{"id":857,"date":"2008-03-18T11:48:29","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T11:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=857"},"modified":"2014-03-06T19:15:37","modified_gmt":"2014-03-07T00:15:37","slug":"the-trump-of-doom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/?p=857","title":{"rendered":"The Trump of Doom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Strange are the fragments of mental flotsam and jetsam. This morning the word ‘trump’ surfaced (pretty much unbidden), and I dimly remembered a poem that ended “…Those boy-scouts practising again!”, but I couldn’t remember where I’d read it, or who was the author… so of course Google came to the rescue. The bit I specifically recalled (so Google tells me) was quoted in the lead-in to a story about Joe McCarthy<\/a> (and legislative pusillanimity) in Time<\/i>, 15 February 1954. The whole poem is Edith Sitwell’s Solo for Ear-Trumpet<\/i>, reproduced here (from fullbooks.com’s Miscellany of Poetry<\/b><\/a>) because it deserves to be better known, and might be meditated upon in these parlous times:<\/p>\n

SOLO FOR EAR-TRUMPET<\/p>\n

The carriage brushes through the bright
Leaves (violent jets from life to light);
Strong polished speed is plunging, heaves
Between the showers of bright hot leaves
The window-glasses glaze our faces
And jar them to the very basis–
But they could never put a polish
Upon my manners or abolish
My most distinct disinclination
For calling on a rich relation!
In her house–(bulwark built between
The life man lives and visions seen)–
The sunlight hiccups white as chalk,
Grown drunk with emptiness of talk,
And silence hisses like a snake–
Invertebrate and rattling ache….
Then suddenly Eternity
Drowns all the houses like a sea
And down the street the Trump of Doom
Blares madly–shakes the drawing-room
Where raw-edged shadows sting forlorn
As dank dark nettles. Down the horn
Of her ear-trumpet I convey
The news that “It is Judgment Day!”
“Speak louder: I don’t catch, my dear.”
I roared: “_It is the Trump we hear!_”
“The _What?_” “_THE TRUMP!_” “I shall complain!
…. those boy-scouts practising again.”<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strange are the fragments of mental flotsam and jetsam. This morning the word ‘trump’ surfaced (pretty much unbidden), and I dimly remembered a poem that ended “…Those boy-scouts practising again!”, but I couldn’t remember where I’d read it, or who was the author… so of course Google came to the rescue. The bit I specifically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2567,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions\/2567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oook.info\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}