AS THE AEGEAN ROLLS IN
August 9
These moments of concentration
and solitary reflection
as the Aegean rolls in
will prove as ephemeral
as the wrinkled skin and hesitant gait
which signal what’s ahead
for your aging generation,
grateful though you be
to have experienced the many episodes
that give life colour,
to have participated as best you could
in the republic of letters,
to have encountered the heights and depths
of eros and bereavement,
to have belatedly become aware
there is no easy resolution
to the riddles that elude us.
ABOVE THE CLOUDS
AF374
August 21
A touch of champagne to get you going,
a gourmet lunch from a Michelin-starred chef,
music with a courtly Versailles setting,
enough to make you almost forget
the ills of the world beneath.
You know it is pure illusion,
that the plane speeding you home
is rendering life increasingly a challenge
where fires rage
and heat domes are the norm.
Yet still we fallible humans
enjoy our stratospheric moments,
swearing in good conscience
to be worthier stewards of the planet
once we have returned to earth.
BUT DOES IT HAVE A SOUL?
(for Don Fisher)
September 5
The woods were beautiful today,
grooved Douglas firs and cedars,
sunlight through the canopy,
trails carefully groomed
for cyclists, joggers, strollers, dog lovers,
and then UBC’s south village,
condo towers of recent vintage,
burbling fountains,
black-eyed Susans in bouquets
of ravishing colour,
and in its centre, shops, cafés,
a square of sorts
with a hired busker to sing her tunes
against the ambient sound of cars and buses,
students off to classes,
the start of a new school year.
Lovely to sit there in amiable conversation
with a friend of many decades,
like me an emeritus of this campus,
having both made our academic careers
in this ostensibly paradisiac city
at a continent’s edge.
Yet we both have known older places,
walked their narrow streets
and stalked their legends,
immersed ourselves in libraries and museums
replete with echoes of ages past.
And though we may repeat to one another
how lucky we have been
to have lived our lives
through the longue durée of the postwar years
in this physically splendid urban space,
one cannot help wondering
in one’s solitary, brooding moments,
does it also have a soul?
PATRIOT*
October 15
Dostoyevsky, in his Notes from Underground,
left an indelible monument
to the Siberian prison colonies of the czars.
Solzhenitsyn, in his Gulag Archipelago,
did the same for the redoubtable chain
of prison camps under the Soviets.
And now, from beyond the grave,
Alexei Navalny reminds those,
too ready to forget,
what twenty-first-century tyranny is all about.
*Alexei Navalny, Patriot: A Memoir
BC ELECTION ’24
October 29
How salty tastes the bread abroad and how difficult to mount and descend foreign staircases.
— Dante in exile
A very narrow victory,
but victory nonetheless,
the party of your choice
in office for a third term,
a veritable first
in the history of this province.
Savour it for all it’s worth,
knowing that it is voters of your demographic
who helped put it over the top,
and that its re-election provides an oasis,
a comfort zone of sorts,
in a world that seems headed for the rocks.
Recall the price paid by many
who have lost their gamble
in the great game of politics,
forced to face exile, if not worse,
the very bread they eat,
the quarters in which they sleep,
doleful reminders that their native land
has now become their scourge.
A WEIMAR MOMENT?
November 6
Sail, sail thy best, ship of democracy,
Of value is thy freight.
—Walt Whitman
Were we misled
into fearing another Weimar moment,
the fate of liberal democracy
hanging in the balance,
as the erstwhile city on the hill
morphed into a carousel of horrors?
Other elections have also been called
epochal, transformative,
with untold consequences
for the planet.
To his critics
one of the contenders
seemed off his rocker,
raging now in one direction, now another,
with an entourage of climate deniers,
vax opponents, gun fanatics,
and strongman aficionados
holding up the rear.
Yet what mattered in the end
had more to do
with the price of milk or eggs,
the number of illegals at the border,
the sense of a country
floundering on the rocks
than the concerns voiced by his opponents.
