True and through

"To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true."

H.L. Mencken, US writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odour of death

Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can

Unearth the whole offence

From Luther until now

That has driven a culture mad,

Find what occurred at Linz,

What huge imago made

A psychopathic god:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use

Their full height to proclaim

The strength of Collective Man,

Each language pours its vain

Competitive excuse:

But who can live for long

In an euphoric dream;

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism's face

And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play,

All the conventions conspire

To make this fort assume

The furniture of home;

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash

Important Persons shout

Is not so crude as our wish:

What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

Into the ethical life

The dense commuters come,

Repeating their morning vow;

"I will be true to the wife,

I'll concentrate more on my work,"

And helpless governors wake

To resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

Who can reach the deaf,

Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

Wystan Hugh Auden, Anglo-American poet (1907-1973)

Original posting of the poem

Spinning Statuette in Manchester Museum

Immersion

"Every human being's essential nature is perfect and faultless, but after years of immersion in the world we easily forget our roots and take on a counterfeit nature."

Lao-Tzu, Chinese philosopher (6th century BCE) 

Survie des agélastes

Non, ne survivons pas à notre génération !
Tailladons-nous les veines, dévorons nos rations !
N'attendons pas comme des moutons la glaciation !
Crier contre l'injustice rend la voix rauque ?
Alors hurlons parce que ce monde ne vaut pas une bauque
et qu'entre injustice et impunité tout nous paraît glauque.
Rions à pleins poumons, dansons, chantons !
La vie n'est rien de moins qu'un marathon.
Étourdissons-nous puis repartons !
Brûlons la chandelle par les deux bouts,
car d'autres moins vivaces resterons debout
car on n'a jamais vraiment eu besoin de nous.

Creating the demand

"The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards."

Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

Not a Super Moon...but a nice-enough full moon

Yet again, I had forgotten my tripod!

Tentatives

Toutes ces tentatives

loin d'être naïves

sont incomplètes

désuètes

sommaires

éphémères

le temps excoriera

l'expérience animera

la puissance sommeille

attend l'éveil

la feuille de thé

en forme de paupière

l'hiccéité

formée dans la poussière

il faudra pour cela verser

plus de sang et de larmes

que n'en fit couler Circé

sans l'aide d'aucune arme

il faudra pour cela observer

plus de soleils et plus de lunes

au coucher et au lever –

peut-être les voir de la dune

il faudra pour cela vivre

moins vainement

lire plus de livres

plus silencieusement

il faudra pour cela, aller de l'avant

et être moins ivre moins souvent

Autant que possible (1913)

Et si tu ne peux pas mener la vie que tu veux,

essaie au moins de faire en sorte, autant

que possible: de ne pas la gâcher

dans trop de rapports mondains,

dans trop d’agitation et de discours.

Ne la galvaude pas en l’engageant à tout propos, 

en la traînant partout et en l’exposant

à l’inanité quotidienne

des relations et des fréquentations,

jusqu’à en faire une étrangère importune.

Constantin Cavafis, En attendant les barbares et autres poèmes

 

The longest night

The longest night is the longest day

juxtaposition of sun and sun

moon and moon in ecstatic ballet

light and light over a tiled floor

where names are renamed,

where words acquire new meanings for the night.

And the revelling takes on new shades

and people new hues

when yew trees extend their claws deep into the dusk

when the husk of what was is discarded

in the bonfire

and the pyre is delineated,

fiery line by fiery line,

minute after minute

by the failing light and the rising darkness.

The longest night of the year

lengthens and lengthens

and the lanterns flicker the way to the sphere

with the uncanny patterns,

some dance, enraptured,

some gambol with the giggling and the gay,

by the night immatured.

Behind the black birds-and-buds motifs

is secreted a spiral staircase.

Some, led by the nocturnal connoisseur,

will ascend this null point in space

and still the sclerotic buts and ifs

with the tongue-tying picture

of the city glazed in dazzling darkness

stripped of all merit and of all culpa

during the longest night of the kalpa.