For the Tempus-Fugitives

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For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 10

by Christopher Norris


  The chosen from the rejects, those who’d score

  Sky-high on His account from those who tried

  But failed, or the massed legions of His corps

  Glorieux from those whose agonies supplied,

  For some, the opportunity to pore

  On torments of the flesh for souls enskied,

  Yet left some others yearning to restore

  The human consanguinity that died

  When they renounced the flesh and so foreswore

  All laws of kin. Take Origen as guide

  And then most likely you’ll get over your

  Desire that God’s great plan should coincide

  With yours and have Him act as guarantor

  Whenever someone else you can’t abide

  Turns up for judgment and God wipes the floor

  With their excuses since to see them fried,

  As per Tertullian, multiplies the store

  Of heavenly joys. So Jekyll turns to Hyde

  And souls once trained devoutly to adore

  God’s mercy vow strict justice shall preside

  And sinners’ pains be ratcheted the more

  Excitingly the oftener they’re eyed

  From heaven’s vault. And yet, should we deplore

  Such want of mere humanity or chide

  Their sub-angelic failure to abhor

  That hellfire stuff, let’s ask what bona fide

  Credentials we might have to claim rapport

  With those who suffered, not with those who vied

  For front seats at the viewing. If “Encore!”

  Strikes us as less than angel-like when cried

  After some episode of heretofore

  Unequalled cruelty, should we not concede,

  Perhaps, on all the evidence to date,

  That—looked from the nether side—this need

  To stress how fiercely we abominate

  The stink of torture in Tertullian’s creed

  And trust that Origen will put us straight

  On Christian doctrine, might suggest that we’d

  Best think some more. Then we might see how hate

  Takes many forms, how some of them may breed

  Compassion’s likeness, and—to complicate

  The reckoning further still—how this can lead

  To just such strange contortions as create

  Those ecstasies of righteousness that feed

  Tertullian’s fire. Should its heat once abate

  Then finally we’d see that lack of heed

  To how these opposites could alternate

  Insensibly was what near-guaranteed

  They’d end as two sides of a single trait

  And so, once the machine got up to speed,

  Serve perfectly to show how church and state

  Might profit by its workings and succeed

  At last in their long quest to sublimate

  The whole shebang. Then nothing could impede

  Its course or hinder the conversion-rate

  By which the gentle Origen, though he’d

  Allowed no vengeful cravings to dictate

  His own theodicy, felt pity bleed

  Away and thoughts of mercy conjugate

  With thoughts of how, should harsh Tertullian plead

  His case for mercy at God’s bar, the gate

  Of Heaven must close against him and God read

  The fatal sentence: change of heart too late!

  Perhaps the sad truth is, no Origen

  To get us off that hook did not the shade

  Of grim Tertullian hang above his pen

  And rule that he himself, God’s scourge, be weighed

  In a scale that would tip against him when

  Set up by his kind nemesis and made

  To yield such unkind data as would then

  Ensure that any verdict thus displayed

  Was one to which kind hearts would say amen.

  Always some bastard fails to make the grade,

  Some cursed Malvolio slouches off again,

  And they get ready for the next crusade

  By which to satisfy their burning yen

  For love while he reviles the masquerade

  That shows why “cretin” stems from “chretien”

  And why Tertullian leads God’s love-brigade.

  NEOBULE AND ARCHILOCHUS: AN EXCHANGE

  Archilochus,…the earliest Greek writer of iambic, elegiac, and personal lyric poetry whose works have survived to any considerable extent. The surviving fragments show him to have been a metrical innovator of the highest ability.

  Archilochus was famous in antiquity for his sharp satire and ferocious invective. It was said that Lycambes betrothed his daughter Neobule to the poet and later withdrew the plan. In a papyrus fragment…a man, apparently the poet himself, tells in alternately explicit and hinting language how he seduced the sister of Neobule after having crudely rejected Neobule herself. According to the ancient accounts, Lycambes and his daughters committed suicide, shamed by the poet’s fierce mocking.

