Author: Steven Brown

Ow as in now, where does the time go?  I wake from another literary coma and it’s g.d. October.  Experts say I’m supposed to write every day to ‘drive traffic’ to my blog.  No is driving.  Not even George Sand could drive like that.  And there’s too much traffic, generally.  As Sterne said, ‘I’ll g.d. write my blog (novel) anyway I please’.  Of course he was talking about Tristram Shandy.  We know that.  I love Tristram.  A good guy and hilarious and still around, by the way, after all these months.  He’s racked up quite a few.

So I’ve been thinking about C.P.Cavafy since our last post and, to tell you the truth, much longer than that.  Who in their right mind hasn’t heard of C.P.?  Don’t answer that.  Lived most of his life in Alexandria, Egypt, which should be enough to make him interesting to anyone. Nice little town, Alexandria.  Like to drop by there sometime.

C.P. wrote a lot of excellent poetry.  For a novelist I can tell you one thing.  I seem far too interested in poetry on this blog.  But I like iconoclasts, one-offs, people that haven’t been contaminated or tamed by any school or movement, who don’t play hockey and have never even heard of it.

C.P. was steeped in history and his work shows it.  He could also make stuff up with the best of them.  He is never tiresome or obscure.  He’s witty and knows what irony is all about, the type of irony that rules lives with an iron fist.

This sampler was first published in 1910.  It was translated into English in 1975 by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard and published by The Hogarth Press the same year in the ‘Collected Poems’ and in paperback in 1978 by Chatto & Windus.  I’m writing from the second impression of the revised paperback edition published in 1990.  I don’t think old Chatto and Windus’ll mind.  They’re pretty laid-back dudes.  I think Chatto scored fifty goals in fifty games one year.

Ambition, frustrated ambition, not quite what you were looking for, beaming baubles not quite measuring up.  Who doesn’t know the feeling?  A good question.

THE SATRAPY  by C.P.Cavafy

Too bad that, cut out as you are
for grand and noble acts,
this unfair fate of yours
never helps you out, always prevents your success;
that cheap habits get in your way,
pettiness, or indifference.
And how terrible the day you give in
(the day you let go and give in)
and take the road to Susa
to find King Artxerxes,
who, propitiously, gives you a place at his court
and offers you satrapies and things like that–
things you don’t want at all,
though, in despair, you accept them just the same.
You’re longing for something else, aching for other things:
praise from the Demos and the Sophists,
that hard-won, that priceless acclaim–
the Agora, the Theatre, the Crowns of Laurel.
You can’t get any of these from Artaxerxes,
you’ll never find any of these in the satrapy,
and without them, what kind of life will you live?

Change of pace now from our old master carver. Far from the people, places and events that set your mind on edge lie volumes of bucolic material, opportunities for advancement in the field of trying to understand and failing, but enjoying the ride a little more. Let’s not get all university here. It’s always an enjoyable ride and if there’s anything to be grateful for it’s the vast variety of experience even if we’re locked in continuum jail followed by XX. It’s the gentleman amateur’s way.
Tonight’s contestants are three fabulous songs bolted together by time. Time has softened their contours but not lessened their ephemerality. If the poet captures a thousandth of what was possible let’s wave from the sidelines and shout, “Nice shot!” Efforts tell. Make poetry a part of your day.

BOUNDARY PASS

We never really exist
Life is with the immortals
Who see outside time
And have no being
And are just an idea
As you’re gazing on space
The wide open Pass
And the tall grass is shining
Just below in the vast

How many men have lived like me?
Dreamers, idealists
There has to be a place where we’re all stacked up
Okay, it’s an imaginary place
But there has to be a body-count of those who wished
But never were

Think of their places below on the slopes
All the diehard dopes
And all the dope we planted someone stole
And all the cutting we did to improve the view
And it’s grown over again
And it always happens

At the bottom of the hill
At the edge of the cliff
At a makeshift shrine
In the waving grass
We scattered the ash
That ecstasies abound
That it isn’t necessary
Or sound
To be an unrelenting catastrophic clown
Good advice

Haven’t seen orcas in a couple of years
They’re out there somewhere though, being successful
Recall one of the first times I came here
Ahead down the path comes this mysterious sound
The sound of orcas
Thought it was the wind or something in the trees
Phishoo!
Then the view opens up, this panoramic vision
And in the Pass a fine fresh pod of orcas splashing in the sun
Way out right through the middle of the Pass
The grass was high that trip too

There’s a lot of people out there who struggle sometimes for a very long time with a situation, and by that I mean a very unsatisfactory situation. There can be a lot of fall-out from this, and as those toxic fall-out flakes are floating down hopefully we take time to write something about our experience, confident in the knowledge this flake-storm won’t last forever and that a sense of truth, honour and decency will ultimately prevail. Here’s to Ultimately! This goes out to Helen Dye, a beautiful but tragically flawed human being who does a lot of damage but is one of my favorite works of fiction in my new novel-in-progress – Wilderness Park.

HEALTH SCIENCE

Why the weak, the mediocre, the lifers and fatties
The dopes, the incompetents, the numberless numbered?
Why the professionals, the experts, the champions of convention
The young and brilliant and beautiful
Why the intelligent, why ‘the record speaks for itself’
Why the prestige and the elite, the cruel elite in their brilliance,
Ease of manner
You open the door and enter the site
Look up at the ceiling and wide expanse of walls
Why the controllers, the compassionless non-empathizers
The robotic rote reaction, the cold, the incalculable
Why the merciless insect rationale the
Complete absence of the minutest decent impulse?
You can say goodbye to your wench
‘Perfectly justified’ never draws off the stench

Why the beast, the lack of remembrance
They’re wheeling him in now, the litterateur who bit it
The lover and conveyor unloved and degraded
Why the lies and psychopathy, the mean
Errant vacuousness and the disgrace
The ignoble dragging down, the callousness
The terrible unkindness of control, the paranoia
The emptiness of unreason and the stupidity (of the season)
The morass, the gutter, the lack of respect
Why the hideousness, the horrorshow horrors (let’s break her neck)
These are the professionals and before they go
Why the death? ‘I’m not afraid of being shy,’ the great one said.
‘I’m afraid of being morose.’
Go ghost, hasten to thy peace.
Did you think you lived to be treated like this?