To clarify: I am agnostic when it comes to coincidence; when the neighbor’s Rubenesque pooch barks in the same tonal register as Paul Simon, I do not take it as a sign of anything, really, beyond my own thoughts. Which confuse even me. So I’m reading this poem by Ted Burke and it reminds me of yes, Paul Simon (but not the dog) and even more of a few lines by Pablo Neruda, and more as well, but at the time I responded to Ted I couldn’t quite recapture the poem, which is not online. So I wrote a quick response and then looked up the words (it’s called “Brussels”), viz.

I have sought and found, wearily,
under the ground, between the fearsome bodies,
like a pale-wood tooth
coming and going under the tough acid,
alongside the materials
for a death agony

Then my brain got stuck. It jammed up very suddenly and started skipping like a record (remember records?). It was like two groups of people were singing two poems as rounds. The first group was chanting “Brussels”, and the second group “Campo Dei Fiori” by Czeslaw Milosz. Bam, skip, bam, skip, bam.

I like to think of myself as a cultured guy, but I don’t normally walk around with all this damn poetry clogging up the works. Backing up: this thread got me thinking about evil. One thing lead to another, and next thing mrs. august knows she can barely fit on the bed for the stack of books on the Holocaust (which is a hokey way, at this point in the century, to deal with the problem of evil, but that’s where I was, and mrs. august mad at me besides, and I’ve got to write an article (that as perhaps you, gentle reader, can tell, I really don’t want to be thinking about)).

Anyway, “Campo dei Fiori” is about a square in Rome, but really it’s about a carousel that was set up outside the Warsaw Ghetto. It continued to operate as the ghetto was being, ahem, “cleared.” The poet compares the crowd’s indifference to the way Italians reacted to the burning of the philosopher Giordano Bruno at the stake. It got stuck in my head, the poem, and the other poem too. (Lest you think I’m trying to show off or be annoyingly erudite – the last thing that got stuck in my head was a Seal song with my eyes becoming alive by the light that you shine etc and so forth). It’s a lot to be carrying around all the time, and not especially good for my marriage, or my article. That, and a cool piece about libraries. Oh and something about prison ships that seems to have created not the smallest echo of a stir in the US.

After all that, I have very little to say about evil, or anything else. It’s just that I think that politics is more than arguing whether a party nomenklatura should anoint a or b (and pretending that either choice is more democratic). Mostly I’m stuck: bam, skip, bam. Here’s the round:

Sometimes the wind from burning houses
I have sought and found, wearily,
Would bring the kites along
Under the ground, between the fearsome bodies,
And people on the merry-go-round
Like a pale-wood tooth
Caught the flying charred bits
Coming and going under the tough acid
This wind from the burning houses
Alongside the materials
Blew open the girls’ skirts
For a death agony
And the happy throngs laughed

On a beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Now I feel ill.

That's a magnificent "bang-skip-bang". Koestler would call you a creative genius.

I think you should revive your exquisite corpse idea.

As an aside, what you've done is similar to what certain musical minds have done with sampled music (and how the Verve netted a tidy profit, unintentionally, for the Rolling Stones). Sometimes, though, the gestalt is so radically different than the component parts, I wonder whether copyright protection laws really do go too far.

Anyhow, nice poetic remix. And nice to see you.

But I really do feel kind've ill.

Probably the soylent green.

...thinking about evil has made you think about our political system.

I second what FB says about the whole poetic mash-up deal. It must be nice to have a mind that actually, you know, works and stuff.

Probably the soylent green.

Nah, I'm thinking tympanums. Tympani?

Anyway, where's today's med pamphlet?

note to Arch: you have a mind that actually, you know, works and stuff. And I'm so glad that you do and that you post here with it, as well. Ditto to fb.

post.

Hi, august!

Thanks. Nice to see you as well. I don't think exquisite corpse would work very well with the new format, but I've been thinking about something similar. We'll see.

Lot's of evil to go around. I wouldn't know about the mind thing.

Thanks! Hi to you as well.

And I thought my mind was a ping-pong game. Your mind is a all-Chinese ping-pong tournament, for crying out loud!

Anyway, my mind boggles at the combo of Milosz and Neruda... I wonder if they knew each other, and, if so, what they thought of each other.

MA

Neruda was full of praise for Stalin. Milosz recognized this for the poppycock it was -- there's an essay in Captive Mind . I'm on a Hitchen's boycott (and I don't like the way the article is framed), but anyway it comes up in this Fighting Words piece.

In answer to your question on the other thread: it's still too early to say what the role of "The Chinese Government" was. The school collapses are tragic, but they are tragic in part because so many kids were in school (not true of all poor countries). It's not clear what level of government failed -- was this local corruption, or was there some central policy that encouraged failure? The government appears to have been more successful in other respects: while the failure of schools is indeed awful, it is totally amazing to me that the dams have held out as well as they have given the enormous stress of the earthquake. There's still a lot we don't know. Mostly, I think it's still too early to make a call one way or the other. I'd also say that while the government is to be praised for its initial handling of the disaster, it's not clear what the long-term political consequences will be for those in power.

I envy you your Du Fu!

Some rescuers found steel reinforcement rods in the rubble that were the thickness of pencils!!

The central government let the media have full access to the people (and vice versa) at the height of the rescue. Now that they want to clamp down again, it may be too difficult to get the genie back in the bottle.

It's not clear what level of government failed -- was this local corruption, or was there some central policy that encouraged failure?

Somehow, I don't think we're going to get the answer to that question, august. Maybe just a few (or more) firings (and suicides) for the local officials, and that's all. Especially with the central government "so busy" with the upcoming Olympics.

Enough. Back to whatever article you're supposed to be writing.

MA