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Jan. 15th, 2009 11:14 pm
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Dec. 13th, 2008 07:34 am
...waking up, somehow I was thinking about this from yesterday. And also Horace.
Don't ask, Clarice, we're not supposed to know
what end the gods intend for us.
Take my advice: don't gamble so
on horoscopes of Babylon. Far better just
to take what heaven might allot us, whether
it's winters galore, and more, until we're stiff,
or only this one wintertime to end all others,
grinding the Tuscany Sea with its pumice of cliff.
Get wise. Get wine, and one good filter for it.
Cut that high hope down to size, and pour it
into something fit for men. Think less
of more tomorrows, more of this
one second, endlessly unique: it's
jealous, even as we speak, and it's
about to split again...
(Heather McHugh) ( ..and more )
forbidden fruit
Aug. 5th, 2008 09:56 pmLast night I read an account of the quiz show scandal of the 50's by Charles Van Doren in the New Yorker. The end of his story involves the Redford movie - which I have always liked. It has to be something like a modern myth: Mark Van Doren - the famous father; the golden and carefree son; the temptation of money - or whatever; and the aftermath of shame and banishment.
Tonight, I chanced on this brief tale from Ovid:
Ascalaphus - by Ciaran Carson after Ovid
Proserpina ate seven pomegranate seeds. So what? I'll
tell you what--
It doesn't do to touch strange fruit, when it's forbidden
by the Powers
That be. Who put you on a hunger strike, which if you
break, you'll stay put
In the Underworld. It doesn't do to get caught out.
Watch out for prowlers.
She'd wandered into Pluto's murky realm; plucked the
dull-orange bubble.
Split the cortex. Sucked. And who was salivating in the
bushes' dark interior
But Ascalaphus. Stoolie. Pipsqueak. Mouth. He spilled
the beans on her, he blabbed--
Straight off he shot, and knocked, knocked, knocked
on Heaven's iron door.
But she spat back as good as she had got: unholy water
from the Phlegethon
She slabbered on him. His eyes yellowed, drooled and grew.
His neb became a beak.
He sprouted spermy wings. Hooked talons shot from his
fingers. His body dwindled
Into mostly head. All ears, all eyes: touts everywhere,
potential freaks,
Beware. For now he is the scrake-owl, Troubles' augury
for Auld Lang Syne,
Who to this day is harbinger of doom, the gloom of
Pluto's no-go zone.
And another take on it.
Tonight, I chanced on this brief tale from Ovid:
Ascalaphus - by Ciaran Carson after Ovid
Proserpina ate seven pomegranate seeds. So what? I'll
tell you what--
It doesn't do to touch strange fruit, when it's forbidden
by the Powers
That be. Who put you on a hunger strike, which if you
break, you'll stay put
In the Underworld. It doesn't do to get caught out.
Watch out for prowlers.
She'd wandered into Pluto's murky realm; plucked the
dull-orange bubble.
Split the cortex. Sucked. And who was salivating in the
bushes' dark interior
But Ascalaphus. Stoolie. Pipsqueak. Mouth. He spilled
the beans on her, he blabbed--
Straight off he shot, and knocked, knocked, knocked
on Heaven's iron door.
But she spat back as good as she had got: unholy water
from the Phlegethon
She slabbered on him. His eyes yellowed, drooled and grew.
His neb became a beak.
He sprouted spermy wings. Hooked talons shot from his
fingers. His body dwindled
Into mostly head. All ears, all eyes: touts everywhere,
potential freaks,
Beware. For now he is the scrake-owl, Troubles' augury
for Auld Lang Syne,
Who to this day is harbinger of doom, the gloom of
Pluto's no-go zone.
And another take on it.
Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens
Nov. 1st, 2006 12:15 pmAnything Can Happen (after Horace, Odes, I, 34)
Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now
He galloped his thunder cart and his horses
Across a clear blue sky. It shook the earth
And the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
The winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest towers
Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,
Setting it down bleeding on the next.
Ground gives. The heaven's weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle-lid.
Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.
(Seamus Heaney)
A Funny Thing Happened...
I, master of philosophy,
Ex-adept of an idiot's creed,
Lax and infrequent churchgoer,
Am now compelled to turn again
By something that I cannot read:
Thunder in blue skies, and no rain!
Whatever can so freak the weather
Must be the god of earth and sea
And hell and heaven, I now concede.
Jehovah, Paradox or Luck
Pulls down the proud, promotes the meek:
What changes all, now changes me.
(K.W. Gransden)
Sparing and but perfunctory in my devotions,
Going my own way, wandering in my learnèd
Well-considered folly, now I must turn about,
And change my course, and sail for home and safety.