  —Encyclopaedia Britannica

  Neobule:

  Archilochus, remember how your praise

  Of me not only spread the word of my

  Rare beauty far abroad but helped to raise

  Your lyric gift until it touched the sky

  And, Homer’s equal, filled it with the blaze

  Of god-like genius. Just recall how I,

  Your dearest, quietly waited out the days

  Before our nuptials till, persuaded by

  The urging of my father Lycambes,

  At length I lost the courage to deny

  Your rival’s suit. Why then these brute displays

  Of savagery by which you daily try

  To blacken our good family name, amaze

  The scandal-hungry populace, defy

  All laws of common decency, and craze

  Your ardent soul by stooping from its high-

  Bred martial strain to satire that betrays

  A baser spirit. If, then, I decry

  Your fickle muse that deems no caustic phrase

  Too harsh for me, nor stratagem too sly

  For public use so long as it conveys

  Your hatred and contempt, do not ask why

  This cry of pain since I’m the one one who pays

  With my lost reputation while you vie,

  You and those scandal-mongers, to erase

  All trace of it. Please know, as you let fly

  With some new barb, that it may chance to graze

  Your own good name since I’m resolved to die,

  Along with kith and kin, beneath that gaze

  That now afflicts me with its evil eye,

  Yet once—or so futurity portrays

  Your fabled gifts—could endlessly supply

  New-minted lyric forms and diverse ways

  To conjure what your love let you espy

  In me, like Galatea, through the haze

  Of shapes awaiting life. Convert to lie

  That long heart-cherished truth and nothing stays

  The same—no power of memory to tie

  That time to this as your invective frays

  Its few remaining threads and sends awry

  My every thought of you. But this delays

  Three deaths that now must serve as our reply

  Since nothing halts the genre-blight that strays

  From form to form till naught can satisfy

  Your fiery soul unless it so dismays

  Its victims that the strongest of them shy

  From public life as your communiqués

  Insist: let honor go or bid good-bye

  To life itself. If new-style satire plays

  The joker’s role in all that hue and cry

  Around our infamy then it obeys

  Some god of hybrid forms that multiply

  Our sufferings as their chief device to raise

  More laughter while t
he satyrs occupy

  Old lyric’s haunts and secretly liaise

  With our ancestral enemies to pry

  Where its voice fails. Once we might euthanase

  The hurt with lyric’s salve, but should we try

  That now, reflected in the perfect glaze

  Of your spite-polished art, then we’ll supply

  Some further jest that splendidly repays

  Your unrelenting wit. Spare me that sigh

  You’ll one day breathe as memory decays

  Along with all the joys afforded by

  This crowning triumph of your comic phase

  While still the momentary thought of my

  Once lyric-feted loveliness essays

  Your satire-hardened heart. Yet know that I

  And my poor kin no longer shall dispraise

  Your name nor call down vengeance from the sky

  For our dishonor though you set ablaze

  The pyre of calumny on which we die.

  Archilochus:

  It wasn’t you, Neobule, but your

  Kid-sister I was screwing, so just quit

  This endless litany of woe. What’s more,

  Your father all along connived at it,

  Said you were old enough to know the score

  And wouldn’t take much urging to remit

  Your nuptial rights. But, girl, should you ignore

  The call of duty and give us some shit

  About lost reputation or implore

  The gods to punish me as you see fit

  Then just be clear, I’ll wipe the fucking floor

  With you lot so you’ll never know what hit

  Your dwindling clan. Tell Dad and tell that whore,

  Your sister, they’re just nincompoops who bit

  Off more than they could chew that day they swore

  They’d drag me through the dirt and dare to pit

  Their tale against mine in this phony war

  For hearts and minds. The trouble with close-knit

  Families and sibling bonds is how they store

  Up grievances that may start out legit

  (Like yours, let’s face it) but become a bore

  When it’s required that everyone submit

  To having the complainants daily pour

  Their sorrows out till listeners either split

  Or split their sides. That old esprit de corps

  May once have been a handy piece of kit

  When family names were still worth fighting for,

  But what’s the point when a mere touch of wit

  Can puncture noble pedigrees galore

  And one lewd epigram from some new skit

  Of mine on wings of satire can outsoar

  The highest dignities? A moonlight flit

  Will save my skin if your lot should deplore,

  And prosecute my stuff, but if you slit

  Your throat right now then all their talk of law

  Won’t heal the wound.

  Let me write your obit:

  “Here lies Neobule, a maid who wore

  Pretend-virginity like a fake tit,

  Whose sister banged me like a shit-house door,

  And whose insatiable, man-eating clit

  Now rots with her false heart.”

