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GEORGE SANTAYANA REVISITED'
When he was old and
ill
and could not live alone
George Santayana was cared for by the Blue Nuns
On the Via Santo Stefuno Rofundo,
An underliner ofCeline, a doter of Franco.
"I confess that I don't like the Jewish
Spirit, because it is worldly, seeing
God in thrift and success." He spent hours
Trying to read Pound's savage handwriting.
Gone the pique vest, kid gloves, and spats,
The Murillo madonna with mustaches
Watching football with a Greek perspective.
Blind as a bat, peering at paintings,
He had much to say about aesthetics.
He lived in a world full of rocks, trees, beasts,
Where his own thought was a form oflife,
Its meaning a form of satisfaction, and order.
He made the world congenial to his interests.
"There is no God, and Mary is His mother,"
Said Russell of his valuation of religion.
But he searched for evidence that mountains and pencils,
We and our memories, and time, exist;
And for their "essences," in a leap of animal faith.
Hating the "promiscuous bipeds that now blacken the planet,"
He sympathized with Soviets, Fascists, Catholics,
'Author'S Note: In memory of Jonathan Lieberson, from whose essay, "The
Sense of Santayana" the first line is quoted and material on G. S. derived.
