Circe and the Cyclops: The Land of the High and Mighty Cyclops (Homer)

From there we sailed on, our spirits at low ebb,

And reached the land of the high and mighty Cyclops,

lawless brutes, who trust so to the everlasting gods

they never plant with their own hands or plow the soil.

Unsown, unplowed, the earth teems with all they need,

wheat, barley and vines swelled by the rains of Zeus

to yield a big full-bodied wine from clustered grapes.

They have no meeting place for council, no laws either.

no, up on the mountain peaks they live in arching caverns –

each a law to himself, ruling his wives and children,

not a care in the world for any neighbor.

Homer: “Circe and the Cyclops”

RKS British Literature: Little John Joins Robin and His Merry Men (Henry Gilbert)

‘Hark ye, seven footer,’ said Robin. ‘We are outlaws, brave lads who have run from evil lords. There are twenty-two of us. If thou wilt join us, thou shalt share and share with us, both in hard knocks, good cheer, and the best we can reive from the rich snuffling priests, proud prelates, evil lords and hard hearted merchants who venture through the greenwood.

Henry Gilbert, “Robin Hood”, 1912

Circe and the Cyclops: In the Land of the Lotus-Eaters (Homer)

I was borne along by rough deadly winds

On the fish infested sea. Then on the tenth

Our squadron reached the land of the Lotus-eaters,

People who eat the lotus, mellow fruit and flower.

We disembarked on the coast, drew water there

And crewman snatched a meal by the swift ships.

Once we had our fill of food and drink I sent

A detail ahead, two picked men and a third, a runner,

To scout out who might live there-men like us perhaps,

Who live on bread? So off they went and soon enough they mingled among the natives, Lotus-eaters

Lotus-eaters

Who had no notion of killing my companions, not at all

They simply gave them the lotus to taste instead…

Any crewman who ate the lotus, the honey sweet fruit, lost all desire to send a message back, much less return,

Their only wish to linger there with the Lotus-eaters

Grazing on lotus, all memory of their journey home dissolved forever…

Homer: Circe and the Cyclops

RKS French Literature: Louis XI and His Manipulative Physician (Victor Hugo)

While feeling the king’s pulse Coictier assumed a look of greater and greater alarm. Louis XI watched him some anxiety. Coictier grew visibly more gloomy. The king’s bad health was the worthy man’s only farm. He made the most of it.

Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”

RKS British Literature: Who Shall Robin Hood and His Merry Men Beat, Bind and Set Free? (Henry Gilbert)

First, I will have you hurt no woman, nor any company in which a woman is found. I remember the sweet Virgin, and will ever pray for her favour and protection, and I will, therefore, that you shield all women. Look to it, also, that ye do not any harm to any honest peasant who tilleth his soil in peace, nor to any good yeoman wherever you meet them. Knights, also, and squires who are not proud, but who are good fellows, you shall treat with all kindness. But I tell thee this and bear it well in mind – abbots and bishops, priors and canons, and monks – ye may do all your will upon them. When ye rob them of their gold or their rich stuffs, ye are only taking only that which they have squeezed and reived from the poor. Therefore, take your fill of their wealth and spare not your staves on their backs. They speak the teaching of the blessed Jesus with their mouths. But their fat bodies and their black hearts deny Him every hour.

Henry Gilbert, “Robin Hood”, 1912

RKS French Literature: The Hellish Passion of the Archdeacon for Esmeralda (Victor Hugo)

And, as he thus sifted his soul to the bottom, when he perceived how large a space Nature had prepared there for the passions, he sneered more bitterly still. He stirred up in the depths of his heart all his hatred, all his malevolence, and he discovered with the cool eye of physician examining a patient, that this hatred, this malevolence, were but vitiated love, the source of every virtue in man, turned to horrible things in the heart of a priest, and that a man constituted as he was, by making himself a priest, made himself a demon. Then he laughed frightfully, and suddenly became pale again, in contemplating the worst side of his fatal passion, of that corroding, venomous, malignant, implacable love, which had driven one of them to the gibbet, the other to hell-fire, for her to condemnation, him to damnation.

Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): The Unvaccinated Bastards (COVID MEMORIES)

The Unvaccinated Bastards (COVID MEMORIES)

Flaunt your Trumpian civil liberation palaver

A PLOT

Against civil liberties

And your welcome may be a painful death

Of course, after you infect those who don’t believe in your party line

You low life selfish swine

Interfering with my own libertarian line of freedom of association

Kill your parents and grandparents

As thousands gasp for life in emergency army tents

YOU let the virus mutate

Isn’t that GREAT?

In Hell you’ll bake

For killing more than your selfish self

Isn’t it great to be stupid and ignorant

So go to the patio and swill down a beer and enjoy your “freedom”

Hoping for attendance at your funeral and those who you have murdered

Bravo for your ideals

Which we will celebrate at your grave

You call a mask a muzzle

Society will call you a puzzle

But you are dead and gone

Perhaps mentioned in bitterness in some pop song?

Robert K. Stephen

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds): POLITICIANS Do I Need Your Permission to Piss? (COVID MEMORIES)

POLITICIANS Do I Need Your Permission to Piss? (COVID MEMORIES)

You scold us politico hypocrites for gathering as humans

Then you threaten to fine us

We don’t follow your undemocratic orders all under the guise of emergency orders for the public interest

The interest that you fucked up knowing full well the warnings of SARS and recommendations made

No surprise as you also ignored countless warnings about the morass of long-term care

Perhaps your edicts have wisdom

But why edicts in the first place

Because you had the chance as politicians to avoid all these suspensions of liberties

And we had to pay the price for your historical incompetence

And listen to the sickening toady media urging

24/7 about untested vaccinations as the saviour of the world

The Fifth Estate with the integrity of a turd

Supposedly “informing us” as a herd

Ruminating on this on a walk in a public trail I confess it’s time to piss

But you’ve locked all public washrooms for public safety

So where do I go?

Should I urinate in my pants

And you go on a victory dance?

Robert K. Stephen

RKS French Literature: Parisians Accustomed to Public Torture and Hangings (Victor Hugo)

There was then no Gazette des Tribunaux; and as hardly a week passed in which there was not some counterfeiter to boil, some witch to hang, or some heretic to burn, at some of the numberless justices of Paris. People were so much accustomed to see at every crossway the ancient feudal Themis, bare armed, with sleeves turned up, doing her work at the gibbets, the whipping posts and pillories, that they hardly paid any heed to it. The aristocracy of that day scarcely knew the name of the victim that passed by at the corner of the street; and at most, it was only the populace that regaled itself with such coarse fare. An execution was a common incident in the public highways, like the baker’s braising pan or the butcher’s slaughter house. The executioner was but a sort of butcher of a little deeper dye than the rest.

Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”

RKS French Literature: Hanging Justice (Victor Hugo)

Justice in those days cared little about clearness and precision in the proceedings against a criminal. Provided only that the accused was hung, that was all that was necessary.

Victor Hugo, “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame”