Wednesday, March 4, 2009
SOLDIER CRY
(This was written as part of an installation piece for work that Joan Anderson has made to invoke the vast, implacable and timeless world of fallen soldiers. Reading through section VII accompanies the installation of two large image/effigies. At that point alcohol and meat are shared with the audience. The reading resumes with the last verses of section VI.
In the first performance, Barbara Dilley choreographed the installation; Mark Miller played Soprano Saxophone; I and Robert Spellman were readers, all under Joan's overall direction)
I
Heaven divides the world:
In dark and light,
In night and day,
In the living and the dead.
Only in the movement of sun, moon and stars
Do we know ourselves.
We know ourselves only as movements of fleeting clouds.
Beneath the vast bright sky,
The living dwell in their villages and homes.
In fathomless shadow,
The dead inhabit their silent towns.
Now the living surround the Eastern capital.
Now the dead surround the Western hills.
Though inseparable,
The living and the dead
No longer know each other.
In moments of joy,
They do not remember the other,
In bitterness,
They do not long for one another. (1)
II
The cold passes reluctantly from the earth and the retreating mists reveal an army stretched out for miles on the hills, asleep. A watery sun rises slowly and the landscape changes from pale gray to green. The army stirs. It trembles at the whispers of rumor. It casts its eyes upon the roads. (2)
III
With a groan, I start from sleep.
All the earth is on the march to war.
The rulers have commanded it. (3)
*
Heaven is high and far away.
The king’s business never ends.
I cannot stay to plant my crops
How will my parents and my children live?
Heaven is high and far away.
The earth below must always march to war.
When will it end? (4)
*
We pray for a sovereign.
We pray the sacrifices he commands
Bring peace.
Yet we long for home.
In what month will we return? (6)
No breeze stirs.
We must wait.
I look down the highway
And my heart is blank. (7)
*
Oh bright Heaven high above,
Shining on the earth below,
How our westward march
Has brought us to the empty plains
We have suffered cold and heat.
Oh the aching of an empty heart
Oh the poisons of bitterness.
Thinking of the ones who raised us,
My tears fall like rain in the sadness of my heart.
Though I long for life and home,
I cannot turn back.
Warfare drags me on. (12)
IV
The sweat of waiting, even in the silent cold, each frozen in his own thoughts, even those who make jokes and can’t stop talking, the rank smell of fear and dust, choking.
At the shout of command, there is no longer any time. Doubts dissolve in the sheer mass charge: arms taut, weapons held in front. legs pumping, screaming war cries. And then, charging, scrambling wildly down the hillside, amid the hail of arrows and bullets, there is a sudden moment where the clear bitter smell of crushed leaves, the exhilaration of running, and cold air pouring through nostrils is desperately alive, and it is impossible to imagine life will ever end. The enemies rise up like weeds before us. They are cut down. The work of killing begins.
V
Like a slowly moving flood gate,
Iron scraping iron,
The great hinge of battle opens.
A bow string snaps,
And there is silence.
Now time stops.
The white disc of a single cloud
Hovers in the pale sky.
Flocks of sparrows rise and wheel.
Red, yellow and black banners flutter.
Sunlight glitters
On steel blades and spear points.
Sword arms raised, mouths gaping,
Soldiers freeze.
An arrow stops in mid flight.
VI
Shining like diamonds in the air
The gods of war
Descend in a circle of hard light:
Seated on their steeds of wind,
Indifferent to all obstacles and enemies.
Radiant
They do not move.
Everything around them now erupts.
Soldiers forgetting all their names or home,
Charge forward as if there were no death.
They hurl themselves onto the iron teeth of war.
Wildly, they shout:
Seu Lhawang Damsang ride with me
Seu Thuchen Mongpa guide my arm
Tungsen Karma do not let me fall
Nyengen Deva deliver me.
Shinje Chogyal take me through the terrors of this world.
Now the living and the dead
Part.
The world of the dead falls into the black earth.
The world of the living bursts into flower.
