September 2026

September 27-28, 2026: This is how it feels, what with the life going out of any humanistic impulse these days. The Sicilian word incaprettato means goat-tied: a Mafia method of execution. “A rope is looped around the victim’s neck and then tied to his feet, which are raised behind his back, as in hog-tying. Fatigue eventually forces him to lower his feet, strangling him in the process”. (From notes appended to one of Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novels.)

Fatigue of a spiritual sort (and otherwise) often follows my morning walkabout through the news. Whereby I inspect the “news” like a paleontologist or an archaeologist analyzing coprolites for the dietary habits of some species of fauna. Whereby one’s muscles lock up, straining against the inevitable, the overwhelming sense that the news will cut off one’s oxygen supply by way of the regime’s obscenities, by way of the stale pieties of the so-called push-back on any number of fronts. What the hell is “essentialism”? Trump having his hissy fits against the fact of his mortality? A podcaster on a roll? “We’re all going to die anyway,” the former has said in recent days, asked about the implications of some policy of his as might impinge on the latter, and we all fall down as per the nursery rhyme.

Camilleri and Proust share the same shelf in my digs. It is a statement of a kind, though it is not to suggest that the one author is the equal of the other. A little light reading with a snorkel as opposed to the deep dive in a submersible that reading Proust is? Yesterday, gambling, I bought a DVD collection of “I, Claudius” for two bucks. Either the discs are shot or who cares about an interpretation of a Caesar’s life, as we have got other fish to fry. More indefatigable pursuance of self-celebratory acts? Hence, the sales tag, culture dirt cheap, of a BBC classic as low as a toonie.

The Aztecs saw the sacred as more destructive than not. To wit: The shadow of Tezcatlipoca, the Lord of the Here and Now, was everywhere, mocking human effort, falling across the smallest, most innocent things of the everyday. (From “Aztecs, An Interpretation”, Inga Clendinnin, Cambridge University Press.) I cannot see You-Know-Who as a “smoking mirror”, as a creative force however dark, as an embodiment of obsidian. There is a conservative commentator whose favourite verb, apparently, is “enshittify”. (He might have coined it, for all I know.) But I do not think he had fertilization in mind, and endless cornfields. Seeing as it is how he characterizes Trump’s (and his regime’s) favourite go-to activity. Hell was once defined as terror of the infinite. Words I am not inclined to laugh away.

It was the barbarian north that kept alive Mediterranean culture. At least once a week I head over to my local bookstore, scan shelves and bins, select a title nearly at random, go home, do my catch-as-catch-can reading. I am that old barbarian north in my person, a throwback. That we have been taking books and culture in general (“culture” in the best sense of the word) too much for granted for too long; that we could lose it all. What brings books into being? Itch that needs scratching? Ego that wants stroking? Something serious? You calculate the per centages, if you wish to handle the hollowness of the echoes coming back your way.

I say “tradition” and mean “continuity”, not a closed circuit. I mean that state of affairs by which a poet might speak to a fellow poet, and in the next breath address Homer or Yeats directly (as if they were living still) and so, a breathing culture, time no obstacle to a conversation. Fascists are always trying to exterminate that animal. Political correctness? Another source of pest control. Gatekeepers who think that the pursuit of culture is to arbitrarily supplant what cultures preceded it. Expunge the past, good, bad or indifferent, and you have a still-born present good, bad, or indifferent. The future? What of it? We are all going to die, anyway, so we have been informed.

At any rate, the last grunts of the resistance to the last fascist outbreak across the world have pretty well gone the way of all flesh (or so it was once put by Mr Butler). The last of their progeny, who might have been expected to have an inkling of the scope of their sacrifice, are soon to join them. Their children, in turn, are coming to maturity in a world in which they are blind, history to them a void. Booksellers will tell you that they cannot give their history books away. They do not sell. One to two per cent of American university students look to get history degrees at this point in time, this down from a peak in 1971 of seven per cent, and the drop-off soon after was sharp. Will this do you for the math? And by the way, with respect to the way of all flesh, Trump might have a gander at 1 Kings 2:2., though I expect the injunction to live well (but not rapaciously) would be lost on him.

Postscript I: Speaking of history, on this day in 1822, the French scholar Jean-François Champollion announced that he had deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphics using the Rosetta Stone. Carpenter does pretty much the same, translating the regime’s palaver by way of “Svengoolie”. Oh, and the Axis Powers were established on this day in 1940. Did the roster-making bear any resemblance to the NFL draft?

