WELCOME TO THIS WEBLOG

01:00 - Saturday 22 February 2020 - comments {6} - post comment

Augusto De Campos (1980)

13:11 - Saturday 29 January 2011 - comments {0} - post comment

Where's Wal Now? (XXXV)

Currently reading:

Don DeLillo (US), Point Omega, 2010

Currently listening:

Muzsikás (HUN), Máramaros - The Lost Jewish Music Of Transylvania, 1993

 

http://www.klezmershack.com/bands/muzsikas/lost/muzsikas.lost.html

 

14:45 - Thursday 18 March 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

On Control, Complexity, Concern And Collapse

 

                  Thomas Cole (U.S.), Destruction, from The Course Of Empire, 1833-36

I am not by nature inclined toward an alarmist view of history. I prefer

things to be in a groove and to swing steadily. But a fine recent essay in

Foreign Affairs looks at some of the historiographical equivalents of

a lost game. Lately we've been seeing many tropes of the final days, of the

collapse of the American Imperium, and pieces on the eschatology of political

domination. While I believe much of that might be a little overstated, if not

premature, I also believe this study by Niall Ferguson is well worth pondering. 

                                                                                                        

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65987/niall-ferguson/complexity-and-collapse

17:44 - Wednesday 17 March 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "If A Horizontal Waterfall..."

I am safe. I trust more; I fear less. I am centered and grounded.

            — On a New Age prayer flag in a Melbourne suburb

What does it mean to read

From sorrow to more sorrow

Or from swirling dust to God?

Whether love is really like a bellows

That whispers was it actually that?

Was the issue ever decided

(The unequivocal tragedy

We'll call it dirty realism)

Carefully tending people's lies?

Irredeemable as the waterfall

Suddenly charging horizontal

Under quiet crater lake pressure

Unimagined till the spray hits you

Without shoes high in the Owen-Stanleys —

Meanwhile in a suburban backyard

Six old trees, ten different birdsongs

Held by one summer's fierce blue light

Soft black flies landing on your arm.

                                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                            

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

19:57 - Monday 8 March 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

An Edward Thomas Poem

 
              

         Rain 

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

                                                                                                            

(7 January, 1916)

                                                          

http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/thomas

 

19:16 - Monday 8 March 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

"SNAKE WINE"

 

  

Snake Wine is a 100-page selection of Rob Schackne's

China poems written between 2002-2006. Readers,

reviewers and publishers are all most cordially invited

to reach out to: robschackne@hotmail.com.

About him, even allowing for fabrication in matters

biographical, this much we know is probably true:

Born in New York in the middle of the last century

during a relatively peaceful era, growing up

there and in several South American countries,

this continued in Barbados, in Spain, Switzerland,

the U.S. again, and then Australia — which

last place finally took him in. He attended a few

universities, serving a complicated apprenticeship

in the humanities. He says he enjoys the unusual

insights of intelligent discourse. He now works as a

Foreign Expert EFL teacher in a big city in China.

There were many sports once, viz. track and

field, ice-hockey, rock-climbing, Goju-ryu karate,

Alpine skiing, squash, scuba diving, soccer,

middle-distance running and long-distance

bushwalking. He now plays (mostly) respectable

chess and pool. He listens to The Grateful Dead.

He claims he can read Shakespeare in the original.

E basta così.

 

11:15 - Friday 5 March 2010 - comments {3} - post comment

Terracotta Typewriter Issue #4

                       http://www.tctype.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Winter10.pdf

16:18 - Tuesday 2 March 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Where's Wal Now? (XXXIV)

Currently reading:

Roberto Bolaño (CHL), Nazi Literature In The Americas, 1996  (tr. Chris Andrews, 2008)

Currently listening:

Four Tet (UK), Everything Ecstatic, 2005

 

15:07 - Tuesday 2 March 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Books & Music (Cont.)

 

Here again in no order at all is what he claims he brought back recently from Australia. Our man says he's got eclectic tastes. But I think there are lots of other things going on here too.

                                                                                                                     

BOOKS

Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions

Roberto Bolaño, Nazi Literature In The Americas

David Simon, Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets

Neil Gaiman, American Gods

Raymond Carver, Beginners

Don DeLillo, Point Omega

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

David Malouf, Ransom

Helen Garner, The Spare Room

Tim Winton, Breath

                                                                                                              

MUSIC

Bobby Womack, The Poet

Monty Alexander, Stir It Up

Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté, Ali And Toumani

Babylon Circus, La Belle Étoile

The Skatalites, Occupation Ska!

Lightnin' Hopkins, Lightnin' Hopkins

Mulatu Astatke, The Heliocentrics

Alejandro Escovedo, With These Hands

The Flatlanders, Wheels Of Fortune

 

 

09:38 - Tuesday 2 March 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "The Recession; Or, Copying As Art"

                                                                                        

Give yourself a moment   

prop yourself up on the sink 

watch that face in the mirror

practise that three or four times

and go out into the world 

drive to where there's a cliff 

park and practise parking again 

wait for the sunset to finish 

practise this several times 

remember how you did that

go home now go home again 

say hello to them say it again

you practised it so much 

copying the countless ways

you have copied everything 

give yourself a moment.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

16:16 - Wednesday 17 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "In The First Year Of The Tiger"

 

That day when warring finally

was harnessed to fireworks

while the generals sipped their teas

and tutted about fire discipline

the new children's model was found

to explode without warning too

and the fingers and the faces

wore a little of the invention

that whistled death to so many

meanwhile angry parents screamed

against the irreverent technology

and said it was only superstition

to believe that ghosts needed blood

said it was time for quiet now —

but the damage had been done

every year the demons must have their noise

and tired generals sit down pleased

and continue to lick their plates.

                                                                                                                           

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

05:04 - Sunday 14 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "On Borges' Book Of Sand"

 

In Jorge Luis Borges

We hear the falling cadence

Of an obstinate man, largely blind

With maybe only ten years left

Fluent enough to remember horrors

And how well the will preserves

The images of that, and Love —

Whereas we the patient learners

Turn his old stories like a field

Sharp into our own stubbornness

Till we too are reading by candlelight

The parables of not life, not death

With just one last pitiful learning

About uncountable gruesome worlds

With as many dreams as grains of sand

For which we thank you, muy estimado.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

19:30 - Saturday 13 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

An Arun Kolatkar Poem

  Traffic Lights

Fifty phantom motorcyclists

all in black

crash-helmeted outriders

faceless behind tinted visors

come thundering from one end of the road

and go roaring down the other

shattering the petrified silence of the night

like a delirium of rock-drills

preceded by a wailing cherry-top

and followed by a faceless president

in a deathly white Mercedes

coming from the airport and going downtown

raising a storm of protest in its wake

from angry scraps of paper and dry leaves

but unobserved by traffic lights

that seem to have eyes only for each other

and who like ill-starred lovers

fated never to meet

but condemned to live forever and ever

in each other's sight

continue to send signals to each other

throughout the night

and burn with the cold passion of rubies

separated by an empty street.

                                                                                  

(1932 - 2004)

 

           http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/oct/21/featuresreviews.guardianreview32

03:43 - Saturday 13 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Where's Wal Now? (XXXIII)

Currently reading:

Jorge Luis Borges (ARG), The Book Of Sand & Shakespeare's Memory, 1989             (tr. Andrew Hurley, 2001)

Currently listening:

Debashish Bhattacharya & Bob Brozman (IND & USA), Mahima, 2005

 

03:42 - Saturday 13 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "A Short Ballad, 5 Foot 9½"

                                                                                              

Young, gifted and usually unused

That day he scored the goals that won

The final game that won the season

The other champions lifted him up

In the street the cars were honking

He was famous throughout Melbourne

People cheered all his moves after that

When he sobered up he'd had enough 

His knees were shot or his body just said no

He went bush and sat among the trees

The abstraction was finally put to rest

Came down the mountain and took another look

At last got back all his breath and grew his hair long

Started to write his stories and poems

And he started a printing business

Mostly young poetry risking it all.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

03:35 - Monday 8 February 2010 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "Midnight On Julian's Balcony In Shanghai, Smashed"

                   "I really should go back to Barber School..."

                    -- Doug Sahm (1969)

                                                                                  

Didn't feel your gaze

as fractious security door

or like an iron balcony

till nightime penthouse

was an open moment

rain steadily changing

clothes trying to fly

just fifty meters away

a felicitous cigarette

because of watching you

putting telescope down

at an open window

smoking a cigarette too

and looking at the rain

was falling between us —

later leave the party

almost leave umbrella

say to a passing friend

clearly is hard the getting in

but why so hard the getting out.

