Sitting

 August 18 Word of the Day: Sitting

 

Eating breakfast waking up

Keeping balanced coffee cup

 

Leaning forward as you speak

Meaning’s awkward hide and seek

 

Staring upward at the ceiling

Deciphering the carpet’s feelings

 

Pissing peaceful at stool your own

Cogitating systems upon the throne

 

Waiting arrival of the urbane commute

Watching landscapes from a window so beaut

 

Kneebone footbone to the floor mate

Sternum straight back as for a portrait

 

Sedentary ergonomic might

Typing keyboard left and right

 

Sitting pretty telling a phone what’s what

Photographically on the spot

 

Alone along a laneway alcove shaded

Squeezed in by crowds lost paraded

 

Crosslegged calm outside the rush

Knitting patterns their own weaved hush

 

Quietly quite upright somewhere somehow

Wishing waiting would end now now

 

Tickling smiling the cat’s chin

Homeward is where they let you in

 

Yoga poses or at least close supposes

Checking news is no spray of roses

 

Reading pages prolix up in bed

Slumping slumberwards in your head

 

Recollect

 August 17 Word of the Day: Recollect

 

Recollect the day, its pleasantness, resting into my pillow. The heavy fog, augury of sunny day. Kindness of breakfast barista to pay tomorrow when credit card defaulted. Jasmine, whiter than pinker over side fences. Email with good news. Progress with next week’s speech, two more sentences. Cataloguing a book by the Limbourg Brothers. Light at the end of the tunnel with an arduous task. Girl curled with lapdog curled in tram seat. Crunch of baby corn, wiggle of shiitake, and scent of rice over dinner. Paying a long overdue donation online, at last. Reading Primo Levi and listening to Mozart.

Median

 August 16 Word of the Day: Median

 

Clarinda is one of Melbourne’s top three “most tightly held suburbs”, according to a newspaper article entitled ‘The suburbs people never leave.’ Actually, the article reports residents saying approvingly it’s only a short drive to Oakleigh, so they do leave now and then, just not permanently. Oakleigh helped me grasp the location of Clarinda, a suburb I didn’t know and have never visited but seems to be on the other side of Warrigal Road, where we went to the drive-in in the old days. I am probably not alone in my ignorance of Clarinda, which is why people like living there, in another of those “best kept secrets of Melbourne.” The other two in the top three are Kilsyth South and Belgrave South, places where “home owners hold on to their properties for a median 26.9 years before they sell.“ Constant mobility is hardly a virtue of living. Wanting to escape denotes psychological anxiety. I wonder why the headline isn’t ‘The suburbs where people prefer to stay’, but such a statistic may be beyond the scientific interest of real estate. Anyway, as a watcher on a cast-iron balcony I enjoy browsing down this list, even if the same list in another paper may contain several different names. It comes as no surprise that two suburbs adjacent to my own obscure valley are in the top 20: Yallambie and Viewbank. Viewbank is Heidelberg by another name, one reason for its secure anonymity being that the main feature going through Viewbank is not a road but the Yarra River. Only two others feature in the inner east, Mont Albert and Murrumbeena, making me ask if a more meaningful list would be ‘The suburbs people most wish to leave’, though real estate is doubtless keeping tabs on them too. That Williamstown North is one of only two listed in the west is another story. Inner Melbourne is represented by old money Parkville, but also Carlton, the very mention of Carlton indicating that this early suburb has moved past its postwar déclassé legend into an entrenched gentrified respectability. I nod sagely at the naming of some of the islands of calm: St. Helena, Tecoma, Warranwood, Seaholme. Others require the Clarinda search test, Attwood and Wandong belonging I can report, like Ferny Creek and Croydon Hills, in the bracket Outskirts. Shoreham catches the eye as a questionable outlier, but the figures are thrown into complete chaos by Cape Schanck, which is not a suburb or a town or even much of a cape; Wikipedia plays safe by calling it a locality. Perhaps the whole article is a subliminal advertisement for Cape Schanck, with the intention of turning it into a suburb, but I must accept the word of the newspaper that it is somewhere people never leave.        

