If Rudy* is a “hand grenade”* Why did Bolton* send his aide To disarm the whole charade While Bolton lounges in the shade?
Well, that is how his wars are made: From the safety of Bolton’s brain.
Note: *Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of NYC serving as President Trump’s personal attorney and covert diplomat in Ukraine. *John Bolton was the former National Security Advisor who referred to Giuliani as a *”hand grenade” regarding efforts to force the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son.
[JK: An augury is an omen and this is a political poem because . . . today is Blake’s birthday and the poem details connections, relationships ecological and human we too often, especially in the halls of power, fail to acknowledge. The first four lines are famous but we often neglect the rest of this poem of transcendental justice. Thanks to the Poetry Foundation from which I borrowed Blake’s bio and the poem.]
William Blake [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
A poet in a bad mood can ruin a reputation, as T.S. Eliot did for April when he called it “the cruellest month”, adding an extra letter l for emphasis.
I prefer what Robert Frost had to say about April in is his poem “Two Tramps in Mud Time.” Mud time is what rural people in New England used to call early spring, that time of year when the snow melts and dirt roads and nearly every other spot of ground melts into mud:
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
Happy April. Read some books of poetry or locate a journal or two. Perhaps the nation could use a National Mud Month as well.
[Thanks to poets.org for the National Poetry Month logo]
For many years she wanted to write a poem
To end all cruelty. But always she failed to start
Or finish because she thought: Who am I
To try to change what many holy people
Failed to do? And how could one poem Accomplish what entire books Said to be written by God or saints or prophets Had not done? But one day she started
To write and could not stop until the lines,
As if dictated, appeared: a poem she could
Not comprehend completely, but seemed
To be some formula, a kind of spell
That when recited erased her fears and joined
Everything together so that even the most
Vicious acts were easy to forgive,
Even when she imagined herself the victim.
And then she was distracted by the phone.
After the call, she looked at the poem again.
Whatever she thought she’d written there was gone.
Banishment has this benefit:
Art becomes your argument. You’re free
To dabble in the resistance of language,
Rebel in babble, decorate the walls
With something human that will last or have
To be furiously, futilely erased.
Exhausting to elaborate the facts,
Explain thisness of this, thatness of that
To people who put on power like a hat
That covers eyes and ears but not
The mouth: to hear themselves they have to shout.
Call it the drowning out of doubt,
Conquering of conscience, clearing a forest
That will come marching back– Macbeth’s
Nightmare. Better to be a witch,
A soothing sayer of spells casting doubt
In riddles and rhyme. Be lyrical, then,
Be underhand to undermine, eschew
Fury and cultivate a banished sound.
Despite doubt, you are signifying something.
