A Million Nows

I reckon it must be a million nows

Since those Sundays on Upper Montague

Street in 1963, when we three,

Snug in our new nest,

Breakfasted on bagels, avidly

Read The Observer and The Sunday Times,

And thought . . . What did we then think?

Those nows return to me now in their nowish way

Like a dog lost on vacation, a hundred miles away,

That turns up again one day with a sheepish smile,

Having made its way back, against all odds,

And proudly says, “I'm not like other dogs!

I’m me. You're you!

How can you ever lose me,

No matter what you do?

Sunday, January 4, 2025

Food for Oblivion

Ah, did you once see Shelley plain,

And did he stop and speak to you?

And did you speak to him again?

How strange it seems, and new!

—Robert Browning, “Memorabilia”

Why, yes, I did, before he'd gone,

Wishing he'd something better to do

Than furnish "this jingling food for oblivion

Called verse."* He might very well rehearse

Some native prince in India—or worse—

Employed at the East India Office?

Nothing superfluous, nothing wanting,

I said I'd see what might be done.

Finding no suitable commercial post,

Off Shelley went and drowned.

I saw him plain enough, a ghost.

His lines kept running jingling on—

At least they did in Browning's time.

Are they still read in yours and mine?

*In 1821, Shelley said this to his friend, and later executor, Thomas Love Peacock, a high official in the East India Office. He could not be employed by the Indian Civil Service, Peacock said, offering to find him something in business instead. Shelley decamped to Italy, however, and drowned sailing recklessly in the Mediterranean in July 1822. See J. B. Priestley, Thomas Love Peacock (English Men of Letters ser., 1927).

Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Possession

I will do such things—

What they are yet I know not, but they shall be

The terrors of the Earth!

—Shakespeare, King Lear 2.4.321–23

Do I possess free will to do

Unknown things, which shall be by their

Doing known? Might philosophers

Some day obtain their magic stone?

A dog may have a kennel

But never own a home.

So, no, you don’t possess free will.

. . . Perhaps it possesses you?

According to Leszek Kołakowski, Bertrand Russell quipped that Lear’s words [epigraph above] summed up the philosophy of Nietzsche—who was to be the prophet of the coming era.

Sunday, September 6, 2026