Thanks for nothing.

The USA is fighting an “Eternal War” which fills the pockets of the military-industrial complex. It appeals to the American political class because internally they can continue to present their nation as the “World’s Policeman”. Have you seen how policemen behave in the USA? Especially if you are not white?

The eternal war is the employment of the military as a tool of foreign policy to exert control. That control is motivated by profit, not by peace, not by compassion. When the US Cavalry arrive in your country don’t be fooled; they are not coming to save you.

In their international exploits the Americans portray themselves in a positive light by leading a “coalition of the willing” and presenting themselves as simply one rational voice in a wider grouping. Countries like France who question the motives of the USA, question the ultimate outcomes and express a lack of willingness are pilloried in the US press and are subjected to economic sanctions by the US Government. Remember “Freedom Fries”?

If your nation is regularly joining these “coalitions of the willing” are you supporting it? Do you believe your participation as a nation is furthering you and your goals as an individual, as a nation? Or do you believe that your Government are simply serving US foreign policy at the expense of the ethos of your nation? I have the luxury of living in a neutral nation with a pesky small army that nobody is interested in recruiting. But I would not be prepared to accept the army of my nation participating in US led foreign interventions to further the political ambitions of US Presidents.

If international intervention is required that is why we created the United Nations. The reason the UN does not work is because the USA does not want it to work. That would replace them as the “World’s Policeman”.

Today, despite what the Western Media may be telling you, I suspect a lot of Afghans are breathing a sigh of relief.

Starspangled Cowboy: by Margaret Atwood

Starspangled cowboy
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face
a porcelain grin,
tugging a papier-mache cactus
on wheels behind you with a string,

you are innocent as a bathtub
full of bullets.

Your righteous eyes, your laconic
trigger-fingers
people the streets with villains:
as you move, the air in front of you
blossoms with targets

and you leave behind you a heroic

trail of desolation:
beer bottles
slaughtered by the side
of the road, bird-
skulls bleaching in the sunset.

I ought to be watching
from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront
when the shooting starts, hands clasped
in admiration,

but I am elsewhere.
Then what about me

what about the I
confronting you on that border
you are always trying to cross?

I am the horizon
you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso

I am also what surrounds you:
my brain
scattered with your
tincans, bones, empty shells,
the litter of your invasions.

I am the space you desecrate
as you pass through.

-=o0o=-

Hope you enjoyed this post. The site is available for free and if you see any ads here I make no money from them. If you would like to show your appreciation for my site you can buy me a coffee! http://buymeacoffee.com/DonalClancy

Cathedral Frenzy

In the mid-12th century Abbot Suger of St. Denis in Paris built a new cathedral. He already had the tombs of the Kings of France and the relics of Saint Denis the Martyr, one of the patron saints of France. Suger is credited with building the first Gothic cathedral. He took the Islamic pointed arch and made it a defining feature of Christian Architecture. He added Norman ribbed vaulting. The pointed arches gave the new cathedral height. New stone-working techniques dispensed with the need for thick rubble walls which were replaced with soaring columns. Between the soaring columns was space and into that space came light.

Massive walls of stained glass appeared, depicting scenes from the Bible. Enormous rose windows soared above the congregation, painting them all the colours of the rainbow as the sun precessed across the heavens. Hundreds of statues adorned the walls both inside and out.

When the British Navy built Dreadnought in 1906 it made every existing battleship obsolete. It sparked a frenzy of ship building. The same thing happened in the Middle Ages with Cathedrals. Once a pilgrim saw St. Denis no other church could compete. From the 12th to 15th centuries towns competed with each other to build the tallest, the longest, the highest steeple, the biggest and the best. Craftsmen were in high demand to produce the volumes of statuary and stained glass. In one period of 100 years a one new cathedral was built every year.

These buildings dominated the landscape in a manner that is hard to comprehend today. In a world where few people ever mounted a staircase they soared as high as birds could fly. Their carillons of bells rang for miles across the countryside calling the faithful to prayer and pilgrimage.

The Antagonism; by Thom Gunn

The Makers did not make
the muddy winter hardening to privation,
or cholera in the keep, or frost’s long ache
afflicting every mortal nation
from lord to villagers in their fading dyes
—those who like oxen strained
on stony clearings of the ground
from church to sties.

