Puzzles and epiphanies; essays and reviews, 1958-1961 by Kermode, Frank

Analogue memes

 

Wolfpupy

 http://wolfpupy.com/

Ryzen 3700X

 

Watch of the Week: Grand Seiko SBGE255

 

Poor Richard's almanack

Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism

The Ten Bulls

 

The Amazing Randi

Soil Test Apparatus for Lunar Surfaces

The Power of Translation: issues in the translation of premodern Japanese waka

The Lady Be Good

http://www.ladybegood.net/index.htm




Lady Be Good is a USAAF B-24D Liberator that disappeared without a trace on its first combat mission during World War II. The plane, which was from 376th Bomb Group, was believed to have been lost—with its nine-man crew—in the Mediterranean Sea while returning to its base in Libya following a bombing raid on Naples on April 4, 1943. However, the wreck was accidentally discovered 710 km (440 mi) inland in the Libyan Desert by an oil exploration team from British Petroleum on November 9, 1958.

Investigations concluded that the first-time (all new) crew failed to realize they had overflown their air base in a sandstorm. After continuing to fly south into the desert for many hours, the crew bailed out when the plane's fuel ran out. The survivors then died in the desert trying to walk to safety. All but one of the crew's remains were recovered between February and August 1960. The wreckage of the Lady Be Good was taken to a Libyan Air Force base after being removed from the crash site in August 1994.

The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow (the Arrow)

The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow (the Arrow) was a supersonic interceptor jet aircraft designed and built in the 1950s by A.V. Roe Canada (Avro). The Arrow was one of the most advanced aircraft of its era, helping to establish Canada as a world leader in scientific research and development.

Though the Arrow was widely praised for its power and beauty, the program was cancelled in February 1959 by the government of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. This resulted in the loss of at least 25,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Many believe that the Arrow’s cancellation was a betrayal of Canada’s aerospace industry. Others assert that the jet was extravagant and had little chance of competing with impending innovations. At best, Avro and the Arrow were historic examples of Canadian ingenuity and intriguing case studies of unrealized potential.


Unveiling of the Avro Arrow in 1957. (Courtesy Library and Archives Canada/PA-210520)
Key Terms

Interceptor aircraft: A plane designed to attack enemy aircraft, especially enemy bombers.

Nuclear escalation: An increase in the possibility or extent of nuclear attacks between nations, as well as a race to develop nuclear weapons technology.

Supersonic: Capable of travelling faster than the speed of sound.
Political Background: The Cold War


Following the Second World War, nations found themselves divided among two ideological camps: the capitalist West (led by the United States) and the communist East (dominated by the Soviet Union). As tensions grew among opposing parties — worsened by espionage, proxy wars, aggressive dialogue and nuclear escalation — Canada increased its military commitment to the Western cause in what became known as the Cold War.

By the 1950s, there was a growing concern that Soviet bombers would attack North America via the Canadian Arctic. (NATO intelligence suggested that such an attack could occur as early as 1954.) So, in 1953–54, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) commissioned Avro to design and build the Arrow: an all-weather nuclear interceptor meant to fly higher and faster than any aircraft in its class. It was, at the time, the most demanding specification in the world, and many international manufacturers believed it impossible to achieve.
A.V. Roe and Canada’s Aerospace Industry

Avro CF-100 Canuck
(courtesy Library and Archives Canada)Avro CF-100 Canuck, the first jet fighter designed and built in Canada (courtesy Library and Archives Canada).

Already an established British aircraft manufacturer, A.V. Roe came to Canada in December 1945 to take advantage of the country’s skilled aviation labour force that had been left unemployed following the Second World War. The company — newly branded A.V. Roe Canada — set up shop in the Malton area of Mississauga, Ontario, at the former Victory Aircraft plant (now Toronto Pearson International Airport).

Avro experienced early success with the Avro CF-100 Canuck, the first Canadian-designed military fighter aircraft. The Canuck first flew on 19 January 1950. In total, 692 planes were built, with Canuck fighter squadrons serving the RCAF, NORAD and NATO.

