FRANZ*
November 26

The biopics on Kafka keep coming,
though the mystery remains
how this employee of the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute
who could negotiate bureaucratic hurdles without difficulty
came to record the stranglehold of bureaucracy
over people’s lives,
spawning in the process
a potent adjective out of his own name;
who suffering from writer’s block
as few others experience,
left a literary heritage
only the rarest of writers can claim;
who could never maintain a lasting relationship
with members of the opposite sex,
dying largely unknown at forty of TB,
yet something of a cult figure
in our day and age,
tourists flocking to the Prague museum
that bears his name;
a mystery all said and done
that would have left the K. of his novels
perplexed by the fame
antiheroes posthumously attain.

*Franz, a biopic directed by Agnieszka Holland

HAS CANADA COME OF AGE?
January 3

In the aftermath of WWI,
with the sacrifices at Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele,
and our membership in the newborn League,
some argued Canada was coming of age.

In the aftermath of WWII,
as we shed the symbols of Empire
– British subjects, Dominion status,
Union Jack on the flag –
we seemed to be fully on track.

All the more with our economy booming,
a robust welfare state,
Expo 67, a newfound cultural buzz,
a Charter entrenching basic rights.

Free trade may have locked us
into the American orbit,
but we acceded to G7 rank,
stayed out of the Iraq War,
much like the Vietnam War before it,
and survived two Quebec sovereignty referenda
along the way.

With the ogre now strutting about
we’ve adopted elbows up,
determined to fend our own course,
with appropriate allies to boot,
in a global order being ripped apart
by Russia and the U.S. alike.

Yet lingering existentialist angst
still leaves one to doubt
just what this northern home of ours
is all about.

First Nations tug at our ancestral strings,
our two key linguistic communities
all too superficially overlap,
regional divisions repeatedly flare up,
and the conundrum remains unresolved.

Without a deeper sense of shared identity,
this side of temporal possibility,
can one credibly maintain
that Canada has finally come of age?

HOW MUCH WOULD CANADIANS PAY?
January 14

Even as the world media’s attention
remains focused on Venezuela,
Greenland, or Iran,
Ukraine continues to be battered,
its electricity networks repeatedly destroyed,
as the winter cold creeps in.

Yet its population,
robbed of so many of its children,
of big chunks of its territory,
struggles on,
unwilling to yield
its precious freedom as a country
to Putin’s folly.

How much would Canadians
be prepared to pay,
and not just in terms of GDP,
to keep our side of the 49th parallel intact
from a marauding neighbour?

FENTANYL ALLEY, 10 P.M.
March 7

Why are they so
bent over on the pavement,
crouching with knees
up against their chin,
rain beating down
as though there were no tomorrow,
no shelter, this night of nights,
to take them in?

Was it a broken family,
a short-lived job or marriage,
a friendship that spelled disaster,
one drink too many,
neurons that misfired,
ecstasy and fentanyl
the body could not absorb?

No going back,
no going forward,
the entrails of a First World city
on display,
this nightly tragedy
a stark reminder
of where even lucky countries
can go astray.

DAVOS MAN – 1
March 14

A speech resonating far and wide,
shoring up middling countries of the globe
against the overweening power
of the strong.

But our smooth-talking PM
has other accoutrements of Davos man,
thirteen years in the employ of Goldman Sachs,
five as vice-chair of Brookfield Asset Management,
funds bolstering the planet’s wealthy one per cent.

The one role may complement the other,
many might believe,
but sceptics have every right to wonder
which version of Davos man
is ultimately more likely to prevail.

CAPITALISM*
March 29

Of the “ism”s that have graced the earth,
this one has had a venerable run,
a good five hundred years to date,
still going strong.

One that’s taken many twists and turns,
bringing extraordinary wealth to some,
crushing servitude to many more,
impressive breakthroughs in how we moderns live
and the cornucopia of things we now consume,
but at a price the planet has begin to reap.

It fuses easily with other ideologies,
liberalism, conservatism, social democracy,
authoritarianism of the fascistic,
military, or theocratic stripe,
and as we’ve come to see,
even with communist heterodoxy.

What its future destiny foretells
is impossible to predict,
but given how empires have come and gone,
states, religions, and creeds of every sort,
this version of an earthly god
is unlikely to escape their fate.

*Sven Beckert, Capitalism: A Global History

THE APRIL OF OUR DISCONTENT
April 1

Chaucer spoke of April
with its sweet-smelling showers
piercing the draught of March
to the root;
Eliot dubbed April the cruellest month,
breeding lilacs out of the dead land.

And what are we to make
of April as it rolls around,
a full-scale war on in the Middle East,
another still raging to its north,
with little reason to believe
that springtime heralds the Prince of Peace?

The earth will be renewed, no doubt,
but even that is less assured
as the climate takes repeated hits,
and an ambient sense of gloom
pervades no small portion
of our terrestial habitat.

So here’s to the April of our discontent.

DEATH FUGUE
April 25

The wiggle room to end the current strife
is as narrow as the Strait itself,
with the prospect of lasting peace as fragile
as magnolia petals falling from the trees,
with language usage more tortured and debased
than the currency of medieval kings,
and the spiral of shattered lives
a horror film with no semblance of relief,
even if many hope and pray
that the rival madmen in command
and their contending creeds
will somehow release us from their iron grip
and from a death fugue
fast becoming the symbol of a dystopian age.

THE FUNDAMENTALIST IMPERATIVE
April 29

Secular minded souls
may well have thought
the very notion of God
had bitten the dust
a century or two ago,
that science pushing the frontiers
of the cosmos
had revealed a universe so expansive
no god could ever call it home.

Yet there seems to be a turn
to more intransigent forms of faith,
in each of the Abrahamic religions
for all their historic rivalry,
in Hinduism or Buddhism as well,
no more immune from extremism’s siren call.

