The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
Marianne Moore
 |
| Joshua Tree by Sandy Redding |
31 May 2011
30 May 2011
29 May 2011
 |
| Mark Rothko No. 14 |
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
Gil Scott-Heron
The human being is flesh and consciousness, body and soul;
his heart is an abyss which can only be filled by that which is godly.
his heart is an abyss which can only be filled by that which is godly.
Olivier Messiaen
 | ||
| Osceola Refetoff, Giacometti Sculptures - MOCA - Los Angeles, CA http://www.ospix.com/ |
I Am The People, The Mob
I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.
Carl Sandburg
 |
| Sotiris Sorongas |
Σοφοί δε Προσιόντων
σοφοί δε προσιόντων αισθάνονται.
Φιλόστρατος, Τα ες τον Τυανέα Aπολλώνιον, VΙΙΙ, 7
Οι άνθρωποι γνωρίζουν τα γινόμενα.
Τα μέλλοντα γνωρίζουν οι θεοί,
πλήρεις και μόνοι κάτοχοι πάντων των φώτων.
Εκ των μελλόντων οι σοφοί τα προσερχόμενα
αντιλαμβάνονται. Η ακοή
αυτών κάποτε εν ώραις σοβαρών σπουδών
ταράττεται. Η μυστική βοή
τούς έρχεται των πλησιαζόντων γεγονότων.
Και την προσέχουν ευλαβείς. Ενώ εις την οδόν
έξω, ουδέν ακούουν οι λαοί.
Κ.Π. Καβάφης
(Από τα Ποιήματα 1897-1933, Ίκαρος 1984) But the Wise Perceive Things about to Happen
ordinary people things in the present, but
the wise perceive things about to happen.”
Philostratos, Life of Apollonios of Tyana, viii, 7.
Ordinary people know what’s happening now,
the gods know future things
because they alone are totally enlightened.
Of what’s to come the wise perceive
things about to happen.
Sometimes during moments of intense study
their hearing’s troubled: the hidden sound
of things approaching reaches them,
and they listen reverently, while in the street outside
the people hear nothing whatsoever.
C. P. Cavafis
27 May 2011
love is a tree
Love is a Tree
The intellectual is always showing off,
the lover is always getting lost.
The intellectual runs away.
afraid of drowning;
the whole business of love
is to drown in the sea.
Intellectuals plan their repose;
lovers are ashamed to rest.
The lover is always alone.
even surrounded by people;
like water and oil, he remains apart.
The man who goes to the trouble
of giving advice to a lover
get nothing. He's mocked by passion.
Love is like musk. It attracts attention.
Love is a tree, and the lovers are its shade.
Rumi
 |
| Paul Gauguin |
Get out of my walled infinity
Of the star circle round my heart
Of my mouthful of sun
Get out of the comic sea of my blood
Of my flow of my ebb
Get out of my stranded silence
Get out I said get out
Get out of my living abyss
Of the bare father-tree within me
Get out how long must I cry get out
Get out of my bursting head
Get out just get out
Vasko Popa
25 May 2011
"Look!" I cried. "Look at my face! Doesn't anybody know me?"
The Execution
by Alden Nowlan
On the night of the execution
a man at the door
mistook me for the coroner.
"Press," I said.
But he didn't understand. He led me
into the wrong room
where the sheriff greeted me:
"You're late, Padre."
"You're wrong," I told him. "I'm Press."
"Yes, of course, Reverend Press."
We went down a stairway.
"Ah, Mr. Ellis," said the Deputy.
"Press!" I shouted. But he shoved me
through a black curtain.
The lights were so bright
I couldn't see the faces
of the men sitting
opposite. But, thank God, I thought
they can see me!
"Look!" I cried. "Look at my face!
Doesn't anybody know me?"
Then a hood covered my head.
"Don't make it harder for us," the hangman whispered.
by Alden Nowlan
On the night of the execution
a man at the door
mistook me for the coroner.
"Press," I said.
But he didn't understand. He led me
into the wrong room
where the sheriff greeted me:
"You're late, Padre."