Lauf

 August 15 Word of the Day: Lauf

 

Is Scrabble a word game, a vocabulary memory test, or more a form of mathematical improvisation involving letters and numbers? You have to lauf. Formidable 13-year-old Dineth Fernando used this word on his way to winning the World Youth Scrabble Championship in Nairobi. Lauf he did, four letters meaning a run in bobsleighing, itself a fact known to a small percent of the English-speaking world. German, probably Swiss-German, its use here obscure even then. Dineth is unlikely to have competed in bobsleighs but he does practise 200 words per day from the official Scrabble dictionary. This reading habit is intensive training of a special order, eliminating the common assumption that players live on an intake of encyclopedias and novelese, another word Dineth put in place on his winning way. Authors of novelese, defined as writing characteristic of poor novels, bland and formulaic, might envy his word power while questioning how many of these words would ever make it into their own, or any, fiction. Latter day Joyces could well concur. Sri Lankan now living in Melbourne since February, Dineth has competed against many Australians. One player, Carol Johnsen, says Dineth is “an astounding player. The tiles just flowed for him. He got the X and the Z and the Q and they all went in the right places.” Which goes someway to answering our question. He uses his double and triple vocabulary to match double and triple word scores in a highly scientific manner, lending new meaning to the word computerate. Minceur, a French word for thinness that has entered English as low-calorie cuisine, was another of his winners. But the skill goes past knowledge of the word to where the power letters can capitalise, or grow fat if you will, by strategic placement on power squares. Only particular kinds of histrio (an archaic word meaning actor) will have that blend of aptitudes and talents, memory and attention, added to which they must keep in training. It is not enough to rely on postering, that is all the main words that send the message. Postering is another word the Scrabble histrio Dineth used in his win in Nairobi But he won by possessing words, any word but in fact the right word, to suit the occasion in play provided by the unique crossword puzzle combination confronting him in real time. It is as though all available words are equal on a level-playing field, their use being not communication or feeling or the necessities of words in the moment, but purely their perfect suitability during a game played on an enormous rebus. Dineth, his friends and colleagues, engage in a high-level language game that, long ago, broke the boundaries of an enjoyable pastime where family and friends test their English vocabulary. They are racing down their own chosen lauf.

 

Weakly

 August 14 Word of the Day: Weakly

 

Test cassettes for viruses get more sophisticated. Ailing this week, I returned to memories of lockdown tests: the swirl of the swab, sting in the nostril, goo in the extraction funnel, dropper on the test plate. “The RSV, Adv, Flu A/B & Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Combo Test is a lateral flow immunoassay based on the principle of the double antibody sandwich technique,” read the tissue-thin instructions, convincingly, extracted from the self-testing box purchased at the pharmacy. Expecting, even as I expectorated into a man’s large handkerchief, that Flu-A would register in the control panel bright red, instead a feint pink line appeared against Sars-Cov-2. This meant Positive, according to the tissue-thin pamphlet (See ‘Pamphlet’ this month, August 8 opening “Beloved of all…” for reverent description of such vital ephemera), but only what is termed Weakly Positive. I would see Red with completely Positive. This ‘Weakly’ position was signified by the pale pink band, scarcely visible, in the panel. I employed a magnifying glass to confirm this interpretation. The unusual flu symptoms of the past few days -sniffles, aches, pains universal, pulsing neck veins – suddenly made sense. They were covid symptoms, ‘Weakly’ because this year I had already had a covid shot, leaving me to think how badly I’d be suffering if I had not. ‘Weakly’, not weekly, as ‘weekly positive covid’ is, by definition as we and the world knows, impossible, the contracting of the virus making one immune for some months from further infection. So here I sit in my ‘weakly’ state which, according to current iso instructions from government and health, lasts no more than seven days. One may walk the streets but a mask is advisable near people. Stay at home and rest up. Having passed seventy, seven days is a reasonable quantity of measure, a foreseeable effort with a completion. I can practise being weakly positive. Not negative, which is not helpful, can hinder and distract, even be harmful and self-consuming. Nor completely positive, which is exhausting and a little unreal and possibly leads to quixotic or over-enthusiastic misjudgements. The panel is in, and it says be weakly positive. Potter around the place. Choose the best arrangement or the best view or best angle. Sleep at every hour when sleep suggests itself as an option. Reading matter may be negative, positive, anywhere on the spectrum, pamphlets, as long as it is read in a weakly positive manner. Pillows puffed up in bed in a warm room facilitates this style of reading. As day follows night, the longer I stay weakly positive the sooner I will recover from the reading listed Weakly Positive. No more aches and pains.