In an era
when civic institutions and secular creeds
once taken for granted
begin to fray
and chaos rears its head,
the fundamentalist imperative
can provide unequivocal certainty in its stead.

LEARNING TO LIVE WITH AMBIGUITY
May 25

Every generation, it seems, believes it inhabits uniquely turbulent times.
— Hannah Critchlow, The 21st Century Brain

We’re learning,
as our twilight years sink in,
that the waves that buffeted us in one direction
can just as quickly turn the other way,
the comfort zone we knew as peace
can quickly turn to war,
the nature we thought that we had tamed
can punch right back,
and all our breakthroughs in technology
have failed to revamp our hard-wired brains.

So rather than mourn our vanished certainties
or curse the times in which we live,
we’d best embrace the ambiguities
that make us the beings who we are.

DAVOS MAN – 2
May 29

“A strong Canada will help make America great again,” Carney tells New York business leaders.
— CBC News, May 28, 2026

It was one thing to talk about rupture,
speaking truth to power,
the hypocrisy too often practised by the West,
the need for middle powers to uphold the norms
of a rules-based world order violated by the strong.

But when Davos man
begins to spout the very lines
that have filled the bloated sails
of our less than friendly neighbour
with bombast and disdain
one has cause to wonder.

Are we back to playing junior partner
to a swaggering power that worships manifest destiny,
thinking we will gain by flattery
a few more crumbs from an imperial table
with a mad Caesar at the helm?

Is this the bold new course
the banker cum growth fund manager turned Prime Minister
has ultimately embraced,
the speech a value-free AI bot might generate,
varying with the audience one seeks to ingratiate?

Image: Archaeological Park of Plato’s Academy, Athens, Greece. photo: George E. Koronaios, public domain

WHERE OUR STORY ENDS
May 18

Slavoj Žižek, at 76,
self-confessed misanthrope, workaholic,
communist, enemy of wisdom,
admits to his fear of a painful death,
preferring to go in a flash,
and who amongst us would dissent?*

Denys Arcand,
at the ripe old age of 84,
thinking back on his films
marking an era in Quebec cinema,
on his love for history
that first brought him there,
admits that his muse has vanished for good,
and who amongst us
would find that surprising?**

For even as I draft these lines
in the early morning hours,
I’m thinking of you, my generational peers,
who’ve lived through much
the same sequence of events,
now forced to own up,
à contre-cœur or not,
to where our story ends.

*El Pais, May 18, 2025 **Le Devoir, May 17, 2025

WHEN THE WAR COMES TO DAMOUCHARI
Damouchari, Greece, July 24

We were sitting on the patio
under the plane tree
finishing our noon-day meal,
when just below us,
adjacent to the cove,
the altercation began.

A young Israeli
and five Greeks her age
debating le thème du jour,
each side with pitched voice
demanding the floor
to expound the horrors of Hamas and Oct. 7
or the daily toll of Palestinians
slaughtered by the IDF,
neither side prepared to cede an inch.

The fate of a quiet beach town
where Israeli tourists have long been prone to come
in a time of war.

PLUS ÇA CHANGE
August 2

In 1937,
when the census figures for the USSR
fell considerably short
of what the Little Father of the People had expected,
he had the census takers arrested
and the census declared invalid.

In 2025,
when the labour market numbers for the United States
fall considerably short
of what the MAGA Piper-in-Chief had expected,
he has the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics fired,
claiming the figures have been rigged.

Two different political systems,
a century apart,
yet a convergence of behaviour
that tells a tale.

THE OLIVE GROVE
Damouchari, August 10

The muses here consort and on these plains
the olive grows, self-born, immortal, unafraid of foes.
— Oedipus at Colonus

Their branches exultant in the breeze
can blind you as the sun
plays trickster with the leaves,
now light green, now silvery,
as the fruit slowly ripens in the heat
and their trunks stand guard
against the avatars that through the ages
seek to wrestle them to the ground.

 PLATO’S ACADEMY: OR THE RUINS OF PHILOSOPHY
Athens, September 6

As always in Greece,
there’s a myth behind a name,
hence Academus, an Attic hero
supposedly buried on this spot
where centuries later, in a public grove,
Plato is said to have founded his Academy.

Cicadas are chirping away
in the trees above the site
in imitation of the chatter to and fro
that echoed here millennia ago.

In the park that has grown up around,
neighbouring residents walking their dogs,
mothers with their prams,
small kids fighting for possession of a ball.

Not quite the search for some eternal truths
by Plato and his acolytes,
but to those venturing here
some distance off the beaten tourist track,
a reminder that the philosophical quest
began in ruins like these.

IT ONCE WAS THE CASE
October 2

It once was the case
that the seasons changed
with some predictability,
that summers were warm and winters cold,
that the rivers and seas
seemed to know their place
with the icebergs and poles fairly well behaved
in the planetary scheme of things.

It once was the case
when we turned on the news
that the world as a whole
seemed to be on a roll,
that the ills of the past,
the despots and wars,
the famines and plagues,
might never return.

It once was the case
as the young came of age
that the future ahead
promised little but hope,
new breakthroughs in science,
new medical feats,
if only we’d keep technology harnessed
and our demons at bay.

CLIO
October 5

We were told by Santayana
that those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.

In Israel/Palestine we see what happens
when there is too much history
and all too little geography to contain it.

In the Slavic world of Kyiv and Moscow
the same may hold true for the past,
though geography is not in short supply.

For those who ponder
authoritarianism’s current return,
Suetonius and Tacitus
have become figures of inspiration.

And for the many among us
who find Clio too much to cope with,
there is always Melpomene, her sister muse,
to keep us company.

THE PROPHETS
October 28

Watchman, what of the night?
— Isaiah 21:11–12

We are not the first
to face the looming winter nights
without a crystalline sense
of where we may be heading
or a compass to direct us.