VII
Soon behind us,
They rest in the soft earth on the hills
They, in tens of thousands,
The victors and the vanquished.
They have entered the dark world.
They are cut off from the living,
The tomb is sealed.
In their joy, they do not remember one another,
In their bitterness they do not long for one another.
(15)
*
The war gods have returned to their abodes.
The earth is gray.
Climbing to the ridge of a high mountain
I now look down on the capital,
Now lonely, and how still.
Palaces and houses burnt to ash.
Walls and fences broken, fallen down,
The royal names effaced from looted tombs,
Family gravestones crumble
As thorns and brambles clamber towards the sky.
I do not see old men or youths.
I turn aside: no straight road to walk
Through wasted fields.
I have been away so long.
I do not recognize the paths
Amid abandoned pasture lands.
A thousand miles without chimney smoke.
Thinking of the house I lived in all my life
I turn inward.
Alive or dead,
I cannot speak.
(16)
VII
In the torrent of existing,
The fires of endless war,
We have touched
The all- consuming heart.
The blazing sky touches this dark earth.
Our eyes are scorched.
Words have no meaning.
Parted,
The living and the dead
Hold the secret of fleeting love.
They do not know peace.
************************************************
Adaptations from:
(1) Mark Edward Lewis- The Creation of Space in Early China; SUNY 2007- p.123)(2) Stephen Crane- The Red Badge of Courage Chapter1, p.1)
(3)Arthur Waley tr. The Book of Songs:Grove Press:1301;(4)#152;(5)#151;(6)#150;(7)#149;(8)#139;(9)#133;(10)#148;(11)#146;(12)#143;(13)#141;(14)#130-1(15) Lewis- supra, p. 123(16) Cao Zhi, son of Cao Cao- Lewis, supra.-p.188
**********************************************
This fragment of Ariane Mnouchkine's splendor and intensity is part of the conscience of the above
Theatre du Sloeil- Les Atreides
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OahkdsfIPgg
In the first performance, Barbara Dilley choreographed the installation; Mark Miller played Soprano Saxophone; I and Robert Spellman were readers, all under Joan's overall direction)
I
Heaven divides the world:
In dark and light,
In night and day,
In the living and the dead.
Only in the movement of sun, moon and stars
Do we know ourselves.
We know ourselves only as movements of fleeting clouds.
Beneath the vast bright sky,
The living dwell in their villages and homes.
In fathomless shadow,
The dead inhabit their silent towns.
Now the living surround the Eastern capital.
Now the dead surround the Western hills.
Though inseparable,
The living and the dead
No longer know each other.
In moments of joy,
They do not remember the other,
In bitterness,
They do not long for one another. (1)
II
The cold passes reluctantly from the earth and the retreating mists reveal an army stretched out for miles on the hills, asleep. A watery sun rises slowly and the landscape changes from pale gray to green. The army stirs. It trembles at the whispers of rumor. It casts its eyes upon the roads. (2)
III
With a groan, I start from sleep.
All the earth is on the march to war.
The rulers have commanded it. (3)
*
Heaven is high and far away.
The king’s business never ends.
I cannot stay to plant my crops
How will my parents and my children live?
Heaven is high and far away.
The earth below must always march to war.
When will it end? (4)
*
We pray for a sovereign.
We pray the sacrifices he commands
Bring peace.
Yet we long for home.
In what month will we return? (6)
No breeze stirs.
We must wait.
I look down the highway
And my heart is blank. (7)
*
Oh bright Heaven high above,
Shining on the earth below,
How our westward march
Has brought us to the empty plains
We have suffered cold and heat.
Oh the aching of an empty heart
Oh the poisons of bitterness.
Thinking of the ones who raised us,
My tears fall like rain in the sadness of my heart.
Though I long for life and home,
I cannot turn back.
Warfare drags me on. (12)
IV
The sweat of waiting, even in the silent cold, each frozen in his own thoughts, even those who make jokes and can’t stop talking, the rank smell of fear and dust, choking.
