Poem-in-progress

LBJ - 1960 


The giant rose above the Texas plain, 
Colossus of ambition, destiny 
Ordained his nervy quest, his adolescent
Yearning for power, to climb above rock hard 
Hill Country soil and help the poor to hold 
A measure of their rightful dignity. 


Could you have soared over the hardpan earth,
Self-propped from impecunious stock - though they 
Had seen aggrandizement, flush times, respect,
Only to watch it crumble - ? Lyndon took 
His only chance to flee humiliation: 
The Teachers' College. And somehow enough. 
But how from there to Washington? And how
To power? The Senate when he came: a swamp,
A backward parliament of poobahs, grand 
And not, irregular at best, blocked, jammed,
Stodgy or sedentary, costive group, 
A hundred hidebound men. Yet Lyndon had 
No Yale or Harvard, no distinguished brass 
From West Point or Annapolis. So how 
Did Johnson change the nature of the Senate? 
And how become a bright and lonely star
To that plutonic clan on Capitol Hill? 
He smiled, he lied, he groveled, purred, praised, fawned, 
He threatened, buttonholed and jawboned, winked, 
He passed out envelopes stuffed full of cash. 
Thus he ascended north. 

89


You think that couldn't be? 
They wouldn't drop you in the sea? 
You think I'm telling a lie? 
Go ask Billy Bligh
I know he won't deny 
When they set you adrift 
They don't care how you shift
They're thinking that soon you'll die. 
And look you in the eye. 
You're gonna feed the rats of the sky. 

88.


You wanted nothing so much as you wanted to sail
So why'd you fail?
Now they'll set you adrift
Marooned in a spoon.
Now the storms won't lift.
You think you feel an island
But it's not an island
That's just the devil's tail.

87. 
They’ll never scarce conceive how fast my lord

Could move and plan, and moving plans fulfill,

How Alexander knew maneuvers first,

Their rationale would follow only later

And we would see their destined brilliance shine,

A comet in the night. You would’ve let

The Persian slip away, a crippled dog,

A hobbled useless horse. The king however

Understood like no one else to win

At Gaugamela meaningless without

A Darius who bowed and yielded all

His earth and titles, all his earthly reign.

Would you have fought a day, to take a mile

Of land, only to fight a thousand miles

Of harsh terrain, of deserts, mountains, deaths,

Defiles, betrayals, treacherous rivers? – long

Before you would’ve quit. But always he

Pressed on, though weak or sick or tired, through doubt,

Confusion, loss, privation, seeking Darius.

A year and more he chased the toppled tyrant.

I’ll let you sleep, forever he’ll be king.  

86. 
What then is bravery, a word, a noise, 
A puff of air? Go scowl in fortune's face,
Since being brave is only your good luck. 
You're glad your liver wasn't eaten long
Ago. Go, Hitch and glare the quasar down.
Seeking disputation over truth,
You won your fame, prompting fools 
With passion's full intensity and great 
Conviction to declaim their hate or praise 
Of things opposed, the heroes changing horse
Mid-stream, for Borodino now, and now 
Against. We are so weak, so frail, so slight,
So evanescent, yet we can envisage 
Perfect love and grace. Infinity 
Provides the fertile womb of God. Our need, 
Our boundless need, across the cosmos, would, 
Through endless yearning, yield a Lord of skill.
Brave Damocles, thank your amygdalae. 


Imagination is the key. . .    
Machines will poison everything. . .    

85.
"But didn't he also fight to make the case that we need to inquire freely and constantly? Isn't that what is behind his assertion that there are no final solutions, no absolute truth?" 


"Maybe, Mrs. Olyphant, but the Houyhnhnms reasoned that perhaps the Yahoos should be liquidated. Reason is a whore. We can't trust her. There must be some absolute barrier when it comes to meting out death. How is that based on reason alone? We all are going to die anyway. We all live under the sword of Damocles. Why not truncate the life of this annoying human? Everything about Mr. Hitchens manner of delivery suggested he could indeed imagine doing in his enemies. There was more than a soupçon of Madame Defarge about his attitude. He had the aspect at least of a classically trained Machiavell." 


Cole: "And he was so sure there could be no god. Of course we know in our hearts there is a god and she is the devil."  

84.


 "Hitch believed in happiness, truth, beauty and wisdom. Silly Romantic."
 "You don't believe in those things, Mr. Cole?"
 "Belief is a weasel word. I'm not sure anything has any meaning. Why would it? I think we all can be destroyed without a moment's notice. We stand on a great precipice that will erase not only us but all of human history. What is all this scrambling about?" 

 Ridge: "Oh, fragile we."

