Category: history
-
Let’s Hear it from Janus on the Union
Posted:
The Roman god Janus had two heads, two faces. They are usually depicted as looking in opposite directions. And the UK has a Gaffe man and a lying Toad for Prime Minister. He says, “Call me Boris” but perhaps “Call me Janus” would ring a little truer. And those two heads are not only turned…
-
What a Funny Time to say Goodbye to the Chaos Maistro
Posted:
So now, suddenly, it’s off with his head, the maestro, that shiny hate-filled spear-head of Brexit. He conducted his own removals, exiting through the front door of course, in full view of the cameras, delivering insult to the last. Not so long ago, a raucous parrot I know, a “bird of paradise” who insists on…
-
Wild Honey UK 2020
Posted:
This poem above is actually a very loose translation of “Wild Honey” by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. The slightly altered title here is an acknowledgement of just how loose the translation is. The poem’s original was written (I think) in 1933. Stalin had been in power for around a decade and his…
-
The Gaze Blank and Pitiless
Posted:
WB Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” was written almost exactly a century ago, but if it’s possible for a poem to become truer still with age, then surely this one does. And yet…Yeats wrote his poem in 1919, in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence…
-
West of Caritas
Posted:
“The Conversion of Saul” by Michelangelo, Pauline Chapel fresco, Vatican City. This “I” we each inherit, made spine of the world, axis, pole, look-out from the world’s helm gazing on the universe, gazing on you, gazing on death… “Mummy,” I said, seven or eight years old, “I have decided that I am God.”…