At the shout of command, there is no longer any time. Doubts dissolve in the sheer mass charge: arms taut, weapons held in front. legs pumping, screaming war cries. And then, charging, scrambling wildly down the hillside, amid the hail of arrows and bullets, there is a sudden moment where the clear bitter smell of crushed leaves, the exhilaration of running, and cold air pouring through nostrils is desperately alive, and it is impossible to imagine life will ever end. The enemies rise up like weeds before us. They are cut down. The work of killing begins.
V
Like a slowly moving flood gate,
Iron scraping iron,
The great hinge of battle opens.
A bow string snaps,
And there is silence.
Now time stops.
The white disc of a single cloud
Hovers in the pale sky.
Flocks of sparrows rise and wheel.
Red, yellow and black banners flutter.
Sunlight glitters
On steel blades and spear points.
Sword arms raised, mouths gaping,
Soldiers freeze.
An arrow stops in mid flight.
VI
Shining like diamonds in the air
The gods of war
Descend in a circle of hard light:
Seated on their steeds of wind,
Indifferent to all obstacles and enemies.
Radiant
They do not move.
Everything around them now erupts.
Soldiers forgetting all their names or home,
Charge forward as if there were no death.
They hurl themselves onto the iron teeth of war.
Wildly, they shout:
Seu Lhawang Damsang ride with me
Seu Thuchen Mongpa guide my arm
Tungsen Karma do not let me fall
Nyengen Deva deliver me.
Shinje Chogyal take me through the terrors of this world.
Now the living and the dead
Part.
The world of the dead falls into the black earth.
The world of the living bursts into flower.
VII
Soon behind us,
They rest in the soft earth on the hills
They, in tens of thousands,
The victors and the vanquished.
They have entered the dark world.
They are cut off from the living,
The tomb is sealed.
In their joy, they do not remember one another,
In their bitterness they do not long for one another.
(15)
*
The war gods have returned to their abodes.
The earth is gray.
Climbing to the ridge of a high mountain
I now look down on the capital,
Now lonely, and how still.
Palaces and houses burnt to ash.
Walls and fences broken, fallen down,
The royal names effaced from looted tombs,
Family gravestones crumble
As thorns and brambles clamber towards the sky.
I do not see old men or youths.
I turn aside: no straight road to walk
Through wasted fields.
I have been away so long.
I do not recognize the paths
Amid abandoned pasture lands.
A thousand miles without chimney smoke.
Thinking of the house I lived in all my life
I turn inward.
Alive or dead,
I cannot speak.
(16)
VII
In the torrent of existing,
The fires of endless war,
We have touched
The all- consuming heart.
The blazing sky touches this dark earth.
Our eyes are scorched.
Words have no meaning.
Parted,
The living and the dead
Hold the secret of fleeting love.
They do not know peace.
************************************************
Adaptations from:
(1) Mark Edward Lewis- The Creation of Space in Early China; SUNY 2007- p.123)(2) Stephen Crane- The Red Badge of Courage Chapter1, p.1)
(3)Arthur Waley tr. The Book of Songs:Grove Press:1301;(4)#152;(5)#151;(6)#150;(7)#149;(8)#139;(9)#133;(10)#148;(11)#146;(12)#143;(13)#141;(14)#130-1(15) Lewis- supra, p. 123(16) Cao Zhi, son of Cao Cao- Lewis, supra.-p.188
**********************************************
This fragment of Ariane Mnouchkine's splendor and intensity is part of the conscience of the above
Theatre du Sloeil- Les Atreides
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OahkdsfIPgg
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Edward Avedisian
I met Edward Avedisian by chance at Max’s Kansas City when I sat down next to him at the bar. Otis Redding filled the air. “You know, “ Edward turned to me and said, “Ultimately what pop-music is all about is hiring someone to cry in public for you.” He watched for my response, eyes alert beneath his remarkably high forehead. I would come to know that ‘ultimately’. It was a regular conversational preface, because, as Edward later explained, it was his desire “to describe everything without reference to any convention.”
