A Poem For Sunday

Robert Hass won a Pulitzer this week. His poem Between the Wars:

When I ran, it rained. Late in the afternoon—
midsummer, upstate New York, mornings I wrote,
read Polish history, and there was a woman
whom I thought about; outside the moody, humid
American sublime—late in the afternoon,
toward sundown, just as the sky was darkening,
the light came up and redwings settled in the cattails.
They were death’s idea of twilight, the whole notes
of a requiem the massed clouds croaked
above the somber fields. Lady of eyelashes,
do you hear me? Whiteness, otter’s body,
coolness of the morning, rubbed amber
and the skin’s salt, do you hear me? This is Poland speaking,
“era of the dawn of freedom,” nineteen twenty-two.

When I ran, it rained. The blackbirds settled
their clannish squabbles in the reeds, and light came up.
First darkening, then light. And then pure fire.
Where does it come from? out of the impure
shining that rises from the soaked odor of the grass,
the levitating, Congregational, meadow-light-at-twilight
light that darkens the heavy-headed blossoms
of wild carrot, out of that, out of nothing
it boils up, pools on the horizon, fissures up,
igniting the undersides of clouds: pink flame,
red flame, vermilion, purple, deeper purple, dark.
You could wring the sourness of the sumac from the air,
the fescue sweetness from the grass, the slightly
maniacal cicadas tuning up to tear the fabric
of the silence into tatters, so that night,
if it wants to, comes as a beggar to the door
at which, if you do not offer milk and barley
to the maimed figure of the god, your well will foul,
your crops will wither in the fields. In the eastern marches
children know the story that the aspen quivers
because it failed to hide the Virgin and the Child
when Herod’s hunters were abroad. Think: night is the god
dressed as the beggar drinking the sweet milk.
Gray beard, thin shanks, the look in the eyes
idiot, unbearable, the wizened mouth agape,
like an infant’s that has cried and sucked and cried
and paused to catch its breath. The pink nubbin
of the nipple glistens. I’ll suckle at that breast,
the one in the song of the muttering illumination
of the fields before the sun goes down, before
the black train crosses the frontier from Prussia
into Poland in the age of the dawn of freedom.
Fifty freight cars from America, full of medicine
and the latest miracle, canned food.
The war is over. There are unburied bones
in the fields at sun-up, skylarks singing,
starved children begging chocolate on the tracks

More here.

Will Clinton Over-Reach?

Clintonwilliamthomascaingetty

The "bitter" spat is gold for Morris-Rove politics, which is why Clinton is exploiting it so baldly. It is exactly the kind of debate that has constructed American politics since Vietnam; it is exactly the kind of politics that Obama has been trying to transcend. Clinton will use anything at this point to destroy Obama’s candidacy and message; but by adopting Rovism at its reddest, the Clintons do risk looking too obvious. Check out the comments in CNN’s Politicker. At some point people will realize that the Clintons represent a continuation of the kind of politics that has made a serious engagement with this country’s profound problems impossible. Or is acknowledging profound problems now unpatriotic? Is this election about how to salvage the least worst option in the Iraq disaster? Is it about restoring some kind of fiscal sanity? Is it about doing all we can to unite Americans in a war against Islamic terrorism? Is it about restoring America’s compliance with the Geneva Conventions? Or is it again about red-blue culture wars? We know what the professional political class is comfortable with. We know what Rove and Bush and Penn and Clinton believe. What we will find out soon is if Americans want more of the same. It’s a free country – and people can vote. Goodbye to all that? Or hello again – for yet another cycle? A reader writes:

I am a rustbelt native. I live near Gary, Indiana and have never lived anywhere else. I’ll probably die here.

I read and, more importantly, listened to Barack Obama’s response to the Clinton cacophony after his remarks about blue collar/regular people/rustbelt voters. The difference between the two politicians is amazing. One is thoughtful and unafraid while defending a politically risky yet righteous position. The other is just noise.

My husband and I already have one child and grandchild living thousands of miles away and I fully expect the other to leave within a few years. I don’t blame them. In fact I always encouraged them to leave because I wanted them to realize the full measure of their talents and abilities and that isn’t possible here.

Obama’s right about guns and religion in that there simply isn’t much to do in an economically depressed area but hunt and pray. There’s nothing insulting or elitist about this, but people can be easily persuaded that an elitist has indeed insulted them.

That’s what worries me. People will forget their interests, will forget that their children are moving away en masse, will forget the political idiocy of the Clintonian hypocrisy that inspires Howard Beale-like angst in all of us. They may forget all of that just for the misguided privilege of feeling insulted.

And that’s their right. Americans have had the presidency they deserved these past four years; the war they voted to continue; the debt they voted to increase; the incompetence they decided to reward. They also get to pick who comes next. If they want more of the same, they know who to vote for.

(Photo: William Thomas Cain/Getty Images).

The Preamble

Ben Smith has more of Obama’s remarks in San Francisco. Here’s what preceded the passage jumped on by Clinton, McCain et al:

Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism.

It is indeed easier to play the red-blue resentment game. We’ll see if it still works …

Clinton Pounces

She goes in for the kill on Obama’s "bitter" comments, as one would expect. The goal is to kill Obama’s candidacy – for now and in the fall, if she can. Noam thinks she’s playing into Republican hands. You think? Here’s the Rove Clinton soundbite:

"Sen. Obama’s remarks are elitist, and they are out of touch. The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling to’ religion because they’re bitter … I also disagree with Sen. Obama’s assertion that people in this country ‘cling to guns’ and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration. People of all walks of life hunt — and they enjoy doing so because it’s an important part of their life, not because they are bitter."

Whatever works – or might work. I still reserve judgment on how this eventually plays out. America is a little too angry and restless right now to be parsed once again into the red-blue divide, even if it helps the Clintons for a nano-second.

Just out of interest: how regularly does Clinton go to church, compared with Obama? An "elitist", of course, is someone reared by a single mother whose net worth is a fraction of the multi-millionaire former first lady. Al Giordano comments here. David Brody wonders what the big deal is here. Ambers on Obama’s "regrets" here.

So Fallows Is Fallible

We now have Japanese waistline mandates. Here’s Jim in a 1986 article on fitness in Japan:

Some Japanese friends tell me that things are changing. Kids are overeating now; adults are starting to worry about weight. I don’t believe it, but I take heart from their concern. When Jane Fonda’s Workout Book becomes a best seller in Japan, we’ll know that our industries have a chance.