 

                                                     ©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

23:35 - Sunday 7 February 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

A Jack Gilbert Poem (II)

                                                                                    

   

   

  TO KNOW THE INVISIBLE
 
 
The Americans tried and tried to see
the invisible Indians in the deeper jungle
of Brazil. Finally they put things in the clearing
and waited. They waited for months,
maybe for years. Until a knife and a pot
disappeared. They put out other things
and some of those vanished. Then one morning
there was a jungle offering sitting on the ground.
Gradually they began to know the invisible
by the jungle's choices. Even when nothing
replaced the gifts, it was a kind of seeing.
Like the woman you camp outside of, at the five portals.
Attending the conduits that tunnel from the apparatus
down to the capital of her. Through the body
and its weather, to the mind and heart, to the spirit
beyond. To the mystery. And gradually to the ghosts
coming and leaving. To the difference between
the nightingale and the Japanese nightingale
which is not a nightingale. Getting lost in the treachery
of language, waylaid by the rain dancing its pavane
in the bruised light of winter afternoons.
By the flesh, luminous and transparent in the silent
clearing of her. Love as two spirits flickering
at the edge of meeting. An apartment on the third
floor without an elevator, white walls and almost
no furniture. Water seen through pine trees.
Love like the smell of basil. Richness beyond
anyone's ability to cope with. The way love is after fifty.

                                                                                  

(2009)

11:37 - Monday 1 February 2010 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "Did You Strangle All Delicacy"

                                                                          pace Thomas Lynch

                                                                                          

I can't help writing this.

I'm sorry. Forgive me.

Did you strangle all delicacy

In a single careless moment?

Did you chase her away with music

You gave her to sit down and listen to

Which alas contained a secret song?

Was your every night a fretful one

When you slept like the grateful dead

Did you punch and kick your legs

As if beauty was still your enemy?

Now of course all demons rest −−

Freedom from her was hard-won.

Though the scratching you begin to hear

Is like a heavy gate upon the skin.

Did you think you could get away with it?

I’m sorry. Forgive me.

I can’t help writing this.

                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                                   

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

03:39 - Friday 29 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

A Thomas Lynch Poem

  

                   

FOR THE EX-WIFE ON THE OCCASION OF HER BIRTHDAY

                                                                                                                     

Let me say outright that I bear you no
unusual malice anymore. Nor
do I wish for you tumors or loose stools,
blood in your urine, oozings from any orifice.
The list is endless of those ills I do not pray befall you:
night sweats, occasional itching, PMS,
fits, starts, ticks, boils, bad vibes, vaginal odors,
emotional upheavals or hormonal disorders;
green discharges, lumps, growths, nor tell-tale signs of gray;
dry heaves, hiccups, heartbreaks, fallen ovaries
nor cramps—before, during, or after. I pray you only
laughter in the face of your mortality
and freedom from the ravages of middle age:
bummers, boredom, cellulite, toxic shock and pregnancies;
migraines, glandular problems, the growth of facial hair,
sagging breasts, bladder infections, menopausal rage,
flatulence or overdoses, hot flashes or constant nausea,
uterine collapse or loss of life or limb or faith
in the face of what might seem considerable debilities.
Think of your life not as half-spent but as half-full
of possibilities. The Arts maybe, or
Music, Modern Dance, or Hard Rock Videos.
Whatever, this is to say I hereby recant
all former bitterness and proffer only all the best
in the way of Happy Birthday wishes.
I no longer want your mother committed,
your friends banished, your donkey lovers taken out and shot
or spayed or dragged behind some Chevrolet of doom.
I pray you find that space or room or whatever it is
you and your shrink have always claimed you’d need
to spread your wings and realize your insuperable potential.
Godspeed is what I say, and good credentials:
what with your background in fashions and aerobics,
you’d make a fairly bouncy brain surgeon
or well-dressed astronaut or disc jockey.
The children and I will be watching with interest
and wouldn’t mind a note from time to time
to say you’ve overcome all obstacles this time;
overcome your own half-hearted upbringing,
a skimpy wardrobe, your lowly self-esteem,
the oppression of women and dismal horoscopes;
overcome an overly dependent personality,
stretch marks, self-doubt, a bad appendix scar,
the best years of your life misspent on wifing and mothering.
So let us know exactly how you are once
you have triumphed, after all. Poised and ready
on the brink of, shall we say, your middle years,
send word when you have gained by the luck of the draw,
the kindness of strangers, or by dint of will itself
if not great fame then self-sufficiency.
Really, now that I’ve my hard-won riddance of you
signed and sealed and cooling on the books against
your banks and creditors; now that I no
longer need endure your whining discontent,
your daylong, nightlong carping over lost youth,
bum luck, spilt milk, what you might have been,
or pining not so quietly for a new life in
New York with new men; now that I have been
more or less officially relieved of
all those hapless duties husbanding
a woman of your disenchantments came to be,
I bid you No Deposits, No Returns,
but otherwise a very Happy Birthday.
And while this mayn’t sound exactly like good will
in some important ways it could be worse.
The ancients in my family had a way with words
and overzealous habits of revenge
whereby the likes of you were turned to birds
and made to nest among the mounds of dung
that rose up in the wake of cattle herds
grazing their way across those bygone parishes
where all that ever came with age was wisdom.