They sought an utterance,
or sunshine soluble in institution,
an orthodoxy justified, at once
the dream and dreamer warmed in fusion,
as in the great Rose Window, pieced from duty,
where through Christ’s crimson, sun
shines on your clothes till they take on
value and beauty.

But carved on a high beam
far in the vault from the official version
gape gnarled un-Christian heads out of whom stream
long stems of contrary assertion,
shaped leaf ridging their scalps in place of hair.
Their origins lost to sight,
as they are too, cast out from light.
They should despair.

What stays for its own sake,
occulted in the dark, may slip an ending,
recalcitrant, and strengthened by the ache
of winter not for the transcending.
Ice and snow pile the gables of the roof
within whose shade they hold,
intimate with its slaty cold,
to Christ aloof.

The Revolution Vs Reality TV

You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag
And skip out for beer during commercials, because
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be televised
The revolution will not be brought to you
By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle
And leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams, and Spiro Agnew
To eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre
And will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs
The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because
The revolution will not be televised, brother

There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mae
Pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run
Or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not be able predict the winner
At 8:32 on report from twenty-nine districts
The revolution will not be televised

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young
Being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process
There will be no slow motion or still lifes of Roy Wilkins
Strolling through Watts in a red, black, and green liberation jumpsuit
That he has been saving for just the proper occasion

“Green Acres”, “Beverly Hillbillies”, and “Hooterville Junction”
Will no longer be so damn relevant
And women will not care if Dick finally got down with Jane
On “Search for Tomorrow”
Because black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day
The revolution will not be televised

There will be no highlights on the eleven o’clock news
And no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists
And Jackie Onassis blowing her nose
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Keys
Nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash
Engelbert Humperdinck, or The Rare Earth
The revolution will not be televised

The revolution will not be right back
After a message about a white tornado
White lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom
The tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will put you in the driver’s seat

The revolution will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
Will not be televised
The revolution will be no re-run, brothers
The revolution will be live

14 Hours of Hell

On this day in 1914 the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers were effectively wiped out in a rearguard action to slow the German advance on the Western Front. Following the drubbing given to the Germans at Mons in Belgium the German Imperial Army X reserve was hurled at the British Expeditionary Force, then in full retreat.

The 3 companies of the Munster Fusiliers, 800 men, fought what is known as the Rearguard Affair of Étreux.

The Munsters, fighting their first action of the war, were ordered to hold the line “at all costs”. In the area around Étreux, France, 60 km South of Mons, they stood their ground. Under relentless attack they fell back before the Germans who outnumbered them 6 to 1. Over the course of 14 hours they slowly fought a fighting retreat, losing 600 of their number.

In the process they killed their pursuers at a rate of 2 to 1 accounting for around 1,500 Germans. Finally, having run out of ammunition, completely surrounded, the remaining 240 Munster men were compelled to surrender and spend the remainder of the war in a POW camp.

The 14 hours gave the British I Corps time to escape and regroup. Instead of fleeing for the Channel ports the British fell back in good order to the Marne and joined the French in stopping the German advance to the East of Paris one week later.

Dreamers; by Siegfried Sassoon

Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
they think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
and in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
and mocked by hopeless longing to regain
bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
and going to the office in the train.

What is the Stars?

Today is my dad’s birthday and he would have been 94 today. So a small memory of him. He told me that as a young man he was reading about astronomy. My parents were in an Irish Language social club called An Réalt (The Star). It was an Irish language version of the Legion of Mary. But don’t take this to signify some great religious devotion. In Ireland of the 1940’s all cultural activities were curated by the Catholic Church.

He was asked to put his astronomy to some use, and give a talk to the members about the solar system. So he explained to the assembled members, through the medium of Irish, that the Sun at the centre of our solar system is a star. He then went on to explain that the night sky was filled with stars. Each of these stars potentially had planets in orbit about them. Furthermore there was a possibility that some of those planets might contain life.

After the talk one of his friends came up to him and said “Pat, that was very entertaining, but you really are full of shite.”

“What is the Stars” is one of the key lines from Sean O’Casey’s play “Juno and the Paycock”. The “paycock” is a Dublin pronunciation of the word “peacock” and refers to the paterfamilias of the hapless Boyle family; “Captain” Jack Boyle. He is called the captain for his exaggerated stories of his days in the Merchant Navy. He recites the line to his best buddy and partner in avoiding work; The Joxer Daly.

