Gods And Rabble Rousers
The victories that seem to please the gods
have problems when they seem to come to odds
with moral standards of a higher level
than that espoused by gods who give the devil
his due in certain battles. Victrix causa’s
to gods more pleasing than to rabble rousers.
In Lucan’s epic poem Pharsalia, describing the defeat of Pompey by Caesar at Pharsalus, and inspiring, it seems to me, the libretto for Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Pompey becomes a kind of secular martyr; calm in the face of certain death upon arrival in Egypt, receiving virtual canonization from Lucan at the start of book IX. This elevation of Stoic and Republican principles is in sharp contrast to the ambitious and imperial Caesar, who becomes an even greater monster after the decisive battle. Even though Caesar wins in the end, Lucan makes his sentiments known in the famous line Victrix causa deis placuit sed Victa Catoni - 'The victor's cause pleased the gods, but the vanquished pleased Cato.' This line has been a favorite for supporters of lost causes over the centuries. One American example comes from the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetry, which has these words inscribed on its base.
2/4/09
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Until It Finds A Tree
A bird flies round until it finds a tree;
its spirit doesn’t tell it one is better,
and even when it lands it feels it’s free
to try another, avian jet-setter.
Inspired by Ricardo Muti who told Daniel J. Wakin (“And the Brass Ring Goes to the Chicago Symphony: Riccardo Muti Says Yes, ” NYT, May 6,2008) :
Mr. Muti called the Chicago Symphony “a perfect machine, ” with the versatility to play huge works like Prokofiev’s Symphony No.3 and Scriabin’s “Poem of Ecstasy” or to display the refined delicacy needed for small-scale Schubert.He remained steadfastly unattached after resigning as music director of the Teatro Alla Scala in Milan in 2005 in an operatic kerfuffle. Orchestra musicians and other workers at the theater had turned against him in an internal political wrangle. “I thought it was time for me to be absolutely free, like the birds in the air, ” he said. “Birds go around and they enjoy their happiness, their freedom. But sometimes it can happen they find a tree, and they like to stop on a tree, and they didn’t know about the tree before. It doesn’t mean one tree is better than another tree. It just happens at the right moment in life.”
5/6/08
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Do Not Ask
Don’t remind the August sky
how you used to love July,
and even if you should remember
August skies when it’s September,
don’t brood on them, for they have gone,
and you should only dwell upon
the skies that you see now above.
It’s just the same, of course, with love;
what love you may have lost is not
what you should think of, hot to trot
with someone new who takes your fancy.
It’s not a sign of sycophancy
to tell her that you’ve never seen
a girl more beautiful, or been
more happy than you are with her.
Forget the past which, de rigueur,
is just the past, and don’t see shrouds
in skies where there are sometimes clouds.
What's past you must forget and bury;
look up, ahead and now be merry!
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Mystic Chord
Memory, whose mystic chord
suggests existence of the Lord,
draws some to Gustav's music, Mahler,
many others to Kabbalah,
and even when agnostic, mystics
responsive to Pascal’s statistics,
find Leon’s Moses, sephirotic,
believable, because erotic.
Castilian writings that they dust off
appeal to me far less than Gustav.
Who’s right we may find out in olam
haba, but surely not from Scholem.
Richard Bernstein reviews “American Culture, American Tastes: Social Tastes: Social Changes and the 20th Century, ” by Michael Kammen (Alfred A. Knopf) (“Lowbrow? Highbrow? Culture Raises an Eyebrow, ' the NYT, August 25,1999) . Kammen, the author of 'Mystic Chords of Memory, ” pointing out that since the dominant role of television around 1960 cultural stratification and the existence of distinct brow levels have become blurred where they haven't been overtly blended. He traces the decline of traditional cultural authority and its eclipse by mass culture: “The entrepreneurial power of commerce totally crushed the recommendations of such cultural authorities as John Crosby, Jack Gould and Gilbert Seldes–– prominent television critics who pleaded for diversity.”
