever gathered together. It is at rest; not a single thing stirs. It is held back, kept at rest under the sky.
Whatever there is that might be is simply not there: only the pooled water, only the calm sea, only it alone is pooled.
Whatever might be is simply not there: only murmurs, ripples, in the dark, in the night. Only the Maker, Modeler alone, Sovereign Plumed Serpent, the bearers, begetters in the water, a glittering light. They are there, they are enclosed in quetzal feathers, in blue-green.
Thus the name, "Plumed Serpent". They are great knowers, great thinkers, in their very being.
And of course there is the sky, and there is the Heart of the Sky. This is the name of the God, as it is spoken.

And then came his word . . . .

--

The Heart of the Sky is the Hurricane. And this I think is all very interesting. It gets even more interesting. Just like our year will. I suppose we will start it with breakfast, and then it will get every minute more complex. It will be life.

Happy New Year to you all.

The Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. Revised Edition. Trans. Dennis Tedlock. A Touchstone/Simon & Schuster Book, (1985, 1996). Excerpts from pp. 63-65.  If you read Spanish, there is a lot of significant study on this manuscript taking place as they translate it from the Mayan language to modern Spanish. It might be worth looking up!

The Poetry Bus: That Bad Gift

I nearly passed on this Poetry Bus, hosted by The Muse Swings. Because, you know: ingratitude and all that. But then I got an idea and started laughing. It's also perfectly true.

The Dregs of the Heirlooms

The gift that arrived in the mail
Was a heirloom from grandmother’s stash
And though dear granny had plenty of dough,
She never had very much class.
The necklace was orange with blue plastic discs;
It clashed with my sister’s attire.
O horrid necklace, o necklace so bad
What a tacky piece of crap that you are, you are
What a tacky piece of crap that you are!

The note that came on this Christmas gift
Said: This reminds me of you!
And with the wrapping unwrapped, and truth unveiled
My sister didn’t know what to do.
Stepmom doesn’t know me, or she doesn’t care
And how will I fake Christmas glee?
Oh horrid gift note, oh gift note so bad,
What a snarky little note that you be, you be,
What a snarky little fake pleasantry!

But now sister’s so pleased: she’s sending the thing
To the home of wise-cracking Ann T.
I’ll exchange it for some other horrid re-gift
At a party on Epiphany.
With luck, someone tacky will draw it in lots--
Or else we will laugh while they cringe!
Oh horrid necklace, o necklace so bad,
My sister will get her revenge, her revenge,
My sister will get her revenge.

Stars: The Poetry Bus

Well, The Bug has been doing this forever. And C.L.'s been doing it. And I thought, maybe every once in awhile, I will do it: it's the Poetry Bus, hosted this week by "The Weaver of Grass". The prompt this week is "stars".

Eclipse: December 21, 2010

1.
Above my city
On the night of the solstice
The moon eclipses.

On a flat rooftop
I’ll bring a full thermos
(Coffee regular)

And wrap up warmly
To see the moon’s shadow and
The stars showing cleanly.

In the dark desert
The big sky bulges with stars.
In town, hardly one

Competes with neon.
With luck, I’ll outlast the cold
With wool and coffee.

I'll watch a red moon
Pass into darkness and out,
The stars as witness.


2.
Long ago, my man
And I watched the moon eclipse
In small-town Texas.

He placed a penny
On a train track in the dark
To show off, playing.

The town was empty.
We were courting then. He took
The moon’s photo twice,

And the town’s photo
Once. Stars in skies. Stars in eyes.
The train rattled through.

The picture’s on my wall.
The flattened penny’s safely
Saved. The memory too.

3.

A copper shadow.

Light and dark. It's different

Now. I remember

Those were your last words

In a dream after death. You

Were happy. And me

I forget sometimes

I promised to keep the light.

Stars as my witness

In wool and cold air

I will see and remember

We'll talk it over.

Volunteer Charity: More Poems from the Front Lines

Yesterday, I posted the first three poems written by The Bug in 1986, when she volunteered at a charity organization. Together they make quite a statement. The reason I separated them into two posts, however, is to feature each one a little better, hopefully for a cumulative effect.

           IV. 

“Shut that baby up!”

And the child cries on.

Mary Justevich sings

her raucous song of life

& the child cries.

