Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission.


Friday 15 July 2016

The Good Romans: « C'était comme au bowling » "C'était une soirée cool..." (Stevie Smith: Tenuous and Precarious)

.
Maori warriors from New Zealand take part in the traditional Bastille Day military parade on the Champs Elysees in Paris, France, July 14, 2016.   REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

Maori warriors from New Zealand take part in the traditional Bastille Day military parade on the Champs Elysees in Paris, France: photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters, 14 July 2016

Maori warriors from New Zealand take part in the traditional Bastille Day military parade on the Champs Elysees in Paris, France, July 14, 2016.   REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

Maori warriors from New Zealand take part in the traditional Bastille Day military parade on the Champs Elysees in Paris, France: photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters, 14 July 2016
 
Alpha jets from the Patrouille de France fly in an 'Eiffel Tower' formation over the Champs Elysees at the start of the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris, France, July 14, 2016.  REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

Alpha jets from the Patrouille de France fly in an ‘Eiffel Tower’ formation over the Champs Elysees at the start of the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris, France: photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters, 14 July 2016 

Alpha jets from the Patrouille de France fly in an 'Eiffel Tower' formation over the Champs Elysees at the start of the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris, France, July 14, 2016.  REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

Alpha jets from the Patrouille de France fly in an ‘Eiffel Tower’ formation over the Champs Elysees at the start of the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris, France: photo by Benoit Tessier/Reuters, 14 July 2016 

World in focus – best photos for July 14, 2016
 
A view taken from a helicopter shows Alphajet aircrafts from the French elite acrobatic flying team Patrouille de France (PAF) releasing smoke in the colours of the French national flag as they fly above the rooftops of Paris during the annual Bastille Day military parade on the Champs Elysees: photo by Thomas Samson / AFP, 14 June 2016
 
 
#14juillet France marks Bastille Day #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 14 July 2016



#14juillet France marks Bastille Day #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 14 July 2016



#14juillet France marks Bastille Day #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 14 July 2016

 
#14juillet France marks Bastille Day #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 14 July 2016
 


#14juillet Maximum security on France's Bastille Day military parade. Photo @Sakutin #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 14 July 2016
 


#14juillet Maximum security on France's Bastille Day military parade. Photo @Sakutin #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 14 July 2016



#14juillet Maximum security on France's Bastille Day military parade. Photo @Sakutin #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 14 July 2016
 

#14juillet Maximum security on France's Bastille Day military parade. Photo @Sakutin #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 14 July 2016


URGENT UPDATE: Around 60 killed in #Nice #attack - local media quote prosecutor's office: image via RT Verified account @RT_com, 14 July 2016 


EN DIRECT - #Nice06 Le gouvernement met en garde contre les rumeurs: image via Le Figaro @Le_Figaro, 14 July 2016

The Good Romans: « C'était comme au bowling » "C'était une soirée cool..."


We will never forget you #Nice06 #Nice: image via M O H A M E D @achahbarmo, 15 July 2016
 

#Nice06 Il n'y aura jamais de pardon ! There will never be forgiveness !: image via Marc Herstalle @herstalle, 15 July 2016 


No matter your God, ideology, or mental state. You can't fight against people who would celebrate this. #Nice06: image via Jesse Miler @MediatedReality, 15 July 2016 

Stevie Smith: Tenuous and Precarious

Tenuous and Precarious
Were my guardians,
Precarious and Tenuous,
Two Romans.

My father was Hazardous,
Hazardous,
Dear old man,
Three Romans.

There was my brother Spurious,
Spurious Posthumous,
Spurious was Spurious,
Was four Romans.

My husband was Perfidious,
He was Perfidious,
Five Romans.
 
Surreptitious, our son,
Was Surreptitious,
Six Romans.

Our cat Tedious
Still lives,
Count not Tedious
Yet.

My name is Finis,
Finis, Finis,
I am Finis,
Six, five, four, three, two,
One Roman,
Finis.

Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith (1902-1971): Tenuous and Precarious: Stevie Smith, from Poems (1971)
 

 
#Negresco hotel turned into help center for victims after #Nice #attack #PrayForNice #Nice06: image via RT Verified account @RT_com, 15 July 2016
 

Truck attack in Nice, France: What we know, and what we don’t: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 15 July 2016


More than 70 killed in Nice attack: what we know, and what we don’t know: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 15 July 2016


The front page of The New York Times for July 15, 2016
: image via The New York Times @nytimes, 15 July 2016
 

Witness to truck attack in Nice, France: “Nobody in the way stood a chance.”: image via The New York Times World @ @nytimesworld, 15 July 2016 
 

Les premières images de #Nice, après l’attaque: image via Le Monde @lemondefr, 15 July 2016


Attaque de Nice : sur les lieux, Eric Ciotti décrit: image via Le Monde @lemondefr, 15 July 2016


Des témoins racontent : « C'était comme au bowling »: image via Le Monde @lemondefr, 15 July 2016


