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To Sleep

10/31/2018

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
      Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
      Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
      In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws
      Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,—
      Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
      Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

—by John Keats, born on this day in 1795

Audio of Claude McKay Reading and Discussing His Poetry, Including "If We Must Die"

10/29/2018

For a long time, I’ve wondered if there might not exist some audio recording of Claude McKay, or even film—and why not?—but have never found any, despite occasionally searching YouTube, until today.

Actually, I was looking for a nice rendition of “If We Must Die,” his most popularly recorded and recited poem. Most of the versions were not too good, and a surprising number contained errors of one kind or another: mispronunciation, switching of word order, substitution, or omission. One recording stood out above the rest and I kept returning to it. At first I didn’t realize it was McKay himself.

I’ve found three distinct audios: McKay talking about his most famous poem; a reading of three poems together (“If We Must Die”, “St. Isaac’s Church, Petrograd”, “The Tropics in New York”); and “If We Must Die” all by itself (I haven’t listened carefully enough to notice if this is an extraction from the reading of three and therefore the same audio).

Here is the introduction:

Three poems read by Claude McKay:

“If We Must Die”:

I believe these are recordings from the Smithsonian, but don’t know the provenance or the occasion, nor if there are any more.

The Depletion of Virtue

10/27/2018

My countrymen resign themselves
To liars and their lies,
As years go by in monthly twelves,
And tell themselves, “Time flies.”

A dozen years have come and gone,
Two dozen, maybe three,
While honesty it seems has flown
And lies are currency.

A candle let me hold beneath
The broad light of the sun—
“Where is an honest man?” Has death
Abducted every one?

You let the virus fester long,
First caring not to notice,
Who proffered virtue for a song,
Regretting with Miss Otis.

The common bond was cast away,
You gained a couple shekels,
But—as the curtain ends the play—
There’s no applause but heckles.

It could have been an artistry,
This human life your birth,
But—once forsaken honesty—
All gains exhaust their worth.

Soldiers at the Border

10/26/2018

The boy was asking for the way
To get to school that April day—
He’d knocked on several doors before
He came to Mr. Zeigler’s door.

The door swung open. Zeigler held
A shotgun, and he shot and shelled;
The boy—fourteen—lest he be dead
Before his fifteenth birthday, fled.

A court of law found Zeigler guilty—
“Intent to harm” no verdict filthy—
Though he was egged on by his wife.
By heaven’s grace he took no life.

What kind of rage builds in a man
That he’ll shoot a pedestrian
(And boy at that) who does not threaten?
How one lone boy be so upsetting?

We see today a similar
Occasion building—from afar
Asylum seekers come, and seek
Protection, help, for they are meek.

What kind of rage prepares to shoot
The innocents come not to loot
But begging sweet assistance, mercy,
And why should they be met so fiercely?

The soldiers gather at the border
Authorized—charged—with keeping order;
Invective rises and, unstilled,
Must anger see somebody killed?

When Dying Is Not Hard

10/26/2018

Administration Sending Military to Border to Stop Caravan: Headline

If they will shoot asylum seekers
It bodes ill—very ill—
But mercy is not mixed in beakers,
Concoction volatile.

Like nitro: if the scene explode
Protect me from the shard,
Yet if shall pass what times forbode
The dying is not hard.

To balance off this life, one death,
So much holds claim on me,
But let me not, with a single breath
Approve such infamy.

They flee from terror, seeking help:
If I do not affirm
Humanity, then I myself
Crawl lower than a worm.

Troops “follow orders.” If they do
And gun the seekers down
Inflicting horror, we accrue
Much blame and blot to own.

In the Days Before Election

10/26/2018

They threaten violence and then
Claim themselves as afraid
Of violence enacted, when
Their own threats have been made.

’Tis subtle, this hypocrisy,
As they prepare to kill
Their own complacent enemy,
Competitors, at will.

They fear the contest will not go
The way that they desire,
So plan to thwart the outcome—so
Illegally conspire.

O, like a lamb that’s being led
To slaughter, you and I,
But let us lower not the head
But boldly stare: defy.

If you will kill me you must look
Into unblinking eyes,
Although your conscience not be shook
Nor mercy ever rise.

I do not mind the death so much
As all the lies you tell,
Proclaiming heaven, while you clutch
Tenaciously to hell.

The Vanity of Verse

10/21/2018

When criminals assume the helm
Where else can you expect the realm
To go?
Disasters come to overwhelm,
With innocents in coffin’d elm
Lain so.

Civilians voted for a man
Whom all agreed a charlatan
Regardless—
Put honesty in the trash can
And virtue, viced by the ruffian,
Left bardless.

How shall we sing of former days
And is there any left to praise?
This nation
Ignored warnings of a “malaise”
And sunk its credit in foul play’s
Temptation.

