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New Poetry — Fred Agonistes

Frances Weaver — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:04:50 +0000

Author:Robert Conquest

Fred on Myth

Though Orpheus won the laurel crown
He drank the bitter cup:
Eurydice first let him down
Then Maenads tore him up.

An Orpheus Complex? Fred won't fuss
With such an ancient tale
(Unlike old Freud with Oedipus)
-The thought, though, turns him pale.

Mere myth?-But that old Greek (thinks Fred)
Who told the tale as true
Had some material in his head
On which he later drew.

Footnotes from Fred

"Si la jeunesse savait, si
La vieillesse pouvait", yet
Fred brings up an anomaly
That aphorists forget.

He finds that, with the years he's spanned
In his not special case,
The savvy's finally to hand,
The pouvy still in place.

New Poetry

Frances Weaver — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:52:54 +0000

Author:Alan Brownjohn

In the Post

In the middle of a batch of junk
one with her writing, these days
the postmark uninformative...
It might be precious. The smaller
kitchen knife opens it, and I'll keep
the envelope because it's part of her.

The contents are a jade green —
twice-folded half of a torn A4,
spelling out NO MORE WORDS.
Well at least I didn't this time have
to pay for the lack of a stamp. — I'm sorry?
— Yes. I'll still keep the envelope.

Christmas Scenario

"But sir, this is the time to celebrate."
"No." — I decline the Santa hat proffered me
By the waiter, and declare instead: "Champagne
For the lady alone in the corner, if
She will accept it." Thinking, "She can't be driving."

The Limits of Secularism

Frances Weaver — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:04:05 +0000

Author:By Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks

Isaiah Berlin: A secular Jew but a loyal Jew

In 1830 a young French aristocrat visited the United States to see the new phenomenon of American democracy built on the principled separation of Church and state. He naturally expected to find a secular society, a place where religion, having been deprived of power, had no influence either. What he found was exactly the opposite: a society that was very religious indeed, a society in which religion was, in his words, "the first of its political institutions" — or, as we would say today, the first of its civil institutions.