Auriferous

 August 13 Word of the Day: Auriferous

 

A Glossary of Everyday Colours

 

umbrageous

shady; yielding shade

“purple paths umbrageous in white heat”

 

testudineous

resembling the shell of a tortoise

“a deliberately slow reader, his text reflected in testudineous frames”

 

quiddany

marmalade; confection of quinces made with sugar

“their hi-vis breakfast made a queue of quiddany”

 

plunket

a kind of blue colour

“the sea was as plunket as they had ever seen it”

 

melliferous

productive of honey

“melliferous the clouds at sunrise”

 

lutarious

living in mud; of the colour of mud

“the wash-up is a fashion for lutarious home exteriors”

 

holland

fine linen made in Holland

“japan the master’s gold landscape, his clouds holland”

 

herbescent

growing into herbs

“in watercolour she had perfected herbescent abstraction”

 

erubescent

reddish; somewhat red; inclining to redness

“angry traffic halted at erubescent lights”

 

darkling

a participle, as it seems, from darkle, which yet I have never found; being in the dark; being without a light; a word merely poetical

“a blackness darkling where naught may be found”  

 

cerulifick

having the power to produce a blue colour

“musicians famed for their cerulifick techniques”

 

auriferous

that which produces gold

“acacias again auriferous in August”

 

[Selections from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755]

 

 

 

Melon

 August 12 Word of the Day: Melon

 

Tragedy has been averted in recent days when it seemed the King of Thailand might expire from a surfeit of melons. The court could no longer suppress the fact of the king’s secret addiction to the fruit, which began at the age of 8. Some say, earlier. The President of Russia has been exposed as the supplier of high-quality melons, planed in secretly from the best melon nations. He was not available for comment. Some of the melons classify as luxury melons, “according to sources familiar with the matter.”  ‘Melon-drama!’ blasted one local tabloid, a witty sub-editor’s play on melodrama, suggesting things had got out of hand, or was that with ice-cream and macadamia nuts? The King of England admitted to enjoying melon on occasion but could not be drawn on how often, beyond saying it’s appropriate at any meal. He grows his own. The French President sent his best wishes on a speedy recovery, commenting that melon was also one of his own weaknesses. The Paris press was quick to remind readers melon was a great favourite of Napoleon. The Rome press went troppo on headline puns using meloni, the name of the Italian Prime Minister, some of them untranslatable. The King of Thailand later admitted the error of his ways, that he needs to ration his diet to three round meals a day. National outpouring was swift, with a huge increase in popularity for any fruit calling itself melon, and a corresponding praise for abstemiousness, self-reflection and proper mealtimes. The Chinese president keeps a measured silence. His Indian counterpart indulged in a week of melon jokes without hinting at what he was referring to. The American press judges the events as a curiosity, with wispy editorialising using lyrics from ‘The King and I’ for reference. Their President also has said nothing directly, but did spend almost 30 minutes of a rambling three-hour speech detailing his favourite melon dishes. Late night comedians joked about why he had not yet died of a surfeit of them. Wiser heads have been asking why the monarch of a country famous for this family of fruit, notably the magnificent durian, would need to accept melons from outsiders at all. Interest has turned to gifts, favours, and tributes, with focus on other leaders involved in pandering to the king’s secret, with further enquiries underway. These conjectures are being outweighed, it can be observed, by salacious articles about other historical figures who died of a surfeit, melons or other; as well as colour pieces on how much melon is too much melon; and warnings against eating too much of one kind of foodstuff, with special reference to the side effects of excess melon, which include bloating and sugar spikes.

