Ater Xmas...EST et NON EST

I shall be incommunicado until after Xmas....at least. I shall still write my bleeding poem per week for peace, only I shall amend the prayer to incorporate "well being" also. We have a simulacrum of peace, now, only because the USA is to prostrate too launch a strike against Iran. I fear that the powers that be that listen to my poetic prayers for peace gave me what I desired, but I did not specify that the well-being of mankind should not be infringed in this quest for peace. I hate to think that peace is only achievable if we are too exhausted to lift our weaponry. Anyhow, I need time to think. Reading today in re Citi group: Robert Reich http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/11/citibank-scores.html Citigroup Scores If you had any doubt at all about the primacy of Wall Street over Main Street; the utter lack of transparency behind the biggest government giveaway in history to financial executives, and their shareholders, directors, and creditors; and the intimate connections the lie between Administrations -- both Republican and Democratic -- and the heavyweights on Wall Street, your doubts should be laid to rest. Today it was decided the government will guarantee more than $300 billion of troubled mortgages and other assets of Citigroup under a federal plan to stabilize the lender after its stock fell 60 percent last week. The company will also will get a $20 billion cash infusion from the Treasury Department, adding to the $25 billion the bank received last month under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. This is not a particularly good deal for American taxpayers, but it is a marvelous deal for Citi. In return for all the cash and guarantees they are giving away, taxpayers will get only $27 billion of preferred shares paying an 8 percent dividend. No other strings are attached. The senior executives of Citi, including those who have served at the highest levels in the US government, have done their jobs exceedingly well. The American public, including the media, have not the slightest clue what just happened. Meanwhile, more than a million workers in the automobile industry, along with six million mortgagees, and a millions of Americans who depend on small businesses and retailers for paychecks, are getting nothing at all. I must plan the future. I mean, even an old bird like me must now plan his future. This country has become a bear-trap, a punji pit, a cage for the unwary. Blah,blah,blah...I love America...blah, blah, blah. O.K. Now you have to look out for yourself. I am Ausonius, Decimius Ausonius - grammarian, rhetorician, soldier, poet, and confidant of emperors - and I stand in Gallia. I am at my place in Burdigala, and I feel the cold wind of Fall blowing from Alemania upon my leathery cheek.

I am writing a poem: It Is and It Is Not...the very title portrays my frame of mind, the quandary in which I find myself. For the present is so fallen, that no one reads what I write. I write for the future ages, thousands of years hence, when new continents churn the seas, and the clangorous conflicts of nations have given way to brotherhood. I am alone, even though there is activity just behind me, as the table is set for the mid-day meal. The people hovering about it appear as ghosts; the meat is a caricature, the wine dispirited, and the sweet desserts taste like the after-life of Egyptian burial chambers. I am alone.