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amolosh

I said, 'A line will take us hours maybe;

Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,

Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.'

—Yeats, "Adam's Curse"


Even if not a tour de force,

a poem's tacitly a wager,—

a bet with certain risk assumed

(albeit ensuring it may be caught)

putting the cart before the horse

when that’s what the sibylline muse

assigns to your ordainèd course—

a morceau de bravoure,* in short.


Yeats’ gong-tormented Byzantine sea,

the Emperor in Roth's Radetzky

March,

e.g., are blatant clues in Sherlock's sport.

Deciduous history's poetry's not.‡

And as to the formal causes of art . . .

Well, there's this horse before the cart.




* Cf. Charles Dantzig, Dictionnaire égoïste de la littérature française (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2005), s.vv. Morceau de bravoure, tour de force, originalité.

† Joseph Roth’s novel Radetzkymarsch (Radetzky March), tracking the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was published in 1932.

‡ "As if all history were deciduous," Anthony Hecht exclaims in "A Birthday Poem."


Saturday, February 15, 2025

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amolosh

The emperor Aurelian


Saint Valentine—whose “acts”

mirror the res gestae (or "facts")

about Saints Marius and Martha,

supposèd Persian pilgrims,

put to death in the Colosseum,

during the Lupercalia,

(a pagan festival of love,

marriage, and fertility) this day,

in the crisis of the Third Century,

together with their sons,

Saints Audifax and Abachum—

is just . . . a sort of carbon copy.


Martyrdom's an industry

in the hemorrhaging empire,

whose ruler will in 275 CE

be murdered by his guards

on his way to war with Iran,

to "make Rome greater again."


Oh, confounded palindrome,

Roma summus amor,*

but slaughter is the butcher's tax!

All we can do is, as before, to roam.

Happy Saint Abachum’s Day!

Why won't you be my Audifax?





Friday, February 14, 2025

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amolosh

There was a curmudgeon in Rheims

Who lacked an appropriate stance.

When he met a young filly

Who teased, “Let’s be silly!”

He groaned, “Nana, I’m long past Brrromance.”

 

A cross-dresser in old Reykjavik

Once cut a young queen to the quick.

When they saw from their pants

They was eager to dance,

They said, “Sorry! I’m looking for Dick!”

 

A superannuated snow-bird at Mar-a-Lago,

Was unhappily not in the know.

When he saw on a pier,

“No refugees here!”

He thought it meant: “Bring back Jim Crow!”

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Photo by Peter Dreyer

 Cyclops by Christos Saccopoulos, used by kind permission of the sculptor.

Copyright © 2023 - by Peter Dreyer

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