I ran into him often. He would sit, scruffy, restless, yet somehow detached, watching the crowd of artists, rock and rollers, drag queens, speed fueled denizens of Warhol’s factory ebb and flow, eddying through the smoky darkness around the famous, the rich and those who had drugs to sell. “Something for the head?” a small extremely handsome Apache, so sad and far from home, yet so hip would whisper as he passed by. Edward watched silently, then growled: “ Ultimately, all talk is crime.”
As it turned out, Edward was a painter of great distinction. Recently he'd been very famous, but now not so much so. He occasionally took teaching jobs at provincial universities where he holed up in a motel, ate acid, and generally tried to turn the minds of his students inside out. “It’s a big country, and the only thing keeping it together is television,” said Edward about his travels. Nonetheless, he lived well, had a small house in Chelsea and divided his non-teaching time exercising his lucidity on everything he encountered in bars, drugs and on his painting. “There are only two paths: decadence and spirituality. I have chosen decadence.” He had a wide circle of friends, but I got the impression that his unsparing, random insights made him familiar in many circles, but not a part of them.
Painting however remained his focus.. His pictures continued to explode in uncomfortable contrasts of wild pinks, excessive yellows, soft greens colors, wan blues, applied in blobs and swatches of varying densities and textures. They were simultaneously sophisticated and extravagant almost to the point of tastelessness. When the Metropolitan bought one, he was pleased. “Well, there I am up there with Velasquez and Picasso,” he shrugged. He thought that it was also somehow ridiculous, evidence that the prevailing standards had gone into serious decline.
Late one afternoon, when we’d met because he wanted me to help him sell a painting without his gallery knowing about it, we were walking through Central Park near the museum. “The great impetus in American art is ultimately to recreate the world at the time the artist’s mother was still a virgin. That’s why there’s always so much period recreation in movies and abstraction in art.” A lady swathed in mink walking an emaciated Chihuahua cut past us. “That dog belongs on a bun,” Edward snarled, and the woman, looked at him anxiously as she hurried away.
Usually however, I met Edward late at night at Max’s. Most of our talks took place as we walked, he to home and I to the subway nearby. One cold night, as we left the bar, a troupe of young men, with shiny hair ratted and teased, dressed in bright satin skin-tight pants, velvet jackets, strutted in teetering on alligator boots with two inch platform soles. Edward stopped and watched. “The point is, you could never run away from a mugger in those things. Don’t you think that ultimately they’re trying to magnetize some kind of violence they’ll have to submit to?”
Another night when it was hot and muggy night, you could almost feel the breathing of thousands of people moving torpidly on the streets or stirring in sweaty sleep. Edward talked about a movie he wanted to make called “The Ultimate Bar”. The characters in the film would be the ‘stars’ of a number of different kinds of bars: an Irish workers' bar, a pick up bar, a gay bar, a leather bar, an artists’ bar, a wall street hangout, and so forth. These people would meet periodically at one of their respective haunts, but on one particular evening, one would say he'd finally found the ultimate bar. Then they would all go in a cab uptown to a tough Puerto Rican neighborhood. They’d enter a tenement and make their way up a creaking, urine-smelling staircase to the fifth floor. There, they’d enter a dim slum apartment, rooms painted in streaky, faded Caribbean blues and flamingo pinks, cracked linoleum floors, and all filled with small formica-topped tables. Around all the tables sat parties of middle class people, “really nice, decent people,” Edward explained, “ but they’d all be stoned like they’d each drunk a whole bottle of Romilar cough syrup.” Waiters would circulate attentively, bringing small bowls to each table, and as they withdrew, a sudden glow of light would warm the rapt faces of those sitting around it. Mystified, the new arrivals would move in closer to see what was going on. In each bowl, the people would be burning money. Edward sped through this scenario as we walked; suddenly he stopped: “ This city is the greatest teacher. I’m so, so thankful.”
