homage to GWB

Those of us who thought that GWB (aka King Sadim) couldn’t top three losses (Iran, North Korea and Iraq) must now admit they were wrong. He has trumped those three with a new trio (AL Qaeda, Taliban, Pakistan) PLUS nuclear weapons:

Oct. 20 — The scenes of carnage in Pakistan this week conjured what one senior administration official on Friday called “the nightmare scenario” for President Bush’s last 15 months in office: Political meltdown in the one country where Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and nuclear weapons are all in play. … other current and former officials cautioned that six years after the United States forced General Musharraf to choose sides in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, American leverage over Pakistan is now limited. Similarly, they and Pakistan experts said that a series of policy miscalculations had left the administration with few good options. NYT A1

So, we apologize, and try to honor him with three poems:

LORD BYRON

An orator of such set trash of phrase,

Ineffably, legitimately vile,

That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,

Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile.

Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze

From that Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil,

That turns and turns to give the world a notion

Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

A bungler even in its disgusting trade,

And botching, patching, leaving still behind

Something of which its masters are afraid,

States to be curbed and thoughts to be confined,

Conspiracy or congress to be made,

Cobbling at manacles for all mankind,

A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains

With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains.

(44, Dedication, sections 13 & 14)

WH AUDEN, 1936:

Against the ogre, dragon, what you will;

His many shapes and names all turn us pale,

For he’s immortal, and to-day he still

Swinges the horror of his scaly tail.

Sometimes he seems to sleep, but will not fail

In every age to rear up to defend

Each dying force of history to the end.

Milton beheld him on the English throne,

And Bunyan sitting in the Papal chair;

The hermits fought him in their caves alone,

At the first Empire he was also there,

Dangling his Pax Romana in the air:

He comes in dreams at puberty to man,

To scare him back to childhood if he can.

Banker or landlord, booking-clerk of Pope,

Whenever he’s lost faith in choice and thought,

When a man sees the future without hope,

Whenever he endorses Hobbes’ report

“The life of man is nasty, brutish, short,”

The dragon rises from his garden border

And promises to set up law and order.

--Auden, “Leter to Lord Byron,” 1936

AUDEN, 1968

The Ogre does what orgres can,

Deeds quite impossible for Man,

But one prize is beyond his reach,

The Ogre cannot master Speech.

About a subjugated plain,

Among its desperate and slain,

The Ogre stalk with hands on hips,

While drivel gushes from his lips.

--Auden, ”August 1968” --1968