83.
Ridge and Mrs. Olyphant were out on the sun deck -- she reading the news on her iPad. 
   "Oh, Christopher Hitchens has died," she said. 
   Ridge: "He didn't like T. S. Eliot. But for all the wrong reasons. He reminded me a bit of Orwell: a man who could only read a book from a political angle. Charles Dickens, not a good Marxist. Of course with Hitchens it was, Graham Greene, just another Marxist. Don't need him." 
   "Why didn't Hitchens like Eliot, his anti-Semitism?" 
   "He just didn't think The Waste Land was good poetry. I have to admit that it isn't poetry that many people have memorized. I will show you fear in a handful of dust is a paraphrase. In Michigan we liked to joke about April being the cruelest month. There it is completely accurate. Not so much in Georgia."
   "But Eliot was so influential. Surely, all of the poets and novelists who were reading him and responding to what he wrote weren't wrong to appreciate him." 
   "We would have to ask the Hitch, and he's dead. Of course, there are any number of things not to like about Eliot's poetry. The way it is always focused on providing salvation for his people humble people like he's some kind of poetic Uriah Heep. He was the great writer making a 'raid on the inarticulate,' he was the articulate artist, don't you know. We are just the "general mess of imprecision of feeling, undisciplined squads of emotion.' And now under conditions for poets that seem so very unpropitious. It truly chokes you up."
   Cole: "Don't be an envious douchebag, Ridge." 
   "What do you mean, Mr. Cole?" Mrs. Olyphant asked.
   "Ridge is trying to show you he hasn't lost the common touch. He's not a snob. There is no hierarchy of men. There are no great books or great ideas. It's just one big flat egalitarian plain." 
   "I take it you think that is not true, Mr. Cole?" 
   "I think it's crap and should be flushed with the bilge. Eliot was articulate. He had a gift and he worked hard at saying something. Faulting him for that is how we ended up with plainspeaking dunces like W." 
   "Mr. Cole raises and interesting point." 
   "Because something is interesting does not make it correct or expedient," Ridge said.  
  

82.
The ant wants
To see with those eyes
To walk with those legs
To be forever an ant.
To never be an ain't.

81.

"My generation had the Truth." 

"Oh cursed spite that ever you were born to set it right." 

"What's that mean, my young cynical friend?"

"I'm not young. I just didn't worship the sun." 

"We stood for something"

"You ran for something. Rushing fools." 

"Better than you brats."

"Because we could imagine complexity?"

"Right and wrong aren't that complicated." 

"It can be. What is truth without understanding?" 

"Mr. Ridge. This is jesuitical sophistry."

"In certain circumstances."

"Hahaha!""Mrs. Kellington, your set had intuition. But can you always trust it?"

"When the cause is right, Ridge."

"The cause may be just, but the means is never easy."  

80.
"There are some cruel wretches on this cruise."
"What did you do to her, Ridge?"
"Nothing. Was nice to her."
"That was your first mistake. The wounded always seek to wound the kindhearted. Makes me almost glad we're headed straight for the maelstrom."
"There's no such thing as karma but at least no one gets out alive."

80. "There are some cruel wretches on this cruise."
"What did you do to her, Ridge?" 
"Nothing. Was nice to her?"
"That was your first mistake. The wounded always seek to wound the kind. Makes me almost glad we're heading straight for the maelstrom."
"There's no such thing as karma, but at least no one get's out alive."  

79.
You can hurt me
But you can't desert me
We're stuck on this wreck together.
After I saved you
And gave you all I had.
And I nursed you
Go ahead and curse me
Or worse deny the changing weather.
I threw you the life line.
That jacket was mine.
Those rations are mine.
The captain's given the sign
I think after this wave we're going down forever.
I was your mate.
You returned loyalty with hate
Slit my throat in my sleep
To survive the deep
But after this wave we're going down forever.

79.

Ridge: "Don't weep for me, Gaugamela."

78. (B)

"Darius turned his chariot and drove

From Gaugamela’s rout, giving the field

To Alexander as he had at coastal Issus.

Philip of Macedon’s child he wouldn’t meet

On equal footing, nor all Persia forfeit –

Regardless of how many times the Greeks

Might trick him with their dubious tactics, he

Would flee into the mountains, the defiles

Of Media. Let the phalanx chase him! Fast!

He left without his wife at Issus, loses

More worldly treasure now as he retreats –

What good to yield and live but not to rule? 

His mother, children, chattel, troops remain

In Alexander's camp; these came to Egypt

With them as trophies; they parade them east.

Twice Alexander’s serried allies broke

The Persian’s careless flank in frightened pieces.

For when he stretched a hole in staggered ranks,

And seized his chance to pierce the Persian line

A second time, a second glorious route, 

The king, not thinking of his wounded thigh,

Thrust toward the tyrant’s chair, striking the teeth

Of Darius’ guard. 
                               The pike took Gaugamela.  

78.

"Darius turned his chariot and drove

From Gaugamela’s route, giving the field

To Alexander as he had at coastal Issus.

Philip of Macedon’s child he wouldn’t meet

On equal footing, nor all Persia forfeit –

Regardless of how many times the Greeks

Might trick him with their dubious tactics, he

Would flee into the mountains, the defiles

Of Media. Let the phalanx chase him! Fast!

