“The guns are available and the targets are soft.”
(Stephen King)
Been to the broke-heart mountain.
Been to the Jesus well.
Thoughts and prayers
for the Shepherd’s cause,
the Founders’ flaws,
the House of Laws,
from We the People’s hell.
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
“Trashing his opponents and setting his huge fan base on them is a tactic Trump has used for years.”
(The Guardian)
The person who commits lèse majesté
on the pugnacious lord of Magalago
incurs a stiff barrage of coo-coo ack-ack
from keyboard hoplites flogging his farrago.
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
My favorite Spanish word is sigiloso.
It comes to me unbidden of a sudden
from that place frondoso in my noggin,
the quarter that is menos lugareño,
con tan poco apego to the local
that I can be exotically vocal.
Resulta que me_evoca English “sigil,”
a seal que no_es lo mismo que foca;
of logic en mi_idioma hay muy poca.
It leads me to your sister’s chest-of-drawers:
No_es lo mismo “la cómoda de
tu hermana” que “acomódame
a tu hermana” — ¡Dios, qué_escándalo!
The play on words es un retruécano.
Arturo Rodríguez told me this tale:
A man’s car failed him in a lonely dale.
Nearby pastured a horse, and distant lay
a farmer’s house where urchins were at play
(Arturo’s word for “urchins” was escuincles).
“Es el carburador,” murmured a voice.
As to who had spoken there was no choice.
The man hightailed it to the house in panic.
“YOUR HORSE JUST TALKED!” he stammered halfway manic.
“It said my problem is the carburetor!”
“Not possible,” the farmer said. “That horse
no sabe nada de mecánica.”
Artesano del arco, ¡te saludo!
Arturo, amigo de grato recuerdo,
viviste_antaño en mi cobertizo.
En paz descanses, maestro de canto,
y obra de ladrillo y cemento.
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
Never a bird had fairer scientific name than Upupa epops, the jaunty hoopoe, for which the Arabic is hudhud. “Heron” is balaSHUN.
I experience this delicate lyric written in Arabic as all signal with no noise. If it alludes to other than what it says, I’m clueless. The poem exalts confusion, and being humbly confused is divine in my book. Wallowing in certainty is where mischief lies. Only today I read this: … Stay with the questions and entertain doubt as the unlikely bedrock of understanding.
The translation to English and transliteration of the Arabic text are mine.
2013-8-16
I sing of you, O bird, migrating heron.
I sing of your whiteness, and your unhurried gait in fallow land.
I sing of you also, O hoopoe, who are resident.
I sing of your little crown as you gather seeds in the plowed field.
I am like this, my song is confused;
it puts one foot in the fallow land
and another in the plowed land.
One time I say the prayer of the resident,
another the prayer of the traveler.
(Zakaria Mohammed, Poetry, September 2023)
‘uḡannī-ka yā ṭā’ir(a)-l-balašūn(a)-l-muhājir(a).
‘uḡannī bayāḍ(a)-ka, wa-mišyaẗ(a)-ka-l-mutamahhilaẗ(a) fī-l-‘arḍ(i)-l-būr(i).
wa-‘uḡannī-ka ‘anta ‘aiḍ(an) yā hudhud(a)-l-‘iqāmaẗ(i).
‘uḡannī tuwaij(a)-ka wa-‘anta talquṭ(u)-l-ḥab(a) fī-l-‘arḍ(i)-l-maḥrūṯaẗ(i).
‘anā hakaḏā ‘uḡnīyaẗī mubalbalaẗ(un)
taḍa^(u) qadam(an) fī-l-‘arḍ(i)-l-būr(i)
wa-‘uẖrā fī-l-‘arḍ(i)-l-maḥrūṯaẗ(i).
marraẗ(an) ‘uṣallī ṣalāẗ(a)-l-muqīm(i)
wa-‘uẖrā ṣalāẗ(a)-l-musāfir(i).
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
By Monday morning, a furious Mrs. Muzzle pounced on Uncle’s lap, took her petite paw and gave his smirking lips several wicked whacks. But he …
Mrs. Muzzle
“With students, sometimes she suggested that they try silence, not working at all. That, she believed, might be best for someone who was writing the wrong poems or producing too much.”
(Colm Tóibín)
She insisted on calling herself a writer. It was for posterity to judge if she was a “poet,” she averred in an essay. News of her passing hit me with a jolt on the very day of it. Louise Glück died on October 13, 2023, aged 80.
