The Lone Chill On A River's Bank

*

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

September 1, 1939
by W. H. Auden

One of my eternal faves, posted again.

We were here, we there, we were everywhere, in the prickling of the grass, the first heat of the morning sun, the shadows of night, the vast sky. He was caught in the flexing muscle of it all, the drift, the floating world. He never expected to be caught isolated on the ledge, overlooking the valley. Landscape was everything. He could see in astonishing detail the lives spread out before him, the villages, the date palms. There was information available; the boy who wanted to write, the man caught in a deteriorating fog, the lone chill on a river's bank. And always there ware other voices, in the fabric of things.

Broken, disconnected, as so much of it had been, he thought the pen portraits would tell a greater story, the river of history, the false beginnings, and in a way all it meant was the community by the sea, the chapel, all the people in different stages of the life-cycle, the parents with young children, the teenagers, the catastrophe that had so nearly destroyed their lives. The bombs going off in the square. They were all scared now. Everyone had expected the world's terror to come here. The images of 9/11 played constantly. The destruction of the World Trade Centre towers was, if not seared, embedded in the national consciousness. Was the carnage coming here?

People adjusted to the greatest cataclysm, the Thai said their prayers and rebuilt Phuket to an even more bustling and glossy version of its previous self. Whole communities disappeared under water. Here the drunken ice fuelled arguments of the night break the early morning air. Still dark, they have not been to bed. He has to wait for the traffic to clear before crossing the road in the morning. Everyone knows everyone. The lyricism was lost, he was in the dead zone. He could see a couple of the local characters talking animatedly at the bar as he passed the pub door. The ten dollar jugs at the Glengarrie made it a popular watering hole. She was convinced he was too old for her.

The vividness of past streets always overlaid the present. We were in the morning air. We could feel the Asian streets all around us. Everything prickled now; as if we were on the edge of momentous change. The days rolled by. There was one tragedy after another. He emoted for each one, caught in the stories of loss. You know you're having a bad day if you see me coming, he was want to say. There were other things being borne out of this. He bossed his kids around and lived in a nest in the inner-city. Once you lock the doors you could be anywhere, he was also fond of saying. And so it was that he came to be there, in the centre of that untidy nest of deviates. And they died and they died, leaving him one of the few survivors.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/22/2522741.htm

Triumphant Bligh vows to fight financial crisis

Posted 2 hours 4 minutes ago
Updated 1 hour 15 minutes ago

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called victorious Queensland Premier Anna Bligh to congratulate her on the victory in his home state.

Last night, Ms Bligh made history when she became the first woman to be elected an Australian premier.

Despite a modest 3 per cent swing against Labor, the party is expected to hold 53 seats in the new Parliament.

The LNP will have 32 while there is likely to be four independents.

Ms Bligh says Queensland voters have given her a mandate to take charge during the financial crisis.

"I will take us forward and I'll take us forward with hope, with optimism and with confidence," she said.

Mr Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan's deep connections to the state party meant both men had a stronger interest than simply confirming who would be at the next Premier's Conference.

After the victory, Mr Rudd was on the phone and Mr Swan was in the tally room with high praise for the re-elected Premier.

"When the going got tough, Anna Bligh got going," Mr Swan said.

"Really what shines through is Anna Bligh."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/21/ali-khamenei-barack-obama-iran

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dismisses Barack Obama's overtures to Iran

Supreme leader responds to US president's video message with speech saying Tehran does not see changes in policy.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, today dismissed overtures to his country from the US president, Barack Obama, saying Tehran did not see any change in policy under the new US administration.

Khamenei's comments were the first high-level Iranian reaction to a video message released by Obama yesterday.

The message saw the US president reach out to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year.

Khamenei has the last word on major Iranian policy decisions, and the way in which the country ultimately responds to any concrete US efforts to engage it will depend largely on his say.

Khamenei said there would be no change in relations between the two countries unless the president brought an end to US hostility towards Iran and brought "real changes" in foreign policy.

"They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice," Khamenei said in his speech, broadcast live on state television. "We haven't seen any change."

In his video message, Obama said the US wanted to engage Iran and improve decades of strained relations.

However, he also warned that a right place for Iran in the international community "cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilisation".

Speaking to tens of thousands of people in the north-eastern holy city of Mashhad, Khamenei asked how Obama could congratulate Iranians on the new year and accuse the country of supporting terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons in the same message.

"As long as the US government continues the same policies and directions of the previous 30 years, we will be the same nation of the past 30 years," he said. "The Iranian nation can't be deceived or threatened."

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25223815-29277,00.html

Majority of experts say photos not Pauline Hanson

By Nick Leys

The Sunday Telegraph

March 22, 2009 03:01am

THE experts have spoken and, in a majority rule, the controversial pictures published in The Sunday Mail last week are, in all likelihood, not Pauline Hanson.

The Sunday Mail commissioned its own analysis of the photographs by two independent and internationally recognised facial recognition authorities.

Three other experts had their say during the week, meaning five expert opinions have now been delivered.

Three believed the images were not Ms Hanson, one was certain it was her and the fifth declared the images a 58 per cent chance of being Ms Hanson.

But seven days after the photos were published, including on this website, opinions are still divided over the identity of the woman in the 1970s photographic shoot taken by former soldier Jack Johnson.

Forensic anatomist Dr Meiya Sutisno of the University of Technology, Sydney, said the images were probably not Ms Hanson and her opinion was supported by RMIT University associate professor Gale Spring, an expert in forensic photography.

However, another equally qualified analyst, University of Adelaide anatomy professor Maciej Henneberg, said the images were "99.2 per cent sure" to be of Ms Hanson.

Prof Henneberg calculated a 0.8 per cent mathematical probability that two random people would have such an array of closely matching characteristics, including body build, eye colour, face shape, relatively high position of mouth, narrow upper lip, and wide, straight nose.

Global software giant NEC analysed the images using the same advanced facial recognition technology used by immigration and customs services. The technology splits facial features into small segments and applies an algorithm to match measurements. It shows a match of between 50 and 58.8 per cent with Pauline Hanson's face.

"It is more likely to be her than not," said Lance Heather, senior manager and biometrics specialist at NEC Australia's Melbourne headquarters.

Finally, Vision Control International, a respected software company that designs facial-recognition software for law enforcement agencies around the world, has declared the photos not to be of Ms Hanson.

Managing director John Hansen said the facial-matching algorithm indicates the probability is that the photos are not Ms Hanson.

Despite his initial insistence that the woman was a young Ms Hanson, Mr Johnson's recollection of the events from the mid-1970s became increasingly hazy during further questioning last week. Treatment for cancer has affected his ability to recall key details, he claims.

No other woman has come forward to identify herself as the woman in the photographs.

It remains unclear why Ms Hanson declined to address the issue when it was first put to her last Saturday, prior to publication, and 36 hours before she issued her denial that the photos were of her.

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