On the Birth of his Son -- Su Tung-p'o

Guest poem sent in by Raj Bandyopadhyay

A universal gem in sarcasm...

(Poem #1217) On the Birth of his Son Families, when a child is born Want it to be intelligent. I, through intelligence, Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he will crown a tranquil life By becoming a Cabinet Minister. -- Su Tung-p'o

         [ CE)
         translated by Arthur Waley (1919)

The Confucian examination system for recruiting officials into the
bureaucracy may have been far more egalitarian than anything comparable in its
heyday; yet it had its limits. Wealthy men were able to hire tutors to ensure
their success, and poor but intelligent men seldom rose to the top.

Su Tung-p'o, usually considered the greatest poet of the Sung Dynasty,
often commented cynically on the system he considered corrupt and was
dismissed from various positions for his pains. His sarcasm in the
following poem sounds a strikingly contemporary note in this age of
cynicism about politicians. The poet's revenge lies in the fact that his poems
are still read and memorized when all those who persecuted him have been
forgotten.

Raj

[Martin adds]

There's a wonderful takeoff on the examination system in Pratchett's
"Interesting Times", though that poked fun not at its fairness, but at its
utility in selecting capable people. I'm also reminded of the President in
Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator":

    It soon began to dawn on me
    He wasn't very bright
    Because when he was twenty-three
    He couldn't read or write

    'What shall we do?' his parents sob
    'The boy has got the vapors!
    He couldn't even get a job
    Delivering the papers!'

    'Ah-ha!' I said, 'this little clot
    Could be a politician.'
    'Nanny', he cried 'Oh, Nanny, what
    A super proposition!'

Any resemblance to actual presidents is strictly coincidence (and mighty
prophetic coincidence at that). Great book, for those of you who've never
encountered Dahl.

martin

Sonnet -- Billy Collins

Guest poem sent in by Supriya Nair

(Poem #1216) Sonnet All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now, and after this one just a dozen to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas, then only ten more left like rows of beans. How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan and insist the iambic bongos must be played and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines, one for every station of the cross. But hang on here wile we make the turn into the final six where all will be resolved, where longing and heartache will find an end, where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen, take off those crazy medieval tights, blow out the lights, and come at last to bed. -- Billy Collins

Billy Collins is easy to love and easier to understand, but for all that, I
don't think he could be classified under "Light Verse". He almost always
manages to get serious without seeming to. But then, the things he takes
seriously are often the things which we are conditioned NOT to take seriously,
but which we secretly do care about. His realm of expertise is the marginalia
(see poem #1130) of the mind - history, literature, pets, food, and how all
these get mixed up with our daydreams and memories and form bits of our life.
He's quite like a kindly, dreamy professor going about it, and this blends
beautifully with his dry, educated humour ("Laura will tell Petrarch to put
down his pen.").

I found a book of his poems which keep me awake half the night, but I picked
this one over a lot of others because I read it with the delight of recognition
- having given an English exam recently - and the warm, fuzzy, not at all
cynical final image of the muse telling her devotee call it a day is, for me,
one of Billy Collins' finest achievements.

Supriya

Regime Change -- Andrew Motion

Guest poem sent in by Reed C Bowman

Here's Andrew Motion's latest take, as UK poet laureate, on the
destruction of Iraq (from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2912557.stm):

(Poem #1215) Regime Change Advancing down the road from Nineveh Death paused a while and said 'Now listen here. You see the names of places roundabout? They're mine now, and I've turned them inside out. Take Eden, further south: At dawn today I ordered up my troops to tear away Its walls and gates so everyone can see That gorgeous fruit which dangles from its tree. You want it, don't you? Go and eat it then, And lick your lips, and pick the same again. Take Tigris and Euphrates; once they ran Through childhood-coloured slats of sand and sun. Not any more they don't; I've filled them up With countless different kinds of human crap. Take Babylon, the palace sprouting flowers Which sweetened empires in their peaceful hours - I've found a different way to scent the air: Already it's a by-word for despair. Which leaves Baghdad - the star-tipped minarets, The marble courts and halls, the mirage-heat. These places, and the ancient things you know, You won't know soon. I'm working on it now.' -- Andrew Motion

Calling it 'Regime Change', presumably the change from life's to death's realm,
from standing monuments of history to fading memory, is bleakly ironic
commentary on the political beginnings and propaganda of this war.

The comment 'You see the names of places round about?' reflects the
extra awe and horror of modern warfare's havoc wreaked on places
hallowed by millennia of history. (I'm reminded of James Fenton's
"Jerusalem" - I forget if you've run that yet - though there it is the
history itself that is the bone of contention. Here it is merely the
recipient of attention from that infamous hobgoblin, collateral damage.)