America, land of the free,
Became land of dishonesty
And seizes
Spasmodically for all to see
Frothing and sputtering rabidly
For Jesus.

America goes to the dust;
Let history’s verdict linger just.
We sing
How people their inherited trust
Hellward, with joy and scant nonplussed,
Did fling.

Vice triumphed over virtue and
The truth became a contraband
In essence;
With discord sown and scandal fanned
The conflagration out of hand
Nor lessens.

So with a whimper we subside,
As greatness ebbs just like the tide:
Vainglory
Remains the substance; men abide
And tell themselves with foolish pride
Their story.

Kiss Me, Petruchio

10/20/2018

I’ve heard about Joseph Papp’s free Shakespeare in the park for my whole life. If you are in theater at all, this is monumental. But I never really had a sense of what Papp did, and I didn’t know this existed.

Building the Death Machine

10/20/2018

1

Khashoggi wanted (it was said)
A permit to be lawfully wed,

So went into the Consulate
(He was the prey, the permit bait),

Where, trapped, they cut him up alive,
Ensuring he would never wive—

Outside she that was his intended
Innately knew her hope was ended

When he, her loved one, fair devout,
Who had gone in, did not come out.

2

The bonesaw sliced into his flesh
And as he screamed, his blood flowed fresh,

As one by one, his fingers severed,
Life eked away; and they endeavored,

His torturers, to send a message
Incapable of happy dressage:

Do not subvert the Despot’s rule
Or question it, lest every tool

Available at his disposal
Be used to sap your life ambrosial.

3

The Consulate, some sanctuary
Became a trap; Jamal, unwary,

He entered in—the case was clear—
But never thence did reappear:

“He slipped outside the back gate”—so
The word official tried to go,

But of more weight men held the thesis
He left the place in little pieces,

His corpse carved up in little bits.
The story changed in starts and fits.

4

The President, a Saudi chum,
Gave cover with excuses dumb:

“It may have been some rogue assassins,”
And so great guilt with lies he fastens

On citizens of the US:
“We knew the Saudis would transgress

But looked the other way because
Money sways us more than do laws,

And precepts some ascribe to God
We will excuse the House of Saud.”

5

The Party men, they did begin
Then to defame, excusing sin,

Calling Jamal, the journalist,
The mill of propaganda’s grist—

A bad man, liar, so they said,
Who for his job was better dead—

For free speech in the USA
Was better to be done away,

And citizens without a conscience
Heaped up such lies and gave them staunchions.

6

“There’s money to be made in war;
That’s what our consulates are for,

And if perchance we sanction murder
Such small crime merely makes one girder

Within the greater edifice,
For in the last analysis

We will support the House of Saud,
And give all sorts of crime the nod

Because, the Death Machine we build
But sees our own deep pockets filled.

7

Jamal Khashoggi, rest in peace;
Ourselves absolve, ourselves release

From moral pretense, and make clear,
He who has ears, then let him hear:

Whomever speaks the word of truth
We will bring low, to death uncouth,

Stopping not shy of murder, torture,
Though deeds may be a conscience-scorcher.

Just like the Saudis killed Jamal,
Truth-tellers, we will kill you all.”

In Memoriam Jamal Khashoggi, 1958-2018

10/17/2018

Before he died, they cut his fingers off
To signify he would not write again,
Nor smooth a lover’s hair, curtail a cough,
But most that he should no more wield his pen.

His killers tortured him, and gave no quarter,
Their conscience blunted while their music played,
And, making him a corpse, made him a martyr
To truth and justice which his words conveyed.

He was a gentle man, kindhearted, true,
Poised on a new endeavor in his life,
But with a saw they cut, and blade they drew
His blood, honor dismembered with a knife.

Despots and autocrats will have their day,
Serving their idols, strewing death and pain,
While innocence and truth are left to pay
The price for tyrants’ vanity and gain.

Jamal Khashoggi, may he rest in peace,
Has left behind a world of rife despair,
Who marshalled words that were not vanities,
And his example permeates the air.

Let us resolve ourselves to tell the truth,
Though tyrants hate its threat thereby to power;
For murders may be reasoned out by sleuth
And any man must meet death’s fateful hour.

Be not afraid. The martyrs of the world
They have preceded you, as into throes
Of nightmare and fiasco they were hurled,
But guilty men—theirs be the greatest woes.

<<Previous

To Sleep

Audio of Claude McKay Reading and Discussing His Poetry, Including "If We Must Die"

The Depletion of Virtue

Soldiers at the Border

When Dying Is Not Hard

In the Days Before Election

The Vanity of Verse

Kiss Me, Petruchio

Building the Death Machine

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

In Memoriam Jamal Khashoggi, 1958-2018

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