READING THE SHROPSHIRE STAR

Shropshire is a county in the west of England, bordering on Wales, famous for AE Housman's poem A Shropshire Lad. It is a rural county, with farming and tourism as the principal economic activities. The rolling hills Housman called blue remembered are now yellow with rapeseed. Far from being a land of lost content, Shropshire is a vibrant part of England, with a few big towns (Ludlow, Shrewsbury, Telford) and numerous small towns, villages and hamlets, populated by a welcoming population, almost exclusively white, of natives, holiday-home owners and retirees. One of the prettiest villages is Clun.

Clunton and Clunbury,

Clunford and Clun,

Are the quietest places

Under the sun.

There is a fine Anglican church in Clun, where playwright and 'angry young man' John Osborne is buried. One of his great characters, Archie Rice, an entertainer, says

Observation-is the basis of all art.

The Shropshire Star offers a weekly compendium of multiple observations, local, national and international, in berliner format, costing eighty pence for the Saturday edition. The Saturday 15th April edition leads with the Roman Catholic Bishop of Shrewsbury bemoaning the weakening of the Christian festival of Easter, as he observes it, in the marketing of a chocolate egg hunt at a Shropshire National Trust property. The Bishop acknowledges that

a recent survey of national opinion also produced some confusing results as to what the British people believe about Christ's resurrection and the life of the world to come.

This story appears beside a front-page photo of well-known pop singer and sybarite Rod Stewart, who is due to play a concert locally. There's news of a coach fire due to overheated brakes and of the threat to a Women's Unit at Telford Hospital. Features and ads abound, telling of the county's tourist activities, in particular over Easter weekend, a classic time for family holidays. There was an ATM ram-raided from the post office in Malvern, half of Shrewsbury's town councillors plan to step down ahead of next month's election, while Telford councillors were advised to desist from tweeting

if you are angry, tired or in a bad mood.

The most (in)famous tweeter today, Donald Trump, features in an opinion piece by Nigel Hastilow, where the commentator nails the hypocrisy of recent responses to warmongering in Syria.

A child blown to smithereens by a barrel bomb, a vacuum bomb or a cluster bomb is just as dead as a child left with no outward blemishes who is killed by inhaling sarin gas.

That sentence appears in bold in the column. Nigel Hastilow comes back

to the question of why some weapons are unacceptable when it's OK to use others.

For that column and its insights alone, it's worth reading The Shropshire Star. It has the nuanced multiplicity of the local and regional, presenting sophisticated thinking far from the homogeneity of the metropolitan media and the crass uniformity of the on-line world.

Let's hear it for proximity.

Where else but in The Shropshire Star would you find ads for MANBAT, a funeral directors, shot-, bead- and grill blasting services, a report of the sighting of two rare, white squirrels near Shifnal and a review of a rock-gig by Kasabian that was so special it

probably won't happen again.

Not to mention astute political commentary, that shows more moral imagination than a slew of broadsheets and global on-line news channels, owned by the an incestuous cabal of overly rich people.

www.shropshirestar.com

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WHAT UK FIXED TERM PARLIAMENT?

The UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, went on a walking holiday in Wales, then came back to London and announced a general election in her country. Something fresh in the Welsh air perhaps? Or an Easter epiphany? Neither. Simply power politics at play, in the mother of all parliaments.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition British Labour Party, has already said he favours an election, so he and the majority of his fellow opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) will vote in favour of overturning the Fixed Term Parliaments' Act, which was meant to spare citizens the ordure of electioneering and the boredom of voting, while securing stability at levels of governance and administration, even though the civil service and the large corporations run the UK, more a permanent government than a fixed-term one.

The MPs' vote takes place today (19.4.2017) and Theresa May will have her way. Voters in the UK will face towards the 8^th June general election with dread, fear and some excitement. Many will echo the discontent voiced by Bristol resident Brenda, who groaned 'not another one'. And, no, the parliamentarians are not joking.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2017/apr/18/does-brenda-from-bristol-have-the-best-reaction-to-the-election-news-video

Exactly why Theresa May pulled an election bunny out of her Easter bonnet is revealed by a consideration of her position, as she leads the UK negotiations to leave the European Union (EU). She knows that delivering on the two big elements: full control of immigration and disengagement from the European market; is not wholly feasible. Compromise will be required in the face of pressures from the European Union, from her own civil service and the major corporations who make profits in the UK and other countries in Europe. She needs more seats on her team, so that when things get sticky, she can tell her hard-core Euro-sceptics to sit on their hands, while she accepts the support of her own newly-elected acolytes on the government benches in Westminster.

This is the kind of move that makes UK subjects who voted for Brexit nervous. If the Fixed Term Parliaments' Act can be by-passed as neatly as a traffic accident on the M25 round London, then what's to stop Theresa May and others from pulling a similar stunt on the actuality of Brexit?

All of this should give some hope to opposition parties, but, political matters being so Brexit-spancilled at present, all the opposition parties can do is dance around the May pole and finish up pretty much where they started, which for the Liberal Democrats means a few extra seats and a notion of yet another weakly-glimmering false dawn and, for the British Labour Party, a full-blown reality annihilation following the virtual one the party has been living through for months.

It's hard to make predictions, beyond likely a hefty increase in seats for Tories, a few more for the Liberal Democrats, a thumping loss for Jeremy Corbyn and his colleagues, the Scottish Nationalists taking a small dip, mainly due to election fatigue, and Nigel Farage's farrago, UKIP, gone altogether, because they're wannabe Tories anyway.

Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, (do we hear Theresa May call 'where?') attempts to forge a legislative assembly, with a functioning executive, from the base metal conjured out of the most recent election (Brendas across all six counties of the region are scunnered with the politicking) are likely to be deferred/postponed/kicked wildly into touch. Subjects and citizens alike will wait. Yet again.

Because nothing is ever fixed or permanent, when it comes to power and the terms on which it serves itself, first and foremost. Theresa May returned from her walking holiday in Wales, kept her hiking boots on and trod the people’s interests into the mud round Westminster, raised two fingers to stability, while lilting in a lyrical Welsh brogue

Theresa May yn ei wneud wrth iddi ewyllysiau.

Theresa May do as she will.

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READING A POEM A DAY 13 12.4.2017

TO GO TO LVOV

By Adam Zagajewski. Translated by Renata Gorczynski

To go to Lvov. Which station

for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew   

gleams on a suitcase, when express

trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave   

in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September   

or in March. But only if Lvov exists,

if it is to be found within the frontiers and not just   

in my new passport, if lances of trees

—of poplar and ash—still breathe aloud   

like Indians, and if streams mumble

their dark Esperanto, and grass snakes like soft signs   

in the Russian language disappear

into thickets. To pack and set off, to leave   

without a trace, at noon, to vanish

like fainting maidens. And burdocks, green   

armies of burdocks, and below, under the canvas   

of a Venetian café, the snails converse

about eternity. But the cathedral rises,

you remember, so straight, as straight

as Sunday and white napkins and a bucket   

full of raspberries standing on the floor, and   

my desire which wasn’t born yet,

only gardens and weeds and the amber

of Queen Anne cherries, and indecent Fredro.   

There was always too much of Lvov, no one could   

comprehend its boroughs, hear

the murmur of each stone scorched

by the sun, at night the Orthodox church’s silence was unlike

that of the cathedral, the Jesuits

baptised plants, leaf by leaf, but they grew,

grew so mindlessly, and joy hovered   

everywhere, in hallways and in coffee mills   

revolving by themselves, in blue   

teapots, in starch, which was the first   

formalist, in drops of rain and in the thorns

of roses. Frozen forsythia yellowed by the window.   

The bells pealed and the air vibrated, the cornets   

of nuns sailed like schooners near   

the theatre, there was so much of the world that

it had to do encores over and over,

the audience was in frenzy and didn’t want

to leave the house. My aunts couldn’t have known   

yet that I’d resurrect them,   

and lived so trustfully; so singly;   

servants, clean and ironed, ran for   

fresh cream, inside the houses   

a bit of anger and great expectation, Brzozowski   

came as a visiting lecturer, one of my   

uncles kept writing a poem entitled Why,

dedicated to the Almighty, and there was too much   

of Lvov, it brimmed the container,   

it burst glasses, overflowed   

each pond, lake, smoked through every   

chimney, turned into fire, storm,   

laughed with lightning, grew meek,   

returned home, read the New Testament,

slept on a sofa beside the Carpathian rug,

there was too much of Lvov, and now   

there isn’t any, it grew relentlessly

and the scissors cut it, chilly gardeners   

as always in May, without mercy,   

without love, ah, wait till warm June

comes with soft ferns, boundless

fields of summer, i.e., the reality.

But scissors cut it, along the line and through   

the fibre, tailors, gardeners, censors

cut the body and the wreaths, pruning shears worked   

diligently, as in a child’s cutout

along the dotted line of a roe deer or a swan.   

Scissors, penknives, and razor blades scratched,   

cut, and shortened the voluptuous dresses

of prelates, of squares and houses, and trees

fell soundlessly, as in a jungle,

and the cathedral trembled, people bade goodbye   

without handkerchiefs, no tears, such a dry

mouth, I won’t see you anymore, so much death   

awaits you, why must every city

become Jerusalem and every man a Jew,

and now in a hurry just

pack, always, each day,

and go breathless, go to Lvov, after all

it exists, quiet and pure as

a peach. It is everywhere.

I didn't go to Lvov, at least not the real place though Zagajewski's long, free verse poem offers the possibility that Lvov does not exist, except in dreams.

if it is to be found within the frontiers and not just

in my new passport

I spent a dreamlike week with the theatre makers at Gardzienice, between Lublin and Lvov on the Poland-Ukraine border and came to know

Frozen forsythia yellowed by the window.

Zagajewski's city is Lvov, Lviv, Lemberg, Lvivska, Львів, Львов, לעמבער, Leopolis: so many cities.

The poet repeats

There was always too much of Lvov, no one could

comprehend its boroughs, hear

the murmur of each stone scorched

by the sun,

There is rampage and rage with the arrival of war and violence

But scissors cut it, along the line and through

the fiber, tailors, gardeners, censors

cut the body and the wreaths, pruning shears worked

diligently, as in a child's cutout

along the dotted line of a roe deer or a swan.

Zagajewski saddens to realise

I won't see you anymore, so much death

awaits you, why must every city

become Jerusalem and every man a Jew.

He ends with an injunction that we visit the city, that 'every city', for it really is there; visit

at dawn, when dew

gleams on a suitcase, when express

trains and bullet trains are being born.

For, he asserts, this 'every' city is everyWHERE and advises us

now in a hurry just

pack, always, each day,

and go breathless, go to Lvov, after all

it exists, quiet and pure as

a peach. It is everywhere.

It persists. And that is is power and beauty, where

joy hovered

everywhere, in hallways and in coffee mills

revolving by themselves, in blue

teapots

This free verse exhortation visits a city and its history, to see the movement of people from residents to refugees, as much a part of a city as smog, now in Mosul, Aleppo and Sana. And who knows where tomorrow. Your city?

To go to Lvov. Which station

for Lvov









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