I am sure that due attention is in fact being paid by bomber commands
not to destroy ancient monuments if it can be helped, as they always
insist, but I dread the Friday when at time of prayer some ancient
faience-decked and thronging mosque will fall to a bomb made to look
like a cruise missile blast, because what better way would there be for
a desperate, ruthless and irreligious regime to at least call down
vengeance for its own passing on the enemy which is hunting it down?

Even if someone's hand balks at that deed, we'll see Monte Cassinos
fall, the more in Iraq because their equivalents are more densely
strewn, in any city the ground war takes by storm. If we protested the
war before it started, this poem is, in a way mourning the passing of
monuments which have not yet been destroyed. But beyond that, it laments the
stain of death now being brought to the hallows, even if the mosques or temples
or palaces or ruins are not battered down.

Reed

[Martin adds]

I like today's poem a lot more than I did Motion's previous antiwar piece,
Causa Belli [Poem #1143]. Motion addresses the common concern about priceless
historical sites being obliterated in a moment of wanton destruction, and sets
that against the background of a Middle East enriched by the passing millennia,
the cradle of civilisations, empires and legends.

'Regime Change' doesn't really do justice to the richly evocative, almost
legendary nature of the region's history (I wonder, for instance, what Flecker
would have made of the same material), but then, that isn't its focus. Instead,
its tone captures the indifference-masquerading-as-pragmatism that seems to be
vying with patriotic glory as a justification for some of modern warfare's
indiscriminate excesses. The understated, almost offhand "I'm working on it
now" hits just the right note.

martin

p.s. Quote of the day:
  "Andrew Motion said his 22 lines of verse were intended to be explicitly
anti-war."
    -- [broken link] http://dsdsdemo2.ap.org/aptopicsdemo/stories/184_ds_1764009.html

On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam -- Hayden Carruth

Guest poem sent in by amulya gopalakrishnan

(Poem #1214) On Being Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam Well I have and in fact more than one and I'll tell you this too I wrote one against Algeria that nightmare and another against Korea and another against the one I was in and I don't remember how many against the three when I was a boy Abyssinia Spain and Harlan County and not one breath was restored to one shattered throat mans womans or childs not one not one but death went on and on never looking aside except now and then with a furtive half-smile to make sure I was noticing. -- Hayden Carruth

Poems on war sometimes seem so useless and uncalled for, like flinging bits of
confetti at this pitiless juggernaut. This poem sort of captures that, right
from the throwaway tone it begins with to the bland monstrousness of the end.

Amulya

[Martin adds]

This is indeed a brilliant poem, but its very brilliance serves to mask an
underlying fallacy. The purpose of war poetry is not so much to "restore breath
to one shattered throat", but to show people what exactly war is, in a way that
the safely sanitised capsules delivered by newspapers and television cannot or
do not. "The pity of war, the pity war distilled" needs to be adequately
conveyed to the populace-at-large, and I submit that poets, as much as anyone
else, have served to counteract the "dulce et decorum est" blood-and-glory
mindset of an earlier day.

martin

Paradise Lost (excerpt) -- John Milton

Guest poem sent in by Matt Chanoff

(Poem #1213) Paradise Lost (excerpt) Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? Th' infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, what time his pride Had cast him out from heav'n, with all his host Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring To set himself in glory above his peers, He trusted to have equaled the Most High, If he opposed; and with ambitious aim Against the throne and monarchy of God Raised impious war in heav'n and battle proud With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms. Nine times the space that measures day and night To mortal men, he with his horrid crew Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf Confounded though immortal: but his doom Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought Both of lost happiness and lasting pain Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes That witnessed huge affliction and dismay Mixed with obdúrate pride and steadfast hate: At once as far as angels ken he views The dismal situation waste and wild, A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed: Such place Eternal Justice had prepared For those rebellious, here their prison ordained In utter darkness, and their portion set As far removed from God and light of heav'n As from the center thrice to th' utmost pole. -- John Milton

No Milton has been posted here since 1999. Here's something I've appreciated
during these apocalyptic times. It's from Paradise Lost, right near the
beginning. The lines "Hurled headlong flaming from th'ethereal sky/ With
hideous ruin and combustion down" are, and I think, belong, in the pantheon of
immortal poetry. I'm no Christian, but the embers of that combustion seem all
around us recently.

There's a lot more about Milton than I know described and linked to Poem #106,
Poem #127, Poem #279 and Poem #281.

Matt