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| rocks and grass, ©fourteenth |
Edward Witten
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
5 November 2012
inner harmony
Edward Witten
4 July 2011
26 June 2011
Pinetree
Καὶ θυμᾶμαι τὸν ἥλιο ποὺ γελοῦσε
Πού γελοῦσε καὶ δάκρυζε θυμᾶμαι
Γιῶργος Σαραντάρης
Pinetree, water colour
for Michael Longley
As a child, they could not keep me from wells
And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.
I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells
Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.
One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.
I savoured the rich crash when a bucket
Plummeted down at the end of a rope.
So deep you saw no reflection in it.
A shallow one under a dry stone ditch
Fructified like any aquarium.
When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch
A white face hovered over the bottom.
Others had echoes, gave back your own call
With a clean new music in it. And one
Was scaresome, for there, out of ferns and tall
Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
Seamus Heaney
Personal Helicon
Όποιος ποτέ του δεν αγάπησε, θ' αγαπήσει, στο φως...
Γιώργος Σεφέρης
2 June 2011
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
Octavio Paz
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| Agora, Athens by Ben Hein |
“And then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils.”
William Wordsworth
from I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
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| Ben van den Bussche |
Interval of Joy
We were happy all that morning
God how happy.
First the stones the leaves and the flowers shone
and then the sun
a huge sun all thorns but so very high in the heavens.
A Nymph was gathering our cares and hanging them on the trees
a forest of Judas trees.
Cupids and satyrs were singing and playing
and rosy limbs could be glimpsed amid black laurel
the flesh of young children.
We were happy all that morning;
the abyss was a closed well
in which the tender foot of a young faun stamped
do you remember its laughter: how happy we were!
And then clouds rain and the damp earth;
you stopped laughing when you reclined in the hut,
and opened your large eyes and gazed
on the archangel wielding a fiery sword
"We cannot explain it," you said, "We cannot explain it,
" We find people impossible to understand
however much they may play with colors
they are all black".
George Seferis
translated by Kimon Friar
Διάλειμμα Χαρᾶς
Πεντέλη, ἄνοιξη
Εἴμασταν χαρούμενοι ὅλοι ἐκεῖνο τὸ πρωὶ
θεέ μου πόσο χαρούμενοι.
Πρῶτα γυάλιζαν οἱ πέτρες τὰ φύλλα τὰ λουλούδια
ἔπειτα ὁ ἥλιος
ἕνας μεγάλος ἥλιος ὅλο ἀγκάθια μὰ τόσο ψηλὰ στὸν οὐρανό.
Μιὰ νύμφη μάζευε τὶς ἔνοιές μας καὶ τὶς κρεμνοῦσε στὰ δέντρα
ἕνα δάσος ἀπὸ δέντρα τοῦ Ἰούδα.
Ἐρωτιδεῖς καὶ σάτυροι παῖζαν καὶ τραγουδοῦσαν
κι ἔβλεπες ρόδινα μέλη μέσα στὶς μαῦρες δάφνες
σάρκες μικρῶν παιδιῶν.
Εἴμασταν χαρούμενοι ὅλο τὸ πρωΐ
ἡ ἄβυσσο κλειστὸ πηγάδι
ὅπου χτυποῦσε τὸ τρυφερὸ πόδι ἑνὸς ἀνήλικου φαύνου
θυμᾶσαι τὸ γέλιο του: πόσο χαρούμενοι!
Ἔπειτα σύννεφα βροχὴ καὶ τὸ νοτισμένο χῶμα
ἔπαψες νὰ γελᾶς σὰν ἔγειρες μέσα στὴν καλύβα
κι ἄνοιξες τὰ μεγάλα σου τὰ μάτια κοιτάζοντας
τὸν ἀρχάγγελο νὰ γυμνάζεται μὲ μία πύρινη ρομφαία-
«Ἀνεξήγητο» εἶπες «ἀνεξήγητο
δὲν καταλαβαίνω τοὺς ἀνθρώπους
ὅσο καὶ νὰ παίζουν μὲ τὰ χρώματα
εἶναι ὅλοι τους μαῦροι».
Γίωργος Σεφέρης
30 May 2011
29 May 2011
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| 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
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| 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
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| 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
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
21 May 2011
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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