 Joxer: God be with the young days when you were steppin’ the deck of a manly ship, with the win’ blowin’ a hurricane through the masts, an’ the only sound you’d hear was, “Port your helm!” an’ the only answer, “Port it is, sir!”
     Boyle: Them was days, Joxer, them was days. Nothin’ was too hot or too heavy for me then. Sailin’ from the Gulf o’ Mexico to the Antanartic Ocean. I seen things, I seen things, Joxer, that no mortal man should speak about that knows his Catechism. Ofen, an’ ofen, when I was fixed to the wheel with a marlin-spike, an’ the win’s blowin’ fierce an’ the waves lashin’ an’ lashin’, till you’d think every minute was goin’ to be your last, an’ it blowed, an’ blowed — blew is the right word, Joxer, but blowed is what the sailors use…
     Joxer: Aw, it’s a darlin’ word, a daarlin’ word.
     Boyle: An’, as it blowed an’ blowed, I ofen looked up at the sky an’ assed meself the question — what is the stars, what is the stars?
Voice of Coal Vendor: Any blocks, coal-blocks; blocks, coal-blocks!
     Joxer: Ah, that’s the question, that’s the question — what is the stars?
     Boyle: An’ then, I’d have another look, an’ I’d ass meself — what is the moon?
     Joxer: Ah, that’s the question — what is the moon, what is the moon?

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout; by Gary Snyder

Down valley a smoke haze
three days heat, after five days rain
pitch glows on the fir-cones
across rocks and meadows
swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
a few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
looking down for miles
through high still air.

-=o0o=-

This site is available for free and I make no money from any ads you see here. If you would like to show your appreciation feel free to leave a comment or you can buy me a coffee! http://buymeacoffee.com/DonalClancy

The Walrus and the Pelican

This summer Ireland has had two unusual travelers visiting our coasts. A walrus nicknamed Wally and a jail breaking Pelican who fled the Fota Island wildlife park. The pairing reminded me of the Lewis Carroll poem “The Walrus and the Carpenter” which is a thinly veiled criticism of the predatory nature of organized religion.

I revised the poem to cast our two visitors as modern day Cassandras, harbingers of the climate disaster facing us as we are all wrapped up in Coronavirus.

The Walrus and the Pelican; by Lewis Carroll and Donal Clancy

The sun was shining on the sea,
shining with all his might:
he did his very best to make
the billows smooth and bright —
and this was odd, because it was
the Coronavirus night.

The moon was shining sulkily,
because she thought the sun
had got no business to be there
after good times were done —
“It’s very rude of him,” she said,
“To come and spoil the fun.”

The sea was wet as wet could be,
the sands were dry as dry.
you could not see a cloud, because
wildfires blotted out the sky:
no birds were flying overhead —
there was but one bird to fly.

The Walrus and the Pelican
stepped the light fantastic;
they wept like anything to see
such quantities of plastic
“If this were only cleared away,”
they said, “it would be majestic!”

“If G7 leaders with G7 summits
voted year after year,
do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“that they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Pelican,
and shed a bitter tear.

“Anti-vaxxers, come march with us!”
the Walrus did beseech.
“A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
along the briny beach:
we cannot group with more than four,
our max group size to reach.”

An Elder protester looked at him,
but never a word he said:
the Anti-Vaxxer winked his eye,
and shook his heavy head —
meaning to say the right to choose
leaves the baby dead.

But four young anti-vaxxers came,
all eager for the treat:
their glad rags on, fake tan done,
tickets bought and festival alert —
and this was odd, because, you know,
they had no vaccination cert.

Four other partygoers followed them,
and yet another four;
and thick and fast they came at last,
and more, and more, and more —
all hopping through the frothy waves,
and scrambling to the shore.

The Walrus and the Pelican
walked on a mile or so,
and then they rested on a rock
conveniently low:
and all the party people stood
and waited in a row.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
of masks — and flights — hand sanitizer —
vitamin D — and here’s the deal —
the sea is boiling hot now —
climate change is real.”