And so the fate of Whitman’s
good ship of democracy
now rests in the hands of a demagogue
with half the country in his grip.
LIBIDO DOMINANDI
November 8
I can calculate the motion of the heavenly bodies,
but not the madness of people.
— Isaac Newton
So spoke the great savant
who had uncovered the laws of motion,
but lost a fortune
in one of the financial bubbles of his age.
And what are we to say,
who for so long lived
in our benighted liberal trance,
endlessly pattering about freedom, rights,
checks and balances, or intersectionality,
preaching it like a gospel to others.
Had we completely forgotten
the primordial urge
running like a red thread
through our checkered history as a species,
the will to power?
There are those who gain
unlimited control over others,
through cunning, force,
or dint of personality,
and far larger numbers
who succumb to their rule.
Not always willingly, to be sure,
for sheer coercion plays a commanding role,
but at other times,
with the full consent of those
whom they will subjugate.
Welcome to the club,
one is tempted to say,
in the aftermath of where
the American colossus
with its manifest destiny
finds itself today.
ZEITGEIST
November 20
The winds of change were blowing,
fiercely, tempestuously when we were young,
placing many long-established shibboleths into question
– Cold War divisions, the colonial legacy,
religious dogmas, sexual and racial inequalities –
for starters.
For those on the right,
these were often unwelcome challenges
to a long-established civilizational order
that had been happily humming along
to their benefit.
The winds of change are blowing once again,
fiercely, tempestuously,
but this time in the opposite direction
against the very forces that had won the cultural wars,
against a globalizing ethos
that had left too many in its wake,
in favour of a refurbished nation-state
with leaders who can rule with an iron hand.
Now it is those on the left
who find themselves suddenly bereft,
their core beliefs in disarray,
even as the planet faces challenges,
not least on the climate front,
that brook no delay.
Call it fate, call it destiny,
such are the vicissitudes of history.
RUMINATIONS
November 29
The ancient texts bristle
with the annals of war,
Gilgamesh, the Egyptians,
the Hittites, the Trojans,
the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
the Persians, the Hellenes,
the Carthaginians, the Romans.
The Chinese had their successive warring dynasties,
the Mahabharata speaks of nothing else,
conquering Islam did its bit,
so too the Crusades,
centuries of European history
reek of warfare and overseas conquests,
nor were the Mayans, Aztecs or Incas
pacifists at heart.
The twentieth century was a standout
in bloodthirsty conflicts,
while the current one has gotten off
to a flying start.
Count yourselves fortunate,
if your generation and habitat
have been spared a starring part.
THE QUARTER MARK
December 6
Cold seeps in at a quickening pace
and soon all traces of summer’s heat
will have been effaced
as we seek refuge amidst the interstices
and ritualized festivities
of the holiday season.
Little to celebrate, alas,
as the wars prove as brutal
as they’ve always been,
the electoral toll almost as grim,
and the climate a near write-off
even as the planet continues to spin.
“What new entrapments lie ahead?”
one is tempted to exclaim,
given the hash
we’ve made of things to date,
with prospects no less bleak
at the century’s quarter mark.
THE 51ST STATE
December 7
So it may finally come to this,
after the endless bickering
between English Canada and Quebec,
debates about where First Nations fit in,
futile attempts to sever connections with the Crown,
to find ourselves in bed with Uncle Sam.
With two measly Senate seats as our sole reward
and no more ability to tame the larger MAGA beast
than California has,
for all the good that does.
We were warned it might come to this
by sober voices from the past
aware just how dangerous it was
to find ourselves locked in
with a superpower for whom manifest destiny
could only mean
the entire continent as its prize,
54-40 or Fight,
water, energy and rare minerals on tap
with pliant apparatchiki up north
to do their bidding.
O Canada we used to sing,
but the Stars and Stripes has a more familiar ring
and if we promise to behave
they just may let the snowbirds
continue to winter in the Keys and Everglades
before the mega tides roll in.
