Thursday 23 July 2009
Accretion Anxiety -- by Zephirine
History is always being made
all the time
not just when big occasions happen
and we are all told to pay attention
but with every step, conversation, meal and bus journey
of supposedly unimportant people
fragment upon fragment
layer upon layer
It is not easy to tell
without prophetic gifts or very good astrology
which moments will have a historic effect
and which will simply add
more leaves to the forest floor
The spotty child who asks questions
and is quite annoying and often ignored
on which day is his ambition kindled
so that he grows up to discover a vaccine which saves many lives
or else to invent a weapon which slays thousands?
For a while, either may be possible
perhaps he just likes his physics teacher better
and so starts keenly on the path to destruction
Sarajevo, June 1914: Gavrilo Princip, a student, is knocked down
by a runaway horse and dies in hospital
and no one ever knows he was on his way to shoot an Archduke
What would history look like then?
The Parisian mob does not storm the Bastille
but turns aside to get drunk and watch a dog-fight
His mutinous crew force Columbus to turn back
and America is discovered ninety years later by North Africans
William of Normandy decides life is too short to invade Britain
Julius Caesar dies in infancy
How easily, in a few moments
it could all have been different
As you sit being bored in a boring office
doing nothing much
but living through the ticking seconds of history
the woman who was interviewed before you
but failed to get the job
might be so enraged by unemployment
that she is about to do something that may change the world
How can you know?
Put like that
history is rather frightening
14 comments:
Written for the GU Poster Poems series, this month's topic being History, but they helpfully closed the comments thread before I could post it. So, their loss is OtherStuff's gain :)
Free verse isn't really my thing, but I like this poem. It has the considered tone which I associate with the Zephirine product, and the line breaks don't seem merely random.
I too was lumbered with a history poem. Please remove it if I'm being presumptuous by placing it here.
Thermidor
On the floor of the Convention
St Just roars and rants with anger
once again the Revolution
stands threatened by mortal danger.
Outside virtuous sans-culottes
pull good patriots from their beds
moderate views, monarchist plots,
the basket fills with severed heads.
Citizen Barras and his friends
feel Mme Guillotine’s cold breath,
the indifferent blade descends
the Incorruptible meets death.
The People wish to celebrate
now the Tyrant is deposed,
hélas, they are unfortunate:
it’s August. All the bars are closed.
a considered tone indeed Meltin', seems like you were both mulling the Revolting French (;)) at about the same time
can't say different than MM; interesting, thoughtful and thought provoking Zeph as usual. Puts me in mind of Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, so well known it's almost a cliche now but I'll quoth anyway:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
How many of these pivotal moments pass us by unnoticed? It's often the small things that lead onto the big things isn't it? And even after the fact it's often difficult to be really sure which step it was that we took or didn't take that brought us here
(the bus that just missed us, the bus we just missed).
As you say Zeph; the law of Accretion is a frightening thing not least because it's almost totally beyond our control.
Another fine poem Melton, should be on the front page tho and not buried here in Letters to the Editor. Love the 3rd stanza particularly and especially Mme.Guillotines cold breath - chilling
and I've got a poor cousin of a pome in the works too, why did PP close so early (thought they'd decided to leave it open for 2 weeks). Billy?
Very nice, Melton, not presumptuous at all, in fact I thought it could have a solo spot. I won't delete it from here though, otherwise we'll lose your kind remarks about mine:)
Don't know what happened with PP, it wasn't even a full week. Some autobot gets triggered after 5 days maybe.
very true,and well-told. I was recently asked if I view history as linear or cyclical, and I came to the unpopular conclusion that it's a line, but a messy line, not a straight one, with lots of zigzags and knots.
Munni, I think it goes in big coils like barbed wire, with the spikey bits too... you move slightly forward but it comes round again and catches you.
The 17 year-old Robespierre giving the oration at Louis XVI's visit to Louis-Le-Grand must be one of those coils/snags. A smaller world then, I suppose, but still a bit spooky.
I've asked the GU to re-open the History thread, and they have. Open until Friday, I believe.
Good poem, zeph.
Thanks, Billy! That GU, eh? can't get the staff...
Melton, I wonder if Louis XVI had a little chilly feeling while listening to that oration, as if somebody had walked over his grave?
The hairs should have stood up on the back of his neck, but I doubt they did. His diary entry for 14th July 1789 seems to sum Louis up: 'Rien.'
Quite apart from finding this poem very interesting, and Meltonian's also, I rather like the revolting French.
I have issues with them, obviously, especially L'Equipe, but I always felt we, British, failed to learn from their revolutionary techniques.
Though I read somewhere that a Scotsman invented the guillotine. Just didn't apply it.
And what if Greengrass and Ebren had never been banned from GU? None of this would have happened. Not in this form anyway. There's a fair chance Zeph and I would have stuck to the cricket and football blogs, respectively, and our cyberpaths might never have crossed.
So, I never thought I'd say this, but thank Dog for moderators.
Well, you're quite right in this case, Offie, but don't let us hear you say it again. Of course, had history been different we might have met in another way, at Cannes, say, or the Oscars..
Mimi, did the Scotsman just think it was a good device for slicing very large vegetables?
As for us not learning from the French, quite true, and on our previous attempt though we did cut our King's head off it then all fizzled out into things like closing theatres and banning music and dancing. Not so much a revolution, more a wet weekend. I wish we'd had a revolution in 1848 when it was all the fashion, and got rid of the ghastly Victoria.
Ah Zeph - but the problem is that neeps don't have a neck. Though a properly devised mini-guillotine would certainly come in handy when attempting to half one of the sturdier members of the neep tribe.
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