Perhaps this is the way it has always been,
danger lurking in the darkened passageways,
grievances and bitter enmities
stirred up from the lower depths
as chaos threatens.

Lulled by the good times we have known,
ill-prepared for what awaits us
now that the critical hour is upon us,
we look for guidance from the prophets
and there is none.

DOMUS AUREA
November 7

If Nero could build a House of Gold
with his plunder,
what of the Oval Office
transformed by a garish ogre?
If corruption long proved the bane
of empires and republics,
what of liberal democracies
where stellar fortunes breed overweening power?
If instinct and emotion
so often beat out sobriety and reason,
what future for a species
with its reptilian charger?
Just asking.

THE FEARS
November 14

Then back they come, the fears that we fear.
— W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety

We’d quite forgotten
what fear was all about
in those halcyon years,
at least in the West,
when the future was looking ever brighter,
major wars a figment of the past,
international law and human rights
more redeeming and substantial
than autocracy’s recurring scourge.

Did we have blinkers on,
believing a utopian age had dawned
with the pent-up enmities of old
packed away for good,
even as new dangers
we’d never dreamed about
lurked on our fractured planet?

Did we think our generation,
so boastful and self-assured
about all it had achieved,
was somehow immune
from the instinctual fears
that so many through the ages
have endured?

THINGS HAPPENED
November 19

“Things happened,”
said the ogre to the Prince
who knows a thing or two about how to make
pesky critics vanish without a trace
and has untold trillions with which to build
futuristic cities in the desert
where Ozymandias, King of Kings,
once reigned.

And they spoke of deals to come,
of F-35s to hasten the process along,
of bulldozers, excavators
clearing the rubble from Gaza’s ruins,
of an Abrahamic Peace about to grace
the Holy Land and Middle East
with the fabled troubles of the past
swooshed away in the swirling sand.

THE YEAR THAT LOOMS AHEAD

December 26, 2024

Imagine for a moment
you could go back a century or more
before the war to end all wars
had shattered so many illusions in its wake.

Or just as easily, two centuries ago,
the Romantics in full flight,
the dawn of an industrial age
with promises yet to be redeemed.

And why stop there,
Edo in the Shogun’s days,
Florence in its prime,
and you a chameleon on the wall
as the spectacle unfolds?

Ah yes, to dream away
the year we leave behind
the better to avoid imagining
the one that looms ahead.

ARCANA IMPERII

 Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you get off.
— Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

January 7, 2025

Straight from the horse’s mouth,
the secret so many aspiring autocrats
hold close to their chest
as they prepare their ascent.
Once they’ve reached the top,
as we’ve learned time and time again,
the props that might impede their path
are swiftly swept aside,
the media muzzled, judiciary shamelessly controlled,
opponents bullied, locked up,
or otherwise dispatched,
as megalomania becomes the order of the day.
A fatal flaw, all said and done,
in how the democratic game is played,
in human nature as well,
which helps explain
the painstaking hurdles to be overcome
for the pendulum to swing back the other way.

FIRESTORM

January 11

In L.A., nature doesn’t seem to care
whether the communities going up in smoke
house the rich or house the poor.

Like death, the great equalizer,
there is no escape
when the rains hold off for countless months,
the foliage in the ridges
is bone dry,
as the glare from across the hills
grows near.

Nor should we
watching this apocalypse from afar
engage in schadenfreude,
knowing all too well
this is no Hollywood movie with special effects
and deafening soundtrack
to rattle the nerves,
but something that many elsewhere
have also endured
from the boreal North that we call home
to the Mediterranean in the summer heat
to the Austral bush year after year.

There seems to be a message here,
but it’s not one the climate change deniers
want to hear.

AUSCHWITZ @ 80

January 27

You too once journeyed to Auschwitz,
though it was on an empty, well-aired train
from Cracow which you had been visiting
in relative comfort.

You also passed beneath
the wrought iron sign
speaking of Labour making us Free,
saw the bunkers, the room labelled Canada
with heaps of shoes and clothing
taken from the incoming victims,
the chimneys of Birkenau nearby.

You remembered those on your mother’s side
who had perished in the genocide,
recalled the testaments of Primo Levi, Nelly Sachs,
and less celebrated ones as well.

You wondered then and wonder now
what we may have learned,
knowing full well
massacres on a mega-scale still occur,
hatred seeps through the veins
of all too many on this earth,
even in the so-called Holy Land,
and we can only bow our heads in shame.

IF THE ANCIENTS

February 13

If the ancients, viewing our predicament,
could remind us what they had learned
what might they have to say?

That power in a single set of hands,
can quickly yield to hubris, madness,
and woeful tyranny?

That empires that once held
half the known world in their sway
soon enough crumbled into dust?

That wars, plagues, and famines
never seem to go away,
despite the better times that come along?

That for all the wondrous breakthroughs
our species may achieve
our underlying nature never seems to change?

That even the gods
to whom we mortals pray
prove no more lasting than you and me?

Then, not wanting to leave us in complete despair,
they’d wish us better luck
as they shuffled back across the Acheron.

A GAME OF THRONES

February 22

It’s like having front seats
at a horror film,
adrenaline spiking into overdrive
at every twist and turn,
villainy, skullduggery
making the blood run cold.

Or like finding ourselves aboard the Pequod
with mad Ahab
on his vengeance trip
tracking the white whale,
though ship and crew, as we know full well,
will sink deep into the sea.

Or like frequenting Bayreuth
as the Ring Cycle begins,
operatic drama with its highs and lows
dragging on interminably,
until Valhalla itself
comes crashing to the ground.

A game of thrones in very real time
the world could do without,
and little prospect, sad to note,
of simply tuning out.

NORTH AMERICANS OF A DIFFERENT SORT

March 2

Perhaps it is a virtue to be less flashy,
somewhat self-effacing,
though not unadventurous or uncreative,
but thankfully not always in your face.