Nouveau bilan de 77 morts: image via Nice-Matin @Nice_Matin, 15 July 2016

 
La une de Nice-Matin du vendredi 15 juillet : carnage à Nice, neuf pages spéciales #Nice06: image via Nice-Matin @Nice_Matin, 15 July 2016
 

INFO NICE-MATIN. Un Niçois d'origine tunisienne au volant du camion: image via Nice-Matin @Nice_Matin, 15 July 2016


Les drapeaux de la ville de Nice en berne ce vendredi: image via Nice-Matin @Nice_Matin, 15 July 2016


"C'était une soirée cool...": image via Nice-Matin @Nice_Matin, 15 July 2016


La Promenade des Anglais fermée pour une durée indéterminée: image via Nice-Matin @Nice_Matin, 15 July 2016


Le témoignage de cette femme qui aurait vu le camion fou dès 22 heures: image via Nice-Matin @Nice_Matin, 15 July 2016


Le pire drame de l'histoire de Nice ”: les réactions des politiques: image via Nice-Matin @Nice_Matin, 15 July 2016


Statement on the publication of a graphic video showing the tragic and graphic aftermath of the attack in #Nice
: image via NewsThisSecond @NewsThisSecond, 14 July 2016 

A picture taken on July 14, 2016 shows an aerial view of the Balkhash lake in Kazakhstan.  The Balkhash lake is one of the largest lakes in Asia and the 15th largest in the world. It is located in southeastern Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, and belongs to an endorheic (closed) basin shared by Kazakhstan and China, with a small part in Kyrgyzstan. / AFP PHOTO / PATRICK BAZPATRICK BAZ/AFP/Getty Images
 
An aerial view of the Balkhash lake in Kazakhstan. The Balkhash lake is one of the largest lakes in Asia and the 15th largest in the world.: photo by Patrick Baz/Reuters, 14 July 2016
 
A picture taken on July 14, 2016 shows an aerial view of the Balkhash lake in Kazakhstan.  The Balkhash lake is one of the largest lakes in Asia and the 15th largest in the world. It is located in southeastern Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, and belongs to an endorheic (closed) basin shared by Kazakhstan and China, with a small part in Kyrgyzstan. / AFP PHOTO / PATRICK BAZPATRICK BAZ/AFP/Getty Images

An aerial view of the Balkhash lake in Kazakhstan. The Balkhash lake is one of the largest lakes in Asia and the 15th largest in the world.: photo by Patrick Baz/Reuters, 14 July 2016

4 comments:

TC said...

Who Killed Brown Owl?

On The Promenade of the English

"How, one is left to ask in horror, can one civilization inflict such pain upon another, in the name of an ideology, so routinely as to make such acts of mass violence seem almost commonplace?"

The Ride of the Valkyries

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Great post Tom, from Maori warriors to tricolor of jet trails above L'Arc de Triomphe to last night's carnage in Nice . . . Bastille Day will never be the same,

Hazen said...

Tom, Those links to Vietnam are, as we used to say, right on. The painful fact is that there’s no statute of limitations on the blowback of anybody’s empire. Atrocities of another century lead to atrocities today. Nobody forgets anything. It’s never over. The casual terror of colonial armies becomes late or soon the cause of some individual’s bloody act of revenge—Apocalypse Whenever. This isn’t the end of the world; it just feels like it.

TC said...

Thanks, fellows. Bastille day will never be the same. Ou sont les neiges. Demonstrations of bellicosity among the Gauls always have that same element of empty theatricality one gets from the bombastic rhetoric, the pronunciation snobbism, in fact everything else we are supposed to believe has to do with their Invention of Culture (in the form of the croissant was it then?), and their Valour and Courage as a people, exhibited wonderfully in the heroic scuttling of the fleet at Toulon. When the Turtle goes to his Vocabulary of Outrage, reaches in deep and pulls out one of those beautiful Gallic abstract concepts, like "Monstrosity!", you've got to know nothing ever changes.

Fifty years ago now I spent two months (July / August '66) in the high country above Nice, in a stone cottage perched on a hillside directly across a steep gorge from another ridge where there were cottages occupied by Tunisian migrant workers. By night the mistral wafted their radio music across the gorge.

Last night both Drumpf and Hildebeest were beating the drum for a Declaration of War in the Morning, against... well, whoever.

Today it turned out there wasn't even a Plausible Whoever, as the perp was a whack Tunisian with no radical political affiliation and a rap sheet that ran to one traffic stop for road rage, period. He'd been away from Tunisia for four years. There had been that beach blast targeting tourists some years back, no doubt he knew about that. But then, so did the whole world, if it was paying attention.

When living in the region I learned to avoid that tourist stretch of holiday plage down front of the swank white hotels. Being run over by a speeding truck on that slice of expensive frontage can't have been any fun at all. But then I feel exactly the same way about being run over by a speeding jetta here on a murican thoroughfare, and so far nobody has stepped up to declare war over that.

Haven, thanks for your good thoughts. Nobody forgets anything. It’s never over.