Protest

 August 11 Word of the Day: Protest

 

Letrilla: All my songs are protest songs

 

It’s true my heartbeat grows and grows

My body lives out all it knows

All my nerve ends walk to the edge

My tongue goes lightly from the ledge

And all my songs are protest songs

 

There is the song of red flowers

Songs that swagger songs that glower

Drawled songs travelling the world and back

Songs ludicrous songs blue songs black

But all my songs are protest songs

 

Lullabies without a pretext

I sing anthems lots of effects

Tall ballads long crooners their schmaltz lines

Great spirituals in waltz time

But all my songs are protest songs

 

Freeways streaming without a care

Buildings go nowhere into air

All the cables are enough rope

Spaceships promising more false hope

Where all my songs are protest songs

 

 

 

Listening to the Royal Albert Hall concert of 1966

Image: B. Harvey

Pretext

 August 10 Word of the Day: Pretext

 

B. Harvey

Why ever should I need a pretext? Here is the making of the news. Here the collision at the zero place. Place of given flesh. Here is word shock. In growing seconds. In thought burst. The raw reality insults my quaint certainties. Protest is instant. The song made of absorption. Of mess and meaning. Meaning racing to make meaning. Direct questions rush in to size the situation. Statements of thirst. Now is the need to protect. Protect myself. Protect memory abiding in the truth of past experience. Statements of knowing in the midst of not knowing. Hung in the now.  

 

Tears

 August 9 Word of the Day: Tears

 

Letrilla: That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

Hard to explain why I’m so tall

And the planet a tiny ball

Facts don’t connect more surprising

And meanwhile waters are rising

That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

My body is all out of sorts

What is isn’t at all what oughts

Even my talk’s on holiday

And common sense has gone away

That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

Who in the world am I up swirled  

What in the world is the world

One eye on the very hot garden

One on high tide no beg pardon   

That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

Maybe I’ll drown I just don’t know

Bigger smaller go with the flow

But if I asked politely you

To consider would you come too

That’s not climate change that’s your tears

 

  

Image: Print of ‘Dreaming Alice’ by Charles Blackman (1956)

in the storeroom of Etching House, North Sydney. 

Pamphlet

August 8 Word of the Day: Pamphlet

 

Beloved of all, these well-chosen words require less than a quire to exact their gratitude and adoration. Their embossed language fully visible upon the requisite pages configures all that now need be said, or could be said perhaps, at the moment of deepest composition. Pages that age upon their physical perfection and further more, slipping and drifting, continue so until fire or shred or neglect occlude their sincerest gesture. Beloved of all, these rags of riches, no more eternal than homages dancing on a silicon pin, transfer the best of current language in belief the personal wonder reaches and serves.

Forever

 August 7 Word of the Day: Forever 

Forever New the shop selling Forever and New in unquantifiable deliveries. Join the mailing list for Forever New bargains and updates of all the latest forever news. Brave fronts of the Forever New chain open across the metropolitan area, coming to a shopping precinct near you. Reports of a merger with an unnamed rival are overstated. Shareholders in Forever New are advised to stay calm. Likewise, rumours of a shift from department store to online warehouse must be taken with a pinch of salt. Recent fire sales at Forever New outlets are glitches, not a sign of things to come.

QR

 August 6 Word of the Day: QR

 

Letrilla: Photograph this crossword puzzle

 

For the concert to meet your hopes

Ocean depths and alpine slopes

Photograph this crossword puzzle

 

To understand the master plan

The recipe the average man

Your next world trip itinerary

How to decipher contrary

Persons in a far oasis

Arguments with no known basis

To pop-up link the final word

Promotions you were once referred

Circus tickets walking wires

Program notes soon to expire

In or out the best direction

How to vote at the election

Go where no one has ever been

Visit caverns of drives unseen

Photograph this crossword puzzle

 

1 across a plumbless expanse

2 down a digital dance

3 is for free better by far

4 time’s drainpipe et cetera

Photograph this crossword puzzle

 

Golden wattle engulfs vision

Footpaths sprinkled with decisions

Dress sense testing temperatures

Timetables daylight rest assures

Freeways separate yes and no

Laptop loneliness summers show

Aeroplanes skylines afterglow

Reading pages calm shady slow

Smoked on walls and dripping eaves

Precincts settled shaped autumn leaves

Craniums cool and bodies weave

Imitating slow closure’s grieve

Unlike clouds windows close shut

Wintry windows no ifs and buts

Photograph this crossword puzzle

 