“The next time you come,

you leave that baby at home.”

And in the wounded eyes 

of the mother, I see

her cry:

There’s no one there

no one there

no one.

V. 

They sit as if they’re
used to waiting.
Staring off into space
thinking their own
thoughts.
Waiting. Waiting.
And I am angry.
I watch the waiting
from behind the desk
and I know.
My heart hardens
against the saints
as they talk
and wander about
ignoring the waiting.
thoughtless passages
of time.

            VI.

And in the “real” world
I see that I’ve changed.
The lights have gone gaudy –
I’ve seen the war
behind the glitter.
There will always be
dark, empty buildings
and Al & Fifi, &
even Buddy fighting
for a way of life
fighting for life
fighting.
The homes of the rich
frustrated me –
repugnant desire
of my fickle heart.
I will be gentry one day.
Will I forget
the other side of town?

The Bug posted one of these poems last week, and another post explaining what it was about and what she thinks now. This is what I think they are about: the humane, giving heart. But also, the world of humiliation that seems to go along with poverty and assistance. The humiliation of having your best impulses rebuffed--maybe because you've misjudged the scene or don't have the right thing to offer, or even that there is no right thing for someone in distress. She also writes how people on both sides shut down their best impulses, become indifferent. But there's also hope in these observations. She plunged into the work: recorded it, one poem per day. She Saw. And she knows things now that the rest of us can use. Very much so.

Thanks again, dear Bug, for an invaluable chance to gain some insights.

Volunteer Charity: Poems from the Point of Contact, part I

My friend and regular reader The Bug worked as a volunteer for a church group and charity in the Midwest in January, 1986. She was, as she puts it, "young and idealistic, and didn't know what was going on", but that's quite wrong. She was new to the experience, but that didn't stop her from observing everything carefully.
She wrote a little more about it in yesterday's post.

She mentioned some poems. I asked to see them, and she sent me six. They are very illustrative of the challenges of modern poverty eradication. But they are far more personal than that. They are also very lovely. I took the liberty of numbering them, just so you can more easily see where a new one begins.
Three today; three tomorrow. I want to thank Dana for sharing them. They are a primer on where any of us would start, inside and out.

I. 

The war is very real here.
Will you come with me
to my warm home
and partake of my bounty?
I want to draw you near,
to catch the wind
away from you,
to open my heart
(who cares if you
break the locks?).
But I don’t know
how to give
and
you don’t know
how to accept.

            II.
“You’re here for clothing?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
And I felt like a
savior –oh these poor
people. I was going to
clothe them. I felt so
big – so clean & sacrificing.
After lunch I picked
blouses off a filthy floor
& hung them on filthy
hangers. Castoffs from
faraway people. Dusty,
dirty & tired, I felt small,
very small, a
shopkeeper ashamed of
the selection for my clientele.

III. 

Shame is a funny word.
It’s not the aggressive
mothers struggling to
feed their children. 

It’s not feisty
elders proclaiming
to all who want to hear,
“Life is shit!”
It’s not the children with
soulful, confused eyes.
Shame is the man who said, “Yes,
I’m married. I
have three children &
we’d like some food.”
Shame is the young
man bringing his
bride – “here are all
our papers. Please
help us.” And “I have
no income. No income.”

Shame burns deep 
in the eyes of a man
who can’t provide 
for his own.

The Bug blogs at "The Bug's Eye View", and is also featured on my blogroll. She's a talented writer, a member of her choir, a former sojourner to Africa, a photographer, and a great neighbor!

Tomorrow, the next three poems. Thanks to The Bug for sharing her personal experiences.

Guest Post at Raindog Blue

RainDogBlue is a great blog about police work through the mediums of poetry, photography, and sometimes sound bites. He writes frequently in a verse style which sounds like everyday speech, only more concentrated. That means he can distill very moving life accounts to minimal posts with maximum punch.

He also teaches a little about police work by interspersing lexicon entries of procedural terminology.

In late May, RD asked me if I would contribute a post during his July hiatus. I was very flattered to be asked!

I wrote a poem about a photograph I took. They are both up here. 

Please go take a look, if only to see some of RainDogBlue's usual posts throughout the year. I'm guessing you'll go back again and again.

Rita Dove: David Walker, 1785-1830

.