After earning the right to build the Arrow, Avro became a dominant force in Canadian aerospace and the economy at large. By 1957, Avro employed more than 20,000 people, making it one of the largest companies in the country. With plans to build everything from jetliners to cameras that could photograph speeding airplanes, Avro drew major investment from the government and its own employees. Confidence in the company — and Canada’s aerospace industry — was soaring.
Arrow Design, Development and Flight


Technical drawing of the Avro Arrow (1958) from the papers of engineer William Kuzyk. (Courtesy Library and Archives Canada/R15525-112-X-E)

Production of the Arrow drew many notable characters to Toronto’s industrial suburbs. Among them: Avro president Crawford Gordon Jr., a charismatic industrialist from Winnipeg; James C. Floyd, a renowned British engineer and the first non-American to win the Wright Brothers Medal for his work on jet transport technology; and Janusz Zurakowski, a fighter pilot from Poland who braved the Battle of Britain before becoming the first person to fly an Arrow.

The Arrow was to be an immense project — in size, scale and ambition. Weighing about 20,000 kg when empty, with a 15.2 m wingspan, the jet was, as journalist David Wilson has written, “form sublimely married to function.” It boasted the world’s first computerized flight control and weapons system. Faster than any jet in its class, the Arrow would travel nearly twice the speed of sound at an altitude of 53,000 feet.

Testing the Arrow was intensive. Without computer simulation tools, the Avro team relied on wind-tunnel testing and scale model experiments. Nine models (each one-eighth the size of the full-scale planes) were launched on rockets over Lake Ontario to gauge flightworthiness. Two additional models were launched over the Atlantic Ocean.

On 4 October 1957, the first Arrow was unveiled in front of 12,000 people at the Avro plant. Spectators were immediately taken by the plane’s appearance: “Its swept-back delta wings and early electronic flight controls gave it the look of tomorrow,” journalist Ian Austen has written, “as did its blinding white, matte black and Day-Glo orange paint.”

On its first flight, piloted by Zurakowski on 25 March 1958, the Arrow broke four different speed records. Over the next year, the five “Mark 1” Arrows (i.e., the first version of the plane) would fly a total of 66 times. The more powerful “Mark 2” Arrows that were in development never flew. Despite the plane’s enthusiastic reception, both the Arrow and Avro would soon meet their end in complicated political battles and backroom deals.

Janusz Zurakowski, engineer
(courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-61731)Janusz Zurakowski after the first flight of the Avro CF-105, Arrow, 25 March 1958, Malton, Ontario. (Courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-61731)
Janusz Zurakowski, engineer
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Political Issues

In June 1957, Canadians ended 22 years of Liberal rule by electing a minority Progressive Conservative government. For Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, cutting federal spending (and establishing his authority) became a political priority.

Some think that the Arrow’s high costs contributed to its downfall. With a total cost of $1.1 billion, the Arrow program was very expensive for a country of Canada’s size. But its technology was another concern. The Army’s chief of the general staff, lieutenant-general Guy Simonds, was among those who thought that it was already outdated.
Did you know?
Prime Minister Diefenbaker had a poor relationship with Avro’s president. A teetotaller, Diefenbaker detested the lavish behaviour of Crawford Gordon Jr., who was known for his love of smoke and drink. The two would frequently argue.

Global Competition

Competing technologies and narratives also weakened the Arrow’s homegrown support. On 4 October 1957 — the day the first Arrow was unveiled — the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first human-made satellite. Global imagination (and paranoia) shifted to space; it was then assumed that nuclear attacks would no longer come from piloted bombers, but from intercontinental ballistic missiles that pass through outer space. The Arrow’s purpose was now unclear.

Canada’s allies, too, were making gains in the aerospace sector. In 1958, the Arrow was the world’s fastest fighter jet, but the United States, Great Britain, France and Sweden had developed planes with superior flight range and maximum altitude. America in particular, with its existing economic and military might, consistently released cheaper planes (like the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation’s F-4 Phantom) at a much quicker rate than Canadian manufacturers could achieve. Even those in favour of the Arrow acknowledge that had the program sustained funding, the jet would not have been ready for combat until 1962.
Interest from Other Countries

Notions that the US government pressured Diefenbaker to cancel the Arrow (in an effort to eliminate a competitor of the American industry) appear to be more myth than history. Documents from 1958 even suggest that United States Air Force officers wanted to buy Arrows on behalf of the RCAF as part of a continental defence strategy. Taking this as an act of charity, Canada refused. “There’s no doubt that the American aircraft industry would have been exceedingly unhappy if the [United States] had bought aircraft from Canada,” said historian Jack Granatstein, “but to say that the Americans killed [the Arrow] is, I think, simply not true.”