Postscript II: Lunar in terse little bits: … …. ‘So, then, Trump won't negotiate re. Hormuz. I dread the next chapter of this sorry tale.’ … …. You and me both, kemo sabe… … …. ‘Respect the man who respects poetry, but if I were Cuban, I'd be very nervous indeed’ … …. Canada in the crosshairs? Tuvalu? I think Lunar thinks: not so much. Panama, however… …. ‘Very few poetry collections get reviewed. … …. What launch? I'm confused. Was I an absentee at my own launch?’… …. Well, were you? You know that what brought down the ancient world, the best that was in it, was not confusion so much as its burgeoning indifference to that best. Boredom, perhaps. How many ways can you spell don't care?

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if, besides falling leaves, you spot yet more celebrity miscreants, and yet more reminders to love your country, yet more AI-crafted distortions of “content creation”: … …. ‘The Nazis were even less popular in the last Reichstag elections in '32 than Trump's average approval rating is now, but that didn't prevent Hitler from acquiring power in early '33. Fascists can always find a way. The young may not know history, but you have to give them credit for being overwhelmingly opposed to T. By the way, the last Reichstag elections were in November, too.’ … …. My goodness, a sanguine Drake.

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘I pass again. But I might report that I poured 2000 words into my novel yesterday like I was pouring concrete into urban renewal. It’s a good thing Percival doesn’t understand Sicilian, speaking of the “goat-tie”. Showers overnight, and tomorrow autumnal on this island, that time of year when one starts counting up the years one has lived and ignores what years are left – out of decency to one’s equilibrium. These quiet autumns hide despair/old rhetoric, my mental state… Quoting Peter Levi, two lines of his poesy at the end of his prose book “The Hills of Kronos”. Just saying.’

Postscript V: Rutilius: … …. ‘Pass, and this time I mean it. Perhaps, I can muster up a weather report. Autumn-y. Plus the old saw: “Expected frost can cause damage to vegetation, especially vegetables, grape-vine and blossoming fruit trees.” Words you won’t necessarily find in Virgil’s “Georgics”. Then again, the spirit of the letter &c… Paraphrasing: “Words have got fabulous or semi-fabulous character for most of us, and pass on like a kind of transient similitude, like a sound signifying little.” That is Carlyle in full bray. I kid thee not. Vale, for now.’

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Never mind the cupcakes and the French horn. It’s all about my Polish cousins, their bombardment of my inbox. Or that the Putin-esque is going to nickel-and-dime Europe to death. For all that, the movie “Stanley and Iris” has a feel-good ending that I welcome: Stanley learns to read. Iris gets her man. The triumph of ordinary people overcoming ordinary problems, nothing super about them, no extra degrees of difficulty, no car chases, no death by polonium, just you pays your money, you takes your chances, and with a little application, you do better than breaking even. No, none of this has anything to do with Ayn Rand and the ghouls her work has spawned…. Look, I’ve never warmed to detective fiction. Would Camilleri explain a complete collective abdication of anything like a moral principle, the fox with feathers in his or her mouth in full view of the cameras, as are the scenes wherever the president and retinue lurch from sound byte to sound byte? Never mind the cupcakes and French horn. It’s the inbox.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘I continue to await the reopening of my favourite café. It’s been a near year’s worth of renovation. More proof that civilization wasn’t rendered up in a day by some god. Though there’s this: Taurobolio criobolioque in aeternum renatus… I’ll let you sort the Latin out. But let’s just say it’s not immortality that people want so much as ”reunion”, the meeting up with friends and family, whereupon the mystery cults of which Christianity was a late variation thereof. Don’t I sound professorial now, the misery that was watching the Blue Jays over? ’

ADVISORY: “Blue Neptune”, a collection of poems by Norm Sibum is listed on Amazon.