It seems to have helped keep
this sprawling country of ours together,
despite the speed bumps,
while our neighbours
have torn themselves apart with frenzy
on more than one occasion.

We’re seeing it again
as the ogre’s minions and enforcers
take an axe to some of the reputable things
the republic to our south has undertaken,
academic research, climate initiatives,
aid to some of the world’s most impoverished,
transforming their shining city on a hill
into a despot’s palace.

If we can continue to successfully chart our own course,
despite the madness taking hold next door,
it may just be because of who we are –
North Americans of a different sort.

WHEN THE EMPEROR DECREES

March 11

When the Emperor decrees,
the Senate, Consuls, Tribunes fall into line
and through far reaches of the empire
Prefects ensure his edicts are obeyed.

When the Emperor is enraged,
the object of his ire can choose
the legendary poison fix
or exile to some distant shore.

When the Emperor decides to play,
his courtiers compete to prod him on,
boast of his prowess on mount and between the sheets,
his robust table manners and boisterous good cheer.

And on the sad day our Emperor passes on
we’ll mourn in unison of course,
bathing our cheeks in copious tears
recalling the grandeur he will have bequeathed.

WHEN THE EMPEROR SPEAKS OF PEACE

March 12

When the Emperor speaks of peace,
the images that come to mind
are of Carthage destroyed
in the Third Punic War,
of Corinth levelled to the ground,
or Jerusalem’s smouldering ruins.

So next time you hear him speak
of wars that he will end,
beware what the terms will be,
and remember what may be in store
for those misfortunate enough
to lie in his legions’ path.

ZEITENWENDE*

March 17

Once our generation sang
how times they were a-changin’,
the battle outside ragin’,
the old road rapidly agin’.

Now that we have reached old age
they’re a-changin’ once again,
though not quite in the way
we had intended.

A rule-based world order
is a-fallin’ into tatters
as great powers compete
in treatin’ sovereign states like ours
as dominoes in an imperial game.

Those amongst us who would resist
this turn to might makes right
find ourselves with little choice
but bucklin’ up to pay the price
of keepin’ the predators at bay.

*Zeitenwende – turning point

THE SANCTUARY

April 4

In early modern times,
Holland was the European roost
to which savants
aspiring to breathe free might flock,
fleeing absolutist monarchs and civil wars
in their wake.

In later centuries,
America became the beacon for many more,
seeking to escape the conflicts,
deprivation and tyranny
encrusted in their native soil.

And suddenly our quiet corner
of this massive continent
becomes an island of sanity and retreat
as a toxic web entangles
the land once claiming to be
the paean of liberty.

DODGING A BULLET

April 29

The gun is loaded
aimed straight at our hearts
by an overweening braggart
out to do us in,
but despite party differences
and a closely fought election,
we now need to pull together
to dodge the bullet.

There’s a major slog ahead
before we can begin to disengage
from our neighbour’s iron grip,
but a rekindled sense of purpose,
of a shared country
with its plural identities, vast resources,
and core underlying values,
will be key to help us navigate the storm.

Image: Zagranyasha, via Unsplash.

This Legendary Sea

Damouchari, Greece, September 21, 2023

I will miss these early morning hours,
the sun filtering through the foliage,
rippling waters in the cove beneath the balcony,
as I scribble these lines.
Journey where I may,
to points north, south, east,
or to my westward home,
the vista will never be the same.
So despite the storm which pummelled the coast,
the heartache so many have endured,
the debris scattered along the shore,
I will recall this scene after I have gone,
this legendary sea
that will always hold me in its grip.

Sitting in Judgment

December 23

In the tit for tat between Shoah and Nakba,
between the victimhood preceding that fateful day in 1948
and the victimhood that followed,
how is one to choose?

Hegel may have claimed
that world history is the world court,
but historians bring their own biases to the bench
and rarely are their judgments beyond question.

Perhaps the Latin has it right,
“Vae victis,”*
though in the long run even the winners may lose out,
even if those alive today will never know.

The choice it seems
is not really between right and wrong,
but between the pain and suffering of each side
and between who will have the courage to reach out.

* Woe to the vanquished

On Democratic Politics

February 6, 2024

Creatures of habit,
those who live by ideas and abstract thoughts
easily forget
that most of their fellow citizens do not.

They live in the here and now,
coping with the concrete tasks of coming of age,
raising a family,
earning their keep as best they can,
dodging speed bumps barring the way.

And when catastrophes strike,
wars, plagues, disasters anon,
they usually pay a disproportionate price,
struggling as best they can to survive.

So why the surprise
when self-interest fuels our politics
and when lofty ideals that some proclaim
usually lose out to those who engage
in a less grandiose game? 

If This be a Valentine

February 14

“I’m not afraid to die,”
he said with a shrug,
though he knew it was a lie
to lull himself to sleep
on a cold February night,
dreaming of hands
touching across the deep ravine
separating the living from the dead,
of the sea of words
in which poets through the ages drown,
of the spear that pierced
a fallen soldier on a Grecian vase
and mortars in the killing fields
where Muscovy encounters Kyiv,
of kisses blown in the fevered heat of youth,
oblivious, as was each generation’s wont,
to trysts gone stale
and vestiges of love
strewn helter-skelter in the sands. 

The View from Spanish Banks

February 26

Strollers can count the vessels
lined up in the bay
awaiting a berth in the nearby port,
many heavily laden with containers
stuffed with all that Asia
sends our way.

Vancouver is this country’s gateway
to our Pacific interface,
and through the highs and lows
of plagues and wars
the ships keep coming,
for commerce cannot sleep a single day.

Sometimes one wants to shut one’s eyes
and wish it all away,
too much consumption to sustain,
sometimes one is amazed
at how rapidly this Cinderella of a lumber town
has come of age. 