He left without his wife at Issus, loses

More worldly treasure now as he retreats –

What good to yield and live but not to rule? 

His mother, children, chattel, troops remain

In Alexander's camp; these came to Egypt

With them as trophies; they parade them east.

And when he stretched a hole in staggered ranks,

And seized his chance to pierce the Persian line -- 

A second time, a second glorious route -- 

The king, not thinking of his wounded thigh,

Thrust toward the tyrant’s chair, striking the teeth

Of Darius’ guard.  

77.

Mrs. Olyphant:

“We can sit here, hmm? lest Esther say she’s cold

In the shadow of the ship. What do you say, Mr. Ridge?”

“ ‘Molest her?’ I hardly know her,” quipped Mr. Ridge.

Esther Pryme returned, “You are very droll, Ridge. But I doubt

You could be a serious poet.”

“Where do you think I should stow it?

C’mon, you be Mrs. Browning.

I’ll be Tennyson.

You are far prettier

And I’m much more fun.”

“You are a married man, Mr. Ridge. Scandalous!

You don’t deserve your wife, I’m sure.”

“Must a man deserve his wife?

I wouldn’t think scarcely one in ten

Women deserve their husbands.”

“It’s precisely that flippancy that would keep your poetry from greatness.”

“My poetry could be great flippancy, I suppose.

It isn’t the Kalevala or even the Lusíads.

It’s more of a sketchbook, clippings,

Blades of poetic herbs, or buds of verse.

Why right here I have some notes:

A conversation with our Barb.”

“She doesn’t like to be called Barb.”    

“But, Esther, it so fits her pointed tongue.

She says that Homer is her poet. All other poets

Owe him a debt or can be found within his books.

I countered that I wasn’t so sure I was in there.

Homer speaks to me but not for me. I like Homer

But I could probably live without him.

Could I really live without Plato.

‘Plato hates poets. A great hater, Plato.

He hated everyone who didn’t think like him.

He certainly hated Homer.’

Hated Homer or hated how Homer was used?

I asked. ‘Plato was likely autistic,’ she said.

So was Einstein, I countered. He didn’t speak

Till he was three. That’s perfect DSM IV material.

And anyway, Socrates was a great lover

And all the early dialogues end in aporia.

We really have to read Plato charitably.

We throw out so much if we call it all fascist trash.

We miss his subtleties and ironies

His inconsistencies.

Homer was the one who buried differences,

Denied sources, bullied muses.

‘Homer had great human compassion.’  

Unless you were a suitor or Thersites or in Troy

Or boring and not royal, or a god.

Women don’t figure.

Women do better in Plato.

‘Though not by much.’

True but he gave us logic and with that we

Could ask why that was the case.

Was it a law of god? Where’d god get his laws?

Can Homer begin to raise that question? No.

Plato was the humanist. Homer the theist. 

76.

A better instrument, a magic sextant

Or some other sailor’s scope. . .

For the seventy-sixth time I could go out

And still be caught up short with Pritchard’s book

When floating through my Gilgamesh I see

How he arose going straight to his mother

That she might untie the meaning of his dream.

Who was his mother? Was she a river queen?

According to a legend Gilly’s mom was married

Near a riverbank. I don’t suppose attended

By young Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn.

Now they’d make a wallop of an epic, boy!

My ship ain’t got such lines. 

75.

Long before this remnant we began our voyage south,
Esther Pryme would wander out so late the hour
Was very early. She hoped to see Orion high and east.
She went with feline steps, not wanting neighbors
To raise their peasant faces, or to follow in their cars,
To aim their beams beyond the yelping dogs.

Along her walk she'd half recite
These liminal verses in the night:

"There's such a tide when moving seems asleep.
           Too full for sound and foam,
When once again what drew from out the boundless deep
            Goes home."

So much for Tennyson.
This melancholy dream is never done.


Esther never saw her constellation rise
So high above her neighborhood again. 
The rains had slapped the streets and left.
The clouds were low and roiled like smoke. 
Leaving an opossum to skitter across the pavement 
Below the house that reeks of marijuana 
She bent back home alone 
Apprehensive of her coming winter cruise,
Fearful from the crunch of leaves,
Or sound of solitary drop
A distant scratch of music from the gas station 
Something in the brush, a skunk perhaps, 
The sound of a solitary drop. 
Aboard a ship 
I'll roam now that I'm old 
And insomniac. I'll sleepwalk up the gangplank
And roam in circles till 
What drew from out the boundless deep goes home.  

74.

Mr. Cole:

"Nigh over there's a man I hate.

He'd have us reconcile with coiled up snakes. 

He's had it easy and calls all fine. 

I'd make a noose of this here line

Save that would never teach him right. 

I'll preserve me like a pickle. 

So's to be close when winds turn fickle. 

And then I'll hit him with the beam of light

So all can see him scuttle in the night. 

For all his truths are lies. 

I'll eat him when he dies."