Late one night, as we neared my subway stop, Edward said: “You know, soon you’re going to have to make up your mind.” I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but at the same time, I did know. Now I think that Edward saw me far more clearly than I then saw myself, and his remark that night still touches me as a gesture of true kindness.
Just before I left New York, I gave a party for everyone I knew, regardless of their milieux; so there were artists, druggies, musicians, academics, the old lady who sang solitary hymns in the adjoining apartment late into the night, secretaries, school teachers, therapists and so on. Edward arrived early in a black motorcycle jacket. He was exhausted from some long acid trip and he collapsed on the couch. Ray Johnson, alert, gossipy, and always seeming to be so sweetly innocent, circulated, soliciting people right and left to sign up for the whimsical witty mailings of his New York CorrespondAnce School. (Who would imagine then that years later he would end his life, swimming solo and intent off into the cold night sea?) He spotted Edward napping. “Oooooh,” he whispered in my ear, “Edward, he’s very rare now.”
My life outside New York was involved almost completely in Buddhist study and practice, but I heard that Edward had painted huge murals for Green’s, a posh restaurant run by the San Francisco Zen Center. No, he hadn’t become involved with Zen in any other way, but he was said to be friends with Baker Roshi. That’s all I heard. And when I came back to New York, he had gone. No one seemed to know where.
Still, Edward always remained on the periphery of my thoughts, and recently when I finally succeeded in finding him on the internet, it turned out he had died two months earlier. It seems he had moved to a town on the Hudson upstate, had been living there with a partner for a long time, was active in some organization devoted to rescuing housecats, and had continued to paint. But the paintings I saw on his gallery's web site were figurative landscapes with a distinct kinship to the style of the 1930's. They were clearly about where he lived, all rendered with a sensuous affection, ease, curiosity and, somehow, gratitude.
I was very sorry I had located Edward to late for us to correspond or meet, but I was so deeply relieved that he had come to rest in such a place.
This however still summons the New York of then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEVyf6y_-Y4
I ran into him often. He would sit, scruffy, restless, yet somehow detached, watching the crowd of artists, rock and rollers, drag queens, speed fueled denizens of Warhol’s factory ebb and flow, eddying through the smoky darkness around the famous, the rich and those who had drugs to sell. “Something for the head?” a small extremely handsome Apache, so sad and far from home, yet so hip would whisper as he passed by. Edward watched silently, then growled: “ Ultimately, all talk is crime.”
As it turned out, Edward was a painter of great distinction. Recently he'd been very famous, but now not so much so. He occasionally took teaching jobs at provincial universities where he holed up in a motel, ate acid, and generally tried to turn the minds of his students inside out. “It’s a big country, and the only thing keeping it together is television,” said Edward about his travels. Nonetheless, he lived well, had a small house in Chelsea and divided his non-teaching time exercising his lucidity on everything he encountered in bars, drugs and on his painting. “There are only two paths: decadence and spirituality. I have chosen decadence.” He had a wide circle of friends, but I got the impression that his unsparing, random insights made him familiar in many circles, but not a part of them.
Painting however remained his focus.. His pictures continued to explode in uncomfortable contrasts of wild pinks, excessive yellows, soft greens colors, wan blues, applied in blobs and swatches of varying densities and textures. They were simultaneously sophisticated and extravagant almost to the point of tastelessness. When the Metropolitan bought one, he was pleased. “Well, there I am up there with Velasquez and Picasso,” he shrugged. He thought that it was also somehow ridiculous, evidence that the prevailing standards had gone into serious decline.
Late one afternoon, when we’d met because he wanted me to help him sell a painting without his gallery knowing about it, we were walking through Central Park near the museum. “The great impetus in American art is ultimately to recreate the world at the time the artist’s mother was still a virgin. That’s why there’s always so much period recreation in movies and abstraction in art.” A lady swathed in mink walking an emaciated Chihuahua cut past us. “That dog belongs on a bun,” Edward snarled, and the woman, looked at him anxiously as she hurried away.