On a Sea of Contingency

March 6

It crept up surreptitiously,
the realization that things
we’d once believed with certainty
had proven as fragile
as figurines made of clay,
that the postwar years of affluence,
of carefree indulgence,
were but an interlude
between one era of conflict and the next,
that what lay ahead,
we could feel it in our bones,
was not the harmony of imagined communities
come into their own,
but the unfolding of scenarios gone rogue.

Holiness

March 31

For Patriarch Kirill,
head of the Russian Orthodox Church,
Putin’s assault on Ukraine
is nothing less than a holy war
defending “Holy Russia” from the onslaught
of globalism and a satanic West.

For hard-line Islamists of whatever stripe
theirs is a holy war
in defence of the only true religion
against miscreants of every other creed.

For hard-line settlers on the West Bank,
the whole of Israel – Gaza included –
is part of the promised land
sacred to Jews and to them alone.

O! We foolish secularists of little faith
who dwell in darkness
while others bathe in light. 

Navigating the Current

April 2

Let us acknowledge the perspicuity
of a Machiavelli or a Hobbes
who saw without illusion
into the underlying cupidity and fear
that constitute the oft unspoken truth
of our political universe.

So too let us salute,
despite their imperfections,
the visionary leaps of a Rousseau or a Marx,
unwilling to countenance the ills
with which the privileged weighed down
the masses over whom they ruled.

Somehow in our own uneven way
we seek to thread the span
between the poles of genuine equity
and incipient dread. 

In the Nick of Time

April 12

As members of successive generations
drop off one by one,
the norm is to offer condolences
to bereaved family members
and others closely linked
to the deceased.

In our generation’s case,
we lucky ones who had an unbroken run
through the affluent postwar years,
it seems more appropriate,
given serial catastrophes
bedevilling a now perilous century,
to offer congratulations, not lamentations,
for departing in the nick of time. 

La condition humaine

May 29

The human thirst for self-torture.
— Edgar Allan Poe

An instinct, perhaps as deeply ingrained
as our need for nourishment,
for companionship, for sexual fulfillment.

Why, after all,
keep harking back to the epics
with their catalogue of blood-curdling warfare,
the tragedies where everything is ultimately
out of kilter,
the hardship tales of memoirs and novellas,
the medical traumas
that haunt so many of our fellows,
the climatic catastrophes
that promise horror upon horror?

Is it any wonder
that somewhere in the background
Poe’s raven is croaking “Evermore”?

Palestinian civil defense attempt to control a fire after Israeli warplane bombed a house in Tal-Hawa in Gaza city. Via Motaz_Azaiza on instagram.

Chaos

October 8

Verily at the first Chaos came to be,
but next wide-bosomed Earth
— Hesiod, Theogony
If chaos was indeed
the first entity in existence,
we seem to be in a reverse course
as the 21st century unfolds,
nature doing its bit
to unleash the elements,
our fellow humans following suit
in state after failed state
and region after region
with conflicts bursting out,
enough to hurl wide-bosomed earth
back into the primitive condition
from which it first emerged.

An Eye for an Eye

October 10

An eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth,
the way the game seems to have been played
throughout recorded time.
Repeated attempts may have been made
through covenants and international law
to curb such practices.
But with the blood
of each side’s kith and kin
staining the soil,
one looks in vain for who can restrain
the chilling cry for vengeance.

Hostages

October 13

There are the familiar ones,
seized by armed groups or hostile states,
held in dank, dark cells
for ransom or prisoner exchange,
shorn of contact with the outside world,
subject to their captors’ every whim.

Then there are populations at large,
with little choice but to obey
the dictates of those who come to power
through insurrections, military coups,
one-off elections never held again,
with scant prospects of the nightmare
coming to an end.

Finally, there is metaphysical hostage-taking,
more insidious than the other two,
where one falls prey
to the lure of demagogues or rigid dogmas,
never breaking free,
though no prison bars the way,
only the fear of daring to say NO.

A Modest Proposal

October 19

Times of trouble demand not tears but counsel.
— Leopardi

Easier said than done,
with each side loathing the other,
and vengeance
the rallying cry of the hour.

It would be heavenly
to put a stop to the bloodshed,
but the gods themselves
are parties to this quarrel.

As for outsiders urging a pause,
a chance for everyone
to catch their breath
while civilians can resume their daily lives
and hostages be released,
this too seems like preaching to the angels.

So what if the Hamas leadership
along with the PLO’s for good measure
and the entire Israeli Cabinet
were transported to a desert island
or better yet the Antarctic Shelf
with UN mediators brought along
and a platoon of armed peacekeepers to maintain order
and left for weeks and months on end,
unable to return,
unless they had hammered a lasting settlement out?

La Lotta Continua

October 21

Weber dubbed us a pariah people,
living at the margins of other states and peoples,
with rites and rituals of our own.

And there were ghettos
beginning with the Middle Ages,
pogroms, expulsions, and wholesale extermination,
though also much by way of communal interaction,
intermarriage, and assimilation
in the many centuries that followed.

Which brings me to the dilemmas of today.

To be a Jew in Israel
is for the majority living there a given,
though those who do not fit the bill
have in large part become pariahs
in a land that they still claim.

Until October 7, though wars were not infrequent,
it seemed that Jews could feel far safer in this state,
a haven against an often hostile world,
than in their diasporic faraway.

No longer true, it seems,
not with more Jews,
even the most secular and open to the Palestinian cause,
done away in a single day
than at any time since the ill-famed Shoah.

So what of us living for the most part affluent lives
in an increasingly secular West,
some still practising their old religion,
albeit with variations,
others far removed from its sway?

Is there an equilibrium
between feeling Jewish at one level
and experiencing the pull,
as so many have through the ages,
to something cosmopolitan and larger,
or are we fated to discover
when conflict swirls around the Jewish state
that old stereotypes about who we really are
have a way of surfacing unannounced?

Dagon

October 21

The assassins struck first,
laying low the old, the young,
and those of all ages,
fouling the ground with the maimed and the dying,
putting to shame the pride
of the Israelites.