Free to travel, he still couldn't be shown how lucky
he was. They strip and drag and beat us about
like rattlesnakes. Home on Brattle Street, he took in the sign
on the door of the slop shop. All day at the counter--
white caps, ale-stained pea coats. compass: needles
eloquent as tuning forks, shivered, pointing north.
Evenings, the ceiling fan sputtered, like a second pulse.
Oh Heaven! I am full!! I can hardly move my pen!

On the faith of an eye-wink, pamphlets were stuffed
into trouser pockets. pamphlets were transported
in the coat-linings of itinerant seamen, jackets
ringwormed with salt traded drunkenly to pursers
in the Carolinas, pamphlets ripped out, read aloud:
Men of color, who are also of sense.
Outrage. Incredulity. Uproar in state legislatures.

We are the most wretched, degraded, and abject set
of beings that ever lived since the world began.
The jewelled canaries in the lecture hall tittered
pressed his dark hand between their gloves.
Every half-step was no step at all.
Every morning, the man on the corner strung a fresh
bunch of boots from his shoulders. "I'm happy!" he said.
"I never want to live any better or happier than
when I can get a-plenty of boots and shoes to clean!"

--
In this poem, Rita Dove writes about a somewhat less-than-famous (but historically well-known) abolitionist named David Walker. Here are some basics to help with the poem:

Mr. Walker was "free to walk" because he was born free to a free mother and a slave father.
He travelled, gradually moving to Boston and opening a used clothing store that catered to black sailors.
The sailors smuggled his abolitionist pamphlets to parts of the South--the most famous of these including an appeal to violent revolution. These were discovered, and as you see in the poem, uproar ensued. Many black sailors were then forbidden to leave their ship when berthed in the Port of Charleston or similar. The italicized parts are of course excerpts from that pamphlet.

He also was on the abolitionist's speaker's circuit. The jewelled canaries refers to the audience. Both men and women wore gloves in evening entertainments (of which improving lectures was one such, just as History Channel is today).

I actually did not intend this as part of the Lincoln series. The poem has been reminding me of itself prior to that, but I could not find my copy. The verse that was "sticking" in my mind was:

Every half-step was no step at all.

for other reasons.

Yet these are the half-steps I find here:
1. David Walker's freedom did not free him from being concerned with the slavery of his race. Their status affected him too.
2. Writing about abolition is not the same as accomplishing it.
3. The compass might have been better help than a pamphlet to a slave that can't read.
4. The pamphlets never made it anyway.
5. The more adamant he became, the less his lecture circuit understood him-was that a nervous titter?
6. The glove still separates human hands. The glove on one shows a status that the not-gloved don't share.
7. The man on the corner is free and happy. Or is he free? What horizon does he have?

Anyway, are there more? One thing I did not explore is the quotes. Also, their seem to be a lot of circles in this poem, and I don't know why: fan movement, ringworms of salt, compasses . . .
Whatever you see is well worth sharing.
And another question: what do you think Rita Dove is saying about Walker? I don't think she fully admires him, but I can't quite make up my mind.

Walt Whitman: Me Imperturbe

from Leaves of Grass.

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of irrational things,
Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought,
Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the Tennessee, or far north or inland,
A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of these
      States or of the coast, or the lakes or Kanada,
Me wherever my  life is lived, O to be self-balanced for contingencies,
To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, rebuffs, as the trees and animals do.

W.B. Yeats--The Second Coming

The Easter 1916 uprising failed, a huge effort for Irish separatism. Yeats knew all of its leaders and was in love with one of them. Domestic political revolution all over Europe was channelled into the "Great War", World War I. Most of the artists and many of the writers during that time, involved in anarchist, expressionist, futurist or other burgeoning art movements were either killed in Europe--or--went a little crazy afterward.

You can extrapolate to other fields and start counting the loss.

After the First World War,  ten years ensued where people tried to forget the past. I think that many believed that there was no future, or were completely disenchanted by what society seemed to provide.

So Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" in 1919 or 1920, after years of disappointment at home and abroad. In this lead-up, I have given my personal beliefs about the antecedents of this poem. A world gone mad, and nobody paying attention.