Around the time the Arrow was cancelled, British officials requested the use of one or more of the jets for flight testing. The request was soon withdrawn, allegedly on the recommendation of the Canadian government. In a 1980 interview with the CBC, Arrow test pilot and native Briton Peter Cope suggested that Diefenbaker had not wanted Great Britain to realize that Canada had abandoned such a high-performing plane.

A.V. Roe tried desperately to find a foreign buyer for the Arrow. However, Canada’s political climate, combined with the project’s cost and narrow approach to warfare, left few options. Most countries did not want to take on such an ambitious project, especially given the Arrow’s limited use in the space age. And while fans of the Arrow have since demonized the Diefenbaker government for ending the project, some historians think that the Liberals would have done the same.
Cancellation


On 20 February 1959, before the Arrow could enter military duty, the Diefenbaker government cancelled the Arrow project. Overnight, more than 14,000 people, many of them highly skilled, lost their jobs. The day would come to be known as Black Friday in the Canadian aviation industry. By July 1959, all aircraft had been cut apart with blowtorches, while blueprints, models, designs and machines used to make the planes were destroyed. Scraps were sold to a Hamilton, Ontario, junk dealer for 6.5¢ per pound. Job losses grew to at least 25,000 at the time of Avro’s dissolution in 1962.

In the years that followed the Arrow’s cancellation, Diefenbaker remained defiant of critics, taking full responsibility for what he deemed a necessary act, however unpleasant. Speaking to the CBC, the Prime Minister had this to say about his decision:
“It was a beautiful aircraft…[but] I had to make, in the finality, that decision…. When one’s faced with a problem like this, there is a higher source of strength. If one doesn’t have that…strength, he can never bear the attacks made on him…. I knew that a great industry that had been established would be weakened. But it was right to end it.”


Today, enthusiasts of the plane question the government’s need to so thoroughly remove the Arrow and its technical data from history. At the time, Parliament claimed it was a matter of national security, given the threat of Soviet espionage. Jack Granatstein has speculated on another reason: that Diefenbaker acted out of spite for Gordon and his beloved company.
Aftermath

Free from the Avro contract, the Canadian government moved to buy 66 second-hand Voodoo fighter jets (capable of less than half the speed of the Arrow) from the United States as a supplementary defence strategy. Canada also opted into the Bomarc program, a surface-to-air guided missile system resulting from the 1957 NORAD agreement with the United States. Over the ensuing decade, however, anti-nuclear sentiment would dominate public opinion (see Pacifism). In response, Canada ultimately withdrew its armed forces from nuclear roles and shut down the Bomarc system. The total cost of the Voodoo and Bomarc purchases amounted to more than the entire cost of the Arrow program.

Avro’s end was fast and tragic following the Arrow’s termination. Gordon’s resignation as president was announced in the press on 2 July 1959. He died at age 52 on 26 January 1967 in New York City, likely from alcoholism. Fred Smye, Avro’s vice president and general manager during the Arrow program, resigned in 1959. And in April 1962, parent company Hawker Siddeley Group dissolved Avro, selling its assets for $15.6 million

World Betrayed

 

永明延壽 Yongming Yanshou (904–975) (English:) Records of the Source Mirror / Record of the Mirror of Orthodoxy / Source Mirror Record / Record of the Axiom Mirror / Record of the Mirror of the Tradition

Yung-ming Yen-shou (904-975) was a Buddhist monk who lived in a period of broad changes in Chinese society and Buddhism. He played a leading role in the restoration of Buddhism in the Wu Yüeh kingdom, and left a large body of writings. One of his best known works, the Wan-shan t'ung-kuei chi, has long been cherished by the tradition for its advocacy of harmony between Ch'an meditation and Pure Land practice. The dissertation questions the association of Yen-shou and his Treatise on the Common End of Myriad Good Deeds with the motives of the Pure land school from two points of view. In the history of the numerous biographies of Yen-shou, the association of his image with the Pure Land movement is relatively late. An investigation of the Wanshan t'ung-kuei chi demonstrates that the synthesis of Ch'an meditation and Pure Land practice is a topic of discussion, but is by no means the central concern of the text from either a theoretical or pracical standpoint. The dissertation contends that Yen-shou's Ch'an-Pure Land synthesis should be understood within the context of the Wan-shan t'ung-kuei chi as a whole. A translation of elect passages of the Wan-shan t'ung-kuei chi are included by way of confirming the reassessment put forward in the dissertation.

