LC Smith

I see that messenger
     she gave to me so long ago
That harbinger of lives to come
Return
     as a daily dividend

For Ben

Too Soon To Tell

Those words we’ve heard so much.

But were hearing and listening ever the same?

We thought so.

But were we thinking?

We thought so.

Those words we’ve heard so much.

But were hearing and listening ever the same?

Now we know.

They never were the same.

They never were the same.

To a Pantload

As Clarion Calls are become airy nothings
Surely this is become no country for old men.
Storm clouds gather, but who shall answer?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

A Blooming Good Day. Indeed!

Of a Father’s and Sons’ Day

This upcoming Father’s Day, the sixteenth of June 2019, will be a particularly happy one, because you — the children of all my dear wives — will gather around me as together we celebrate the survival of our unique relationships despite my separation from your mothers’ by divorce, death, and distance.

More than anything that I have accomplished, more than anything that I have contributed, more than anything that I have ever done with my life — the influence that I have had — for better or for worse — on you four thoughtful, hard-working, capable men is my evidence, my testament — the sole worth of my existence.

I am joyful beyond measure with the knowledge that I have added such positive value to this always challenging, often cruel, but ultimately beautiful life, and the world in which we have chosen — together — to live in harmony.

Thank you, Adam Howard, Benjamin Franklin, Jefferson Montaigne, and Robert Támas for giving me this very special Father’s Day.

A Pillar to Post: Harrison E. Salisbury

"I come of the generation which thought that the New Deal was the answer. At long last we were turning our imagination and energy to resolving our social ills and cleaning out the dark, festering corners to try to bring the city on a hill to life on this earth.

"What had it availed?

* * * * *

"I could not believe that the creation of an equitable society lay beyond our grasp. I knew better than most that the answer was not in a new utopia. I had seen how man transformed a utopia into a caricature, a bizarre Orwellian nightmare. I had seen in Russia the tragic perversion of the idealistic dream of the young Russians of the 19th century, who gave their lives to cleanse the social evil from their land, idealism and bravery turned to the mockery of the Gulag.

"Who had created a just society in which human beings could attain their true potential and look ahead to a bright future? China? I did not know China at this point. Scandinavia? Only a Swede could make Sweden's way work. America? We had possessed the dream, we had prepared our foundations, but the gap between ideal and reality was growing. Benign attempts to cure one social ill sowed the seeds of another. The architects of the bright future could not--even with computers--predict what new diseases might be born in the cure of the old."

from A Time of Change: A Reporter's Tale of Our Time
Harrison E. Salisbury, 1988

No Justice, No Peace

I was ambling with my wife and heading north on the Avenue of the Americas a few years ago, shortly before the Trumpage struck, when we were rattled by a quick-marching, slogan-chanting, straight-backed brigade of Black Lives Matter youths that pierced the busy sidewalk full of white-knuckled phone-gripping home-bound work-a-day New Yorkers and visitors, sending us all scattering like geese into the heavily trafficked roadway. The chant of “No Justice, No Peace” was loud and crisp and steady, as the stepping of the marchers was loud and crisp and steady.

Now as I look back, I reckon that they marched as soldiers march on a parade-ground while in training to become an efficiently operating cohesive force; at best they successfully appeared that way; and at worst they completely failed if their mission was to faze, or gather support from a public that had long since lost the desire to care for anyone beyond its personal walls, be they constructs of stone, iron, or willfulness.

One can’t be certain, even now, in the age of full-blown Trump with his minions swaying to the strains of “Rich Lives Matter” that even a cry of “All Lives Matter” would sound a sweet endnote to these stark and stressful times of cacophonic disharmony, but it seems to me that the silent, sycophantic, card-carrying counsels in Washington and their vociferous outlying tribes are themselves drilling for something darker even than oil and coal.

I remember hearing a ditty that was sung around Wall Street in the mid-'70s that went like this:

Brezhnev is my leader,

Brezhnev is my boss,

Come the revolution,

We'll all be eatin' borscht.

Roots. Can't live with them, can't live without them.

Earthen Mother

Their dreams renewed

colored crocuses peep out

crying and shouting