Two Poems for Two Years

From the diwan of Samuel ibn Nagrilla, trans. Peter Cole

Be glad, she said,
that God has given you
fifty years
in this world —
though she didn't know
there is no division
between, as I see it,
my days that have passed
and Noah's
of which I've heard.
In the world I have nothing
but the hour I"m in,
which stands for a moment,
and then like a cloud moves on.



Excerpted from "Adonais," Percy Bysshe Shelley

O, weep for Adonais!-The quick Dreams,
The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,-
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries,
"Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain."
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.

One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak;
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.

In Memoriam, Always Already

The view from my apartment complex.

Esta bala es antigua. 

En 1897 la disparó contra el presidente del Uruguay un muchacho de Montevideo, Arredondo, que había pasado largo tiempo sin ver a nadie, para que lo supieran sin cómplice. Treinta años antes, el mismo proyectil mató a Lincoln, por obra criminal o mágica de un actor, a quien las palabras de Shakespeare habían convertido en Marco Bruto, asesino de César. Al promediar el siglo XVII la venganza la usó para dar muerte a Gustavo Adolfo de Suecia, en mitad de la pública hecatombe de una batalla. 

Antes, la bala fue otras cosas, porque la transmigración pitagórica no sólo es propia de los hombres. Fue el cordón de seda que en el Oriente reciben los visires, fue la fusilería y las bayonetas que destrozaron a los defensores del Álamo, fue la cuchilla triangular que segó el cuello de una reina, fue los oscuros clavos que atravesaron la carne del Redentor y el leño de la Cruz, fue el veneno que el jefe cartaginés guardaba en una sortija de hierro, fue la serena copa que en un atardecer bebió Sócrates. 

En el alba del tiempo fue la piedra que Caín lanzó contra Abel y será muchas cosas que hoy ni siquiera imaginamos y que podrán concluir con los hombres y con su prodigioso y frágil destino.

***

This bullet is ancient. 

In 1897, a boy from Montevideo fired it at the president of Uruguay after spending a long time in solitude so he would be known to have acted alone. Thirty years previous, the same projectile killed Lincoln, in the criminal or magical act of a thespian made Marcus Brutus, assassin of Caesar, by Shakespeare himself. At the turn of the seventeenth century, vengeance used it to deal death to Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden in the midsts of the public catastrophe of battle. 

Before that, the bullet was other things, because Pythagorean transubstantiation is not only the domain of men. It was the silk cord that Oriental viziers met; it was the artillery and the bayonets that destroyed the Alamo's last defenders; it was the triangular knife that slit the queen's throat; it was the dark nails that pierced the flesh of the Redeemer and the wood of the Cross; it was the poison that the Carthagean general kept in an iron ring; it was the placid cup from which Socrates drank one late afternoon.

At the dawn of time it was the rock that Cain threw at Abel. It will be many more things that we cannot yet fathom but that will be able to put an end to men and their prodigious, fragile destiny. 

— Jorge Luis Borges. In Memoriam, J.F.K. English translation mine. 

Layla

Beinecke Persian MS 136

I tried to give you consolation

When your old man had let you down

But like a fool, I fell in love with you

Turned my whole world upside-down

Layla, you've got me on my knees

Layla, I'm begging darlin', please

Layla, darlin' won't you ease my worried mind?

— Eric Clapton and Nizami

(See pp. 142 and ff.)

In Which I Lash Out, in Grief, At My Colleagues' Bad Behavior (Or, Saying things because they need to be said, even without the protection of tenure)

Dear Colleagues,

I know the job market is bad. I know I'm saying this from a position of extreme privilege. But there is no excuse for public, list-serve speculation about whether the death of a too-young colleague less than twenty-four hours ago — beloved to many and author of work that, agree with it or not, radically changed the face of the field — means that there will be a position open now at Yale. 

To think that you are my peers makes me lament not just our absent friend but the disappearance, with her death, of the world that she imagined and taught us to imagine, one where people acted with basic decency and supreme humanity first, even in hard times and even in a bad job market.

My first reaction to this series of emails was to want to opt out: To go law school or teach high school. To leave a profession that breeds such contempt for the humanity it purports to elevate. But one deep breath reminded me that it was someone in the profession who so abhorred this kind of careerism and tried to instill in me that same abhorrence. The profession doesn't create this climate; the people do. 

There will never be another like her, but I can hope that I will continue to have the great good fortune to read and teach and think mostly alongside people who do this work out of a love of text and of solving puzzles and not anywhere near the people who fritter it away, jockeying for position over the corpses of the giants on whose shoulders they stand.

Love, life, and literature,

SJP

Requiem

remember the story of El Cid Campeador in Spain, he also loved a woman called Ximena. And when he was mortally wounded he told her to tie his dead body to his horse and send him back into battle, so the enemy would see he was still alive. Then tie my body to a bloody rickshaw or whatever damn mode of transport you can find, camel-cart, donkey-cart, bullock-cart bike, but for godsake not a bloody elephant; okay? Because the enemy is close and in this sad story Ximena is the Cid.

— Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

***

Give each man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

— Polonius, Hamlet I.iii.69-81

***

My language,
I'd ask of you
in my life
to lift up a sound
of lament

— Samuel ibn Nagrila, trans. Peter Cole

***

Que a mi me vengan a decir la verdad
No aguanto ya más mentiras
Disfruto bien de la vida
Aunque tomando medidas — ¡azúcar!

— Celia Cruz, "La negra tiene tumbao"