"You're wrong," I told him. "I'm Press."
"Yes, of course, Reverend Press."
We went down a stairway.
"Ah, Mr. Ellis," said the Deputy.
"Press!" I shouted. But he shoved me
through a black curtain.
The lights were so bright
I couldn't see the faces
of the men sitting
opposite. But, thank God, I thought
they can see me!
"Look!" I cried. "Look at my face!
Doesn't anybody know me?"
Then a hood covered my head.
"Don't make it harder for us," the hangman whispered.
Alden Nowlan was born into rural poverty in Stanley, Nova Scotia close to the small town of Windsor, Nova Scotia along a stretch of dirt road that he would later refer to as Desolation Creek. His father, Gordon Freeman Nowlan, worked sporadically as a manual labourer.
His mother, Grace Reese, was only 15 years of age when Nowlan was born, and she soon left the family, leaving Alden and her younger daughter Harriet, to the care of their paternal grandmother. The family discouraged education as a waste of time, and Nowlan left school after only four grades. At the age of 14, he went to work in the village sawmill. At the age of 16, Nowlan discovered the regional library. Each weekend he would walk or hitchhike eighteen miles to the library to get books, and secretly began to educate himself. "I wrote (as I read) in secret." Nowlan remembered. "My father would as soon have seen me wear lipstick."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alden_Nowlan
23 May 2011
Facing you I have seen the blood
of Spain rise up
to drown you in one single wave
of pride and knives!
Traitor
generals:
behold my dead house,
behold Spain destroyed:
yet instead of flowers from every dead house
burning metal flows,
yet from every hollow of Spain
Spain flows,
yet from every dead child rises a rifle with eyes,
yet from every crime bullets are born
that one day will find the target
of your heart.
You will ask why his poetry
doesn't speak to us of dreams, of the leaves,
of the great volcanoes of his native land?
Come and see the blood in the streets,
come and see
the blood in the streets,
come and see the blood
in the streets!
Pablo Neruda
|
we find...
Eyes open
eyes shut
we find
even in disgust
in the abyss and
in the boredom
we find.
Wols (Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, 1913- 1951)
 | |||||||||||||||||
| Henry Moore sculpture, photo by Timo Erkilli |
Man looks at everything in terms of human interest:
to such an extent
that he does not comprehend things for themselves;
to nature he is useless;
he uses it, without being able
to render it the least service.
21 May 2011
... the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes
Thank you, Olivier...
*
My faith is the grand drama of my life.
I'm a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith.
I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them,
make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz,
and paint colors for those who see none.
I'm a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith.
I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them,
make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz,
and paint colors for those who see none.
Olivier Messiaen
I am brutal, but I have, or did have, a mania for precision.—Valéry to André Gide
 |
| Pawel Pierscinski |
Ἔχω δεῖ τὸν οὐρανό...
Ἔχω δεῖ τὸν οὐρανὸ μὲ τὰ μάτια μου
Μὲ τὰ μάτια μου ἄνοιξα τὰ μάτια του
Μὲ τὴ γλῶσσα μου μίλησε
Γίναμε ἀδελφοὶ καὶ κουβεντιάσαμε
Στρώσαμε τραπέζι καὶ δειπνήσαμε
Σὰν νὰ ἦταν ὁ καιρὸς ὅλος μπροστά μας
Μὲ τὰ μάτια μου ἄνοιξα τὰ μάτια του
Μὲ τὴ γλῶσσα μου μίλησε
Γίναμε ἀδελφοὶ καὶ κουβεντιάσαμε
Στρώσαμε τραπέζι καὶ δειπνήσαμε
Σὰν νὰ ἦταν ὁ καιρὸς ὅλος μπροστά μας
Καὶ θυμᾶμαι τὸν ἥλιο ποὺ γελοῦσε
Πού γελοῦσε καὶ δάκρυζε θυμᾶμαι
Γιώργος Σαραντάρης
*
Brett Weston
The Thought Fox
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
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