September 17-18, 2026: Even at the height of their sway over Mexico, the Aztecs understood that their decline was inevitable. Perhaps this helps explain some of their weirdness. Well, they had fifty years at the summit of their glory, then Cortes came along. Perhaps no other culture in human history has, so far, taken up more fiercely both war-making and art-making, the Aztec appreciation of beauty genuine, unlike as it was with the Nazis, parody their art-talent. (Perhaps the Romans could have given the Aztecs a run for their money in the twin pursuits of military prowess and floral arrangements.) In any case, the bloody rituals the Aztecs staged so as to forestall the end of their tribute empire failed their grand purpose of continuation. We in our apparent wisdom do not sacrifice virgins and captured enemy warriors to this or that god in order to keep existential unease and the wolves at bay. However, we do fool around with cheery bank ads (hey bro, hey sis, hey mom and pop, you are going to make a roaring success of your lives with “personal connections”). As for life’s grimmer side, pharmaceutical ads would seem to address the mortality-longevity paradox, side effects the equivalent of having your heart ripped out while some feathered priest dances over your dead body.

Postscript I: On this day in the year 14 A.D. Tiberius Caesar called “for the Roman Senate to accept him as the successor of Emperor Augustus”. Tiberius Caesar is my favourite study among the emperors, not because he was someone one could have been easily chummy with or whose ideals (or lack of them) one could have admired or denounced, but because he was “complex”. He was an example of how everything that could have gone right and gone wrong with a man in the course of a long life did go right and did go wrong, all the while he was privileged, all the while he was either quaestor, praetor, propraetor, consul, tribune, general, and eventually emperor; all the while he never quit grieving for a lost love; all the while he allegedly molested adolescents; all the while he might have preferred to have written a noteworthy, scholarly work on this, that, the other thing to the onerous chore of administering governance, erstwhile justice; all the while he despised the senate for being lickspittle; all the while Rome was Top Dog, a fatal condition. Whether or not Carpenter would agree, I cannot say. Otherwise it is Constitution Day and Citizenship Day. Commemorated: the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Carpenter may have views on that.

Postscript II: Lunar outtakes: … …. ‘So B promises an "algorithmic boost", does she, for your work? Isn't that something involving sexual paraphernalia? We could all use a bit of that. We went to the Scapa Flow Museum on the island of Hoy today. Scapa Flow was of course the scene of incredible events in both world wars, firstly the WWI German commander who ordered the scuttling of the German fleet so it would not be of use to the UK - the message for him not to arrived too late - and then the horrendous sinking of the Royal Oak in 1939. Anyway one of the exhibits was about children on a school outing who observed the scuttling of the German fleet and the subsequent surrender. [It was observed]: "We were taught not to jeer or gloat over a beaten enemy." If you happen to have Hegseth's email, could you kindly forward that to him.’

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you espy a 3-per-cent-growth-with-low-taxes-mirage. (Like the Marshmallow Man in “Ghostbusters”, it would commandeer the streets.) Another thing on which to keep a watchful eye: the “great things” the regime has done. And lean on the horn once more if you spot a glassy-eyed prophet sick of the sound of his or her voice, the prophet making a show of sealing his or her mouth with duct tape. Yes, we do silly here from time to time. It is to prevent Drake from going off his nut on account of over-exposure to You-Know-Who. The presidential squint does not turn one to stone, it turns one to Daffy Duck. About those Nuremberg-like rallies with torches, techies trying to take back the night – I do not know what to tell you. Write in Drake for presidential office? Here he is to catch you up with respect to the FBI, Patel, and bestiality: … …. ‘Yes, I have vast experience in this field. It's being discussed because anyone wanting to join Patel's FBI is an animal.’

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘Pass. (As does Percival. Maa to you.) Unrelated topic: have you ever seen a believable portrait of a writer on the silver screen? Depp in “The Libertine” perhaps, even with the recantation at the end? What’s a writer now but a stooge in a marketing machine? It’s not that I curse my desires and ambitions but, man, “literature” is just another gravy train going nowhere for most of its passengers. I’m embarrassed to have wanted to clamber onboard. Writing, for me, has gotten to be that dreaded thing – therapy. Brother, can you spare a dime? Uncloudy here just now. No chance of meatballs.’ … …. ???

Postscript V: Rutilius: ‘Likewise, pass. Just that, when it comes to on-line come-ons, why bother with poets? We're the least likely of literary artists to fall for a scam.’ … …. Yes but, who among us craves attention more? And how many intellects were suckered by Stalin, not to mention the poets he sent off to the camps? … …. ‘Unless it's in hard print in the NYRB or The New Yorker or Times Literary Supplement or Poetry (in which case revive the poor sod with smelling salts) then it's either "thanks" or "thanks, but no thanks" or "I've reported this post and blocked you." Love, R.’ … …. Otherwise, to be sure, I hear you.

