Eric M. Murphy
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ericmmurphy.bsky.social
Eric M. Murphy
@ericmmurphy.bsky.social
1.6K followers 830 following 3K posts
Birds, Math, Literature, & Airpower. BoD Member @Strategy_Bridge, #Strategy, #Development, #NationalSecurity, #MilitaryAffairs. Repost is not endorsement. Nothing interesting to say.
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ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“Variations on Heraclitus”
Louis MacNeice

sententiaeantiquae.com/2021/01/13/v...
Even the walls are flowing, even the ceiling, Nor only in terms of physics; the pictures Bob on each picture rail like floats on a line While the books on the shelves keep reeling Their titles out into space and the carpet Keeps flying away to Arabia nor can this be where I stood — Where I shot the rapids I mean — when I signed On a line that rippled away with a pen that melted Nor can this now be the chair — the chairoplane of a chair — That I sat in the day that I thought I had made up my mind And as for that standard lamp it too keeps waltzing away Down an unbridgeable Ganges where nothing is standard And lights are but lit to be drowned in honour and spite of some dark And vanishing goddess. No, whatever you say, Reappearance presumes disappearance, it may not be nice Or proper or easily analysed not to be static But none of your slide snide rules can catch what is sliding so fast And, all you advisers on this by the time it is that, I just do not want your advice Nor need you be troubled to pin me down in my room Since the room and I will escape for I tell you flat: One cannot live in the same room twice.
November 11, 2025 at 3:08 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“The Bed”
A.D. Hope

chroniclesmagazine.org/vital-signs/...
The doctor loves the patient, The patient loves his bed; A fine place to be born in, The best place to be dead. The doctor loves the patient, Because he means to die; The patient loves the patient bed That shares his agony. The bed adores the doctor, His cool and skilful touch Soon brings another patient Who loves her just as much.
November 11, 2025 at 1:38 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“My Papa’s Waltz”
Theodore Roethke

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43330/...
The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother’s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.
November 8, 2025 at 8:06 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
I think I’ll change the titles on this little shelf each month.

I get to take students to Gettysburg this month, so here’s a little moment of American Civil War stuff I have handy.
November 4, 2025 at 4:07 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“Foresight”
Lincoln Kirstein

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln...
November 4, 2025 at 2:31 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
Sunday night is for football and “Carcassonne of the South Seas.”
November 2, 2025 at 11:10 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
I love @99pi.org’s podcast and @romanmars.bsky.social, and I’m glad they’re telling this story, but it reminds me of Stephen Bloom’s “Postville.”

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9...
October 24, 2025 at 8:55 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
I wonder if Stephen Miller’s view of new architecture at the White House is that it look like this:
October 24, 2025 at 8:39 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“Fish in the Unruffled Lakes”
W.H. Auden

allpoetry.com/Fish-in-the-...
Fish in the unruffled lakes Their swarming colours wear, Swans in the winter air A white perfection have, And the great lion walks Through his innocent grove; Lion, fish and swan Act, and are gone Upon Time's toppling wave. We, till shadowed days are done, We must weep and sing Duty's conscious wrong, The Devil in the clock, The goodness carefully worn For atonement or for luck; We must lose our loves, On each beast and bird that moves Turn an envious look. Sighs for folly done and said Twist our narrow days, But I must bless, I must praise That you, my swan, who have All gifts that to the swan Impulsive Nature gave, The majesty and pride, Last night should add Your voluntary love.
October 23, 2025 at 3:06 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
I haven’t done the math to know if this is definitionally hyperinflation…but it isn’t good.

Charts show Argentine peso to US dollar exchange rate.

Fiscal and monetary policy so janky it outruns the 2025 US dollar this way is an epic self-own.
October 22, 2025 at 3:21 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“Legal Fiction”
William Empson

library.harvard.edu/sites/defaul...
October 20, 2025 at 2:12 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
Look at these clowns, celebrating past glory. Since @dcunitedofficial.bsky.social let Olsen go in 2020, here are some other numbers:

5x seasons
4x head coaches
4x GMs
2x wooden spoons
0x playoff appearances
~120 DIFFERENT players

The GM, head coach, and players are not the problem. #SellTheTeam
October 19, 2025 at 12:44 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“Waterfalls”
Vernon Watkins

allpoetry.com/poem/1508852...
Always in that valley in Wales I hear the noise Of waters falling. There is a clump of trees We climbed for nuts; and high in the trees the boys Lost in the rookery’s cries Would cross, and branches cracking under their knees Would break, and make in the winter wood new gaps. The leafmould covering the ground was almost black, But speckled and striped were the nuts we threw in our caps, Milked from split shells and cups, Secret as chestnuts when they are tipped from a sack, Glossy and new. Always in that valley in Wales I hear that sound, those voices. They keep fresh What ripens, falls, drops into darkness, fails, Gone when dawn shines on scales, And glides from village memory, slips through the mesh, And is not, when we come again. I look: Voices are under the bridge, and that voice calls, Now late, and answers; then, as the light twigs break Back, there is only the brook reminding the stones where, under a breath, it falls.
October 18, 2025 at 9:41 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
Looking forward to cracking open this new arrival from @iantb.bsky.social.
October 18, 2025 at 9:29 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“On a Portrait of a Deaf Man”
John Betjeman