If this angle meets not your need

And if at first you don’t succeed

Take a walk around the block what

Ever then take another shot

Words can’t say who’s mostly at fault

One more abstract goes in the vault

Photograph this crossword puzzle

 

Q&A and QR code

Orderly queues along the road

Just to get inside the building

The food the gossip the gilding

Simply tap your apparatus

Assume a posture and focus

Photograph this crossword puzzle

 

When everything is said and done

Last clues unsprung beneath the sun

One further question shall arise

It should come as no great surprise

Photograph this crossword puzzle

 

Verify

 August 5 Word of the Day: Verify

 

Letrilla: Verify that you are human

 

Any excuse for a party

Play the music not too arty

Comb the tangles out of your hair

Give the mirror a good hard stare

Verify that you are human

 

Tap the wrong key turn think to thing

Spill the coffee and leave a ring

Emails send to All by mistake

Have a feeling more like an ache

Verify that you are human

 

Run to catch the tram and missed

Find the shop only lose the list

Remember well your long-lost friend

Start a letter but never end

Verify that you are human

 

Read the novel but fall asleep

Not too shallow and not too deep

Arrange the cart before the horse

Commit the deed and feel remorse

Verify that you are human

 

Too clever too clever by half

Eat humble pie have the last laugh

Put one foot before the other

Rain starting then race for cover

Verify that you are human

 

Please repeat your last transaction

Notify of slight infractions

Fill out this survey relaxin’

Comments please in Anglo-Saxon

Verify that you are human

 

Switch off On for silent mode

Click upload download motherlode

There’s another deadline loomin’

Enter password before zoomin’

Verify that you are human

 

Accessible

 August 4 Word of the Day: Accessible 

Tonight please just something accessible, something that speaks. And listens. Humble access that speaks the day, not necessarily with words. Days like these, who are we, who are we to each other. Lost things, our absentmindedness, our want. The shocking news close to us, what to think, how to process. Cannot begin to think. Only wanting something. That is accessible, not too hard, too heavy. Close to the wear and tear. Weary, even a tear. Strong beings seem frail of a sudden, simply pushing forward. What to do, but then one thing to do, ask for access. Find the entrance.   

Rant

 August 3 Word of the Day: Rant

 

Rants Ranked

10 The Full Bottle This familiar ranter starts in hubris and goes further. Humility and equal time are not in the vocabulary. Knowledge of the subject is comprehensive and on full display, regardless of the level of informativeness. Previous lack of experience or knowhow is no barrier to broad-ranging opinion, fuelled by the bottle referred to.

9 Rank Outsider A ranter who at all times deluges the reader with sarcasm dressed up as wit. A different point of view exists, mainly to be treated with scorn by Rank Outsider. Ignorance is bliss, in fact is a virtue employed to full advantage as someone’s solid argument is demolished by arrant irrelevancies and red herrings of whale-like proportions.

8 Loomin’ Troll The appearance of this handle in Comments anytime prompts collective sharp intakes and rotational eye-rolls. Neither man nor machine but some unnameable energy from the backseat of the school bus, Loomin’ launches into a disproportionate rant, its one connection to the ur-text addressed being it’s in the same language. English is the language in question, though grammar, spelling, capitalisation and other incidentals take on new dimensions, especially the lack of full-stops. Non-stops prevail.

7 Rank Odour The vile expletives and vulgar deletives of this unseemly particular ranter explode the myth that more is less. The myriad ways of the eff word are here laid bare, a spectacle wearisome with overuse. An Impressionist of sorts, the sheer number of effs applied to any one page adding up to an image that’s one big effing eff.

6 Roll Over Moldova Exists, according to the adjacent avatar, in a highwire cottage on the other side of a placid lake. Rants generally focus on the ineptitude of all politicians of any country or class or party or ideology or suit. On the days when ROM can focus. Displays a serious weakness, bordering on obsession, for Moldova jokes, most of them not funny.  