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Cupcakes in the oven. French horn has had his workout. Polish cousins are texting me to death. End of the world, end of humanity stuff. About which I’ve nothing to say one way or the other. Some clodhopper keeps stepping on European dance shoes. The man whose name almost rhymes with poutine? The man whose name does rhyme with chump? Something one of you guys said last time around got me reaching for a DVD copy of “Titus” (Andronicus). I watched. Was revulsed. By the film’s histrionics. By this or that real deal, like Lavinia’s rape. Upon which there was the loss of her hands, the loss of her tongue with which to round off the horror. And then the horrors that followed. How she identified her defilers – with handless stumps and a stick and sand to write on… I didn’t dare switch to the news because, you know, when the metaphorical becomes a police blotter….’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Yesterday I came across a poem in a bookstore window. It’d been freshly printed by way of a letter press, and the sight of it set off a terrible wave of nostalgia in me. The poem itself, a slight affair, nonetheless had some charm even as it noted that the universe is stretching away from our world at a fantastic speed all the while death is coming for us. Well, another block on, and I was happy to see that the boards have been removed from the windows of my favourite café. Which has been undergoing renovation. Vans coming and going with what, furniture, I guess, and electrical-plumbing stuff, kitchenware, and so forth and whatnot… I feel as if I’m stalking the place. Will the newly revamped venue have a dress code? Will obscure poets now have to pay a cover charge upon entering? Will quoting Carlyle get me a complimentary cheeseburger? He who has health has hope and so, has everything… something to this effect? Trump being ever child-like – he must be this close to pissing himself half the time. The Kennedy Center as a liberal sanctuary? Could be. But it’s also a memorial to a flawed president who had something unusual in him in light of these times of ours – some decency. Apologies for my snit.’ … …. Quite alright. As a curative for “snits”, we recommend dodgeball, if you are limber still. Or you might play “Don Carlo” at decibels.

ADVISORY: “Blue Neptune”, a collection of poems by Norm Sibum is listed on Amazon.

FOUND AGAIN: “Secretum”, Charlotte Melançon, Des Antipodes, 2013; “Petit Carnet”, Charlotte Melançon, Des Antipodes, 2013; “Montreal Before Spring”, Robert Melançon, translated by Donald McGrath, Biblioasis, 2015

September 9-10, 2026: the early years of the 15th century (in Florence) 7 out of every 10 adults could read and write. I do not know how this stacks up against contemporary American per centages, but I am sensing somehow that literacy as such in a certain nation-state has not improved on the above numbers all that much, should we understand literacy as the ability to absorb a text without getting shifty-eyed and to think for oneself. In light of which, from James Sutherland-Smith, a few lines of recently-penned verse:

Order made from disaster or more disorder,
the result of fifty random jottings
after watching the successive fall
of apricot and apple blossom
as the philosopher desires
that the strangeness of his moth-like mind
and the strangeness of the cuckoo world
to be reconciled in a single thought. … ….

I do not know if, embedded in the poesy, is a scary proposition or the best we can expect from a world that has our paw prints all over it. In any case, "The Ornamented Zither: Fifty Variations on a Poem by Li ShanYin".

And I do not reckon that in Maximilian’s day, that poor soul as was the emperor of Mexico for a while (until a firing squad took him out) that there was such a notion as government, diplomacy, war, politics in general by clown car, as there were no cars in the mid-1860s. But there were such heights of intellect and far-sightedness as could mop palace floors with the self-application of a Three Stooges-like forehead or two. It could be said that Maximilian – a man caught between his Hapsburgian, imperial trappings and a genuine desire to do some good for Somebody Somewhere, and the somebody and somewhere, in this instance, was Mexico, gave it his all, did his best (apart from one unforgiveable draconian decree as might have rendered his execution justified). Just that at every turn the man was thwarted by Everybody Everywhere, as well as by his own inner contradictions. Everything that could go wrong did. And the worst offender against “doing some good” was the church. All the while the European powers were angling their hands at their own immediate interests. Washington, a civil war under its belt, could not abide a foreign power having its way in its “zone”, and true enough, Maximilian was no Lincolnesque “republican”, probably no Johnsonian (Andrew) one either, and Maximilian’s greatest enemy – Juarez, resolute in his republican bent – was as politically cold-blooded as they come, no romantic he, he who ultimately decided how Maximilian was to be disposed of. (Shades of Titus Andronicus?) Maximilian’s wife, highly ambitious and capable woman, also wished to do good, and not just in some performative sense, only her relentless aims went a long way towards getting her husband killed as well as triggering her madness. What has this to do with our age of clown cars? Everything and absolutely nothing. Tragedy, then farce, covers things up to a point, but we are in want of new language to get us to a true reckoning as to our “condition”. What? A return to “humanist values”? That this will put a stop to the pit we have been digging for ourselves? Could do so. Could be it depends somewhat on the quality of mind that is driving the “humanism”. Brings to mind Lucius in no need of meme-makers at the end of “Titus Andronicus”: Thanks, gentle Romans: may I govern so, To heal Rome's harms, and wipe away her woe! On the other hand, AI will do us all in by decade’s end, and we will have been outflanked. So quoted CNN. Whereupon I shrugged, turned the TV off. I have no idea, really, as to AI’s lethality or capacity for boon. At some point tragedy and farce no longer have a stake in any matter, and then it is all warped fabric and spontaneous combustion.

