Short Walks

I stood on a hill and I saw the Old approaching, but it came as the New.

            It hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before and stank of new smells of decay which no one had ever smelt before.

            The stone that rolled past was the newest invention and the screams of the gorillas drumming on their chests set up to be the newest musical composition.

            Everywhere you could see open graves standing empty as the New advanced on the capital.

            Round about stood such as inspired terror, shouting: Here comes the New, it’s all new, salute the New, be new like us! And those who heard, heard nothing but their shouts, but those who saw, saw such as were not shouting.

            So the Old strode in disguised as the New, but it brought the New with it in its triumphal procession and presented it as the Old.

            The New went fettered and in rags; they revealed its splendid limbs.

            And the procession moved through the night, but what they thought was the light of dawn was the light of fires in the sky. And the cry: Here comes the New, it’s all new, salute the New, be new like us! would have been easier to hear if all had not been drowned in a thunder of guns.

Brecht, Bertolt. “Parade of the Old New.” 1939. Poems, Part Three: 1938-1956, translated by John Willett, edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, Eyre Methuen, 1976, p. 323.

Link here.

Link here.

My review of Jacob Edmond’s Make It the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media is out on Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. Many thanks to the editor, Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, for the opportunity.

Divya Victor. Fathom. At one time, this meant “to embrace with arms wide open.” At another time, this became a unit of measurement— a length of six feet. At yet another time, this came to mean “understanding” or “measurability,” or its inverse: unfathomable depths were meanings that could not be reached by using one’s own body as a unit of measurement. You should imagine now a woman with arms wide open diving into the Pacific Ocean, measuring it with her own body— unfathomable phantom— she a pantoum, a pun.

Bertolt Brecht. For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do not sit at golden tables. Methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work. New problems appear and demand new methods. Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new.