APRIL-MAY2008

 The Dole Queue, The Rocks of Bawn

AN OLD MAN ON THE RIVER BANK,
BY GEORGE SEFERIS

And yet we should consider how we go forward,
To feel is not enough, nor to think, nor to move
Nor to put your body in danger infront of an old loophole
When scalding oil and molten lead furrow the walls.

And yet we should consider to what we go forward,
not as our pain would have it, and our hungry children
and the chasm between us and the companions calling from the opposite shore;
nor the whispering of the bluish light in an improvised hospital,
the pharmaceuctic glimmer on the pillow of the youth operated upon at noon;
but it should be in some other way, I would say like
the long river that emerges from the great lakes enclosed deep in Africa,
that was once a god and then became a road and a benefactor, a judge and a delta;
that is never the same, as the ancient wise men taught,
and yet always remain the same body, the same bed, the same Sign,
the same orientation.

If pain is human we are not human beings merely to suffer pain;
that's why I think so much these days about the great river,
that symbol which moves forward amongs herbs and greenery
and beasts that graze and drink, men who sow and harvest,
great tombs even and small habitations of the dead.
That current which goes its way and which is not so different from the blood of men,
from the eyes of men when they look straight ahead without fear in their hearts,
without the daily tremor for trivialities or even for important things;
when thwey look straight ahead like the traveller who is used to gauging his way by the stars,
not like us, the other day, gazing at the enclosed garden of a sleepy Arab house,
behind the lattices the cool garden changing shape, growing larger and smaller,
we too changing, as we gazed, the shape of our desire and our hearts,
at the tip of midday, we the patient dough of a world that throws us out and kneads us,
caught in the embroidered nets of a life that was whole and then became dust and sank into the sands
leaving behind it only that vague dizzying sway of a tall palm tree.
Cairo,20 June 1942.
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Dear Friends - this will be the last edition of Handstand for some time. I regret this but I have to change the way I am living or expire of total exhaustion and tendonitis of the wrists,arms and shoulders.I copied out the above poem because those of us who discern the truth in the history of our times must continue both on the internet and in every "walk of life" as the rivers, to role forward nourishing the chasms and plains of our lands with life's truths ; until this filthy rabble of voluntary armies and mercenaries, enrolled from their economic enslavement, these slum armies, disappear. Armies who bolster the military commands of their officers and politicians with evil actions of fear and corruption of their own, rape and pillage, and as their and indeed OUR peers have satisfactorily contrived. (On April 3 the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million.)

Believe me this horrifies me, for it is true to say that The Handstand has carried during the last six and a half years many of the most important texts circulating on the Internet. I have had wonderful people sending me material - much more material indeed than I have properly been able to reproduce. So thank you, thank you all very much for supporting this International "Community Magazine" !! Among the most important pages is Elizabeth Martens interview on Tibet, which releases the details behind the present multitude of propaganda pages leading the foolish protest against China so adroitly manoeuvered among students and the middle classes by the USA and the gullible "good".The British were the predecessors in Tibet to the present rule by China - they left the population, as is customary wherever they were in the world, in economic poverty and behind a chasm of intellectual poverty . It is the theme we can recognise now world wide behind American imperialism. Where was it in Woodward's last book that we read of an US official with long list in is hands, of scientists and intellectuals that must be "removed" from Iraq?

Goodbye for now, and here are one or two of my paintings to illustrate this sad page.


Gaza, Israeli Incursion

Palestine 60yrs of Colonialism by Israel

An ancient pine a fool destroyed

Orientsal woman loses her land to deforestation - her curse

Yes this really was a cafe at Glen of the Downs, Wicklow

Memory of Freedom and Joy of our lives, present work to keep up my spirits

By the River Nore

Russian Ballet Dancers

French Pianist