5 Living Proof A life lived online with everyone in a room of one’s own with a view and a mouse and bottomless coffee, all alone. Never an unpublished thought. An examined life examined by everyone in other rooms, until the view bloviates and the mouse flags and thimbles of living proof vodka go into the bottomless pit.

4 J. Arthur Rank Organisation As the gong soundeth out the start of a brand-new blockbuster so the days of our lives aboundeth in high-sounding accumulations. The Organisation, as it likens itself, sets out quotes and counter arguments, incontestables and dismissals, in serried battalions down the endless page of a barely disguised rage, quite suggestive. Not for the fainthearted, this is rant by filing cabinet.

3 Show Me The Evidence The last vestige of the Enlightenment, destroys all in the way with rants that customarily conclude with that teasing request, shower me with the evidence, Holmes. The implication is frequently that others in the conversation are missing that vital ingredient.

2 Anonymouse Armchair, aka The Mouse that Roared A revolutionary in his own lunch hour, AA is about to take over government within the next 48 hours. The armchair always wins these contests, however, some devotees of AA referring to it as the Napoleon Complex, the Sir John Kerr Rocker, the Et Tu Brute Suite and other percipient epithets.

1 Rank Xerox A cut-and-paste king, Xerox copies slabs of other ranters‘ effusions, then changes vital nouns, verbs, adjectives, and proper names into scintillating satires of what surfers have just imbibed above. Some call it art, even, and the jury is still out on whether Xerox is a zany of the zeitgeist or a total waste of time. Some of the re-rants are already collector’s items.  

 

Unica

 August 2 Word of the Day: Unica 

A book of which there is only one copy in the world, by chance or design, is called a unica, or sometimes unicum. A collection of such books might be called unicas. Georges Perec is where I first encountered the term, not surprisingly given the Frenchman’s delight in the curiosities of literature which he puts, not in a cabinet of curiosities, but page one in the centre. Writers the world over live with the sense the manuscript they are working on could remain, for eternity, a unica. Many handmade books are unicas. It happens that the University of Illinois has initiated a Project Unica “to produce high quality facsimiles of printed books that exist in only one copy.” Preservation must be one objective, though the university says it is “to provide a simple and efficient way of getting this valuable and unique information to scholars when and where they need it.” The university does not say what it does then with the original copy, but we would like to believe it is not the procedure reported today inside Automatic Increase (AI) copying operations. It seems that second-hand booksellers are being inundated with bulk orders for unusual, out-of-date, and rare books from certain companies, that then cut up the book for easy scanning only to throw away the original. The sellers say they are not concerned about those Gutenberg descendants available in thousands, but do not mail a unica to Active Invisibles (AI) on principle. The vision that emerges is unresplendent: a unique monograph is destroyed after being replaced by an intangible digital substitute, its fungibility questionable. With only the digital version in existence, and no catalogue proof of its original, can I be certain of its authenticity? The university is at pains to claim their facsimiles are high quality for good reason: the history of reprint companies in the past three decades is speckled with smudgy text that says something different from the original. The argument being, only the original will always state clearly, print face in cloth paper, what is actually being said. There is also the possibility of creatives producing unica online from the Reformation or Enlightenment that never had an original, that is to say, are hoaxes. The publication date may read AD MDC (1600) even when, to be accurate, it should read AI (Anno Ingenium) MMXXVI (2026). Shakespeare could say more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy or are currently attributed to him in the First Folio. What an opportunity for Brainless Bards! Authorial Inventiveness (AI) can invent text to suit from every period style, as well as inventing the author who made the text. While this is likely to generate unica all of its own, whether anyone will want or trust such productions is doubtful. The books they imitate, or rip off in fact, are not being made with a reader in mind.

