Cri de coeur

(ed. note: After the small debacle that was my first post, this would qualify as one of those 'serious' entries)

There are days when I am physically and mentally unable to seize the opportunity implicit in good health and mental acuity, and today is one of them. Regardless of the glorious weather, evinced by the sunshine outside my window, I remain tied to my books, and to nagging thoughts - nothing grandiloquent, to be sure, only rage in a minor key. A perusal through the Sunday newspapers of France, Britain, the United States, Canada, Malta, even...the collected 'conventional wisdom' of six days cogitation. A question: why do we not have the steel and determination to fight and guard what is most precious, what makes the West a moral and not merely geographical expression? At the risk of acquiring chickenhawk status, (I am hardly about to join the ranks of the enlisted) have we become so comfortably ensconced on the sidelines that appeasement becomes the 'comme il faut' of informed discourse? Does it not occur to anyone that the current moment of our lives - a comparitively peaceful time of material and intellectual progress - is a historical anomaly? Why are we afraid to say that there are certain ideologies so pernicious that they must be eradicated - not solely, or primarily, by the sword, but by facing down the proponents of capitulation among us? 'All that is necessary for evil to triumph' and all that. But more of this another time. I hereby nominate every Sunday on this weblog poetry Sunday, and leave you with the words of one Guillaume Apollinaire. A glance at his lines and the concentrated self-flagellation of Robert Fisk et al. fades into insignificance. My attempt at a translation will follow anon.

Le Pont Mirabeau

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Et nos amours

Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne

La joie venait toujours après la peine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face

Tandis que sous

Le pont de nos bras passe

Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante

L'amour s'en va

Comme la vie est lente

Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines

Ni temps passé

Ni les amours reviennent

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure

Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 - 1918)