The Right Side of History

 “ . . . standing on the right side of history is not a comfortable place to be. It never has been.”

—Wendy Davis

But how to know which side is right?

Is it enough merely to say:

That's so! conclude; then, if a wrong

offend grievously, indict

(Latin indictus = “having been

declared, promulgated, announced”

—by whom is just a dog's delight;

also "unspeakable, ineffable")

what prevaricating minds' must,

confronting, fight, ”in the final

analysis,” as wiseacres say

down Ballykillywuchlin way,*

a stance reluctant, sure—but free?

Within the liminal sphere of

poetry,** yes, Ezra, it must be.

I know that Wendy Davis is right

because her syntax speaks to me,

And if you don’t endorse her song,

most certainly, you've got it wrong.

Jesting Pilate, it's no joke,

right side up the family yoke!

Pavannes and Divagations 

Neath Ben Bulben's buttock lies

Bill Yeats, a poet twoice the soize

Of William Shakespear, as they say

Down Ballykillywuchlin way.*

Let saxon roiders break their bones

Huntin' the fox

thru dese gravestones.

—Ezra Pound, "Under Ben Bulben" (Pavannes and Divagations [1958])

Time, that with this strange excuse,

Pardons Kipling and his views,

And will pardon Paul Claudel,

Pardons him for writing well.**

—W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats (1939)

Epigraph source: Wendy Davis, one of Epstein's accusers, quoted in “What are Trump, lawmakers, victims saying about the Jeffrey Epstein files,” Reuters, November 18, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/what-are-trump-lawmakers-victims-saying-about-jeffrey-epstein-files-2025-11-18/

The Arms Allowed

. . . the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning.

—James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Joyce had his exile. Silence and cunning

eluded him—he was too fond of punning!

I might do better if I shed my love of rhyme,

perhaps not today; before the end of time.

Tipped in and out of waking by my brain,

I keep in mind that other famous rule

taught us long ago in bardic school:

"Never apologize! Never explain!"

Seeking to avoid the human stain,

I may be an idiot, but I’m not a fool!

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Mugwump of the Final Hour

Cartoon of Secretary of State James G. Blaine in the 1884 presidential election.

“You taught me language, and my profit on't

Is I know how to curse.”

—Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest I.ii.366–68

"mugwump of the final hour"—John Ashbery

Cursing becomes a cannibal

Self, I know, but would not have it so,

Who gaze upon a wider world

Which though improved in countless ways

Is the prime source of my dismay:

Like all my kin I live on human flesh

And cannot help it—unhappy

Vegetarian trapped in a universe of meat—

The scene of upright apes' deceit,

And all in all not what I wish.

And so I curse, knowing that things can—

And likely will—get worse. Words told in ancient times,

Shakya Gautama wrote some lines—

He was a Scythian trooper, like me,

But unlike me believed that he could see

A route by which to elude time's web.

It came to him beneath a tree

To which he'd fled from Darius the Great

King of kings and master of his state,

Who’d overthrown a magus named Gaumata.**

You call this “nonsense history”?

And so it is—but made of words, must be,

Since cursing's also made of words,

And lies are curses, too—if they matter!

*John Ashbery, "Alcove" (London Review of Books; Planisphere [2009]), appears to be referring to spring, but with him you never know! Two can play at that game, however, and I impute no agenda to it.

**So says the ancient Greek historian Κτησίᾱς (Ctesias) in his Indica, who also reports one-legged people there with feet so big they could serve as sunshades or umbrellas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctesias). See, too, the reference to the Magian Smerdis (the alleged imposter Gaumata, or Bardiya) in Jorge Luis Borges's narrative "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius."

Monday, November 17, 2025