‘Your Bitter Fountain’
Cassandra by Robinson Jeffers
© 2017 James LaFond
MAR/29/17
“…Truly men hate the truth; they’d
liefer
Meet a tiger on the road.”
Composed in 1948, Cassandra seems to reflect Jeffers realization that he was correct about the false sacrificial virtue of World War II—which some in retrospect have named as the war to save the Stalinist Soviet Union, the greatest murder machine of man’s most murderous century—and that just as his poetic warnings of that war were sneered at his suspicions surrounding the dawning Cold War would likewise be met with scorn. Jeffers own scorn is heaped on “religion venders” and “politicians” purveying their lies for the eager consumption of the idiot mases. As a reader in the twilight of the age he warned against his warnings against the lie-merchants that stoke the embers of perpetual war seem well-founded, as Americans clamor for their leaders to engage in military adventure in the name of security. Indeed, there seems to be something about War that calls many men to his priesthood.
ranger?
the greatest lie ever sold
dark, distant futures
on combat
z-pill forever
predation
logic of force
fanatic
song of the secret gardener
thriving in bad places
the fighting edge
by the wine dark sea
time & cosmos
night city
book of nightmares
taboo you
cracker-boy
fate
logic of steel
beasts of aryas
under the god of things
sons of aryas
the combat space
honor among men
the lesser angels of our nature
on the overton railroad
let the world fend for itself
advent america
the year the world took the z-pill
america the brutal
the first boxers
the gods of boxing
all-power-fighting
son of a lesser god
barbarism versus civilization
within leviathan’s craw
fiction anthology one
your trojan whorse
blue eyed daughter of zeus
uncle satan
solo boxing
hate
songs of aryas
masculine axis
triumph
the greatest boxer
into leviathan’s maw
wife—
winter of a fighting life
broken dance
sorcerer!
menthol rampage
when you're food
the sunset saga complete
orphan nation
SHINE, PERISHING REPUBLIC
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains; shine, perishing republic.
But my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught - they say - God, when he walked the earth.