after years almost
innocuous desuetude
and put in the way

Sorry this is really hammered into place, but I just had to get innocuous desuetude into a haiku.

The words come from a speech by Grover Cleveland in a special message to congress on March 1, 1886, when he said:

And so it happens that after an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude these laws are brought forth–apparently the repealed as well as the unrepealed–and put in the way of an Executive who is willing, if permitted, to attempt an improvement in the methods of administration.

As I understand President Cleveland was speaking out on the Tenure of Office act that had been passed to make it illegal for a President to fire a Cabinet Officer.

The whole thing had been arranged to get President Andrew Johnson if he dared fire Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (This was the 1st President Johnson having taken office after Mr. Lincoln was shot just as the 2nd President Johnson took office after Mr. Kennedy was shot – Lesson: DO NOT HAVE A VICE PRESIDENT NAMED JOHNSON) and when the 1St Johnson DID fire the Secretary of War, he was impeached under the Tenure of Office act.

The impeachment failed in the Senate by 1 vote.

It wasn’t until Mr. Clinton got caught not-having-sex with an intern in the Oval Office was another President impeached.

And no one ever ever thought any President would be impeached twice but there you go.

So anyway, I guess some folks, 20 years after the 1st President Johnson, came after Mr. Cleveland because of the Tenure of Office act.

A law that Mr. Cleveland said, “… after an existence of nearly twenty years of almost innocuous desuetude …“

Desuetude or the state of being no longer used or practiced.

I kind like that.

Like Democracy in America almost innocuous desuetude .

often rarer word
breathes life into old image
words weighty enough

From the review, The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson review – a bravura feat by Emily Hall, when she writes:

There is a bravura self-confidence in Wilson’s choices. In the first two lines of the poem, Achilles’ wrath, which sent so many heroes to their deaths, is called oulomenēn. This long, vowelly, mouth-filling participle is usually translated by a much slighter English word such as “direful”, “ruinous” or “destructive”. Wilson’s choice of “cataclysmic” proclaims her independence from tradition and the acuity of her ear. The word is weighty enough, both aurally and in import; its association with deluges also prefigures, subtly, Achilles’ fight with the River Scamander that forms the metaphysical climax of the poem. Often a rarer word breathes new life into an old image, such as “canister” for “bucket”. I enjoyed the fresh, contemporary feel of the dialogue, especially army banter: “delusional behaviour”, “I am done with listening to you”; “master strategist”.

Ms. Hall askes and answers the most important question in the line of this paragraph of the review:

New translations also proliferated. There were nearly 50 English-language versions in the 19th century, at least 30 in the 20th, and a dozen or more already in the 21st. Some are outstanding: Richmond Lattimore (1951) brilliantly reproduced Homer’s rolling dactylic hexameters; the trench-traumatised Robert Graves (1959) evoked Achilles’ alienation and brutality; Robert Fitzgerald (1974) grasped the Iliad’s pace and acoustic beauty and Christopher Logue (War Music, 1981) its visceral impact. Robert Fagles’s translation (1990) has relentless forward drive and readability. Do we really need another? If it is this one by Emily Wilson, then we certainly do.