The first stanza especially speaks to me.  But I should let Yeats do the talking:

The Second Coming

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

--W.B. Yeats

Thomas Wortham IV--A profound loss

Today was the funeral of a man I never knew or even met. But I know he stood for the best things in American life. For the power of ideals in action.  For youth in its strength bringing timeless virtues forward.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd is a poem about grief for another son of Illinois, another Great Soul we could ill afford to lose.  I offer two last parts of the poem, dedicated to Officer Wortham and to his parents and other loved ones, who shoulder on with new burdens on this earth.

18
. . . . .
And the white skeletons of young men--I saw them;
I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war;
But I saw they were not as was thought;
They themselves were fully at rest--they suffer'd not;
The living remain'd and suffer'd--the mother suffer'd,
And the wife and the child, and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.



20
Yet each I keep, the retrievements out of the night;
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full of woe,
With the lilac tall, and its blossoms of mastering odor;
With the holders holding my hand, nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine, and I in the midst, and their memory ever I keep--for the dead I loved so well;
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands . . . and this for his dear sake;
Lilac and star and bird, twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines, and the cedars dusk and dim.


--Walt Whitman

My previous obituary for Officer Thomas Wortham IV is here.
Second City Cop has a short review of the service entitled
May the Work That I've Done Speak For Itself

In Flanders Fields

Memorial Day was originally a celebration of the re-unification of North and South after the Civil War. It was expanded to commemorate all soldiers who have died in service to this country after World War I. One tradition is the planting of poppies in American graveyards for soldiers. That tradition started with a poem.

Lieutenant Colonel James McRae, a Canadian physician, wrote it upon the death of his friend Lieutenant Alexis Helmer on May 3, 1915. It's a poem, in other words, by someone who was there.  The torch he speaks of belongs to all of us, I am sure.


In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
   That mark our place; and in the sky
   The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
   Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
         In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
   The torch; be yours to hold it high.
   If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
         In Flanders fields.

"If" by Rudyard Kipling

It's all good, except I don't want to be a man if I accomplish all this. :-)
Harvey Keitel gives a good reading of this very important poem.

Horace. Odes II., 15

I posted this earlier in the week, but it got lost in the oil spills and the party. But Horace deserves a quiet minute to be appreciated:

Building Rage

Soon princely palaces will make
Ploughed acres rare, and ponds will spread
As wide as is the Lucrine lake,
And lindens that no vine has wed

Will rout the elms; while gardens rich
In violet and myrtle pour
A world of scent o'er olives which
Gave elder owners goodly store;

And thickly-matted laurel boughs
Rout out the sun. Ah, other ways
Had Cato wrought, and Romulus,
In those untidy, good old days!

With them the state was rich, the man
Was poor--he had no colonnade
Set north and stretching many a span
To pamper him with air and shade.

Their laws allowed no man to scorn
The wayside turf for building stone
The state provided to adorn
The temples and the towns alone.

Horace.
Trans. William Sinclair Marris


---
Most people believe this is about the spread of an over-luxuriant state--but in a way it is also about the loss of wild nature, and unsustainable development. So more than one value is expressed.

The Lucrine Lake was a popular resort, also mentioned in Juvenal and other Roman poets. Violet and myrtle make perfume/are ornamental, while an olive is a harvest crop.
My favorite image is the mat of laurels (awards, and triumph) blocking out the sun: so busy embellishing themselves, no light can get through!  Cato and Romulus were founding fathers of Rome.

We were simpler and more vigorous back then, Horace seems to say. But almost any phrase here is worth a philosophical discussion about one issue or another. The title is different for different translations. I like this one for a. the trend toward overbuilding and b. the anger of the people.

Another man's reading and his own, personalized translation of II: 15 at Horace, et al blog--and it does look intriguing for further browsing, too.

A Poem of Terrorism in Belfast

Pretty sure I found this poem in a long-ago issue of The New Yorker.
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Bloody Hand

Your man, says the Man, will walk into the bar like this--here his fingers
Mimic a pair of legs, one stiff at the knee--so you'll know exactly
What to do. He sticks a finger to his head. Pretend it's child's play--
The hand might be a horse's mouth, a rabbit or a dog. Five hand claps.
Walls have ears; the shadows you throw are the shadows you try to throw off.

I snuffed out the candle between finger and thumb. Was it the left hand
Hacked off at the wrist and thrown to the shores of Ulster? Did Ulster
Exist? Or the Right hand of God, saying Stop to this and No to that?
My thumb is the hammer of a gun. The thumb goes up. The thumb goes down.