Usually however, I met Edward late at night at Max’s. Most of our talks took place as we walked, he to home and I to the subway nearby. One cold night, as we left the bar, a troupe of young men, with shiny hair ratted and teased, dressed in bright satin skin-tight pants, velvet jackets, strutted in teetering on alligator boots with two inch platform soles. Edward stopped and watched. “The point is, you could never run away from a mugger in those things. Don’t you think that ultimately they’re trying to magnetize some kind of violence they’ll have to submit to?”
Another night when it was hot and muggy night, you could almost feel the breathing of thousands of people moving torpidly on the streets or stirring in sweaty sleep. Edward talked about a movie he wanted to make called “The Ultimate Bar”. The characters in the film would be the ‘stars’ of a number of different kinds of bars: an Irish workers' bar, a pick up bar, a gay bar, a leather bar, an artists’ bar, a wall street hangout, and so forth. These people would meet periodically at one of their respective haunts, but on one particular evening, one would say he'd finally found the ultimate bar. Then they would all go in a cab uptown to a tough Puerto Rican neighborhood. They’d enter a tenement and make their way up a creaking, urine-smelling staircase to the fifth floor. There, they’d enter a dim slum apartment, rooms painted in streaky, faded Caribbean blues and flamingo pinks, cracked linoleum floors, and all filled with small formica-topped tables. Around all the tables sat parties of middle class people, “really nice, decent people,” Edward explained, “ but they’d all be stoned like they’d each drunk a whole bottle of Romilar cough syrup.” Waiters would circulate attentively, bringing small bowls to each table, and as they withdrew, a sudden glow of light would warm the rapt faces of those sitting around it. Mystified, the new arrivals would move in closer to see what was going on. In each bowl, the people would be burning money. Edward sped through this scenario as we walked; suddenly he stopped: “ This city is the greatest teacher. I’m so, so thankful.”
Late one night, as we neared my subway stop, Edward said: “You know, soon you’re going to have to make up your mind.” I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant, but at the same time, I did know. Now I think that Edward saw me far more clearly than I then saw myself, and his remark that night still touches me as a gesture of true kindness.
Just before I left New York, I gave a party for everyone I knew, regardless of their milieux; so there were artists, druggies, musicians, academics, the old lady who sang solitary hymns in the adjoining apartment late into the night, secretaries, school teachers, therapists and so on. Edward arrived early in a black motorcycle jacket. He was exhausted from some long acid trip and he collapsed on the couch. Ray Johnson, alert, gossipy, and always seeming to be so sweetly innocent, circulated, soliciting people right and left to sign up for the whimsical witty mailings of his New York CorrespondAnce School. (Who would imagine then that years later he would end his life, swimming solo and intent off into the cold night sea?) He spotted Edward napping. “Oooooh,” he whispered in my ear, “Edward, he’s very rare now.”
My life outside New York was involved almost completely in Buddhist study and practice, but I heard that Edward had painted huge murals for Green’s, a posh restaurant run by the San Francisco Zen Center. No, he hadn’t become involved with Zen in any other way, but he was said to be friends with Baker Roshi. That’s all I heard. And when I came back to New York, he had gone. No one seemed to know where.
Still, Edward always remained on the periphery of my thoughts, and recently when I finally succeeded in finding him on the internet, it turned out he had died two months earlier. It seems he had moved to a town on the Hudson upstate, had been living there with a partner for a long time, was active in some organization devoted to rescuing housecats, and had continued to paint. But the paintings I saw on his gallery's web site were figurative landscapes with a distinct kinship to the style of the 1930's. They were clearly about where he lived, all rendered with a sensuous affection, ease, curiosity and, somehow, gratitude.
I was very sorry I had located Edward to late for us to correspond or meet, but I was so deeply relieved that he had come to rest in such a place.
This however still summons the New York of then:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEVyf6y_-Y4
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Elysium
“The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air; upon all that moveth upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the sea. Into your hands they are delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you. " (Genesis IX 2-3)
I
Remembering desiring imagining feeling: how deeply is one seen as self-deceived?