https://terebess.hu/zen/zongjing-lu.html

Heart’s Needle

BY W. D. SNODGRASS


For Cynthia

When he would not return to fine garments and good food, to his houses and his people, Loingseachan told him, “Your father is dead.” “I’m sorry to hear it,” he said. “Your mother is dead,” said the lad. “All pity for me has gone out of the world.” “Your sister, too, is dead.” “The mild sun rests on every ditch,” he said; “a sister loves even though not loved.” “Suibhne, your daughter is dead.” “And an only daughter is the needle of the heart.” “And Suibhne, your little boy, who used to call you “Daddy”—he is dead.” “Aye,” said Suibhne, “that’s the drop that brings a man to the ground.”
He fell out of the yew tree; Loingseachan closed his arms around him and placed him in manacles.

—AFTER THE MIDDLE-IRISH ROMANCE, THE MADNESS OF SUIBHNE


1

Child of my winter, born

When the new fallen soldiers froze

In Asia’s steep ravines and fouled the snows,

When I was torn


By love I could not still,

By fear that silenced my cramped mind

To that cold war where, lost, I could not find

My peace in my will,


All those days we could keep

Your mind a landscape of new snow

Where the chilled tenant-farmer finds, below,

His fields asleep



In their smooth covering, white

As quilts to warm the resting bed

Of birth or pain, spotless as paper spread

For me to write,



And thinks: Here lies my land

Unmarked by agony, the lean foot

Of the weasel tracking, the thick trapper’s boot;

And I have planned



My chances to restrain

The torments of demented summer or

Increase the deepening harvest here before

It snows again.



2

Late April and you are three; today

We dug your garden in the yard.

To curb the damage of your play,

Strange dogs at night and the moles tunneling,

Four slender sticks of lath stand guard

Uplifting their thin string.



So you were the first to tramp it down.

And after the earth was sifted close

You brought your watering can to drown

All earth and us. But these mixed seeds are pressed

With light loam in their steadfast rows.

Child, we’ve done our best.



Someone will have to weed and spread

The young sprouts. Sprinkle them in the hour

When shadow falls across their bed.

You should try to look at them every day

Because when they come to full flower

I will be away.



3

The child between them on the street

Comes to a puddle, lifts his feet

And hangs on their hands. They start

At the live weight and lurch together,

Recoil to swing him through the weather,

Stiffen and pull apart.



We read of cold war soldiers that

Never gained ground, gave none, but sat

Tight in their chill trenches.

Pain seeps up from some cavity

Through the ranked teeth in sympathy;

The whole jaw grinds and clenches



Till something somewhere has to give.

It’s better the poor soldiers live

In someone else’s hands

Than drop where helpless powers fall

On crops and barns, on towns where all

Will burn. And no man stands.



For good, they sever and divide

Their won and lost land. On each side

Prisoners are returned

Excepting a few unknown names.

The peasant plods back and reclaims

His fields that strangers burned



And nobody seems very pleased.

It’s best. Still, what must not be seized

Clenches the empty fist.

I tugged your hand, once, when I hated

Things less: a mere game dislocated

The radius of your wrist.



Love’s wishbone, child, although I’ve gone

As men must and let you be drawn

Off to appease another,

It may help that a Chinese play

Or Solomon himself might say

I am your real mother.



4

No one can tell you why

the season will not wait;

the night I told you I

must leave, you wept a fearful rate

to stay up late.



Now that it’s turning Fall,

we go to take our walk

among municipal

flowers, to steal one off its stalk,

to try and talk.



We huff like windy giants

scattering with our breath

gray-headed dandelions;

Spring is the cold wind's aftermath.

The poet saith.



But the asters, too, are gray,

ghost-gray. Last night’s cold

is sending on their way

petunias and dwarf marigold,

hunched sick and old.



Like nerves caught in a graph,

the morning-glory vines

frost has erased by half

still scrawl across their rigid twines.

Like broken lines



of verses I can’t make.

In its unraveling loom

we find a flower to take,

with some late buds that might still bloom,

back to your room.



Night comes and the stiff dew.

I’m told a friend’s child cried

because a cricket, who

had minstreled every night outside

her window, died.



