Long after Li Shangyin

I write, my friend,
from far Bashan,
ringed with peaks,
the heart of the continent
if I came from here,
watching chill rain
gather leaves in swirling pools,
far from you, and home,
and the city by the eastern sea,
and imagine myself
on the hill above your house,
watching the two of us,
whenever we might meet again,
framed in your western window:
you light the lamp
and I begin to tell you
of cold rain on far Bashan
and of myself, here, ringed by mountains
and watching that rain,
more content now,
beheld in that uncertain future.

THREE TOLEDO POEMS WRITTEN IN VIRGINIA

I. In Summer, the Richmond Water is as Warm as a Last Swallow of Coffee

Where I come from
in NW Ohio
the guys would play baseball all day long,
and between innings and arguments
about missed flies and fouls and chicken claws
we'd all, Fat George and Stanley and Little Stanley,
run to the concrete fountain in center field
and drink
and splash on our sweaty heads
the water that on the hottest day
still came up cold
from the deep mains,
and recollected in us
the creak of trodden snow on a cold and cloudy day.
And so was our everyboy's summer
refreshed by the winter that underlay all.


II.

In Willys Park,
hard up against the Jeep plant,
when the tennis players,
tired of being pelted by balls,
stopped our Home Run Derby
and the guys with uniforms
chased us from the diamonds
and the water was too high
to look for rubbers on the island
in the creek at the foot of the sledding hill
and it was adult time at the pool,
we'd leave the bright field and,
going down into the damp woods,
sidle along the crossbar
of the wrought-iron fence above the dam
and emerge again
into the sunshine
of the cemetery
where the peacocks strutted and squalled
among the decades of dead Chinese.


III. In their Winding, the Roads Here in Hanover County May Go Anywhere

The mystery in the country there
is not on the roads
that each mile lie in parallel lines
and go on till they get somewhere,
nor in the fields all full
of black dirt and whitened stubble
or then of green corn or beets or beans,
but in the woodlots
back from the highway
that, unless you knew the farmer--
as I never did--
remained those middle-distance woods
always at the center
as you circled the square
you made
turning toward them at very crossroad.
And it was trees,
maybe elm or oak or sycamore,
if a wood was carried
by a creek out to the crown road.

Questions and Observations

To those who are disappointed with the slow pace of economic recovery and are therefore contemplating voting for Tea Party Republicans: Although it's possible to entertain the notion that letting those investment banks, insurance companies, and auto companies fail, and not providing money to keep police, firefighters, and teachers on the job would ultimately be better for the economy, it's hard to imagine how the economy would be better right now. Surely we would still be in the painful, bullet-biting phase. In fact, the only plausible policy that would have made the economy palpably better right now is the larger stimulus advocated by the Paul Krugman camp--even if that policy would in the end result in greater disaster. So sure, you may think that recent government actions have been destructive of the underlying strength of the economy and its long-range prospects, but your preferred policies would not have winched us out of the ditch yet.

Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. It strikes me that the people who believe that gender roles are largely culturally determined are pretty much the same people who are most likely to be sympathetic to the transgendered--those who are outwardly one sex but inwardly feel themselves to be the other sex, and who have the personality and innate preferences of that other sex. I don't really know what is correct or that these two notions can't ultimately be reconciled, but they do at least seem to be contradictory. And no one much notices.


2. It feels right that someone ought to be able to start an honest business with little interference and charge what she wants for her goods or services and that she ought to be able to profit or not depending on her work skills and business acumen. And further, it feels right that she should be able to hire workers for what they are worth to her or sell shares or take out loans to raise money for expansion. And beyond that, those persons holding those shares or loans ought to able to exchange those shares or loans for other things of value. All of this seems sensible and feels right.

But when the elaboration of this process results in some people making many, many, many multiples of what some others make doing full-time, legitimate work, to me, it feels wrong. And I have no problem with the idea of society rebalancing outcomes to some degree. But if it happens that all attempts to do this make the above-described economic system unworkable, and if any other system is too unproductive or requires unacceptable coercion, then we may have to accept wildly inequitable outcomes. But we should not celebrate the morality of massive inequality nor cease looking for workable methods of redress.

While a just society may reluctantly decide that war is necessary in some circumstances, the celebration of the war's attendant slaughter is a mark of that society's barbarity.

Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. A question for those who want no measures strong enough to actually stop illegal immigrants from coming across the southern border and no serious attempts to make them leave once they're here: If you want a completely open border, please say so. And also, do you want to stop screening people who want to come here from places other than Latin America? If not, why not? You don't like Romanians or Nepalese? And there are Iraqis, who, having served us as translators, are trying to come here for their own safety. And they are mired in months and years of red tape.
So hey, if you think people should be able to move freely around the globe and settle anywhere they want without restriction, let's talk. Certainly the nation-state with controlled, well-defined borders has caused a lot of mischief in the world.

2. I heard a discussion today of a report by, I think, the Pew Research Center, that talked about "unauthorized" immigrants rather than "undocumented" or "illegal" immigrants. An effort to find a term that UnAmerican one-worlders and hateful nativist bigots can agree on?


3. Do you think the Arizona legislature should pass a resolution encouraging the President and Congress to maintain the weakness of the economy, since that's been our most effective tool in slowing illegal immigration?

Language Crank

Turning nouns into verbs is an often useful practice that has a long and honorable history in English. For example, a few decades ago we made "parent" into "to parent," and that has worked well. For women, the word has a different emphasis than "to mother." And for men, "to father" has a completely different meaning. But I can't see any reason to make "reference" into "to reference" when we already have "to refer to," except to annoy those of us whom it strikes as incorrect. Perhaps the usage has an academic or bureaucratic origin, because I don't hear it from the uneducated rabble, but mostly from radio and tv commentators and their newsmaking interviewees. In a phrase such as "...the law she______earlier in her remarks...," they feel compelled to insert "referenced" rather than "spoke about," "mentioned," "explained," "expounded upon," "alluded to," or other possibilities that might give more precision and linguistic variety to their commentaries.

Questions and Observations: Something to Offend Everyone

1. I remember reading Herodotus and histories of the Byzantine Empire and thinking that whatever the manifold horrors of the modern world, there really are some barbarities we've left behind--like, you know, cutting off noses and ears.

                                             


2. It puzzles me how people who believe in a God more petty and vindictive than we would find admirable or even tolerable in a mere mortal can insist so strenuously on the loving goodness of that deity. Similarly, how come the people who say,"God is so good," whenever you tell them about something swell that's happened to you, don't also say, "God is so nasty." when you tell them about something not so swell? Been reading too much Aquinas, maybe.


3. I guess that building a Muslim community center two blocks from the site of the twin towers is offensive in the sense that a lot of people are offended by it. And perhaps that's enough--at some point going ahead with something one has the right to do isn't worth it if you get too many people foaming-at-the-mouth-angry about it. And I suppose that on the odd chance that it really is a secret plan to plop a mosque down on the site of a glorious triumph of Islam over the infidels, I'm offended too. But you know, this plan was public for months without anyone being very much exercised about it until we began to be told that we should be up in arms about a "Ground Zero mosque."