But then came the bombs,
strafing and levelling
the dwellings and shelters,
staining the earth with the blood and the limbs
of the children of Gaza.

The blind lead the blind
and the dead mock the living
as Lucifer’s minions cheer on the combatants
and keep a close count on all who have fallen
in a battle that sounds like a tocsin
to those who wish ill to this land.

From their graves the Philistines
take note of the carnage
as their much maligned Dagon,
whom all had forgotten,
wreaks vengeance on those
who displaced him.

Tragedy

October 23

Of the Greeks we remember
the houses of Atreus and Labdacus,
each doomed to repeat the curse
which the founders had engendered,
bringing untold misfortune in their wake.
And what of the house of Abraham,
the one son and his mother
consigned to exile and the desert,
the other son through his mother
the sole legitimate heir?

As History Unfolds

October 25

Pictures of endless ruins,
hospitals and shelters crowded beyond endurance,
cascade across the screen,
each side digging in,
the one crying for revenge
for the barbaric slaughter its citizens have endured,
the other for the unravelling of a blockade
that has kept them prisoners in a tiny open space.

Outside powers call for a ceasefire,
replenishment of a starving populace,
humanitarian corridors, hostages to be released,
all in vain,
as the shadow of Armageddon
looms ever larger over a region
where long ago a visionary
foretold a struggle to the end.

More grim days lie ahead,
with the battle’s outcome
too early to predict,
though in this game
where death throws the dice
the living always pay the price.

As Attention Falters

November 4

We should have known it would come to this,
public opinion not known to stay the course
with so many distractions along the way,
Matthew Perry’s death,
Buffy Sainte-Marie’s spurious claims,
another fusillade in a city or school,
a Middle East out of control.

It’s all too much to keep focusing
on an overshadowed Ukraine,
on what the big bad wolf next door
may be up to with drones and ammo
from its North Korean and Iranian buddies,
with sanctions leaking like a sieve
and Kyiv’s fair weather friends peeling off,
as movement on the battlefield stalls
and a second winter of bombing
and strafing beleaguered civilians
looms ahead.

In a chess game played for keeps,
the rogue side may yet win by default.

Desert Sands

November 7

The incubation grounds for peregrinations and hallucinations,
for commandments from on high,
angels entrusting sleepers with grandiose visions,
warring tribes and quarrelling kinsmen,
codes and rituals to transcend the generations.

Not clear why aspiring divinities
would choose such barren places
to plant the seeds of new religions,
not one, not two, but three,
and even these with multiple permutations.

They’ve gone planetary since,
nuclear if you prefer the expression,
with much blood spilled in the process,
for such creeds in their purest form
brook zero tolerance for rivals and apostates.

To think what the future holds in store,
as croplands shrivel in the heat
with desertification the prevailing norm.

Kristallnacht

November 9

Eighty-five years since shards of broken glass,
burnt synagogues and shops,
homes vandalized,
Jews murdered, brutalized,
force marched through German streets
as onlookers jeer,
and a future colder than the polar night
looms up ahead.

Flash forward to a Middle East in flames,
Hamas massacre of October 7,
Israeli hostages held for ransom,
the anguish and the calls for retribution;
Gaza pummelled into rubble,
its population forcibly displaced,
ten thousand dead and more,
living conditions to make the long years of blockade
resemble paradise.

Old enmities and new,
patterns of killing and destruction endlessly renewed,
with little in the misnamed Holy Land
pointing to redemption.

Red

November 14

The maple’s loom is red.
— Emily Dickinson

So it is this season,
even here on the west coast,
when conifers of every stripe
usually overshadow the maples and the oaks,
and the rain makes mush-pie of the leaves.

It has been a radiant autumn,
crisp air, lots of sun,
a deep texture to the colours on the trees,
the stuff to fantasize and give reprieve
from the devastation of this summer’s heat.

And red seems to be the flavour
of this tail end of the year,
as news of yet another war,
another deathly hurricane or massacre,
comes tinged with a colour that we dread.

Image: Zagranyasha, via Unsplash.

Fatal Flaws

November 30

Of democracy it can be said
its fatal flaw lies
in an inordinate faith
in the good sense of a demos
riven by rival interests and pursuits
and a not infrequent willingness
to take the confabulations of demagogues
who would lead their followers over a cliff
for the real thing.
As for autocracy
which would seem to provide an impenetrable shield
against the slightest flicker of disloyalty or dissent
its fatal flaw may lie
in the claim of its supreme leader
to an infallibility
that even Popes no longer assert
and to mistaking the flattery of sycophants
and the passivity of the masses it has subdued
for the real thing.

Statues

December 6

Statues are coming down, one by one,
our first Prime Minister, a tippler,
but worse far worse,
a perpetrator, it is claimed,
of cultural genocide against the first dwellers of this land,
and now Samuel de Champlain,
the founder of New France,
in the dog-house with the wokish set.
South of the border,
Confederate statues have been carted away,
and the names of Presidents
erased from prestigious institutes,
as history plays catch-up with a racist past.
In the U.K.,
statues of Rhodes
and imperialists of a similar feather
have bitten the dust,
and in the post-Soviet years
statues of Vladimir Ilyich
scattered right and left.
As the Ukraine war rages on,
Catherine, the one-time great,
is about to be dethroned from her pedestal
in Odesa/Odessa,
the former Paris of Europe’s East.
Statues, it would appear,
can prove just as mortal
as the figures
they were intended to revere.

Aletheia

January 1

The Greek word for truth,
carrying the additional meaning,
dixit Heidegger,
of unconcealment.

For the medieval world
that truth could only be God,
and manifold were the cathedrals,
monuments, works of art
to celebrate his glory.

For the Enlightenment
the truth was reason,
which would tear the veil
from all that had been hidden,
rendering humanity free at last.

