A Late Bloom From a Master

W. B. Yeats reflects on his life in 'Among School Children'


The poem -- modest in length, if not in scope -- comprises eight stanzas of eight lines each and employs a rhyme scheme, abababcc, known as ottava rima. Although the lines -- which include a congeries of symbols, allusions, insights and memories -- represent a kind of extended reverie, not a word among them seems awkward or imprecise, let alone superfluous.

Prime Minister, Haiku Poet

Prime Minister, Poet

Belgium's new premier, Herman Van Rompuy is known as both a budget hardliner and an intellectual who writes haiku on a personal blog. Recent entries, translated from Dutch:

Voice
When a friend is dead
You above all miss his voice
But you still hear him

Winter
As the last leaf falls
Naked branches show themselves
Winter shows itself
Of course, he has a blog: http://hermanvanrompuy.typepad.com

Herman Van Rompuy, an intellectual with a penchant for writing haiku, was sworn in on Tuesday as Belgium's prime minister, triggering hopes that he could heal some of this country's bitter linguistic divisions.

Belgium is a curious case, a country I know almost nothing about: I know it is roughly half Walloon and half Flemish, that French and Dutch are the nation's two languages.

The 61-year-old Mr. Van Rompuy takes over a fragile government that has been hammered by a recent bank-bailout scandal and an economy sliding into recession.

Mr. Van Rompuy is from Belgium's Dutch-speaking majority, whose demands for greater autonomy have caused political turmoil here in recent years. But his selection was welcomed by French-speaking media and opinion makers.

In an editorial titled "Yes, He Can," La Libre Belgique, the French-language daily, called Mr. Van Rompuy a leader of "reason and heart," who understands the dangers of dismantling the state.

Note the slogan-headline: more of Obama's influence. Good to see glimmers of reconciliation and cooperation.

Mr. Van Rompuy's immediate priorities, his spokesman said, will be nailing down the details of a €2 billion ($2.8 billion) stimulus plan passed this month by the Belgian parliament and sealing the government's October deal to sell the Belgian banking and insurance arms of Fortis NV, to BNP Paribas SA of France for €14.5 billion.

Belgium shows up as # 30 on the CIA World Fact Book, below Egypt and above Malaysia, with a GDP of $ 376,500,000,000. Two point eight billion in an economy of 376 billion is less than 1%, not much by today's standards.

The longer-term issue on Mr. Van Rompuy's plate, however, is healing the rift between Dutch speakers in Flanders in the north and French speakers in Wallonia in the south. Flanders is wealthier and wants a confederal-state system like Switzerland's, giving each region more control over its tax revenues.

North Italy and South Italy share that sort of split.

Mr. Van Rompuy doesn't have an easy solution to Belgium's linguistic divide, said his spokesman, Dirk De Backer. Unlike Mr. Leterme, Mr. Van Rompuy has a reputation as a conciliator. "Talking, talking to each other, trying to understand each other" will yield a compromise, said Mr. De Backer.

One haiku called "Hair," reads, when translated from the Dutch: "Hair blows in the wind/After years there is still wind/Sadly no more hair."

I know that feeling.

Underwire and steel: two obits

In the newspaper itself, the Wall Street Journal had equal-sized headlines for the two obits; in the website, the Magidson obit had a smaller headline. I find her the more interesting of the two, though Boni has his own interesting facets.

After finding success manufacturing underwire bras, Shirley Magidson became a leading Southern California social activist.

An interesting juxtaposing of her life's details. She hand her husband, both Carnegie-Mellon grads, moved to California and set up shop in Los Angeles as Metric Products Inc. and at first manufactured wire axles that Mattel Inc. used to attach wheels to toy cars and balsa-wood airplanes. A contract from Helene of Hollywood, a competitor to Maiden Form Brassiere Co., brought a big order for underwires.

In addition to design, the Magidsons shared a passion for social justice, and their Beverly Hills home became a meeting place for progressive leaders. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stayed at their home shortly before he was assassinated, family members say. In his memoir "Spock on Spock," Dr. Benjamin Spock, a close family friend, wrote: "If anybody was in charge of the opposition to the war in Vietnam, it was Herb Magidson."

They were involved in more than civil rights: The family held fund-raisers for the Black Panthers, the Berrigan brothers, Daniel Ellsberg and numerous activist causes.

In 1980, Mrs. Magidson helped to found the Southern California branch of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the antinuclear group that shared a Nobel Prize for Peace in 1985. As a leader of the group, Mrs. Magidson journeyed to Stockholm for the awards ceremony. She also was part of a delegation to Peru to visit Lori Berenson, an American prisoner who became an international cause célèbre.

Mrs. Magidson studied Zen Buddhism in Los Angeles, became adept at flamenco dancing and doted on her grandchildren. In recent years, she had a hit with a sleep mask she patented.

Quite peripatetic. Boni was much more staid.

After receiving a doctorate at Carnegie Institute of Technology, Mr. Boni spent his entire career with Armco, based in Middletown, Ohio. He had a sheaf of patents for improved manufacturing processes and coatings. He was fond of citing a quotation attributed to Charles Kettering, GM's legendary head of research: "I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down."

Staying with one company wasn't unusual in mid-20th-century America. Yet he, too, had another side:

A man of diverse interests, Mr. Boni played drums in a touring Dixieland band as a teen, and taught himself cello. He attended a writing seminar at Kenyon College and published books of poetry. As he struggled in the past year with the leukemia that killed him July 1 at age 80, he put the finishing touches on a novel, his second. Titled "Why War?," it follows the fates of three young American soldiers in World War I.

"He was in the process of examining the meaning of life and facing death," his daughter, Leslie Boni, says. "It became so painful to him that we were at war."