1/29/23A

Sunday, January 29 postscript(s)

 I lost control of formatting when I did a cut & paste of Auden's poem so on to a new post.  

Auden's Musee is one of my favorite poems though I wonder why since it induces such recognition of guilt in me.  He tells us the subject of the poem not in the title, but in the second word of the text: "suffering," human suffering. He goes on to reflect that while one human being suffers, anguishes, excruciates and dies,  He notes that even 'dreadful martyrdom' occurs in some 'corner, some untidy spot' where dogs may be pissing and the killer's horse scratches his ass on a handy tree.  He reminds us that Breughel's Icarus depicts a "disaster," "a boy falling out of the sky," "his white legs disappearing into the green water" with a 'splash' and a 'forsaken cry,' while the "expensive delicate ship . . . had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."  How easy it is to think of the forsaken cries of.  George Floyd and Tyre Nichols crying for their mothers while being murdered by their official police department executioners, to think of Eric Garner on Staten Island crying 'I can't breathe.'  How easy to think of all of them as martyrs to Black oppression in America, even with Tyre's murderers all black. Is is conceivable that Tyre would have been treated as he was had he been White?  Ditto George Floyd.  Eric Garner . Freddie Gray.  And as for 'the expensive delicate ship . . . sail[ing] calmly on, consider the video of the casual conversations of the vicious murderous police officers during the 22 minutes that elapsed before an ambulance arrived for Tyre, with the 5 cops offering no assistance whatsoever to their lethally injured victim.   Consider the nonchalance of Derek Chauvin as he pressed his knee on George Floyd's neck for  more than 9 minutes while Floyd's life drained away.  Or Daniel Pantaleo after applying his unlawful and lethal chokehold on Eric Garner.  How can I knot be guilty culpable indifference when I have done nothing to stop or reduce this police criminality other than to 'tsk tsk', or to write about it in my chronicles or journal to be read only by me, or to commiserate with my 'expensive delicate' highly educated very comfortable White liberal friends about what a racist society we live in, virtue signalling. Never picketed, never marched, never carried a sign, never wrote to politicians to demand action.  I'm reminded of the concluding lines of Kenneth Rexroths memorial poem to Dylan Thomas "Thou Shalt Not Kill: "And all the birds of the deep sea rise up / Over the luxury liners and scream  / 'You killed him, you killed him / In your Goddamed Brooks Brothers suit / You son of a bitch!"

Donald Hall, Essays After Eighty:  "My problem isn't Death but Old Age.  I fret about my lack of balance, my buckling knee, my difficulty standing up and sitting down.  Yesterday I fell asleep in an armchair.  I never fall asleep in a chair.  Indolence overcomes me every day.  I sit daydreaming about what I might do next:putting on a sweater or eating a pieceof pie or calling my daughter.  Sometime I break through my daydream to stand up  . . . Fiends die, friends become demented, friends quarrel, friends drift with old age into silence . . ."

Queries to my Seventieth Year, Walt Whitman, died at 72.   "Approaching, nearing, curious / Thou dim, uncertain spectre - bringest thou life or death? / Strength, weakness, blindess, more parahysis and heavier? /  Or placid skies and sun?  Wilt stir the waters yet? / Or haply cut me short for good?  or leave me here as now? / Dull, parrot-like and old, with cracked voice, harping, screeching?

Answers from my Eightieth Year, Chuck Clause, died at ???? "Approaching, nearing, curious - now a decade on / The clear and certain spectre - diminished life and death. / Touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell grow dull and deaden / Memory, identity, and self evanesce. / And cut me short.  There's no leaving me here as now / Plague or plaques or plasias ultimately see to that."              

Vacillation,  W. B. Yeats "Things said or done long years ago / Or things I did not say or do / But thought that I might say or do / Weigh me down, and not a day / But something is recalled, /  My conscience or my vanity appalled."