Myth of Arrival

I have been working on a translation of Federico Garcia Lorca's El nino mudo, what I am loosely translating as The voiceless boy. On doing some research on Federico I discovered that in 1933 he met Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Later, in Madrid, 1934, he introduced Neruda with these words, "I say you are about to hear an authentic poet, one who has forged himself in a world that's not ours, that few people perceive. A poet closer to death than philosophy, to pain than intellect, to blood than ink. A poet filled with mysterious voices that luckily he himself doesn't know the meaning of. A true man who does know that the reed and the swallow are more permanent than the hard cheek on a statue … He stands up to the world, full of honest terror, and lacks two things so many false poets have lived with-hate and irony. When he's about to condemn and raises his sword, suddenly he finds himself with a wounded dove between his fingers." (copied from World Poetry)

Having said that, the poem I present here is all Federico's. It was written in a jaunty, care-free manner, what he once referred to as his ditty stage of writing.

The Little Voiceless Boy

The little boy searched for his voice.
(The emperor of all the crickets had stole it.)
In a water drop
the little boy searched for his voice.
I do not want your voice for speaking with;
I will make a ring out of it
so that you may wear my silence
on your little finger.
In a water drop
the little boy searched for his voice.
(The kidnapped voice, far away,
was donning cricket’s clothing.)

El Nino Mudo

El niño busca su voz.
(La tenía el rey de los grillos.)
En una gota de agua
buscaba su voz el niño.
No la quiero para hablar;
me haré con ella un anillo
que llevará mi silencio
en su dedo pequeñito.
En una gota de agua
buscaba su voz el niño.
(La voz cautiva, a lo lejos,
se ponía un traje de grillo.)

The song is more of a dirge than a celebration. Change is happening in my life and that is always painful on some levels. Plus, there is more than enough sorrow in the world to warrant one more sad song, I think Pablo wouldn't care for the noise I pass off as jazz but he would understand a lament in any form. What surprises me isn't that a photograph survived of my trip to Corsica but that I once let my hair grow that shaggy. What a mop!

The Chinese Baiji Dolphin was declared extinct this week. The Week Magazine briefly noted:

"Goddess goes extinct" (Yangtze River, China) The Baiji, a freshwater dolphin know as the "goddess of the Yangtze," is extinct, scientists said this week. The latest search of the river produced no sightings of the species, which lived in the Yangtze for 20 million years. Even if a few survive, researchers said, there are not enough to perpetuate the species. The demise is blamed on overfishing, which left the dolphins with little food, and construction of the Three Gorges Dam, which caused environmental devastation across the watershed. (page 9)

I had been working on a song lately, not necessarily a lament but when I read this story I changed everything. Earlier this week, after much complaining to friends, I finally was able to make the music editor Audacity work in way that I felt I could use. All the music I sampled I found at Open Source Music; a home of copyright-free songs various artists post and allow the rest of the world to use. From all of that I created this.

"We are stranded on shore, watching the bountiful sea life disappear before our uncomprehending eyes. For many species, what we do — or don't do — in the coming years will make the difference between existence and extinction … [in the] words of William Beebe. 'The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconstructed, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again" (Richard Ellis, 2000).

Forgive us, Baiji, I hope to see you in the next world if you shall have us.

None shall put you back together again.
Damn the Three Gorges Dam. Damn the jaunty
oars, the boat's grunt, the mirth of fishermen.
She is gone. The Goddess of the Yangtze
is gone. Baiji! Baiji! Baiji! Baiji!
Stupid prophet. Stupid cup of wine. You
are too late; for twenty million years She
swam now not even a headstone, bamboo
or wave, will mark where the last, in sickness,
fell. The waters are empty where She swam.
The wine of my heart bitter. I am no
prophet; I could not see this. The Goddess
of the Yangtze is dead. Damn all I am.
Damn all we claim to be, to love, to know.

I wrote this poem back on December 19, 2006 under the title "a pretty piece of flesh, i." The title really had nothing to do with the poem except that it came from a line in Romeo and Juliet I liked and probably had hopes of using it somehow in the poem. Oh well. I had been thinking about Saharan camel trains, desert caravans, at the time, camping "out under the terrible full moon by myself on a wind-swept sand dune, calling the lonely spirits of the wilderness to me." For those who do not know the references, a "night ghast" is taken from the Anglo-Saxon word for ghost, "gāst." Ben Hur is the lead character from a 1959 movie. I use the word "consort" in the poem. At one point in Romeo and Juliet Tybalt slanders Mercutio by telling him, "Mercutio, thou consortest with Romeo" (3.I.39), which causes Mercutio to explode into rage. As it turns out, the word "consort" means both to "keep company with" but was an ancient slang term to also imply "having carnal relations with."

This video is a bit different than others I have tried in that it has background music to it. I understand that sampling a sound to create a beat (versus being able to play an instrument to create the same sound) is still frowned on these days by the establishment, so, in an act of full disclosure, here is where I got the music. The bass line is actually a nano-second of J.S. Bach's Suite No. 1, BWV 1007, G major (Prelude) (as performed by Yo Yo Ma) repeated over and over for a full minute. The cymbals are taken from the end of a Beastie Boys tune I found on a free, open source website, Triple Trouble (the Leo Nevilo remix). Finally, the trumpet is a riff I lifted off a Charles Mingus jam, Better Get It Hit In Your Soul, played backwards and distorted through a Wahwah special effect.

I have been consorting with the desert's
demons, things of air, lately. I know their
tastes, their humors and woes. Let the experts
scoff at these pale dreams, figments borne on air,
laughter at the eye's corner. Asleep I
am more grand than any phantasy. They
come; a few at a time, across sand, sky,
dune and under moon. They please me, they lay
down by my body. Passion is in birds'
breath, bat's wing; not in another lover's
words. Words! I am sick of all these words! True
delight is not a single word but herds
of night ghasts. Go. I'm the last of Ben Hur's
blood kin and I have no more use for you.

This is a repost of an older sonnet I wrote in the beginning of the summer. My friend Stephanie Dominique, from Las Vegas, wrote to me saying she enjoyed it. I tried tightening up some lines and added music in the background, I don't know if it worked (earlier experimenting with music drowned out my voice), so I hope she enjoys it a second time too. Cheers!

Today you sing, “I love you! I love you!
I love you!” And what of it? Did it keep
love at your side? Did any fat ghost who
wanders your whispered landscape stop to weep
or laugh or speak to you? We all possess
secrets. We all possess passions that sleep.
Who does not have the wild urge to caress
or be caressed? When you think of the deep
green roots you have thrust into me, moist dirt
of my heart, the tenderness, the distress,
all the subtle feelings of the desert
that run violent in me, did you once guess
who would pluck you from this moist soil and why?
Who would watch you wither and fade and die?