II
Of mute creatures confined in hide and flesh to moo and bellow, low and moan; one outstanding for scruffiness, another for proud command, for warmth and tenderness, for kindness, for a strange scent, for japery or unsociable waywardness, for sudden rage:
What record is there of their herded passing, what tale of traversal on the soil? What voice can tell off the various ways in which one loved and was loved, one knew and was known?
III
Loved perhaps for many reasons, but lives brought forth, nurtured and sustained for the rich red meat to be stripped from their great frames and for the hides that cover them: these to be scoured and tanned to remove the tufty fur which so resembles the stubble ground of harvest fields where these same cattle once grazed.
IV
Patient and enduring, nuzzling slowly, sociable with their dense drizzling noses, herded hither and thither as the convenience of the little killer-men dictate, so to wander in groups gathering and dispersing, each impressive volume on broad hooved feet, miring up the hock, sinking firmly in the mud then ambling slowly to higher ground, a particular tuft of straw perceived dimply through white-lashed eye; Up to where the red-gold sun warms through the thick hide, wandering ponderously up to there with grunt and moo and sidewise nudge of herd-mate, strange old friend. And on the crest of the rise, a cooling breeze, cool of evening bring acrid scent of plop and sweet of still warm grass and buzz of blowing fly. Forbearing in these modest happinesses which great bulk and time afford. And pleasantly ignorant of prod and truck and chute and electrode and of knife which shall end in a moment of overwhelming knowingness an idyll on the land.
V
A long social history of them who stretch existence in this slow way of idle days, unknowing servitude but obedient to the longer strand of time which is measured by winter hay on hard ground and by tender grasses returning, measured by time in thee winds and rain on broad fields and in the crowded dark of barns, lowering in the comfortable warmth of fellowness. There high in the dark eaves live the flickering swallows dim above them, darting down and near them, a trivial enigma, uninteresting omen.
VI
Though no longer to kick up heels, no longer to flip and flap and roll in clover, nor nudge up close to the great beloved warmth and delve beneath it, there in the best of dark to suck and taste the smooth sweet white flow of sustenance, of milk and love. Gravid now, ponderous and slow-moving, ruminant, measuring in time and slow herd drift the distances between the broad rolling earth and the flocks of pinkish clouds drifting likewise in the sky. Vast satisfaction there in the heavy factuality of that.
VII
But looking to the eye screwing sky-ward in the socket, head slinging back and up, when fear like a cork-screw shall twist out placid sense. What, in warmth was so pleasantly enjoyed: green sour chewing cud or squish in hoof-wide ponds while wandering through rain which dripped off matted flanks, what can prepare for the onslaught of horror impossible to resist, that splits the skull in two like an axe-edge crashing down between the eyes.
VIII
If there is a wind that can take from the body its spirit, does it carry the metal-sharp imminent scent flashing down at them and bring terrible shock to their patient gentle days that have never known its like? Then suddenly aware of all this rolling time as a cruel deception, masking the sordid brutal nature lying on the far side of the enclosed fences where their wanderings stopped. Does this sudden knowing kill as surely as the night to follow?
IX
Sense merged so deeply in this monumental meat and bone, slow to move in this frame adapted to al life of lengthy increase, perambulating interest, disgruntlement and occasional bumbling panic; all life as if there were a measure according to that pace, assumed at the end a certain visionary quality even as it is stripped away.
As if all those afternoons in sun and those morning plodding through mist leaving hoof-prints in the dew, those warm, earth-bound smells of fellowship in the cold of darkest night, all stop. They hover as if there had been a meaning which does not apply to present circumstances. All are now the view of Paradise seen from Hell, blinding in their unity.
***
When I was living next door to the wonderful artist and photographer, Liza Matthews, she was taking many photos of cattle in the nearby pastures. I wrote this to accompany a portfolio of those pictures.
Which leads to:
Couperin: Lecon de Tenebres 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbOYS08dAeU&NR=1
I
Remembering desiring imagining feeling: how deeply is one seen as self-deceived?
