One held the knife another the sword and I held your hand to warm my hand.
My love, my love, I'll speak to you now about the time of joy, about freedom. My love, my love, in the bitter country the north wind will stop blowing, the sky will clear.
The moon is blood-stained the sun is dark and in the night I wait for the sky to open again.
My love, my love, I'll speak to you now about the time of joy, about freedom. My love, my love, in the bitter country the north wind will stop blowing, the sky will clear.
Greek composer, Mikos Theodorakis, once said that a song is more powerful than any tank. Throughout his career, he has continued to uplift the world of sorrow with his musical compositions, often sung by Maria Farandouri.
A few days ago, friend and poet, Lousie Landes Levi, sent me some poems from her collection Banana Baby. I was taken by her evocative poem, "Herat," as the prelude. Herat is a city located in Afganistan Louise visited on her many travels. Once the center of the Persian civilization, Herat is a city of poets renowned for its long lineage of poetry and music. During the Taliban era, poets met secretly including a women's "Sewing Circle." One of the members of this clandistine writing group was the young poet, Nadia Anjuman, an emerging talent whose first book, Dark Flower,promised a distinguished career. Shortly after the publication of her book, at the age of 25, she was reputedly murdered by her husband after an argument.
Which plunderer’s hand ransacked the pure gold statute of your dreams/In this horrendous storm? --Nadia Anjuman, "Strands of Steel"
Louise's poem, "Herat" instilled in me a longing to look more closely at some contemporary poetry from the Middle East. Today bearing a heavy heart, with the growing escalation of violence in the Middle East, the only thing of personal solace I could think of was to connect to these disembodied voices. As this state of mind happens to coincide with an assignment this week at Marlboro's Grad Center to create a podcast, I'll be reading some poems I located on the internet by Mahmoud Darwish (Palestine), Ahmad Shamlu (Iran), Wadih Sa'adeh (Lebanon) and a few other pieces. Somehow, they are all interconencted in their intense yearning for a paradise that all of us can never return to except in our imaginations.
The reality of war hasn't changed much over the centuries, has it? I first heard the following poem set to music by Anne Waldman.
Heaven was pitiless. It sent down confusion and separation. Earth was pitiless. It brought me to birth in such a time. War was everywhere. Every road was dangerous. Soldiers and civilians everywhere Fleeing death and suffering. Smoke and dust clouds obscured the land Overrun by the ruthless Tatar bands. Our people lost their will power and integrity. I can never learn the ways of the barbarians. I am daily subject to violence and insult. I sing one stanza to my lute and a Tatar horn. But no one knows my agony and grief.
TS’AI YEN (ca. 200)
From Kenneth Rexroth's translations from the Chinese 18 VERSES SUNG TO A TATAR REED WHISTLE
I took this snapshot of Harry in October of 1987 while I was either visiting or staying in Allen Ginsberg's East 12th St Apartment. That year I visited often as my mother, Olga was dying of liver cancer. Every other month I would fly into La Guardia from Boulder to visit her staying one or two nights on Allen's living room futon on my way to and from Vermont. Here Harry is with two young friends showing them something with a microphone in the same room.
Click on the link above to hear Harry lecturing on Native American Cosmologies, a highly ranked archive.org presentation from the Naropa Archive available on the archive.org site.
Allen Ginsberg would have been 80 years old today. Nearly a decade after his death (the same day his teacher Chogyam Trungpa died), Allen continues to inspire and irritate with his signature combination of candor and wholehearted compassion through his enduring legacy. Poet, teacher, friend, Buddhist practitioner, political avatar, Ginsberg remains one of the great American minds in promoting a saner world.
Today by coincidence is also the birth of the Buddha celebrated universally as a day when one's actions and thoughts are multiplied millions of times. So, think positive thoughts, write a poem, reflect kindly on the bard who inspired so many of us.
Five A.M.
Elan that lifts me above the clouds into pure space, timeless, yea eternal Breath transmuted into words Transmuted back to breath in one hundred two hundred years nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars, chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork of the mind -- but where's it come from? Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God? Nah, don't believe it, you'll get entangled in Heaven or Hell -- Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night flooding mind with space, echoing through future cities, Megalopolis or Cretan village, Zeus' birth cave Lassithi Plains -- Otsego County farmhouse, Kansas front porch? Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana -- coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas? Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street -- Where does it come from, where does it go forever?
Allen Ginsberg from Death and Fame
In this BBC interview, Ginsberg sings "Father Death Blues" which he says is the work he wants to be remembered for.