Her astutely acid critiques of my submissions in a writing seminar she conducted at Greensboro administered a salutary coup de grâce to my juvenile ambitions to write poetry. At seminar’s end I set sail to fail in other directions, and have since paid her the readerly devotion the genre exacts from me. An unsentimental, Olympian reserve I treasure in Glück’s work has provided a benchmark for how I prospect for poems in verse I consume.
Here’s another comment from Colm Tóibín’s tribute in The Guardian:
Glück was not afraid of using words like “soul” or “god”, or making use of primal images of forest and light and dark and sun and moon. But the poems were not abstract. They were poems of hard experience. She didn’t do innocence. The poems were filled with emotions that she knew only too well.
(Colm Tóibín, “Louise Glück: a poet who never shied away from silence, pain or fear,” theguardian.com, 10-17-12)
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
This is the second of 3 poems by Zakaria Mohammed published in the September 2023 edition of Poetry magazine. They date from 2013. (I noted the first one here). English translations by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha are in the Poetry issue as well.
The translation from the Arabic and transliteration of the Arabic text that follow here are mine.
2013-8-15
I await the expiry of August, September’s coup de grâce.
Hey, dawdling Fall, I am here, expectant. Cooked you
some porridge, kindled a fire. Come, wind-sweep the brazen sun
away. Lift its hand from my shoulder.
Summer crouches heavily on my chest. But my pale hand
swears by season’s turning, readies a saddle for it. Oh! — you piebald horse of Autumn, that carries me where my thoughts go: chainlink stone climbing the foot of the hill, unruly clouds climbing the foot of the sky. There’s nothing more than this, not a thing.
Of course, it’s possible to add a crash
of thunder so my bones are shaken, and the bones of the world.
As for all of you, believing fondly horses live in the hills
of Spring, know: Autumn’s promontories are their dwelling. They tense and gather muscle at the scent of rain, their nostrils flare, they bolt, clearing rocky hurdles toward the summit, where they will graze on the fringes of clouds.
Transliteration
‘antaḍir(u) nihāyaẗ(a) āb(a) wa-maqtal(a) ailūl(a).
‘ayyuhā-l-ẖarīf(u)-l-lāḏi yatalakka’(u), ‘anā hunā bi-‘intiḍār(i)-ka. ṭabaẖ(tu) la-ka
^aṣīdaẗ(an) wa-‘aš^al(tu) nār(an). ta^āla, w-‘uknus bi-rīḥ(i)-ka-š-šams(a)-
ṣ-ṣafīqaẗ(a). ‘irfa^ yad(a)-ha ^an katif(ī).
‘aṣ-ṣaif(u) yajṯim(u) ṯaqīl(an) fauqa ṣadr(ī). lakinna yad(ī)-l-baiḍā’(a)
taḥlif(u) bi-l-ẖarīf(i), wa-tu^idd(u) la-hu-s-sarj(a). ‘āh(i) yā ḥiṣān(a)-l-ẖarīf(i)-
l-‘ablaq(a). yā man yadrus(u) fikraẗ(ī) wa-yunaffiḏ(u)-hā: salāsil(un) ḥajarīyaẗ(un)
taṣ^ad(u) safḥ(a)-t-tallaẗ(i) wa-ḡuyūm(un) mušattataẗ(un) taṣ^ad(u) safḥ(a)-s-samā’(i).
wa-lā šai’(a) ḡair(a) hāḏā, lā šai’(a). bi-ṭ-ṭab^(i), yumkin(u) ziyādaẗ(u) haddaẗ(i)
ra^d(i) kai tataẖalẖal(a) ^iẓām(ī) wa-^iẓām(a)-d-dunyā.
‘ammā ‘antum fa-qad ẓanan(tum) ẖaṭa’(an) ‘anna-l-ẖail(a) taskun(u) fī tilāl(i)-
r-rabī^(i). lā, tilāl(u)-l-ẖarīf(i) hīya maskan(u)-l-ẖail(i). taštamm(u)
muhtājaẗ(an) rā’iḥaẗ(a)-l-maṭar(i), fa-tattasi^u manāẖir(u)-ha, wa-taqfiz(u) fauqa-
s-salāsil(i)-l-ḥajarīyaẗ(i) ṣā^idaẗ(an) naḥwa-l-qimmaẗ(i), kai taqḍam(a) ‘aṭrāf(a)-l-ḡaimaẗ(i).