5

Winter again and it is snowing;

Although you are still three,

You are already growing

Strange to me.



You chatter about new playmates, sing

Strange songs; you do not know

Hey ding-a-ding-a-ding

Or where I go



Or when I sang for bedtime, Fox

Went out on a chilly night,

Before I went for walks

And did not write;



You never mind the squalls and storms

That are renewed long since;

Outside the thick snow swarms

Into my prints



And swirls out by warehouses, sealed,

Dark cowbarns, huddled, still,

Beyond to the blank field,

The fox’s hill



Where he backtracks and sees the paw,

Gnawed off, he cannot feel;

Conceded to the jaw

Of toothed, blue steel.



6

Easter has come around

again; the river is rising

over the thawed ground

and the banksides. When you come you bring

an egg dyed lavender.

We shout along our bank to hear

our voices returning from the hills to meet us.

We need the landscape to repeat us.



You lived on this bank first.

While nine months filled your term, we knew

how your lungs, immersed

in the womb, miraculously grew

their useless folds till

the fierce, cold air rushed in to fill

them out like bushes thick with leaves. You took your hour,

caught breath, and cried with your full lung power.



Over the stagnant bight

we see the hungry bank swallow

flaunting his free flight

still; we sink in mud to follow

the killdeer from the grass

that hides her nest. That March there was

rain; the rivers rose; you could hear killdeers flying

all night over the mudflats crying.



You bring back how the red-

winged blackbird shrieked, slapping frail wings,

diving at my head—

I saw where her tough nest, cradled, swings

in tall reeds that must sway

with the winds blowing every way.

If you recall much, you recall this place. You still

live nearby—on the opposite hill.



After the sharp windstorm

of July Fourth, all that summer

through the gentle, warm

afternoons, we heard great chain saws chirr

like iron locusts. Crews

of roughneck boys swarmed to cut loose

branches wrenched in the shattering wind, to hack free

all the torn limbs that could sap the tree.



In the debris lay

starlings, dead. Near the park’s birdrun

we surprised one day

a proud, tan-spatted, buff-brown pigeon.

In my hands she flapped so

fearfully that I let her go.

Her keeper came. And we helped snarl her in a net.

You bring things I’d as soon forget.



You raise into my head

a Fall night that I came once more

to sit on your bed;

sweat beads stood out on your arms and fore-

head and you wheezed for breath,

for help, like some child caught beneath

its comfortable woolly blankets, drowning there.

Your lungs caught and would not take the air.



Of all things, only we

have power to choose that we should die;

nothing else is free

in this world to refuse it. Yet I,

who say this, could not raise

myself from bed how many days

to the thieving world. Child, I have another wife,

another child. We try to choose our life.



7

Here in the scuffled dust

is our ground of play.

I lift you on your swing and must

shove you away,

see you return again,

drive you off again, then



stand quiet till you come.

You, though you climb

higher, farther from me, longer,

will fall back to me stronger.

Bad penny, pendulum,

you keep my constant time



to bob in blue July

where fat goldfinches fly

over the glittering, fecund

reach of our growing lands.

Once more now, this second,

I hold you in my hands.



8

I thumped on you the best I could

which was no use;

you would not tolerate your food

until the sweet, fresh milk was soured

with lemon juice.



That puffed you up like a fine yeast.

The first June in your yard

like some squat Nero at a feast

you sat and chewed on white, sweet clover.

That is over.



When you were old enough to walk

we went to feed

the rabbits in the park milkweed;

saw the paired monkeys, under lock,

consume each other's salt.



Going home we watched the slow

stars follow us down Heaven’s vault.

You said, let’s catch one that comes low,

pull off its skin

and cook it for our dinner.



As absentee bread-winner,

I seldom got you such cuisine;

we ate in local restaurants

or bought what lunches we could pack

in a brown sack



with stale, dry bread to toss for ducks

on the green-scummed lagoons,

crackers for porcupine and fox,

life-savers for the footpad coons

to scour and rinse,



snatch after in their muddy pail



and stare into their paws.

When I moved next door to the jail

I learned to fry

omelettes and griddlecakes so I



could set you supper at my table.

As I built back from helplessness,

when I grew able,

the only possible answer was

you had to come here less.



This Hallowe’en you come one week.