Postscript I: It being National Teddy Bear Day, I will let you divine the extent to which Carpenter can get cuddly. Or not.

Postscript II: Lunar outtakes: … …. ‘[For one thing], Israel is going to take revenge on the UK although it will be mostly via the USA. … …. Excellent news that Labour has just accused settlers of ethnic cleansing and is applying sanctions although Huckabee says the US will punish the UK for this. Huckabee also calls Ed Miliband, the foreign secretary, who made the announcement, an anti-Semite. Stupid fucker seems not to realise Miliband is Jewish.’ … …. I know. These sorts of gaffes always astound me. … …. ‘Do you read Heather Cox Richardson's blog? She paints a mightily surreal picture of Trump in the small hours typing endless crap onto his Truth Social. He is seriously deranged, maybe even deranged [enough] to start a third world war.’ … …. Yes, I follow HCR fairly religiously. One way to pick up an American history degree on the cheap. Speaking of which, you were going to say: … …. ‘I picked up a CD in the charity shop yesterday, Sofia Gubaidulina's "Sonnengesang" a translation of St Francis's Hymn to the Sun. When these Russians get mystical there's no beating them, Schnittke another example, genuine as opposed to instant mysticism, the flakey stuff that you hear in the mouths of un thinking people. It is why I come close to violence when I hear the word "iconic" which is used for everything now. [ ] You know, of course, Manet's extraordinary painting of the execution of Maximillian?’ … …. Now that you mention it, I will reacquaint myself with the work. I did see it in London once upon a time in the Old West. … .... ‘The bad do as you like and get anyway with it, while the good try to be good and are lambasted over mere trifles. I guess I'm trying to say I'd be in prison a hundred times over.’ … …. Goes without saying, you high plains drifter. … …. ‘So the idiot has given the signal to Argentina or, rather, his moronic buddy Javier Milei, to have another stab at the Falklands, again out of sheer spite. I've got an awful feeling much worse is yet to come, whether it will [be] Putin striking British bases while Trump watches or ... or ... or what? Well, you know my motto: "One can never be petty enough" but nowhere is it as true as in the case of you know you. Tearing down the sculpture in front of the Kennedy Centre may be the beginning of his tearing down the whole place. And Hegseth with his vicious take on fat Canadian girls, just how low can one go? A snake stands head and shoulders above the likes of him. We went to the local theatre last night, a bloody awful play preceded by loud techno "music", the ugliest sound ever devised, which makes rap sound like Mozart. And it had virtually nothing to do with the play unless its spiritlessness was intentional.’ … …. I would say amen, bro, could I say it in the key of D minor on the back of a dirge….

Postscript III: Cornelius W Drake of Champaign-Urbana, honk if you think the moon looks funny, cringing perhaps because someone wants to own it, mooning it all the while: … ….’I've been tempted to ram pickup trucks with Trump bumper stickers and—important safety tip—empty gun racks. [Otherwise]: caustic incredulity. That pretty much defines every honest piece ever written about the jerk. It's also my attitude toward most "health professionals" I've seen in the Seattle area, which seems to attract the bottom 20% of med school grads. In ignoring the national security ramifications of strengthening Russia and weakening NATO, Trump is sabotaging the US for his own sake—future business deals with Putin. That's the only explanation that lends any coherence to such an idiotic policy. It endangers the US but benefits Trump, and Trump is all Trump has ever cared about.’ … …. Well, as for the latter sentiment, its words are highly matter-of-fact, laconic on Drake’s part, about as prosaic as prosaic gets. Even so, the man cannot abide Shakespeare in modern settings. Though the motorcycles and tanks and Fascist-era architecture in the movie “Titus” do suggest power projection to a “t”, seeing as the movie and the play on which it is based is all about mud-wrestling and sunset clauses of a shaky sort….

