From Tory lady, dressed with care
To lefty loon sans underwear,
The shift in politics, of hair,
Is noticeable, everywhere.
Yet Tories too, are punks, these days,
They dress as if some teenage phase
Has stuck and they’re in Neverland
Yet still they have the upper hand.
In the wake of a row at Cambridge about ‘respect’ versus ‘tolerance’ the chief big wig sent out a message to staff telling them that the university was committed to ensuring their work place would be a respectful and supportive sort of a place - words to that effect. Any way, Douglas Murray, writing in Unherd, brought up the old fashioned notion that you should turn statements the opposite way about, before making them and ask yourself if anyone would ever propose what you are declaring yourself against, before putting them out there to be scoffed at. So he asked would anyone ever say “we are committed to ensuring a culture of mutual antipathy and intolerance”? Of course the answer is no, but the comments sections in online publications is the natural home for people like me, who like doing battle with other people’s idiotic ideas, hence my response:
Here, in the comments’ section,
We are committed to ensuring
A culture of mutual antipathy and intolerance
Most hostile,
Every day we shall make a selection
Of remarks our fellows have made
And pour on them scorn and rejection
Because there’s nothing half so enduring
And guaranteed to make one smile,
As the feeling of satisfaction
One gets from being vile.
‘Of Risky Enjoyment And Bold Adventures’
Before I grow ancient and need to wear dentures,
I’ll partake, every day, in a calm, English way,
Of Risky enjoyment and bold adventures.
And though this might cause some alarm
In those who spend every day
Not living, but keeping from harm,
To them I shall say
Have some fun, go and play
Invest not in bonds but debentures.
I had a fragment of a tune
Floating in my mind,
A mere three notes,
Not Claire de Lune,
Or something of that kind,
Whose opening trinity gives away
The whole thing in an instant,
But three notes from some central part,
Which still excited, set my heart
To race,
In competition with my head
Which searched a life time's hoard of scores,
As I lay anxious in my bed,
At breakneck speed to find the phrase,
At least some helpful little trace
Of some few words which might pertain
To this mere trey
Within my brain,
Which yet belonged, in some sad song,
This snippet, which had gone astray.
The three notes were from Kurt Weil's setting of Ogden Nash's poem, ' Speak Low', hence the title.
https://youtu.be/VgQJvNhuiAE
Once all I had to go on was a single long note, sung in a high treble voice. I was lying in the garden on a deckchair and this single note was like a beam from the sun, shining in to my head, beautiful but annoying since it took me ages to place it. It turned out to be the first sung note of Britten's setting of the Corpus Christi Carol
https://youtu.be/fxtwyvZhHDM
w
I met a man up on the moors,
In fog and mud and almost night,
In drizzle, dampness and in sight
Of no one else. No heather there, or yellow gorse,
Just barren emptiness and gloom
And yet on waking from this dream
I felt the scene had been my room
The chalky, grey green colour scheme
Through open eyes, while sleeping seen.
Who was the ragged man I met?
I felt, on waking, I had been
To make a pact, yet I forget
The nature of our strange contract.
Yet deep relief flowed through my veins,
I knew that things would be alright,
As if I'd burst my heavy chains,
And was now free and safe, despite
The lonely place I wandered in,
The only place with wonder in,
The place of dreams, which yet are real,
Which do not tell, and yet reveal
Such things we might not dare to know,
Much more than what they seem to show.
I thought I heard a curlew cry,
beneath the dull November sky,
somewhere above the drifts of fog,
just for a moment, then I knew,
no curved billed bird would come in view.
It was a walker passing by,
who whistled for his dog,
instead. And yet it made my heart as glad
to hear that sound, as if I had
in truth experienced the bird,
his haunting song, the one I’d heard,
still filled my soul with pure, immense
nostalgia from those hidden springs,
the geyser which with power flings
this sentimental substance through
one’s veins and up into one’s head.
And so one is complicit in
such self deceptions as improve
one’s spirits and elicit in
oneself the comforting, Proustian mood
‘du temps perdu.’