You masquerade

as a vermilion, sleek,

fat, crosseyed fox in the parade

or, where grim jackolanterns leer,



go with your bag from door to door

foraging for treats. How queer:

when you take off your mask

my neighbors must forget and ask

whose child you are.



Of course you lose your appetite,

whine and won’t touch your plate;

as local law

I set your place on an orange crate

in your own room for days. At night



you lie asleep there on the bed

and grate your jaw.

Assuredly your father’s crimes

are visited

on you. You visit me sometimes.



The time’s up. Now our pumpkin sees

me bringing your suitcase.

He holds his grin;

the forehead shrivels, sinking in.

You break this year’s first crust of snow



off the runningboard to eat.

We manage, though for days

I crave sweets when you leave and know

they rot my teeth. Indeed our sweet

foods leave us cavities.



9

I get numb and go in

though the dry ground will not hold

the few dry swirls of snow

and it must not be very cold.

A friend asks how you’ve been

and I don’t know



or see much right to ask.

Or what use it could be to know.

In three months since you came

the leaves have fallen and the snow;

your pictures pinned above my desk

seem much the same.



Somehow I come to find

myself upstairs in the third floor

museum’s halls,

walking to kill my time once more

among the enduring and resigned

stuffed animals,



where, through a century’s

caprice, displacement and

known treachery between

its wars, they hear some old command

and in their peaceable kingdoms freeze

to this still scene,



Nature Morte. Here

by the door, its guardian,

the patchwork dodo stands

where you and your stepsister ran

laughing and pointing. Here, last year,

you pulled my hands



and had your first, worst quarrel,

so toys were put up on your shelves.

Here in the first glass cage

the little bobcats arch themselves,

still practicing their snarl

of constant rage.



The bison, here, immense,

shoves at his calf, brow to brow,

and looks it in the eye

to see what is it thinking now.

I forced you to obedience;

I don’t know why.



Still the lean lioness

beyond them, on her jutting ledge

of shale and desert shrub,

stands watching always at the edge,

stands hard and tanned and envious

above her cub;



with horns locked in tall heather,

two great Olympian Elk stand bound,

fixed in their lasting hate

till hunger brings them both to ground.

Whom equal weakness binds together

none shall separate.



Yet separate in the ocean

of broken ice, the white bear reels

beyond the leathery groups

of scattered, drab Arctic seals

arrested here in violent motion

like Napoleon’s troops.



Our states have stood so long

at war, shaken with hate and dread,

they are paralyzed at bay;

once we were out of reach, we said,

we would grow reasonable and strong.

Some other day.



Like the cold men of Rome,

we have won costly fields to sow

in salt, our only seed.

Nothing but injury will grow.

I write you only the bitter poems

that you can’t read.



Onan who would not breed

a child to take his brother’s bread

and be his brother’s birth,

rose up and left his lawful bed,

went out and spilled his seed

in the cold earth.



I stand by the unborn,

by putty-colored children curled

in jars of alcohol,

that waken to no other world,

unchanging, where no eye shall mourn.

I see the caul



that wrapped a kitten, dead.

I see the branching, doubled throat

of a two-headed foal;

I see the hydrocephalic goat;

here is the curled and swollen head,

there, the burst skull;



skin of a limbless calf;

a horse’s foetus, mummified;

mounted and joined forever,

the Siamese twin dogs that ride

belly to belly, half and half,

that none shall sever.



I walk among the growths,

by gangrenous tissue, goiter, cysts,

by fistulas and cancers,

where the malignancy man loathes

is held suspended and persists.

And I don’t know the answers.



The window’s turning white.

The world moves like a diseased heart

packed with ice and snow.

Three months now we have been apart

less than a mile. I cannot fight

or let you go.



10

The vicious winter finally yields

the green winter wheat;

the farmer, tired in the tired fields

he dare not leave, will eat.



Once more the runs come fresh; prevailing

piglets, stout as jugs,

harry their old sow to the railing

to ease her swollen dugs



and game colts trail the herded mares

that circle the pasture courses;

our seasons bring us back once more

like merry-go-round horses.



With crocus mouths, perennial hungers,

into the park Spring comes;

we roast hot dogs on old coat hangers

and feed the swan bread crumbs,



pay our respects to the peacocks, rabbits,

and leathery Canada goose

who took, last Fall, our tame white habits

and now will not turn loose.