--Ciaran Carson

   Belfast, 1987

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There are three images here about the hand. First, the hand makes shapes in the light of the candle, as if it is the shadow play game that amuses children.

Second, Labraid of the Red Hand is an important hero in Irish literature, a man who cut off his hand to become the King of Ireland. Later, the importance Labraid placed on Irish kingship was used as a symbol of Irish self-rule against the English. It is older than "The Troubles." The Red Hand appears on the coat of arms for Ulster, the district that is Northern Ireland, capital city of Belfast.

Third, the hand with the least presence in the room, is the hand of God.

Throughout this poem, I think Mr. Carson emphasizes the hand because the mind and the heart are not to be engaged. The references to hands and play emphasize the facelessness, mindlessness, and manipulation (another hand word) necessary to commit terrorist acts. 

The poem also conveys the drama. We cannot leave any of these things out when thinking about motivated yet motiveless modern terrorism. Mr. Carson packed all this in less words then I just did. And I am sure there is more here--if anyone wants to mention--

Bullies

How I wish that young girl had lived.  How I wish this kind of beastly  Bacchanalia would end.

This Persephone
Was driven down by beasts.
She will not return.

If only someone
Had stood for her. If only
Someone had seen it--

Some stood, but never
Enough. Nothing that lasted.
Maybe we blame them.

Take this lesson hard.
Yesterday rioters said
What they wanted to,

Broke windows, threw stones,
Tried to maim and kill. A girl
hung herself at home

Because her classmates
Did as they pleased. The allies
To the rioters

Supported their view
More than they hated the means.
And they don't see it--

They're not standing up.
The one relates to the next:
Beasts, drunk on cruelty.

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All this preaching to the choir. That lasting stand. I don't know how to make it. Yet.

Xenophon (431 B.C.--354 B.C.) on The Ideal Leader

Cyros the Younger: A Respected Leader
Xenophon's Anabasis is a military memoir set around 401-399 B.C., written in seven Books (probably scrolls). This is from Book I, part VIII, upon the death of his leader Cyros the Younger (424-401 B.C.), "the most royal and most worthy to be king, as all agree [who have known him]". He was a descendant of Darius the Great.

Eager to Train
Next, he was the greatest lover of horses, and knew best how to manage them; and in war-like accomplishments, in archery and casting the javelin, they judged him the most eager to learn and the most careful to practise.

Trustworthy
 . . . if ever he made a truce or bargain or promise he never broke it.  . . . . .
For he said, and he proved by his acts, that he never would abandon  [his soldiers] once he had become their friend, even if they lost numbers and lost luck.

Reciprocity + 1
If anyone did either evil or good to him, he tried to outdo them; and made that quite clear.

Justice, Motivated Armies, and Good Government
In justice and in honesty, if anyone showed himself glad to display these virtues, he took good care to make those richer than those who were greedy for unjust advantage. All his dealings were just, indeed, but he was especially particular to have a real army. Thus the captains and officers from abroad who served him for pay understood that to serve Cyros well was worth more to them than so much a month . . . If he saw one a skilful and just administraor, who managd his district well . . . he added to his trust; so men worked willingly, and got weatly boldly, and never tried to hide from Cyros what they got.

Generosity, with a Personal Style
More gifts were offered to  him, I believe, than to any other man who ever lived, for many reasons; and no one was ever more ready to distribute these among his friends, while he considered their tastes to see what each one wanted most. . . . He used to say, " . .   a man's best finery is when his friends go fine."

In great things it is no wonder he could outdo his generous friends, since he had greater power; but he took care to have the better of them in little attentions and graces, which appears to me more admirable still.

"So, from all I hear, I judge that no one has ever been better loved by Hellenes and Asiatics alike."
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Xenophon had followed Cyros into battle. The Anabasis tells how he and "the Ten Thousand" soldiers of Greece were left stranded deep in territory not their own. The next six books tell how they made it home.

I edited the four-page elegy for blog posting and added the italicized headings to break it up.

Trans. W.H.D. Rouse. An Ann Arbor/U Michigan paperback. pp. 27-30.
Reproduction of a Persian horse from Persepolis, Ancient Sculpture Gallery. com