8/25/99,1/26/07
poem by Gershon Hepner
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Yung And Freudened
When men are yung they are easily freudened
of marriage against which they're hardened, till hoydened,
and when they get older they're even more wary
of marriage, towards which their thoughts are contrary,
until they're discovered by hoydens who're smarter
than they and can turn them to meat-market martyrs
who're willing to burn at the stake, till well-done
when they learn that's the only way they can have fun
with the hoyden whom they, when still freudened and yung,
would never have married though out might hung,
as happened to me once, when found by a hoyden
who hung out in Gower Street when not in Croydon,
and occurred to my son when a girl he had logged
onto, dating through Frumster, and jogged,
jogged his mind to make sure that he took such a fancy
to her that he married her, martyred in Monsey,
which isn't as bad s it sounds. He was picky,
but less mavericky once rigged up with Ricky.
It's often not easy to silence a table,
but thesetwenty lines surely prove I am able.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Scholar's Life
Mark what ills the scholar’s life assail,
toil, envy want, the garret and the jail,
and others Dr. Johnson has omitted,
like friends who think he ought to be committed
by men with licenses and long white coats
who do not care for all the things he quotes,
and patrons who have never gone to college,
who hope that words he uses to acknowledge
their help will make them so respectable
that they to higher office are electable,
and scholars who search carefully his writings
for their own names in small print in the citings
of footnotes, endnotes, all the apparatus
which basically for them is all that matters,
protected by their status and their tenure,
manure some pile on, some pile on womenure.
To toil and envy, garret and the jail,
add steps some make to make their rivals fail.
These are some ills befalling scholars’ lives;
survivors are the ones with lovely wives.
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Lovely Mistake
Marriage, often a mistake,
can be a lovely one.
In marriage you can have your cake
and it eat––oh what fun! ––
although it isn’t perfect––what
on earth is that? It can
be lovely though it may be not
precisely what a married
man or woman would describe
as peachy. It is carried
like remainders after you
divide, but better not divided.
Mistakes, though multiplied,
in marriage should not be derided,
and always should be eyed
as much part of the territory
as what in Eden’s Garden stood,
the famous Error Tree
without which Eve and Adam could
not have lived lovingly.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Fishing Rods, Guns And God
Some say: Give me a fishing rod
so when I start to wish
for food I needn’t pray to God:
I’ll catch myself a fish.
Some think that rifles or revolvers
may solve their problems better,
becoming with such problem solvers
to God a lifer debtor.
All fishing rods are just like guns
in any fish’s eyes,
but I feel merciless when one’s
my dinnertime fish prize.
A bank account won’t save a fish
from dying, but with one
you may prepare a sauce that’s pish,
and not be forced to run
away from cops or into church
or synagogue for aid,
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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Come Quick, Baby
Come quick, baby, and remind me
where I once began and show me
places where you think you find me,
for it’s very clear you know me
better than I do myself. It’s crazy
that you should do, since I’ve known me
far, far longer than those few years
I have thrived from love you’ve shown me,
every day with you like New Year’s.
Hold me tighter, baby, shake me,
make quite sure I’m always spinning
with your loving words that take me
each day to a new beginning.
Inspired by Bob Dylan’s “Emotionally Yours”
Come baby, find me, come baby, remind me of where I once begun.
Come baby, show me, show me you know me, tell me you're the one.
I could be learning, you could be yearning to see behind closed doors.
But I will always be emotionally yours.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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June In January
When in January it’s June,
in March it will be August, hot
and clammy while I swoon
within your arms, if I am not
mistaken about climate change
that is inevitable when
the summer months within my range
make me perspire once again,
and long for January that’s cold,
when I feel comfortable within
your arms, not feeble, frazzled, old,
and ready to embark on sin,
without the need for air condit-
ioning that I associate with June.
That’s why in wintertime I wish
that January will not leave soon,
but when it does it should be May,
my favorite month when birds do sing,
accompanying my love each day
with joy while you make my heart spring.
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poem by Gershon Hepner
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