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
THE UNITED KINGDOM
“Stand up and fight… etc. Stand up and fight – because when you stand up and fight,… etc… stands up and fights. And when… etc… stands up and fights,… etc… stands up and fights. And when… etc… stands up and fights,… etc… stand up and fight. And they stand up and fight for… etc. That is what… etc. Stand up and fight. Stand up and fight! Thank you, conference!” [See note]
(Penny Mordaunt, Conservative Party MP)
THE UNITED STATES
“This all goes back to our reward structure, and how that’s gotten turned on its head… As long as you’re talking about fighting — regardless of whether you have a strategy to land a punch or win a round — you never actually have to win, because that’s what gets the most attention… And that means Republicans are now sort of always talking between ourselves, and the rest of the country we either don’t engage or hold in contempt.”
(Doug Heye, Republican aide)
“[Winning election to Congress] has come… to mean winning a prominent platform for performative outrage…”
(Yuval Levin, Opinion writer)
Sources
Kate Nicholson, HuffPost, “Penny Mordaunt Couldn’t Stop Herself Using This 1 Phrase During Her Tory Conference Speech,” 10-5-23.
Michael C. Bender, “For Republicans in the Trump Era, Chaos Often Seems to Be the Point,” New York Times, 10-6-23.
Yuval Levin, “What We Can Do to Make American Politics Less Dysfunctional,” New York Times, 10-9-23)
Note
Full text of the Mordaunt fight chant:
“Stand up and fight for the freedoms we have won. Against socialism, whether it is made of velvet or iron, have courage, and conviction – because when you do, you move our countrymen, our communities and capital of all kinds to our cause. Stand up and fight – because when you stand up and fight, the person beside you stands up and fights. And when our party stands up and fights, the nation stands up and fights. And when our nation stands up and fights, other nations stand up and fight. And they stand up and fight for the things for which the entire progress of humanity depends! Freedom. That is what Conservatives do. That is what this nation does. Have courage. Bring hope. Stand up and fight. Stand up and fight! Thank you, conference!”
(Penny Mordaunt, Conservative Party MP)
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
“Cricket is first and foremost a dramatic spectacle. It belongs with theater, ballet, opera and the dance.”
(Trinidadian Marxist thinker C.L.R. James)
Cricket may be “somewhat impenetrable” to outsiders, per The Times, but only to those who resist penetration. The quadriennial Cricket World Cup, which started recently, “enraptures lovers of the game” from Durham to Durban, says the journal. I, for one, a perennial outsider, am spoiling for rapture.
The game’s lingo can be exotic: top-rated batter Babar Azam is said to average a “gaudy” 58 runs per game. More RPGs than 58 would qualify as “flamboyant.”
The lingo can wallop equally with understatement: veteran bowlers Trent Boult and Mitchell Starc “are expected to get more than their share of batters out.”
And a certain archly prim manière d’en parler can taste like apple pie: Ben Stokes, an ace at both batting and bowling, is an “all-rounder,” by gosh! The term could have issued from my grandmother’s lips.
EthicalDative isn’t a long-form blog, so I can’t précis the article’s whisper and promise on how cricket is played. A key to understanding the game is to forget baseball. The bowler gets a running start and usually bounces the ball to the batsman. The batsman is allowed to hit the ball in any direction, including backwards. There are two batsmen, not one, who take turns trying to hit balls. They may run between two low posts called wickets, or may decide not to.
That much I know.
(Victor Mather, “How to Become a Crickert Expert Just in Time for the Cricket World Cup,” New York Times, 10-4-23)
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
The Saucy Song a Painter Sang
I’ve pondered how much to grudgingly admire the towering raspberry Tadaaki Kuwayama gave rhetorically to the practice of art. His expressed approach oozes iconoclastic gore in the spirit of outré versecraft from the pages of Poetry.
… He wanted to “create works with no trace of touch that can be made by anybody and replicated endlessly.”
“I didn’t want to create any distinction between ‘good’ or ‘bad’ colors. I wanted to treat them as equivalent to each other. So I used some horrible colors — all on purpose.
“I’ve never felt the need to sign or date my works… I can remake [earlier paintings]. If anything, it’s more interesting to remake them now. The only thing that changes is the material.”
[The Art Students League] “wasn’t a very interesting place to be… It was where amateurs and bourgeois wives went, and the teachers were all conservative. So I hardly went to school at all. I would just sign in and go home.”
“When I started my practice… I felt the age of painting was over, and I wanted to make things that had no trace of painterliness in them, things that existed in a different dimension. I wanted to create things that people who believed in painting wouldn’t understand. And I still do.”
Never mind whether I can understand or look much at what he did. Mr. Kuwayama, a “celebrated painter,” made his own weather. Kind regards, by the way, to amateurs and bourgeois wives everywhere!
(Will Heinrich, “Tadaaki Kuwayama, 91, Dies; Painter Who Carved His Own Spare Path,” New York Times, 9-15-23)
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved