Josephine Miles: Tally
After her pills the girl slept and counted
Pellet on pellet the regress of life.
Dead to the world, the world's count yet counted
Pellet on pill the antinomies of life.
Refused to turn, the way's back, she counted
Her several stones across the mire of life.
And stones away and sticks away she counted
To keep herself out of the country of life.
Lost tally. How the sheep return to home
Is the story she will retrieve
And the only story believe
Of one and one the sheep returning home
To take the shapes of life,
Coming and being counted.
Josephine Miles (1911-1985): Tally from Collected Poems 1930-1983 (1983)
A flock of sheep walks in the smoggy haze in a suburb of Beijing, where poor air quality has proved to be a persistent health hazard: photo by Lintao Zhang / The New York Times, 15 January 2015
An Iraqi shepherd herds his sheep in the Kurdish town of Aqrah, 500 kilometres north of Baghdad: photo by Safin Hamed/AFP, 21 March 2016
An Iraqi shepherd herds his sheep in the Kurdish town of Aqrah, 500 kilometres north of Baghdad: photo by Safin Hamed/AFP, 21 March 2016
Silence of the lambs. Narkanda, Himachal, India: photo by Manik Sharma via the land below water, 2016
Fair Day, Glenties, County Donegal: photo by Robert French, c. 1890-1910 (Lawrence Photograph Collection, National Library of Ireland)
Sheep farmers try to round up a flock as they walk through a cloud of ash pouring out of the erupting Grimsvoetn volcano in Mulakot: photo by Vilhelm Gunnarsson/AFP, 22 May 2011
Sheep on an Irish road: photo by Thorsten Pohl, August 2003
Sheep staring, Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scotland: photo by Bug in Box, 10 October 2009
Afield, Langholm, Dumfriesshire, Scotland: photo by Bug in Box, 10 October 2009
Sheep
graze on a field at the Siennese clays area near Asciano, Italy. The
Crete Senesi, located in Tuscany, consists of an untouched natural
landscape of hills and woods: photo by Max Rossi/Reuters, 2011
It seems there is no escaping a bit of rural decay is there. Ruined miners' houses with sheep, Cwn Ystradllyn, Wales: photo by Carl Jones, 23 June 2008
Life [Marand, Azarbayjan-e Sharqi, Iran]: photo by Seyed Mostafa Zamani, 29 September 2010
That's a veeeery long queue to be security-checked into #Brussels Gare Central. Metro replacement buses working well: image via Ryan Heath @PoliticoRyan, 23 March 2016
Yisrael "Slim" Katz (middle) has said that Belgians spend too much time eating chocolate, rather than fighting terrorism: photo by Menahem Kahana via Huffington Post, 23 March 2016
That crass Katz critique: Peter Beaumont from Brussels, The Guardian, 23 March 2016
Israel’s minister of transport, intelligence and atomic energy has
delivered a harsh critique of Belgian anti-terrorism strategy shortly
after co-ordinated attacks claimed by Isis that left at least 31 people
dead.
In jarring and unsympathetic language, Yisrael Katz declared in an interview on Israel Radio: “If in Belgium
they continue to eat chocolate and enjoy the good life with their
liberalism and democracy, and do not understand that some of the Muslims
there are planning terror, they will never be able to fight against
them.”
Katz’s crass remarks came amid a flurry of columns in the Israeli
media and remarks by security experts, criticising the European strategy
against Isis, barely 24 hours since the deadly attacks -- and with a
large element of victim blaming.
Also joining in was former Mossad director Shabtai Shavit, who echoed
Katz’s remarks, although in moderately less inflammatory language,
blaming the attacks on Belgium’s “laid-back culture” in a country he
described as “ultra-liberal, that exists with no governability”.
“It is human nature to react only after large-scale disasters. An
example is the September 11 terror attacks in New York. But immediately
after the terror attack in New York, the US came to its senses and
carried out extensive reforms, of a scope that it had not carried out
since the end of the cold war. Homeland security in the US today, from
the aspects of budgets and manpower, is the largest ministry in the US
cabinet. They also upgraded their law enforcement and intelligence
systems by the same degree.
“The European Union, in numbers, has more residents that the US. It
could be that the disaster that befell them yesterday will finally wake
them up. Isis succeeded in discerning, very well, the soft underbelly of
western Europe.
And that is Brussels, Belgium, a country that is ultra-liberal, that
exists with no governability. It has had a transition government for
years because it is impossible to form a real government. It is a
country that is madeup of three ethnic groups with three languages,
French, Flemish and German. It is a country in which the people don’t
know how to communicate with each other because of the language
problems.
“There is a general laid-back culture. So the bad guys discerned
this, and slowly but steadily, set up base there. They found fertile
ground for building a base of helpers from their own people and
religion. The Muslim quarters in Brussels are quarters that the police
will not enter. In short, that is the situation today. And to get out of
it, and this is not just Belgium, Europe has to come to its senses and
to decide that this is a number one priority. Belgium is not on its own.
We saw that it was a terrorist from Belgium who carried out the terror
attack in France.”
Katz’s remarks were immediately condemned by Israeli opposition
figures. “The government has devised a system to eradicate terrorism:
stop eating chocolate,” opposition MK Shelly Yachimovich tweeted.
For his part, the Zionist Union leader, Isaac Herzog, said: “Stop
this contemptible talk. Where did you get the chutzpah to degrade
innocent victims of terror? Where do you get this miserable cynicism
from? This is a distortion of the most basic human morality. This is a
painful moment internationally that obligates all people to identify
with the bereaved families, whoever they are, and wish the wounded a
speedy recovery.”
#Israel soldiers mocking Palestinian TV reporter on-air. #BDS #IsraeliApartheidWeek #BrusselsAttacks: image via Dr. Basem Naim @basemn63, 23 March 2016
Suppressing criticism of Zionism on campus is catastrophic censorship: image via Ben White @benabyad, 23 March 2016
The final report of the UC regents working group on principles against intolerance is a thinly disguised attempt to suppress academic freedom and stifle open debate on our campuses: image via Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2016
Suppressing criticism of Zionism on campus is catastrophic censorship: Saree Makdisi and Judith Butler, Los Angeles Times, 23 March 2016
Carefully adorned in the language of
moderation and tolerance, the final report of the UC regents working
group on principles against intolerance is a thinly disguised attempt to
suppress academic freedom and stifle open debate on our campuses.
The
report presents itself as the solution to a problem that it is actually
helping to manufacture. Its point of departure is the unfounded claim
that “manifestations of anti-Semitism have changed and that expressions
of anti-Semitism are more coded and difficult to identify.” It then not
so subtly shifts to a generalization so broad it sweeps all before it:
“[O]pposition to Zionism often is expressed in ways that are not simply
statements of disagreement over politics and policy, but also assertions
of prejudice and intolerance toward Jewish people and culture.” And so
on to the inevitable coup de grace: “Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and
other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of
California.”
In a few paragraphs, the report conflates two
distinct phenomena: hatred of Jews on the one hand, and criticism of a
political ideology on the other. The overall claim is that the latter --
objections to the Israeli state, its military occupation, its demolition
of homes, its two-tiered system of citizenship -- is the new, covert
form of anti-Semitism. These are issues regularly debated in public
discourse; it is imperative that they be freely discussed in
universities as well. But if the report is adopted, scholarship and
teaching that include critical perspectives deemed “anti-Zionist” could
be branded illegitimate, and open discussion shut down.
All forms
of discrimination must be opposed, including anti-Semitism, but this
report is neither inclusive nor balanced in its representation of how
racism operates on our campuses. In an age of unprecedented
Islamophobia, Arab and Muslim students have suffered overt prejudice and
repression of their views, yet the document makes only passing
reference to their experience. It is less interested in actual
conditions of intolerance that we all must oppose than in singling out
and redefining anti-Semitism to include political viewpoints that it
seeks to suppress.
If
the report is adopted, scholarship and teaching that include critical
perspectives deemed "anti-Zionist" could be branded illegitimate, and
open discussion shut down.
The
report is merely the latest manifestation of a well-funded and
increasingly desperate -- even panicky -- political campaign to eradicate
criticism of Israeli policy from American campuses. A compelling student
movement for Palestinian rights has emerged, as have a proliferation of
Jewish voices distancing themselves from traditional Zionist narratives
and affirming the Palestinian right to self-determination, freedom and
equality. Not coincidentally, the focal point of this campaign has been
an attempt to get universities to adopt a widely discredited State
Department definition that collapses the distinction between criticism
of Israel and hatred of the Jewish people.
Although the UC report
claims the need to track “the evolving nature of anti-Semitism,” what
needs to be tracked instead is the drive to hijack, for malign political
purposes, the definition of a genuine scourge. Ironically, by
persistently misidentifying anti-Semitism, the promoters of this
politicized new definition will, like the boy who cried wolf, make it
more difficult to combat the real thing when it occurs.
Whereas
the UC working group met with individuals and institutions unconnected
to the university who have been promoting this redefinition of
anti-Semitism, it seems to have made no effort to find balance by
consulting the many scholars of Zionism, anti-Semitism and the question
of Palestine on UC's own faculty, relying instead on a sophomoric
dictionary entry on of Zionism.
And the report was produced under a
cloud of external pressure by, among others, UC regent Richard Blum,
who publicly issued a veiled threat: “My wife, and your senior senator” --
Dianne Feinstein -- “is prepared to be critical of this university,”
unless UC finds a way to punish the supposed new form of anti-Semitism.
The
report is as bad as it sounds. Its adoption would be catastrophic. It
would be a travesty to let UC become a place where censorship triumphs
over the pursuit of truths, however uncomfortable some may find them.
Saree
Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA.
Judith Butler is a professor of comparative literature at UC Berkeley
and a member of the Coordinating Committee for the Academic Council of
Jewish Voice for Peace.
Judith Butler speaking to UC Regents: conflating anti-Zionism w/ antisemitism is censorship: image via JewishVoicesForPeace @jvplive, 23 March 2016
Judith Butler speaking to UC Regents: conflating anti-Zionism w/ antisemitism is censorship: image via JewishVoicesForPeace @jvplive, 23 March 2016
Black students demanding to speak. Student: "You invest in prisons but you wont let us speak!"
UC Regents: "Public comment is over"
Audience: #BlackLivesMatter: image via JewishVoicesForPeace @jvplive, 23 March 2016
Boycott all the Supporters of #Israel. #Palestine: image via ISLAMIC freedom @islamicfreedom, 2 March 2016
#Heartbreaking #Israel killed his family and did this to him: image via Mohammed Abdul Hay @MSham87, 23 March 2016
@Hillary Clinton email: #Assad must be toppled to protect #Israel: image via Sputnik Verified account @Sputnikint, 23 March 2016
LIVE: Hillary Clinton discusses counter-terrorism at Stanford University in Palo Alto: image via Reuters Live @ReutersLive, 23 March 2016
VERBATIM: Clinton slams Trump on Brussels attacks: image via Reuters TV @ReutersTV, 23 March 2016
Trump says Muslims are not doing enough to prevent attacks: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 23 March 2016
LIVE: Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz makes remarks in New York: image via Reuters Live @ReutersLive, 23 March 2016
Jeb Bush endorses Ted Cruz for Republican nomination #Election2016: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 23 March 2016
Thank you @SenTedCruz for your strong words to @AIPAC tonight in support of #Israel. It was a pleasure meeting you.: image via Danny Ayalon @DannyAyalon, 21 March 2016
Trump says Muslims are not doing enough to prevent attacks: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 23 March 2016
LIVE: Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz makes remarks in New York: image via Reuters Live @ReutersLive, 23 March 2016
Jeb Bush endorses Ted Cruz for Republican nomination #Election2016: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 23 March 2016
Thank you @SenTedCruz for your strong words to @AIPAC tonight in support of #Israel. It was a pleasure meeting you.: image via Danny Ayalon @DannyAyalon, 21 March 2016
A member of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas holds his weapon during a rally to
mark the 12th anniversary of the death of assassinated Hamas spiritual
leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassine in Gaza city: photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP, 23 March 2016
A member of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas holds his weapon during a rally to
mark the 12th anniversary of the death of assassinated Hamas spiritual
leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassine in Gaza city: photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP, 23 March 2016
Local band members wait to board a passenger bus to reach a wedding procession venue in Kolkata, India: photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters, 23 March 2016
Local band members wait to board a passenger bus to reach a wedding procession venue in Kolkata, India: photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters, 23 March 2016
A family looks out of a tent as rain falls at a makeshift camp set by
migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village
of Idomeni: photo by Andrej Isakovic/AFP, 23 March 2016
A family looks out of a tent as rain falls at a makeshift camp set by
migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village
of Idomeni: photo by Andrej Isakovic/AFP, 23 March 2016
This general view shows a layer of fog descending upon buildings in the Kowloon district of Hong Kong as ships sail in Victoria Harbour: photo by Anthony Wallace/AFP, 23 March 2016
This general view shows a layer of fog descending upon buildings in the Kowloon district of Hong Kong as ships sail in Victoria Harbour: photo by Anthony Wallace/AFP, 23 March 2016
An Orbital ATK’s Cygnus space craft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to go to the International Space Station as seen from Viera in Brevard County, Florida: photo by Tim Shortt/Florida Today/AP, 23 March 2016
An Orbital ATK’s Cygnus space craft atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket launches from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to go to the International Space Station as seen from Viera in Brevard County, Florida: photo by Tim Shortt/Florida Today/AP, 23 March 2016
An injured Syrian man walks holding his daughter’s hand in Tishreen, a northern suburb of the capital Damascus: photo by Sameer Al-Doumy, 23 March 2016
An injured Syrian man walks holding his daughter’s hand in Tishreen, a northern suburb of the capital Damascus: photo by Sameer Al-Doumy, 23 March 2016
Hindu devotees daubed in colours sing religious songs inside a temple during Holi celebrations in Ahmedabad, India: photo by Amit Dave/Reuters, 23 March 2016
Hindu devotees daubed in colours sing religious songs inside a temple during Holi celebrations in Ahmedabad, India: photo by Amit Dave/Reuters, 23 March 2016
Brussels attack is another nail in the European Union’s coffin: image via Reuters Opinion @ReutersOpinion, 23 March 2016
British tourists play pool at a English bar in Benalmadena, Spain. Spain is Europe’s top destination for British expats with the southern regions of Costa del Sol and Alicante being the most popular places to live: photo by David Ramos via FT Photo Diary, 21 March 2016
British tourists play pool at a English bar in Benalmadena, Spain. Spain is Europe’s top destination for British expats with the southern regions of Costa del Sol and Alicante being the most popular places to live: photo by David Ramos via FT Photo Diary, 21 March 2016
Tor Head, Northern Ireland. A typical Irish encounter -- on a road barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other you meet a herd of sheep moved along not by a shepherd of old but by a modern farmer in his Landrover.: photo by yakshini, 3 June 2008
Sheep and lambs (Ireland): photo by cosmo_71, 23 February 2014
Baaahhd man! (Ireland): photo by Chris Dixon, 18 March 2008
blaaack lamb -- smiling mum! (Wicklow): photo by davida3, 7 April 2009
Sheep and lambs (outside Dublin): photo by Andreas Georghiou, 15 May 2007
Herding Sheep in Ireland: photo by Stacy, 21 May 2008
Sheep 3 (Balmoral, Belfast, Northern Ireland): photo by sarahluv, 15 May 2009