For the Romantics it would be feeling,
tempering the excesses of reason
by emphasizing intuition
and emotional release.

For us moderns,
it has been technology
with the prowess science could unleash
crowning us sole masters of our fate.

In the century now upon us,
nature is the bearer of unpalatable truths,
heaping disaster upon disaster
as it unmasks the dangers to a species
that fancies itself the acme of creation.

Why?

January 30

You have been spared
Mauthausen’s 186 stairs,
Birkenau’s sinister smokestacks,
Terezin’s false veneer,
unlike the multitudes who perished there.

You have been spared the virus,
its light form with cough and passing fever,
its heavy form with victims gasping for air,
its long form with brain fog and organ failure.

You have been spared
the strafing and slaughter of war
spiralling out of control
with no enduring end in sight.

And you ask yourself the question, “Why?”

The World of Yesterday

April 4

Stefan Zweig wrote nostalgically
of a world he’d once known
with its comfort, immutability, security
blown away in the debris
of two successive wars.
We of the postwar generation
experienced prosperity, security,
an ever-expanding pie,
education as the magic key,
technology ensuring a cornucopia of things
for those lucky enough
to inhabit the affluent North.
But what if that too was a mirage,
a passing station along the way
to where polycrisis becomes the norm,
the precariat the lot of the many losers in the game,
and a malaise that dares not speak its name
the grim reality of the remaining century ahead?

Men on Horseback

April 21

From the safety of our northern homes
we watch askance as military strongmen
square off in a brutal battle for control
over yet another failing state.
“Tsk, tsk,” some might be tempted to exclaim,
as though the Roman republic
had not succumbed to rivalries just as grim,
Cromwell’s Roundheads not wrestled Cavaliers to the ground,
Napoleon with his whiff of grapeshot
not ended the havoc of the revolutionary years,
or Mao, adulated by a sea of future worshippers,
not solemnly proclaimed:
“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Sudanese generals have learned that lesson all too well.

Choices

April 27

Islamic rule or military rule,
emperor rule or party rule,
gang rule or big man rule,
hardball or softball market-based regimes,
civil wars or interstate wars,
state surveillance or corporate surveillance,
the alternatives boil down to little more
as avenging furies gather in the wings.

Les lieux de Mémoire*

May 4

A peek into the inner workings
of the Left Bank set,
Foucault, transgressive, charismatic,
Braudel, imperious, dictatorial,
Lévi-Strauss, touchy, magisterial,
the Gallimards, the aristocracy of publishing.

The world where Pierre Nora gravitates,
a changing weltgeist
as history becomes a reinvented craft,
the loci memoriae of a France
in search of a different past.

Lots of gossip, shifting bed-mates,
dinner parties, country homes,
and heart-ache too,
aneurisms, cancers,
AIDS and strokes
that take their toll.

And through it all
the multi-volume testaments,
grand edifices to higher learning,
breakthroughs in the social sciences,
deadly seriousness with which adversaries
fight things out.

All this comes flooding back to me
as I recall those student years,
the electric charge that each new text,
each article in the serious press and journals,
seemed to represent,
when the world seemed to have an edge
and Paris was the stage.

*Pierre Nora, Une étrange obstination

Passing Reflections

May 12

Your childhood neighbourhood
in the Mile End
transformed into a shtetl,
black robes in beards,
side locks, and fedoras,
young women with wigs,
prams, multiple offspring,
an 18th century village cocoon
in a secular world brazenly rejected.

An urban landscape,
every second street blocked off,
voie barrée, trottoir barré,
as though the sewers,
water pipes, underlying infrastructure
were eternal supplicants for redemption.

Your friends and relatives have aged,
in the warm spring air
tulips and magnolia are in bloom,
the parks and lawns as verdant as before,
despite the retro feel the scene inspires
in a native son briefly passing through.

You visit cafés and libraries
like a pilgrim with his staff,
the cobblestoned streets of Vieux-Montréal,
the river sweeping outwards to the sea,
and memories come flooding back
of dreams and projects you pursued
in your halcyon days.

Still there’s the language mix,
so pleasing to your ear,
French intonations you all-too-seldom hear
out west where a different mindset looms,
the brassage of bilingual cities
where rival tongues intersect
and alloys are wrought
from cultures of the past.

Photos by Jonah Resnick.

The Balcony

May 31

From the balcony above the cove,
one sometimes see Mount Athos to the north
and the Sporades islands to the east;
one can imagine fleets that sailed
from Homeric to Hellenistic times,
when Byzantium was at its peak,
through harsh centuries of Ottoman rule,
to where the arc of time has passed;
one senses legends come to life,
the blood exchange that war decrees,
the chroniclers of human fate;
beneath the surface of the waves,
the shimmering faces of nymphs appear
and sailors drowned in turbulent seas;
refugees in flimsy craft
from every failed state on the earth
now join the eternal search
for safe haven from catastrophe;
and when silence grips the night,
those on the balcony can divine
sparkling stars that seem to mock
a species the gods have often cursed.

The Lucky Country

July 2

A newly made German acquaintance
here in Damouchari
reminds me how fortunate Canadians are
to be living so far from the killing fields.
Thousands of miles away,
we happily play along with our NATO team,
delighted to see Finland and Sweden eager to join in,
promising to up our commitment to the common cause,
though only marginally,
content meanwhile to carry on
debating equalization payments,
minority language rights,
and unresolved First Nation claims
for all eternity.
Not to speak of our anti-vaxxers, bless their souls,
convinced of an ongoing conspiracy
to undermine their God-given right
to be free.

Superpowers

July 6

The one is now engaged
in trying to retrieve tatters of its former empire
in a Pyrrhic battle
raining wholesale destruction on its own conscripts
and on its designated foe.
Its long-time rival,
once proud to be the leading world power,
is bitterly divided,
with a constitution showing its many limitations
and weekly massacres of its own citizens
the new norm.
And in the shadows
a third is rising to the challenge
with techniques of surveillance
and thought control over its population
to put the other two to shame.