Postscript IV: Talking Avocado: … …. ‘Watched The Return last night. Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche, about Odysseus upon his return to Ithaca. Lots of sweat. Liked it. Haven’t seen the big blockbuster The Odyssey yet. You? Though read a rather scathing review in the LRB. Ah, but I do enjoy a scathing review. Though this one was such a scorcher that I began to feel bad for the director. Percival says hi. He felt bad for the director too. I have thought that I had a novel on the go. I’ve been thinking it for a decade now. Yesterday, damn near torched it out of some pyromaniacal frenzy. Trumpian snit? Have I contracted the contagion? Is no island safe anymore? Could you venture an opinion on this matter?’ … …. Afraid I cannot help you there. There is no known serum for Trump in swing mode – to employ baseball lingo. Self-imposed quarantine? Have yet to see the Big Enchilada as per Odysseus, and have no plans to do so. Will content myself with The Inspector Brunetti Mysteries (TV series), or that which has a certain melancholy in it, perhaps because one has always to wear hip waders in Venice where the series is set, and then it is a German language series, the vocables of which sometime startle, in a Schopenhauerian way, amidst the silent slosh of the canals.

Postscript V: Rutilius (in a light-hearted mental frame, and one no less droll for that): … …. ‘Ah, so you're up and have eaten breakfast, if I've got the time difference right. I wish it would rain: a 40% chance next Thursday and 19% the following Tuesday if the forecast is right. This is a tragedy for a beer-drinking country. Fico's survival (our Prime Minister) depends on Kushner and Witzler (Pretzler, nay, Witkoff then) successfully selling Ukraine down the river, if the drought has left any [river]. There seems to be heavy traffic on the web about Europe's inability to hold out too long against Russia. Personally I think, if it came to it, the citizen army of Finland would occupy Saint Petersburg in two weeks and be welcomed. Then there'd be nuclear warfare or a golden age of incredibly good education and furniture design.’ … …. ##***!!

Postscript VI: Sissy Gadzilla: … …. ‘Got cupcakes in the oven. Got Polish cousins worrying at me 24/7. Putin, you know. Got a French horn that feels “dis-respected”. That’s the trouble with the male. Touchy. I tried to watch a new sci-fi release, every second of which (with respect to what I saw of it) was the equivalent of someone picking the lint out of their bellybutton, of having their head dragged through a keyhole of post-post-post-post modernist string theory not a string section, it was so self-referential. If by self-referential we mean a mind that can’t get over itself. Perhaps a worse problem than Foucault’s inner fascist. And that’s all I’ve got, if by “got” we mean the amount of tariff on ferrules. (See pencil parts.) Anyway, Carlota. That was the Spanish name of Maximilian’s wife who was otherwise known as Charlotte to the Belgians, and, somewhat high-strung, she went bonkers. Does one self-seclude? Just asking.’

Postscript VII: Trail Mix: … …. ‘Still no favourite café where I might ensconce myself and occupy space in a meditative way, albeit with the smell of grilled hamburger and semi-homemade chicken soup in my nostrils. Although there are workmen scurrying about the site, shoring it up, re-installing the electrics and the plumbing, the bad paintings to come, those that don’t know whether they are impressionist or expressionist or post-Hockney but are, at any rate, Tate-worthy. I took a break from Roman Hellenism. Wrote stanzas about being an old fart. Strangely, they didn’t comfort. I did come across the following with respect to Carlyle (Thomas): “Nothing is more remarkable in Carlyle than the way in which he simply stopped thinking.” Does the contagion of Trump careen back through time? Carlyle himself once upon a time: “How true, that there is nothing dead in this Universe; that what we call dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order.” And so forth and so on. “Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God’s name! [ ] For the night cometh, wherein no man can work.” Incipient fascist that he may have been, evidently, the man hadn’t heard of Truth Social posts. Or else he’d been speaking, you know, just a tad metaphorically.’

ADVISORY: “Blue Neptune”, a collection of poems by Norm Sibum is listed on Amazon.