II
Of mute creatures confined in hide and flesh to moo and bellow, low and moan; one outstanding for scruffiness, another for proud command, for warmth and tenderness, for kindness, for a strange scent, for japery or unsociable waywardness, for sudden rage:
What record is there of their herded passing, what tale of traversal on the soil? What voice can tell off the various ways in which one loved and was loved, one knew and was known?
III
Loved perhaps for many reasons, but lives brought forth, nurtured and sustained for the rich red meat to be stripped from their great frames and for the hides that cover them: these to be scoured and tanned to remove the tufty fur which so resembles the stubble ground of harvest fields where these same cattle once grazed.
IV
Patient and enduring, nuzzling slowly, sociable with their dense drizzling noses, herded hither and thither as the convenience of the little killer-men dictate, so to wander in groups gathering and dispersing, each impressive volume on broad hooved feet, miring up the hock, sinking firmly in the mud then ambling slowly to higher ground, a particular tuft of straw perceived dimply through white-lashed eye; Up to where the red-gold sun warms through the thick hide, wandering ponderously up to there with grunt and moo and sidewise nudge of herd-mate, strange old friend. And on the crest of the rise, a cooling breeze, cool of evening bring acrid scent of plop and sweet of still warm grass and buzz of blowing fly. Forbearing in these modest happinesses which great bulk and time afford. And pleasantly ignorant of prod and truck and chute and electrode and of knife which shall end in a moment of overwhelming knowingness an idyll on the land.
V
A long social history of them who stretch existence in this slow way of idle days, unknowing servitude but obedient to the longer strand of time which is measured by winter hay on hard ground and by tender grasses returning, measured by time in thee winds and rain on broad fields and in the crowded dark of barns, lowering in the comfortable warmth of fellowness. There high in the dark eaves live the flickering swallows dim above them, darting down and near them, a trivial enigma, uninteresting omen.
VI
Though no longer to kick up heels, no longer to flip and flap and roll in clover, nor nudge up close to the great beloved warmth and delve beneath it, there in the best of dark to suck and taste the smooth sweet white flow of sustenance, of milk and love. Gravid now, ponderous and slow-moving, ruminant, measuring in time and slow herd drift the distances between the broad rolling earth and the flocks of pinkish clouds drifting likewise in the sky. Vast satisfaction there in the heavy factuality of that.
VII
But looking to the eye screwing sky-ward in the socket, head slinging back and up, when fear like a cork-screw shall twist out placid sense. What, in warmth was so pleasantly enjoyed: green sour chewing cud or squish in hoof-wide ponds while wandering through rain which dripped off matted flanks, what can prepare for the onslaught of horror impossible to resist, that splits the skull in two like an axe-edge crashing down between the eyes.
VIII
If there is a wind that can take from the body its spirit, does it carry the metal-sharp imminent scent flashing down at them and bring terrible shock to their patient gentle days that have never known its like? Then suddenly aware of all this rolling time as a cruel deception, masking the sordid brutal nature lying on the far side of the enclosed fences where their wanderings stopped. Does this sudden knowing kill as surely as the night to follow?
IX
Sense merged so deeply in this monumental meat and bone, slow to move in this frame adapted to al life of lengthy increase, perambulating interest, disgruntlement and occasional bumbling panic; all life as if there were a measure according to that pace, assumed at the end a certain visionary quality even as it is stripped away.
As if all those afternoons in sun and those morning plodding through mist leaving hoof-prints in the dew, those warm, earth-bound smells of fellowship in the cold of darkest night, all stop. They hover as if there had been a meaning which does not apply to present circumstances. All are now the view of Paradise seen from Hell, blinding in their unity.
***
When I was living next door to the wonderful artist and photographer, Liza Matthews, she was taking many photos of cattle in the nearby pastures. I wrote this to accompany a portfolio of those pictures.
Which leads to:
Couperin: Lecon de Tenebres 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbOYS08dAeU&NR=1
Thursday, February 12, 2009
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