                    (1986)

03:22 - Friday 29 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Mahatma J.D. Salinger, R.I.P. (1919-2010)

03:10 - Friday 29 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "The Bravado"

                   for Philip Robert Nash

                                                                                               

Listening to Of Montreal

Their record The Gay Parade

And reading Bolaño's Amulet

Very possibly conflating

The astounding terms of both

There's no story without courage

And so no song without a mask

That cannot be removed —

And all of them wait for fear

Churning permutations of desire

The lists of bravado before we sleep

That are universally troublesome

Shall we write about writing?

Terror befalling the unbefallen

Please don't make me laugh

Unless you are laughing too.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

 

01:53 - Tuesday 26 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Where's Wal Now? (XXXII)

Currently reading:

Roberto Bolaño (CHL), Amulet, 1999 (tr. Chris Andrews 2006)

Currently listening:

Of Montreal (USA), The Gay Parade, 1999

 

01:03 - Monday 25 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Everything"

I wouldn't joke about this. Though maybe it's best to keep the process to yourself — at least till the collectors come. The streets clean again for a day, maybe we dream it doesn't happen -- or if it did, then we'll only have been dreaming of some other place. You know how it goes.

            Natura Morta. Garbage lying in the streets, loose, no bins.

            Sun is rising. Rats are still. This picture is without smell.

            But at midnight the work began, accumulation reviewed

            for what waste would be turned into hunger. Cats agree.

            Furtive looks from out of nowhere people will admit,

            who only wish for disappearance, left at the side of the road.

            We mostly don't know any better now. We throw away

            in equal amounts what we love and hate and fear too late

            and so it rots. So much late heat it makes: perfect comment.

            And other rats that scavenge after? We don’t believe in that.

            Sun rises faster. Dogs are moving too, looking and judging,

            experience that wasn’t theirs but they try hard to want it.

            Before collection. Before anticipation, the sweepers' carts

            and big trucks, the recycling starts. An Easter-time of insects

            to make the refuse-body One, spirits a-buzzing, lives afresh.

            There’s argument. Purposes conflict. Sun is higher than ever.

            The goal has been dispersed. The garbage has walked away.

            How else to measure the soul that’s lost, than when all is still?

            When Morning comes, the streets eventually swept of us,

            the nocturnal organization of vehicles disconnected, down

            we climb from the bed where we had written of paradise.

            Maybe. Walking down an alley last night. Ripped of memory,

            the key ingredients gone, one word came a-hastening of love

            so ordinary now it's missed. Creatures gather everything.

 

   ©ROB SCHACKNE (2007)

 

01:00 - Monday 25 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Short Poem: The Distance"

I cannot talk of love
but only of two hearts
flat against the other one
as if the beating surf
surges upon the shore
and the tide recedes
distant clouds are white
he stands on the beach
distant clouds are dark
the wind grows heavy
his teeth are chattering
as he writes this poem.

©ROB SCHACKNE (2010)

 

08:01 - Tuesday 19 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "The Bones Of Fish"

This one could be read in the latest historical context of recent and

on-going searches for lost relatives — but then again, it might not.

 

Indented are the tiny bones

In the hapless fossil record

Vibrating an irritation

Down strange countless years — 

A teenage boy holds

An exceptional surprise

The skeleton remains

Of a nervous spinal system;

Maybe unpredictably

Balanced with a tear

Everyone eschews their memory

Leaves old things undigested —

He feels maybe he can’t love fish

Frantic in understatement

Until he can hear their bones

Perfecting the continuous wave

Man, that system was really working

Crazy and open like a swirling sea

But when waters receded

Landing ancestors high and dry

They gave their augury to the earth

Left their lives behind on stone

Like the teeth of a billion frustrations —

Or nothing if not in the shape of bones.