“But wait a bit,” Anti-vaxxers cried,
“Before we have our chat;
for some of us are out of breath,
and most of us are fat!”
“We must act now!” said the Pelican.
They lambasted him for that.

“Sourdough bread,” the Walrus said,
“is what we chiefly need:
but we must not eat it inside
that’s what the guidelines said —
now if you’re ready, protesters dear,
we can begin to feed.”

“We have rights” the protesters cried,
turning gammon pink.
“You will not fool us with your words,
we are sure the scientists lied
its a government conspiracy
and you are on the wrong side.”

“I weep for you,” the Walrus said:
“but I cannot empathize.’
With sobs and tears he flopped aboard
a boat of smallest size,
“My ice-floes are all melting
right before your very eyes.”

“Anti-Vaxxers,” said the Pelican
“I’ve had a pleasant run!
Back to Fota I’ll be flying home’
but answer came there none —
and this was scarcely odd, because
with rising seas Fota was gone.

-=o0o=-

This site is available for free and I make no money from any ads you see here. If you would like to show your appreciation feel free to leave a comment or you can buy me a coffee! http://buymeacoffee.com/DonalClancy

My History in Objects #8

The Wall!

I grew up in a Europe divided East from West. The Iron Curtain stretched from the Russo-Norwegian border in the Arctic all the way past Finland to the Baltic Sea where it then divided East and West Germany, before running to the Adriatic to encompass Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria in the Eastern Bloc.

The Omphalos of the Iron Curtain was Berlin. Well within the Eastern side West Berlin was an enclave in hostile territory and the Cold War was symbolized by Checkpoint Charlie and the Berlin Wall. How many spy movies ended with a desperate attempt to escape the Stalinist ghost town of East Berlin for the bright lights and bustling shops of the consumerist West? It was like moving from black and white TV to full colour, if only you could cross the wall.

Although I never visited Berlin the wall was a defining feature of my youth. It represented the great ideological struggle between Capitalism (yay) and Communism (boo). At age 11 I remember the Head Brother of my De La Salle school giving a presentation on the “Blue Army” as part of a recruitment drive. Our Lady’s Blue Army of Fátima had an agenda to bring about the fall of communism and my Headmaster was recruiting child soldiers for the good fight. I demurred.

It is relevant, in the week when the USA and their NATO allies are running out of Afghanistan to reflect on the events that led to the fall of the Soviet Union. The last gasp of Soviet Imperialist Expansion was their invasion of Afghanistan. In the late 1970’s the unpopular Socialist Government of Afghanistan relied increasingly on Soviet support to maintain their power in government. The events in Afghanistan played out for Russia in a very similar way to what happened the USA in Vietnam. They provided diplomatic support followed by military matériel. Then they sent in specialist trainers and strategic advisors. Eventually in 1979, to howls of protest from the West, they sent in the tanks.

What followed was a nine year blood letting, again you might call it the Russian Vietnam. The USA via the CIA in Pakistan poured funds, arms and training into native Afghani and other Islamic groups who over the years became household names to us: the Taliban, the Mujahedeen and even Al Qaida.

The Soviet-Afghan War proved to be the death knell of Russian Communism. In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev rose to become General Secretary and he introduced the reform policies known as Glasnost (transparency) and Perestroika (reconstruction). Tentative moves to open relations between Austria and Hungary were followed by similar relaxations in Germany. Then a miscommunication and misunderstanding by border guards resulted in widespread movements from East to West Berlin. It was literally the opening of a floodgate and once that genie was let out of the bottle German Unification followed within a matter of months. I remember it well because it caused an increase in my mortgage rate.

Only 2 years later on this day in 1991 the desperate Communist hard liners tried to re-establish control in Russia in the August Coup. The public were having none of it. Boris Yeltsin famously took control of the backlash against the coup. Gorbachev, although saved, ceased to be relevant in Russian politics.

The great symbol of this period was the carving of the wall in Berlin. The crowd working tirelessly in shifts all night to hammer and cut and pry the wall open until that first section fell to a resounding cheer. The cold war was over and we partied like it was 1999. Before we knew it we passed 1999 and reached 2001 and then the world changed all over again.

