.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Paris

Her grave, sweet haughtiness
Pleaseth me, and in like wise
Her quiet ironies.
Others are beautiful, none more, some less.

I suppose, when poetry comes down to facts,
When our souls are returned to the gods
And the spheres they belong in,
Here in the every-day where our acts
Rise up and judge us;

I suppose there are a few dozen verities
That no shift of mood can shake from us:

One place where we'd rather have tea
(Thus far hath modernity brought us)
'Tea' (Damn you!)

Have tea, damn the Caesars,
Talk of the latest success, give wing to some scandal,
Garble a name we detest, and for prejudice?
Set loose the whole consummate pack
to bay like Sir Roger de Coverley's
This our reward for our works,
sic crescit gloria mundi:
Some circle of not more than three
that we prefer to play up to,
Some few whom we'd rather please
than hear the whole aegrum vulgus
Splitting its beery jowl
a-meaowling our praises.
Some certain peculiar things,
cari laresque, penates,
Some certain accustomed forms,
the absolute unimportant.
Ezra Pound, "Au Salon"

3 comments:

FreeThinke said...

Music of ASTOR PIAZZOLA?

Whatever it is, I like it. Feels like night time in a great city when you're alone, and feeling a bit lost and maybe more than a little homesick. Music composed to accompany a confused, despondent man whose wife has left him for another –– a man suddenly cast adrift –– a man who has lost all sense of purpose and direction.

Not happy music, but it's truthful. I always like that.

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

fyi

FreeThinke said...

Oh I know about Astor all right. He certainly a had a clearly identifiable style –– supposedly one of the marks of greatness in music. I would never deny his obvious talent, but I have aways found his stuff depressing, world-weary, exhausted, tinged with decadence, like alcoholic orgiasts and drug-addicts awakening from a binge that leaves them teetering on the brink of despair.

Much of what he produced would make wonderful background music for The Masque of the Red Death