vaznetti | (no subject)

I was going to post some Cavafy, but it turns out my copy is in the office. So I looked around for something else and settled on Rexroth; I was thinking of "Homer in Basic" (Glitter of Nausicaa's/Embroideries, flashing arms,/And heavy-hung maiden hair;/Doing the laundry, the wind/Brisk in the bright air/Of the Mediterranean day...) but happened upon this first. It was written in 1944 and suggests that the ability of poets to be pessimistic about the future knows no reasonable limit; it also has a nice encapsulation of Tacitus.

Gas or Novocain

Here I sit reading the Stoic
Latin of Tacitus.
Tiberius sinks in senile
Gloom as Aeneas sank
In the smoky throat of Hades;
And the prose glitters like
A tray of dental instruments.
The toss head president,
Deep in his private catacomb,
Is preparing to pull
The trigger. His secretaries
Make speeches. In ten years
The art of communication
Will be more limited.
The wheel, the lever, the incline,
May survive, and perhaps,
The alphabet. At the moment
The intellectual
Advance guard is agitated
Over the relation
Between the Accumulation
Of Capital and the
Systematic Derangement of
The Senses, and the Right
To Homosexuality.

Kenneth Rexroth, 1944.

I find it irrationally cheering that Rexroth could be that bitter; this poem makes me want to jump up and down and wave my arms and shout "Neener neener! Still here!"

Also, I'm leaving for England this evening; I'll update when I can.