Out Cider

In Europe there is a clear climatic dividing line between areas that produce grapes, barley and not barley. They translate into the Wine Belt around southern Europe, the Beer Belt which stretches in a line from Bohemia (Czechia) to Ireland. North of the Beer Belt is the Vodka belt, where the grains are not good enough for Beer and Whiskey so they are converted into various types of Vodka, Aquavit or Schnapps.

I always assumed that Cider followed a similar pattern until my son was in the Netherlands on Erasmus and found that the Dutch students were unaware of the existence of cider. They were amazed that there was such a thing as a “beer” brewed from apples.

Cider is a unique drink in brewing terms. You can make a cider from good eating apples but it is horribly cloyingly sweet. You can make good scrumpy, a rough home made cider, using wild crab apples. The best ciders are made from a carefully selected blend of apples. It is usually a mix of specially bred sharp dry cider apple varieties. For consistency of product these are then blended with sharper crab apple and some sweeter eating apples. The balance can be amended over the season to retain consistency.

The alternative approach, which is common in Breton orchards, and is followed by many American farms, is to allow the cider to evolve with the season. The early season cider is razor sharp and dry and as the summer ripens the crop the cider becomes softer and sweeter. But it is seldom ever the same.

Apples ferment naturally, and yeasts actually form on the outside skin of apples. To stimulate the fermentation all you need to do is break the skin. Then it is a race between the yeasts and the wasps as to who gets there first. Cider makers seldom ferment the whole apple. That is something that produces an apple wine. Cider is made by juicing the apples and allowing the juice to ferment with the yeasts already present from the skin. Commercial cider makers, who value consistency above all else, will not allow the natural yeasts to have their way. They use a commercially grown lab yeast that has a predictable outcome.

The home of Cider is the South East of England, centered around Somerset and Bristol. It was the Romans who brought apple cultivation to Britain as far as we know. The Britons had natural crab apples but it was the cultivars from the Tian Shan mountains on the Silk Road via Greece and Rome that gave us the modern apple.

Somewhere along the way, after the departure of the Legions, the Britons discovered the art of Cider making. From there it spread, naturally, to the apple growing regions of Ireland. We might even hazard that St. Patrick himself brought the skill with him from Britain when he came over to convert the Irish. That might explain his success.

South East England had very close relations with Brittany, which was known once as Bar-Britain or Lesser Britain. It was a short journey from Brittany into Normandy which is the heartland of French cider production today.

After that the spread of Cider making was sporadic and very limited. It seems to be a product of an Atlantic climate for the most part, with centers popping up in the Northern Spanish provinces of Asturias and the Basque country. The production in isolated parts of Southern Germany, Austria and Northern Italy are interesting. These are areas where Irish Celtic Monks re-established Christianity at the end of the Dark Ages. I wonder if the Celtic Monks may have come armed with their cider making skills?

And now a verse of an Irish Cider Song: Johnny Jump Up. The story is that in Youghal they matured the cider in old whiskey barrels and it leeched the whiskey from the wood making it far stronger than normal.

Johnny Jump Up; By Tadhg Jordan

I’ll tell you a story that happened to me
One day as I went down to Youghal by the sea
The sun it was high and the day it was warm
Says I an auld pint wouldn’t do me no harm

I went in and I called for a bottle of stout
Says the barman I’m sorry the beer is sold out
Try whiskey or Paddy ten years in the wood
Says I I’ll try cider I’ve heard that it’s good

O never O never O never again
If I live to a hundred or a hundred and ten
I fell to the floor and I couldn’t get up
After drinking a pint of old Johnny Jump Up

White Man’s Burden

Born Aug 17th 1840 the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was something of an anomaly at the height of the British Empire. He was the polar opposite of Rudyard Kipling, a stance expressed neatly in his poetic novel “Satan Absolved”.

When the Lord God defends the White Imperialist thus:

“This Anglo-Saxon man hath a fair name with some.
He standeth in brave repute, a priest of Christendom,
First in civility, so say the Angel host
Who speak of him with awe as one that merits most.”

Satan responds with a lengthy tirade within which sits the couplet:

“Their poets who write big of the “White Burden.” Trash!
The White Man’s Burden, Lord, is the burden of his cash.”

Blunt was a member of the privileged gentry but empathized with the fate of the colonized. He supported Home Rule in Ireland, and was imprisoned for chairing an anti-eviction meeting in Galway in 1888. He was banned from entering Egypt for four years for his political stance. This latter ban was problematic because of the horses.