allpoetry.com/On-A-Portrai...
The kind old face, the egg-shaped head, The tie, discretely loud, The loosely fitting shooting clothes, A closely fitting shroud. He liked old city dining rooms, Potatoes in their skin, But now his mouth is wide to let The London clay come in. He took me on long silent walks In country lanes when young. He knew the names of ev'ry bird But not the song it sung. And when he could not hear me speak He smiled and looked so wise That now I do not like to think Of maggots in his eyes. He liked the rain-washed Cornish air And smell of ploughed-up soil, He liked a landscape big and bare And painted it in oil. But least of all he liked that place Which hangs on Highgate Hill Of soaked Carrara-covered earth For Londoners to fill. He would have liked to say goodbye, Shake hands with many friends, In Highgate now his finger-bones Stick through his finger-ends. You, God, who treat him thus and thus, Say "Save his soul and pray." You ask me to believe You and I only see decay.
October 18, 2025 at 2:23 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“What Would I Do Without This World Faceless Incurious”
Samuel Beckett

www.best-poems.net/samuel_becke...
what would I do without this world faceless incurious where to be lasts but an instant where every instant spills in the void the ignorance of having been without this wave where in the end body and shadow together are engulfed what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love without this sky that soars above its ballast dust what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before peering out of my deadlight looking for another wandering like me eddying far from all the living in a convulsive space among the voices voiceless that throng my hiddenness
October 15, 2025 at 10:34 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“Vitamins and Roughage”
Kenneth Rexroth

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42802/...
Strong ankled, sun burned, almost naked, The daughters of California Educate reluctant humanists; Drive into their skulls with tennis balls The unhappy realization That nature is still stronger than man. The special Hellenic privilege Of the special intellect seeps out At last in this irrigated soil. Sweat of athletes and juice of lovers Are stronger than Socrates’ hemlock; And the games of scrupulous Euclid Vanish in the gymnopaedia.
October 15, 2025 at 12:31 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“Father and Son”
Stanley Kunitz

allpoetry.com/poem/8508845...
Now in the suburbs and the falling light I followed him, and now down sandy road Whitter than bone-dust, through the sweet Curdle of fields, where the plums Dropped with their load of ripeness, one by one. Mile after mile I followed, with skimming feet, After the secret master of my blood, Him, steeped in the odor of ponds, whose indomitable love Kept me in chains. Strode years; stretched into bird; Raced through the sleeping country where I was young, The silence unrolling before me as I came, The night nailed like an orange to my brow. How should I tell him my fable and the fears, How bridge the chasm in a casual tone, Saying, "The house, the stucco one you built, We lost. Sister married and went from home, And nothing comes back, it's strange, from where she goes. I lived on a hill that had too many rooms; Light we could make, but not enough of warmth, And when the light failed, I climbed under the hill. The papers are delivered every day; I am alone and never shed a tear." At the water's edge, where the smothering ferns lifted Their arms, "Father!" I cried, "Return! You know The way. I’ll wipe the mudstains from your clothes; No trace, I promise, will remain. Instruct You son, whirling between two wars, In the Gemara of your gentleness, For I would be a child to those who mourn And brother to the foundlings of the field And friend of innocence and all bright eyes. 0 teach me how to work and keep me kind." Among the turtles and the lilies he turned to me The white ignorant hollow of his face.
October 13, 2025 at 6:36 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“History”
Robert Penn Warren

www.vqronline.org/summer-1935/...

(I can’t find a version of the poem this side of a paywall. Alas.)
October 13, 2025 at 1:32 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
October 12, 2025 at 12:35 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
It’s a matter of information. If the rule is to always include the serial comma, its absence conveys information. We get more clarity. God knows we could use a little clarity.
October 11, 2025 at 11:38 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
I think I’ll change the titles on this little shelf each month.

I’m a little late this month. Government shutdowns, having to turn someone else’s concept of a plan into an actual plan, etc., have interfered.

So here’s some grand stategerizationing.
October 8, 2025 at 11:06 PM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
I agree.
October 7, 2025 at 2:49 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
“Inniskeen Road: July Evening”
Patrick Kavanagh

allpoetry.com/Inniskeen-Ro...
The bicycles go by in twos and threes - There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn to-night, And there's the half-talk code of mysteries And the wink-and-elbow language of delight. Half-past eight and there is not a spot Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown That might turn out a man or woman, not A footfall tapping secrecies of stone. I have what every poet hates in spite Of all the solemn talk of contemplation. Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight Of being king and government and nation. A road, a mile of kingdom, I am king Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.
October 7, 2025 at 1:08 AM
ericmmurphy.bsky.social
Fun note:

I first looked for the book at the public library, using a card catalog. There were two cards. One was filed under G: “Goldman, William…see Morgenstern, S.” The other, was filed under M: “Morgenstern, S…see Goldman, William.”

I shit you not. I friggin LOVE librarians.
October 6, 2025 at 10:05 PM