 

                                                  ©ROB SCHACKNE (2008)

02:41 - Saturday 16 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

A Derrick C. Brown Poem

             

 

          Punish Children

Who will curl forth honesty
and say that they would like to send their child back
to that sudden baby cave?

I fear having a boy
fore seeing the day I will stare into his skin
and have to say:
“You might unravel, son.
Do not try to prepare for this.
Know that I don’t know shit. No one does.”

I fear having a girl the most,
who will ask me what it’s like to die
and I will have to reply:

“Lose your virginity
and fall asleep in pain.
Be better than me.”

If that small, hairless, voteless tyrant says:

                “Stop talking like you’re trying, Pop.
                 What is it really like to die?
                 Speak plain.”

I will say: 
                 “Love writing with all your heart. 
                  Then have kids 
                  and write no more,
                  you wretched, screeching Leprechaun.”

She has that laugh ‘cause she has my sense of humor.
How strange that the woman you always wanted to meet
came out of your own body.

How egotistical and pure.

My past rushes through her like a river after winter.

I hope she fails history.
 

 

(2004)

                                         www.brownpoetry.com

15:32 - Friday 15 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "The Housekeeping"

We all know people with an unlucky compulsion for public order. Some are clearly mad. But many are slobs who, if you ever circled back around, typically leave their tools, their machinery and their cars in bad shape, skidmarks in the toilet bowl—and a brief but unconsolable sorrow all over the world...  

 

Victims of housekeeping

Know where everything should be

It's the dirt, never the politics

That is the enemy of order

A thousand years of genetic code

Exciting right angles and dust 

Swirling straight up into heaven —

But I, in my truce with cockroaches

Will go straight to hell someday

Just like your perfect mother said

Where I'll sleep in an unmade bed

And wear yesterday's socks again.

 

My old trousers are neat pleated

Accumulations of the world —

Lord, I didn't wash the hands

That trouble my neighbour's sleep

How do unregenerates run free?

One day at a time, piece by piece

Putting coffee spoons in the honey

Errant coins spent under cushions

Strange notes to remind you forgot

The dirty clothes waiting on the floor

The dust that beckons outside the door

For just one more chance at you.

 

                                        ©ROB SCHACKNE (2008)

10:56 - Wednesday 13 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Águas De Março

             

           Águas de Março by Tom Jobim

Águas de Março "É pau, é pedra, é o fim do caminho É um resto de toco, é um pouco sozinho É um caco de vidro, é a vida, é o sol É a noite, é a morte, é o laço, é o anzol É peroba do campo, é o nó da madeira Caingá candeia, é o matita-pereira É madeira de vento, tombo da ribanceira É o mistério profundo, é o queira ou não queira É o vento ventando, é o fim da ladeira É a viga, é o vão, festa da cumeeira É a chuva chovendo, é conversa ribeira Das águas de março, é o fim da canseira É o pé, é o chão, é a marcha estradeira Passarinho na mão, pedra de atiradeira É uma ave no céu, é uma ave no chão É um regato, é uma fonte, é um pedaço de pão É o fundo do poço, é o fim do caminho No rosto o desgosto, é um pouco sozinho É um estrepe, é um prego, é uma ponta, é um ponto É um pingo pingando, é uma conta, é um conto É um peixe, é um gesto, é uma prata brilhando É a luz da manhã, é o tijolo chegando É a lenha, é o dia, é o fim da picada É a garrafa de cana, o estilhaço na estrada É o projeto da casa, é o corpo na cama É o carro enguiçado, é a lama, é a lama É um passo, é uma ponte, é um sapo, é uma rã É um resto de mato, na luz da manhã São as águas de março fechando o verão É a promessa de vida no teu coração É uma cobra, é um pau, é João, é José É um espinho na mão, é um corte no pé São as águas de março fechando o verão É a promessa de vida no teu coração É pau, é pedra, é o fim do caminho É um resto de toco, é um pouco sozinho É um passo, é uma ponte, é um sapo, é uma rã É um belo horizonte, é uma febre terçã São as águas de março fechando o verão É a promessa de vida no teu coração"

Waters of March It's stick, it's stone, It's the end of the road It's a stump left behind, It's a little alone It's a shard of glass, It is life, it's the sun It is night, it is death, It's the snare, it's the fishhook It's peroba of the field, It’s the knot in the wood Lamp caingá tree, It's the matita-pereira tree It's wind in the wood, Falls of the ravine It's the profound mystery, It's what you wish or you don’t It's the wind blowing, It's the end of the slope It's the beam, it's the span, The new roof party It's the rain raining, It’s riverbank talk Of the waters of March, It's the end of the struggle It's the foot, it's the ground, It's the walk on the road Small bird in the hand, A slingshot stone It’s a bird in the sky, It’s a bird on the ground It's a creek, it's a fountain, It's a piece of bread It's the bottom of the well, It's the end of the way In the face the annoyance, It's a little lonely It's a thorn, it's a nail, It's a point, it’s a dot It's a drop dripping, It's an tally, it’s a tale It's a fish, it’s a gesture, It's a silver shining It's the morning’s light, It's the brick arriving It's the firewood, it's the day, It's the end of the trail It's the bottle of liquor, Splinter in the road It’s the house’s design, It's the body in bed It's the broken-down car, It's the mud, it's the mud It's a footstep, it's a bridge, It's a toad, it's a frog It's a hair left behind, In the morning’s light They are the waters of March Closing the summer It's the promise of life In your heart It's a snake, it’s a stick, It's John, it's Joseph It's a thorn in the hand, It's the cut on the foot They are the waters of March Closing the summer It's the promise of life In your heart It's stick, it's stone, It's the end of the road It's a resting stump, It's a little alone It's a footstep, a bridge, It's a toad, it's a frog It's a beautiful horizon, It’s a trembling fever They are the waters of March Closing the summer It's the promise of life In your heart.

 

               http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waters_of_March

 

20:48 - Monday 11 January 2010 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "I Gave It To Her After Lunch"

I know that in the Pataphysics Dept. they study the science of exceptions. Now they're even thinking that exile might remove some key elements of fate. But this one, hell, I don't even get the title.

                                                                                                            

She looks towards the window

and she says it's very windy

I say please look at me —

I'm not a shipping magnate

we've studied Mme Butterfly together

I'm really not a secret agent

(I neither encourage nor prevent)

true enough there's too much rain now

any dreamer can skid on their ass

slip up looking at a window glass

for wisdom and final disaffection

God and the smudges last a lifetime

the best minds of our generation

busy washing themselves off

pay for the lunch we didn't finish

and the many hands stretched outside

to the best minds of their generation

beg for one long birthday noodle

a logistical pot and electrics —

we get up from the busy table

on a day won't be disconnected

from the best ends of us stretched out

flying a kite straight up in the rain

still don't know yet where it went.

 

 ©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

10:12 - Monday 11 January 2010 - comments {2} - post comment

A Friedrich Hölderlin Poem

        'Another day'

                                                                                              

Another day. I follow another path,
Enter the leafing woodland, visit the spring
Or the rocks where the roses bloom
Or search from a look-out, but nowhere

Love are you to be seen in the light of day
And down the wind go the words of our once so
Beneficent conversation...

Your beloved face has gone beyond my sight,
The music of your life is dying away
Beyond my hearing and all the songs
That worked a miracle of peace once on

My heart, where are they now? It was long ago,
So long and the youth I was has aged nor is
Even the earth that smiled at me then
The same. Farewell. Live with that word always.

For the soul goes from me to return to you
Day after day and my eyes shed tears that they
Cannot look over to where you are
And see you clearly ever again.

          

—Tr. David Constantine

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843)

 

 

01:06 - Monday 11 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

Where's Wal Now? (XXXI)

Currently reading:

Roberto Bolaño (CHL), Last Evenings On Earth, 1997 (tr. Chris Andrews 2006)

Currently listening:

Midlake (USA), The Courage Of Others, 2010

 

10:17 - Sunday 10 January 2010 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "Three Minutes With Reality"

 

                                                           after Astor Piazzolla

                                                                                                             

It takes so little to get the three minutes
Or so much depending on where you are
Those three minutes might be sombre
They could be ecstatic or just be quiet
The only trick is to be there at the time

After that they who look back will say
Your life is never going to be the same
Three minutes of a battle or a burn or love
You were outside it and now you're in
Well what do they know it's not a club

You survive that and you survive the next
And the three minutes fall on like the rain
That keeps on getting louder and then it stops
Three minutes with reality float by like clouds
But I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea.