In full regalia, the pheasant cocks

march past their dubious hens;

the porcupine and the lean, red fox

trot around bachelor pens



and the miniature painted train

wails on its oval track:

you said, I’m going to Pennsylvania!

and waved. And you’ve come back.



If I loved you, they said I’d leave

and find my own affairs.

Well, once again this April, we’ve

come around to the bears;



punished and cared for, behind bars,

the coons on bread and water

stretch thin black fingers after ours.

And you are still my daughter.

Intro to Tang Poetry and *Three Hundred Tang Poems* (Tang Shi San Bai Shou 唐詩三百首,comp.1763)

Remarks/reflections on the English language : in the nature/manner of Vaugelas's remarks on the French

Battlefield Atlas of Price’s Missouri Expedition of 1864

 https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/educational-services/staff-rides/StaffRideHB_AtlasofPricesMissouriExpeditionof1864.pdf

Douglas MacArthur

 

Coffee in Sydney

 

accidentallywesanderson

 

Jiang Ziya: Legend of Deification

 

Sydney

 

Armenian Pantheon of Gods on Mount Nemrut

 

Tufte Data Visualisation of the Challenger disaster

 https://informationisbeautiful.net/

Gontiti

 

Gontiti (ゴンチチ, Gon'chichi, sometimes rendered gontiti or GONTITI) is a Japanese acoustic guitar duo formed in 1978 by Masahiko "Gonzalez" Mikami (ゴンザレス三上, Gonzaresu Mikami, born 30 December 1953 in Osaka, Japan) and Masahide "Titi" Matsumura (チチ松村, Chichi Matsumura, born 6 September 1954, also in Osaka)

Henry VII

 

The cat came back

Living With the News

By W. S. MerwinJuly 20, 2014



Can I get used to it day after day
a little at a time while the tide keeps
coming in faster the waves get bigger
building on each other breaking records
this is not the world that I remember
then comes the day when I open the box
that I remember packing with such care
and there is the face that I had known well
in little pieces staring up at me
it is not mentioned on the front pages
but somewhere far back near the real estate
among the things that happen every day
to someone who now happens to be me
and what can I do and who can tell me
then there is what the doctor comes to say
endless patience will never be enough
the only hope is to be the daylight

The Batrakhomuomakhia

https://sententiaeantiquae.com/original-projects-and-translations/2482-2/

The Batrakhomuomakhia (“The Battle of Frogs and Mice”, also Batrakhomakhia) is an example of epic parody dated to the 6th through 4th centuries BCE or later (the Suda also lists “Battle of the Cranes”, Geranomakhia; and “Battle of the Spiders”, Arakhnomakhia; fragments remain of a “Weasel and Mouse War”). The poem’s style and language indicate later composition or editing. Ancient authors confirm this range of time: Plutarch (Agesilaus 15.4) has Alexander the Great referring to a Batrakhomakhia; the parody’s language echoes Anacreon (line 78 = fr. 460 PMG; see Bliquez 1977, 12).

The poem’s authorship is uncertain: Hellenistic sources attribute it to Homer; later sources credit Pigres of Halicarnassus (Plutarch, De Heroditi Malignitate 873). References to Athena, possible allusions to her rituals, and suggestive toponyms have suggested Athenian origins. Ancient testimonies report competitions for parody in the Greater Panathenaea during the 4th century BCE, but Aristotle places the parodic work of the Margites and Hipponax in the previous century (Poetics 1448b38-9a2).

The poem has many tropes from epic narrative. The basic plot features a friendship between a frog (Physignathus, “Puffing-Jaw”) and a mouse (Psikharpaks, “Crumb-thief”) that, once the mouse dies in a pond-crossing after falling from the frog’s back (86-99), results in heroic combat between their ‘tribes’, culminating in a mouse victory (aided by crabs sent by Zeus). In addition, the poem offers: heroic genealogies, speeches, type-scenes (heralds, arming sequences, assemblies), a use of paradeigma (e.g. Europa and Zeus), a divine council and divine intervention. This parodied world is somewhat post-Heroic: Athena refuses to aid mouse or frog and exhorts the Olympian gods to watch upon the conflict. There are some inconsistencies in the poem as combatants die only to reappear, which have been seen as textual errors or intentional imitations of a ‘nodding Homer’ (Kelly 2009). This latter reading is more in accord with a scholarly sense that sees parody engaged in serious—albeit indirect—literary criticism.