Shetland sheep, Baltasound. These sheep are closely eyeing the photographer, wondering if it's safe to return to the feeder which they've just run from: photo by Mike Pennington, 3 February 2010
Polluted Landscape. 'Due to the vast exploitation of coal mines, meadows in Holingol City, Inner Mongolia, China, are left degraded and no cattle or sheep exist there. In order to maintain the image of the city, the local government sculptured more than 120 sheep, as well as cattle, horses and camels in the Horqin grassland': photo by Lu Guang, 2012, via The Guardian, 21 February 2013
Two exhibitors eye each other's charges, Sheep Show: photo by Jeff Carter for Walkabout magazine, c. 1945 (State Library of New South Wales)
Domestic Sheep, Kanazawa Zoo: photo by Toshiro Gamo, 16 January 2015
Attentive sheep [Sarre, Val d'Aosta, Italy]: photo by enki22, 1 March 2013
Sheep [Skipaskagi, Akranes, Iceland]: photo by Atli Hardarson, 23 September 2007
Muddy feet sheep: photo by Micolo J, 1 February 2015
field full of sheep: photo by Micolo J, 3 February 2015
field full of sheep: photo by Micolo J, 3 February 2015
Cunda-sheep and lambs: photo by Güldem Ustün, 29 December 2014
Mrs Sheep. Leicestershire, near Gumley. My first portrait photo. Found this lady when out for a day in the countryside. There were a few of them and their lambs in this field but they were not too happy when I clicked the camera. Managed to get one or two though before they turned their back on me: photo by Katie Dalton, 21 April 2009
Sheep. Kleinfleckschen and 2 of her friends [Morsan, Upper Normandy]: photo by stanze, 10 March 2015
Smoked sheep. Another photograph of sheep in the park [Morsan, Upper Normandy]: photo by stanze, 6 February 2015
Affectionate sheep: photo by Mark Dries, 22 November 2015
Portrait of a sheep on Adox CHS II: photo by Mark Dries, 8 November 2015
Sheep, darkroom print: photo by Mark Dries, 11 November 2015
Sheepish [original version]: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 27 March 2010
Sheepish [hand coloured photogravure version]: photo by Karena Goldfinch, 21 March 2013
New Zealand (sheep and herder): albumen print, photographer unknown, c. 1900 (Museum of Photographic Arts)
Bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), slightly west of Logan Pass along Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier National Park: photo by Wing-Chi Poon, 16 June 2004
It went so far, it was so bad (that the best thing was that you were not like them): photo by y Coyhand, 15 November 2015
How the sheep return to home
ReplyDeleteIs the story . . .
Of one and one the sheep returning home
To take the shapes of life,
Coming and being counted.
Thanks for this Tom, for calling our attention to another otherwise unknown poem by the great Josephine Miles (once your Berkeley neighbor perhaps, once my teacher there) as preface to the story told by such an array of photos from these days before Easter -- sheep in the four corners of the world grazing and moving as they do (and have always done) despite the horrors of all else now going on elsewhere. And also, as Perdita once said, "Grace and remembrance be to you both,/ And welcome to our shearing!"
beautiful poem....love to meet that autor !! thanks !
ReplyDeleteThanks very much, Steve and Sandra.
ReplyDeleteSteve, it's a lovely fact and maybe not even totally an accident that our current salient scholar-poet, namely you, should have had this brilliant scholar-poet as a teacher.
Yes, JM was briefly a sort-of neighbour, and for years after her passing, while I was still able to get around town, passing by her former residence, on bike or foot, I was always conscious of her presiding presence... and there were times when I almost thought I could imagine hearing her murmuring to herself, as she worked on her painstaking and finally revelatory word-counts in that long project of surveying the history of diction in English poetry.
I don't think anybody cares much about that sort of work any more, sadly... but maybe her poetry has an abiding audience anyway and notwithstanding... Don't really know about that, but it would be pleasant to think so!
https://visuals.feedly.com/v1/resize?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FCeQDAmRUEAATPfV.jpg&sizes=647x*!0.01
ReplyDeleteTrump says Muslims are not doing enough to prevent attacks: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 23 March 2016: The fart is talking again!!