Jovian Bricolage Archive
https://operajupiter.substack.com/archive?sort=new
BTW, the Slovenian novelist friend whose name briefly eluded me is Miha Mazzini. I got stuck thinking “Mika” and didn’t want to pause to untangle it.
LATE IN LIFE
While twelve black vultures ride the thermals
the silence of their wingspans against the blue
contrasts with four chimney swifts
flying well below them, as the latter bob and cut
and swoop, emitting sounds as if crazed
by the aerial freedom of a late afternoon.
Two species, fully aware, share
the sky with nothing, or so it seems,
to say to each other. When their flash
& dash take them out of the picture,
the borderless sky appears empty.
But for how long? I like to think the swifts are gobbling
bugs in air as they exercise their mad impulses
at sunset. Hunger is a great organizer of form,
as Ezra Pound didn’t say, but have you read
his Canto 81 lately? Pound blew it
as he readily admitted, late in life, for his anti-semitism
and for his treasonous embrace of fascism.
But does his poetry still have the power to surprise?
The bits he marshals with ingenuity & care
include more than enough insight to be memorable.
🪲
15
PUT ME IN COACH
We were not unaware in 1956
as twelve-year-old boys in sunlit San Diego
that pro-ball in New York had not one, not two,
but three great players in centerfield.
Switch-hitting Mickey Mantle wore
Yankee pinstripes, the Dodgers had lefty
slugger Duke Snider, & the Giants
the incomparable Willie Mays.
This was several years before the Dodgers & Giants
moved west to new homes in California,
breaking a million fan hearts as they did.
Today we got the news that Mays,
the last of them—his hat flying off his head as he raced
around the bases—died at 93, a living legend
that many consider the best that ever played the game.
I will never forget the day we watched him
on black & white TV, hit four home runs
in a single game. Once in a while
a great hitter will hit two, and maybe some
lesser known freak will hit three. But four?
Count those players on a bodily digit, and say hey.
19 June 24
🪲
HEIRLOOM
Why do women hate women?
They don’t?
I feel better already.
Maybe an octogenarian can find happiness
With an heirloom tomato.
The good news is, players on both sides
Of the net have a chance to win.
But I’ll admit it. I’m flabbergasted
When a cheap entertainer
Commands loyalty
From the people he cares nothing about.
Guess that’s par on some course.
So slather on the mayo
While you’ve still got a slice.
It’s going to be a long year
And an even longer week.
The problem is how to propagate tolerance
In regions where tribal hatred
Tears everything apart.
And if strife never ends? Please cue
Some friendly Prince of Peace for a necessary walk-on.
🪲
FASHION
Trench rimes with fence and wench and dense
But as a signifying article of clothing
The coat worn in 1962 by Charles Aznavour
In Truffaut’s “Shoot the Piano Player”
Was as chic as existentialism was grey.
Truffaut, paying homage to the sleuths and lowlifes
Of film noir, seemed never to be draped in anything but.
Does it help to know the film was based on a cheap
American novel? I first heard the music of Aznavour
In Air-en-Provence as a 20 year old student.
His songs were piped out in the yard
Next to the student hotel where I rented a room for $30 a month.
I could hear the music as the men in that yard
Smoked and sipped wine and played boules.
The song of the moment was “Que C’est Triste a Venise.”
They played it over and over, “au temps de l’amour mort.”
Unlike Sinatra, who didn’t write his own songs,
Aznavour did. He sang them in the spirit of regret & loss,
Because no one cries when they hear a happy song.
So what am I trying to say? Only this. Your own
Experience is the sine qua non of that which reveals
The authentic uncertainty of your one true & only life.
🪲