  Yet our rapport,

  Neobule, is still what spurs my wit,

  Not just my taste for mockery and hard-core

  Pornography or readiness to sit

  In judgment upon those with wounds still raw

  From my unsparing jibes. It’s sacred writ

  To me, this satire stuff, and helps restore

  The strange amalgam that all those lit-crit-

  Trained genre-analysts may now abhor

  Yet one day will find reason to admit

  As having helped Archilochus explore

  Such wild extremes that his satiric grit

  And lyric pearls were of a piece before

  Good taste decreed their parting. Floruit

  Archilochus, they’ll say, when poets saw

  No ethical or formal deficit

  In verse that just declined flat-out to draw

  Such tasteful boundaries or retrofit

  The veering passions born of love’s furor

  To genres born of love’s surcease. Dixit

  Archilochus: if you’d locate the flaw

  In lives and loves then see how it’s backlit

  By every lyric vision that forbore

  To steel itself for satire’s incipit.

  BUDGET DAY, JULY 8TH, 2015

  Bankers want to see an easing of regulation after an increase in red tape following the financial crisis. Osborne is aiming to sound a conciliatory tone.…According to the Financial Times, allies of Osborne have said that the chancellor believes some tax and regulation may have been excessive, but that it was a politically necessary measure. Now with the election won and a majority obtained, there is more freedom for change.

  —City A.M., July 13, 2015

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  It’s all there in your red attaché-case.

  But now’s your glory-day, so hold it high.

  Just please the fat cats and the CBI

  And you’ll have no more conscience-calls to face.

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  That lot, who once just managed to get by

  Won’t now, but that’s their own, not your disgrace

  For now’s your glory-day, so hold it high.

  Just get the Mail to stop them asking why

  They always lose, or if you’ve fixed the race.

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  What dies in them is all that goes awry

  When they’re routinely caught out at first base.

  But now’s your glory-day so hold it high.

  Just get the Sun to say they’re all work-shy

  And then get all the loan-sharks on their case.

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  If that lot cut up rough, you can rely

  On Channel Four to keep them in their place

  After your glory-day, so hold it high.

  And if some others say you’re a bad guy,

  Trust Murdoch to ensure they get no space.

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  So long as there’s no lie-machine to vie

  With his, your lies are those that set the pace,

  And now’s your glory-day so hold it high.

  Wave that attaché-case lest any try

  To question plans your banker-friends embrace.

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  Should there be some life-hopers who decry

  Those policies, just sink them without trace

  For now’s your glory-day, so hold it high.

  Maybe a few on your own side will shy

  From deeper cuts, but still you hold the ace.

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  If they protest, then do it on the sly:

  You’re Oxford-bred, just soft-soap them by grace

  Of this your glory-day, and hold it high.

  No matter if you don’t see eye-to-eye

  With some old-Labour wielder of the mace:

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  Truth is, your current budget’s just a dry-

  Run raid on nine-tenths of the populace

  For this your glory-day, so hold it high.

  Neat trick, the one that lets you re-apply

  “Austerity” to have the term erase

  Those lingering life-hopes that now fade and die.

  Just tell the plebs they’re welcome to defy

  Your new poor-laws but they’re the ones you’ll chase

  On this your glory-day, so hold it high.

  Elsewhere the lingering life-hopes fade and die.

  STRICT-FORM
SESTINA FOR THE MARQUIS DE SADE

  In this dream—even at the age of thirty-eight—Sade yearned for the embrace of a mother. “Oh my Mother!” he cried out to [Petrarch’s] Laure, prostrate at her feet, as if he were one of the tortured victims of his own fictional erotic fantasies. But when, in his dream, he reached to grasp her, she disappeared and abandoned him to his lonely suffering.

  —Neil Schaeffer, The Marquis de Sade: A Life

  He knew (or should have known) they’d get him wrong,

  The moralists and those who took it straight,

  His endless improvising on the one

  Big thing that mattered. Not that he was just

  Inventing stuff for kicks, or getting off

  On kinky fantasies where thought of pain

  Endured was bliss enjoyed. Let’s face it, pain

  Was that big thing and so they weren’t flat wrong,

  Those literal-minded types, or too far off

  The moral point, those sticklers for the straight-

  Forward message. Still what made them less than just

  In so concluding was neglect of one

  Odd fact that should give pause—at least if one

  Doesn’t page-hop to the next scene of pain

  Inflicted or procured—for then it’s just

  Conceivable that all our thinking’s wrong

  On this touchiest of topics. Read him straight

  By all means but recall those noises-off

  He suffered daily—since a short way off

  From his barred gaol-cell window—one-by-one,

  As Madame Guillotine dropped clean and straight

  To outstretched necks. Strict justice said the pain

 

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