Polytropos

 August 1 Word of the Day: Polytropos

 

Complicated Professor Emily Wilson is a straightshooter about the meaning of the epithet for Odysseus. The first epithet, that is, of many in Homer’s Odyssey, because it shows up, critically, in the first line. Polytropos. This seemingly self-explanatory word, if you know Greek, has gone viral on the internet, since the professor took the necessary step of self-explanation in light of the release of a blockbuster new film of the famous poem. Critics and promoters alike are wary of calling the film a blockbuster, a word that possibly has an equivalent in classical Greek, Odysseus himself being a ‘blockbuster’ of sorts, though he certainly meets a couple of them on the way through to Ithaca. Actually, he meets all sorts of ‘blockbusters’, both male and female, mortal and god, depending on your translation of the Greek for ‘blockbuster’. Not just the release of the film, but the claim by the director that the professor’s translation inspired his version, a claim the professor has taken exception to, given the film lacks many of the elements essential to a satisfactory retelling of the original. Anyway, polytropos. It is the word of the day on the internet. To open a big poem, or any story, with a one-worder about the subject, is to set the scene, to engender a trust with a reader, to say something vital that must register at once. Fagles says ‘man of twists and turns’. Fitzgerald, ‘skilled in all ways of contending’. ‘The man of many ways’, says Lattimore. The one word contains meanings that describe his thought, his relationships, his prospective travels, his cleverness and famed cunning, his skill and good fortune in getting out of trouble, his survival and his future. Wilson wants simple. She chooses complicated. One word, four syllables, itself a twisting and turning adjective. Her Substack essay adds to his poly-epithets: Odysseus is a man of ‘many stratagems’ (polymechanos), ‘much wiliness’ (polymetis), ‘much-smarts’ (polyphron). Polytropos is the first call of many related attributes in the poem. The tropes are tripping off the tongue. She takes exception with the director, it can be hazarded, precisely because he cites her as an inspiration for his blockbuster, but doesn’t actually follow through on what is required to make Odysseus complicated. Enter, Wilson the ‘blockbuster’. The fault of the film is that it does not make Odysseus complicated, rather it reduces him almost to the level of a sword-and-sandal guy, or an action hero, where action takes precedence over heroism, it could be said. Poetry and film, two different media, and here is where the professor-translator-movie-buff takes exception, not just because the director has taken her name in vain, but because his film lacks the human depth that she expects and Homer demands.                     

 

Lychee

 

the rush and whistle and clang and drone

   of existence outside the bristling skin

   of lychee means also thunderstorms of drink

 

thin its skin lantern-like diminutive

   in warm nights that when split

   its dark case elegantly releases

 

the whitest moon of flesh imaginable

   and inside that a sliver of seed

   with thoughts of more trees of moons

 

dropping into leaf-rich earth

   while lychee’s rose-like fragrance reaches

   upward into the near musical air

 

best before aroma and shape and colour fade

   cold in syrup with white ice-cream

   on an otherwise calm warm ordinary day 

Pomegranate

eat of the pomegranate and be glad

   for that other tree in the garden

   may bring you to sadness or madness

 

admire the lacquered red of the pomegranate

   select design of temple cloth and stone

   amidst glorious present shapes of earth

 

prise open and enjoy the pomegranate’s beads

   fleck and tang on tongue and mind

   forgetful a while either of need or death

 

listen to the modest scale of the pomegranate

   budding anew from immemorial

   unheard by the world’s noisy power play

 

take in the scent of the opened pomegranate

   intended beauty suffusing breath

   refusing thoughts of apathy or despair

 

 

Genesis 2: 9

1 Kings 7:20 

Pitaya

now the flaming green wings

   and rubicund circumference of the dragon

   might be a sight to draw awe or fright

 

and being smooth to touch curved and rubbery

   not mailed or plate-scaled or fire-breathing

   tests expectations and analogies

 

yet is neither exploding hand grenade

   nor tasselled psychedelic boombox

   split with a cleaver or tomahawk

 

it’s cactus its compacted aroma

   quintessence of tropic rainfall

   inside out of great scale persistent heat

 

its contracted reservoir mild sweetness

   anodyne soothing like so much to be said

   the opposite of what we assumed

 

iPhone

 

Starless and Babel black oblong keepsake

claw grip upways a prod springs colour,

universe in universal remake

your own self holds, palm reading futures.

Charge up the silicon valley of debt!

Each one its own start-up datacentre,

candid camera private details net

nonstop news c/- rich tech inventors.

Who is this I who phones each one of us

in breathless apps clocks email spendthrift spam

updating itself with no further discuss?

Lock, stock and barrel passwords’ great I Am.

Colours chart back to black times repeated

taking IDs contacts not deleted.