In the Ancient City of Thebes

July 10

I am king, and responsible to myself.
Does not every state belong to its ruler?
— Sophocles, Antigone

So speaks Creon,
as a crucial moment in the play unfolds,
unwilling to yield,
even to his own son,
the sceptre of authority,
the power to decide
what is right and what is wrong.
We know that Creon is not alone
in staking such a claim,
that through the ages
down to our own time,
rulers have thought like him
and acted with similar impunity.
Thousands, millions have paid the price,
not only Antigone
and Haemon, her ill-starred lover,
in the ancient city of Thebes.

In a Beach Town

July 12

Incongruous at first
to meditate upon power and its discontents
in a beach town,
buzzing with kayakers, swimmers, selfie-takers
on a summer day.
And though the room you sit in
has thick stone walls
that would have done a prison proud,
yours is no dungeon,
but a renovated living quarter
in an old storehouse
with a balcony overlooking the sea.
Yet the misdeeds of states and rulers
dominate the news,
Ukraine brutalized, pulverized,
because an ex-KGB agent
seeks to undo 1991,
Sri Lanka paralyzed
because two brothers
have plundered the state clean,
Mali, the Central African Republic,
a good dozen other African states
with coups, mercenaries, militias, as the rule,
Haiti and Central America’s former banana republics
as failed states,
aspiring great or regional powers
like China, India, South Africa, or Brazil,
each with accountability problems
spiralling out of control,
not to mention Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Afghanistan,
Hungary or the good old USA.
But you are in a beach town, after all,
best to forget the world’s problems for a while.

Pinocchio’s Nose

July 21

The geography is different now.
— Sergei Lavrov, July 20, 2022

So the Special Military Operation
morphs into something larger
as Western weapons stiffen the fight
for the Black Sea ports,
even as the Donbas,
piece by bloody piece,
falls into the Russian net.
Observers will be shocked,
having seen the Russians
forced to back off on their initial thrust
to take the whole Ukraine
in one fell swoop,
to now hear the Russians’ minimum demands
growing with each day.
Much like Pinocchio’s nose,
save this is no Italian fairy tale,
but a Slavic horror story
straight out of Baba Yaga.

After the Funeral

September 3

When the old guard passed on,
Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko,
they pulled out all the stops,
an official day of mourning,
a full-fledged military guard,
Chopin’s Funeral March,
before consigning their bodies to the earth.
They were more niggardly with the last,
perhaps the greatest leader the Soviet Union ever had,
and the distaste of the current master of the Kremlin
for the one he blames
for bringing the empire to its knees,
was manifest.
But the thousands who turned out to bid farewell,
to one who for a brief time
allowed a vision of a freer land
at peace with the Europe and the West
his predecessors had spurned,
reminded us what this day really was about.
Farewell to the hopes that Glasnost and Perestroika had spelled,
to the walls that had once come tumbling down,
as mourners with their flowers and their tears
exited the Hall of Pillars
and a cold wind blew in from the steppes.

The Borrowed Crown

September 13

In my adolescent years,
I could reel off the names
of every king and queen of England since the Conqueror
without a hitch.
For a summer job in Ottawa
during my university years,
I swore allegiance to the Queen
with nary a second thought.
It was only later that it dawned on me
that Canada had been a privileged member of the imperial family,
that the Opium Wars, the Amritsar massacre,
the countless booty pried from the “coloured” colonies
had been a dominant facet of an Empire
on which the sun would never set.
So as a reign that began when I was still a child
comes to an end,
I can’t help but wish
that this last vestige of the old imperial tie,
this borrowed crown,
would also be put to rest
along with the departed Queen.

A Strange and Marvellous Thing

September 23

Referenda come in various shapes and sizes.
The margin between winner and loser can be razor thin
– those of us of a certain age
can recall Quebec’s second referendum,
when it took over two hours to declare
that the “No” side had won,
because of “money and the ethnic vote,”
to quote the Premier of the day.
So too Brexit not so long ago,
which highlighted in clear relief
the gap between the “Somewheres” and the “Anywheres”
in England’s green and pleasant land.
But then there are happier lands
where the outcome does not hang in the balance,
even if the guns of war are pounding away
and alien voices denounce fraud in the making.
For as Stalin,
a hero to the current master of the Kremlin,
once declared,
“It matters less how people vote
than who gets to do the counting.”

Two Elections

October 4

There are elections where the opponents,
for all their rival agendas,
remain civil towards each other,
and though the electoral system
leaves much to be desired,
know that the stakes are not so high
as to jeopardize the foundations
of a shared community.
And then there are ones
where enmities run so deep,
accusations, imprecations,
threats to turn to violence
if one’s godforsaken foes take the helm,
that one shudders knowing this is a land
where rich and poor
have always dwelt apart,
where death stalks the favelas,
the public hospitals, the rainforest,
and the future is as chequered as the past.

Prophets

October 23

The twentieth century had two prophetic figures:
Woodrow Wilson
– wanting to make the world safe for democracy,
and for nation-states to boot,
irreconcilable goals in a way –
felled by a cerebral stroke
even before his dream began to go astray;
Vladimir Lenin,
alighting at the Finland Station,
turning a revolution still in gestation
into one putting the Jacobins to shame,
he too felled by cerebral strokes
five years into an experiment
that left the world ablaze.
And who might the dour prophet be,
in his parson’s frock,
as pandemics, wars, droughts, famines,
floods, fires, cyclones
crowd the twenty-first-century stage
– can that be the ghost of Malthus?

Too Much

October 23

Too hot,
October days
mimicking July,
too dry,
riverbeds and lakes
that cannot slake a planet’s thirst,
too lonely,
the COVID years
and their tenuous aftermath,
too grim,
images from war zones
and inner-city neighbourhoods,
too much
for the overwrought human brain.