Blunt married the grand-daughter of Lord Byron, Lady Anne Noel. Together they travelled widely in Spain, Algeria, Egypt and the Syrian deserts, pulling together a string of pure bred Arabian bloodstock, founding Crabbet Arabian Stud in England. They opened a sister stud in Egypt and together were instrumental in preserving the bloodlines of Arabian horses.

It was in 1901 when he hit the equivalent of the Tabloids of the day with the “Egyptian Garden Scandal”. A large group of British Army Officers held a fox hunt and chased a fox into Blunt’s garden and the grounds of the Egyptian stud. The native house staff and grooms blocked the hunt from entering the land to protect the valuable stud horses. The officers, all out of uniform, beat the staff and then arrested them for assaulting his majesty’s soldiers. They tangled with the wrong man and the anti-imperialist Blunt dragged the officers through the courts to secure the release of his staff. The incident became an embarrassment to both the Military and the Civil Service.

To do some little good; by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt

To do some little good before I die;
to wake some echoes to a loftier theme;
to spend my life’s last store of industry
on thoughts less vain than Youth’s discordant dream;
to endow the world’s grief with some counter-scheme
of logical hope which through all time should lighten
the burden of men’s sorrow and redeem
their faces’ paleness from the tears that whiten;
to take my place in the world’s brotherhood
as one prepared to suffer all its fate;
to do and be undone for sake of good,
and conquer rage by giving love for hate;
that were a noble dream, and so to cease,
scorned by the proud but with the poor at peace.

Perseus

As a child my favourite Greek hero was Perseus and especially the story of how he slew the Gorgon Medusa. He had such cool stuff, the winged sandals, a flying horse, a mirror shield. The Gorgons themselves were such terrible foes, snakes for hair, a look to die for, and one eye shared between all three.

August is the month of Perseus because the meteor shower that bombards the Earth originates in his constellation. This is why we call them the perseids.

The photo above is a gorgon head forming the base of an ancient column. When Constantine the Great made Byzantium his new Rome he chose the site well for its access to the riches of the East and as a defensive strategic location. Unfortunately it lacked a decent water supply.

In the mid-6th Century AD the Emperor Justinian decided to do something about the water supply and constructed a massive cistern beneath the city. The Basilica Cistern is so called because it resembles a massive underground temple. Justinian had his builders pillage the ruins of Greco-Roman Pagan Temples to find the 336 columns required to support the roof. In so doing he inadvertently created a library of ancient columns. Justinian was a painfully fundamentalist Christian and he would have hated the fact that he actually preserved Pagan architecture.

The Gorgon heads were laid upside-down or sideways because, if you remember the tale, the direct stare of a Gorgon could turn a man to stone. Superstitious temple architects would not tempt fate by orienting them in an upright position.

So to a poem about the Perseids and two factoids from ancient Rome and Greece. Valium, the brand name of a diazepam drug, has its name origin in Latin, the word “Vale” meaning goodbye or farewell. As in “say goodbye to all your cares and woes”. Another word in this poem is amnesia. It comes from the Greek for memory “mnesi” the opposite of which is forgetfulness “A-mnesia” or the absence of memory.

Watching the Perseids; by Isabel Rogers

The parrot, Einstein of birds, who can count
and reason calmly in our tongue
while outliving us, disdains the ostrich.
For all its sprint records,
the ostrich will be remembered
for hiding from the truth.
You can’t outrun stupid.

We the people hold some truths
to be self-evident: our magnificent brain
in a body that can’t flee, can’t smell fear,
can’t hear death, can’t see straight.
Even so, our retinas, with rods and cones
as intricate as any telescope array,
evolved to see a predator
slide out of oblique shadow
and give us time to bolt.

We survey our closed dominion
until we look up in August
to find comet dust flaring in the night.

This vastness, this vertiginous awareness
mocking gravity on our speck of now,
wakes us with a recalibrating jolt.

But soon our familiar star will claw toward us
in seven-league boots from the east,
drawing its Valium thread across our planet
as if to cloak a birdcage
to muffle questions that blink through dark matter
and would pour over us
until we drowned, dreaming of amnesia.