Jupiter, whose thunder and whose lightning
Require the clouds, just now, this minute, drove
His thundering chariot and his thundering horses
Right straight across a perfectly cloudless sky,
Unsettling streams and shaking the heavy ground
All the way down to the river Styx and out
To the end of the earth beyond Taenarus' seat
Where Atlas holds up the sky upon his shoulders.
Oh yes, the god has power. Oh yes, he can
Raise up the low and bring the high things down.
Fortune's wings rustle as the choice is made.
(David Ferry)
Lazy in praising or praying to any god
and madly rational, a clever captain
cruising the open seas of human thought,
now I must bring my vessel full about,
tack into port and sail back out again
on the route from which I strayed. For the God of Gods,
who slices through the storm with flashes of fire,
this time in a clear sky came thundering
with his storied horses and his chariot,
whereby the dumb earth and its fluttering streams--
and the River Sytx, and the dreaded mouth of the cave
at the end of the world--were shaken. So the god
does have sufficient power after all
to turn the tables on both high and low,
the mighty humbled and the meek raised up--
with a swift hiss of her wings, Fortune swoops down,
pleased to place the crown on this one's head,
as she was pleased to snatch it away from that one.
(Ellen Bryant Voigt)
Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens,
Insanientis dum sapientiae
Consultus erro, nunc retrorsum
Vela dare atque iterare cursus
Cogor relictos: namque Diespiter,
Igni corusco nubila dividens
Plerumque, per purum tonantes
Egit equos volucremque currum;
Quo bruta tellus et vaga flumina,
Quo Styx et invisi horrida Taenari
Sedes Atlanteusque finis
Concutitur. Valet ima summis
Mutare et insignem attenuat deus,
Obscura promens; hinc apicem rapax
Fortuna cum stridore acuto
Sustulit, hic posuisse gaudet.
(Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now
He galloped his thunder cart and his horses
Across a clear blue sky. It shook the earth
And the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
The winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest towers
Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing the crest off one,
Setting it down bleeding on the next.
Ground gives. The heaven's weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle-lid.
Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores boil away.
(Seamus Heaney)
A Funny Thing Happened...
I, master of philosophy,
Ex-adept of an idiot's creed,
Lax and infrequent churchgoer,
Am now compelled to turn again
By something that I cannot read:
Thunder in blue skies, and no rain!
Whatever can so freak the weather
Must be the god of earth and sea
And hell and heaven, I now concede.
Jehovah, Paradox or Luck
Pulls down the proud, promotes the meek:
What changes all, now changes me.
(K.W. Gransden)
Sparing and but perfunctory in my devotions,
Going my own way, wandering in my learnèd
Well-considered folly, now I must turn about,
And change my course, and sail for home and safety.
Jupiter, whose thunder and whose lightning
Require the clouds, just now, this minute, drove
His thundering chariot and his thundering horses
Right straight across a perfectly cloudless sky,
Unsettling streams and shaking the heavy ground
All the way down to the river Styx and out
To the end of the earth beyond Taenarus' seat
Where Atlas holds up the sky upon his shoulders.
Oh yes, the god has power. Oh yes, he can
Raise up the low and bring the high things down.
Fortune's wings rustle as the choice is made.
(David Ferry)
Lazy in praising or praying to any god
and madly rational, a clever captain
cruising the open seas of human thought,
now I must bring my vessel full about,
tack into port and sail back out again
on the route from which I strayed. For the God of Gods,
who slices through the storm with flashes of fire,
this time in a clear sky came thundering
with his storied horses and his chariot,
whereby the dumb earth and its fluttering streams--
and the River Sytx, and the dreaded mouth of the cave
at the end of the world--were shaken. So the god
does have sufficient power after all
to turn the tables on both high and low,
the mighty humbled and the meek raised up--
with a swift hiss of her wings, Fortune swoops down,
pleased to place the crown on this one's head,
as she was pleased to snatch it away from that one.
(Ellen Bryant Voigt)
Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens,
Insanientis dum sapientiae
Consultus erro, nunc retrorsum
Vela dare atque iterare cursus
Cogor relictos: namque Diespiter,
Igni corusco nubila dividens
Plerumque, per purum tonantes
Egit equos volucremque currum;
Quo bruta tellus et vaga flumina,
Quo Styx et invisi horrida Taenari
Sedes Atlanteusque finis
Concutitur. Valet ima summis
Mutare et insignem attenuat deus,
Obscura promens; hinc apicem rapax
Fortuna cum stridore acuto
Sustulit, hic posuisse gaudet.
(Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