                                                                                                                                             

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

10:29 - Friday 1 January 2010 - comments {2} - post comment

A Jorge Luis Borges Poem

         

              Limits

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
For all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is in the South more than one worn gate,
With its cement urns and planted cactus,
Which is already forbidden to my entry,
Inaccessible, as in a lithograph.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

You will never recapture what the Persian
Said in his language woven with birds and roses,
When, in the sunset, before the light disperses,
You wish to give words to unforgettable things.

And the steadily flowing Rhone and the lake,
All that vast yesterday over which today I bend?
They will be as lost as Carthage,
Scourged by the Romans with fire and salt.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

                                         

                                     —Tr. Alastair Reid

                                                 

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

 

10:00 - Sunday 27 December 2009 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "Her Comment On A Sad Excess"

                                                                                            

I had already known her

the most beautiful woman

in the world as shocking

as a very dangerous wire

exposed and waiting for a child —

she hates that she was so unready

sometimes weeping in the night

there is always so much wanting

she can't believe she's so different

drinking whiskey and choler

pleading to the sadly devout

someday they will really see

their baffled glasses failed them

and finally woken they'll lean

towards another beautiful light

where they forget she isn't there.

 

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

09:28 - Sunday 27 December 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

From David Eagleman's "Sum" (2009)

 
 In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together. 
                                                                                                                                           

You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For five months straight you flip through magazines while sitting on a toilet. You take all your pain at once, all twenty-seven intense hours of it. Bones break, cars crash, skin is cut, babies are born. Once you make it through, it’s agony-free for the rest of your afterlife. 
                                                                                                                                               

But that doesn’t mean it’s always pleasant. You spend six days clipping your nails. Fifteen months looking for lost items. Eighteen months waiting in line. Two years of boredom: staring out a bus window, sitting in an airport terminal. One year reading books. Your eyes hurt, and you itch, because you can’t take a shower until it’s your time to take your marathon two-hundred-day shower. Two weeks wondering what happens when you die. One minute realizing your body is falling. Seventy-seven hours of confusion. One hour realizing you’ve forgotten someone’s name. Three weeks realizing you are wrong. Two days lying. Six weeks waiting for a green light. Seven hours vomiting. Fourteen minutes experiencing pure joy. Three months doing laundry. Fifteen hours writing your signature. Two days tying shoelaces. Sixty-seven days of heartbreak. Five weeks driving lost. Three days calculating restaurant tips. Fifty-one days deciding what to wear. Nine days pretending you know what is being talked about. Two weeks counting money. Eighteen days staring into the refrigerator. Thirty-four days longing. Six months watching commercials. Four weeks sitting in thought, wondering if there is something better you could be doing with your time. Three years swallowing food. Five days working buttons and zippers. Four minutes wondering what your life would be like if you reshuffled the order of events.

                                                                                                                                 In this part of the afterlife, you imagine something analogous to your Earthly life, and the thought is blissful: a life where episodes are split into tiny swallowable pieces, where moments do not endure, where one experiences the joy of jumping from one event to the next like a child hopping from spot to spot on the burning sand.

                                                                                                                                           

—David Eagleman, From "Sum" (2009)

11:56 - Saturday 26 December 2009 - comments {1} - post comment

A Giacomo Leopardi Poem

 

          L'infinito

Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle
E questa siepe che da tanta parte
De'll ultimo orrizonte il guarde esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete,
Io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando; e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e'l suon di lei. Così tra questa
Immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
E'l naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.

                                                                                                  

Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837)

                                                       

http://www.textetc.com/workshop/wt-leopardi-1.html

 

 

10:25 - Thursday 24 December 2009 - comments {0} - post comment

POEM: "These Wings Of Desire"

                                          for Wim Wenders

I really don't care anymore.

My thoughts are debasing me

And I can no longer quiz

A smiling world with my songs —

Rocks below in the water and the wind

I have been falling all my life

There will be an end to this descent.

                                                                                                    

An old man is watching me carefully

Just twenty cold meters away —

He sits like me on the cliff edge

I must be still to get rid of him

And watch no more of this lonely world

There is no point in seagulls wheeling.

Suddenly he is sitting next to me.

                                                                                              

Offer him a job in my little shop

Maybe introduce him to a lovely girl

If his constitution can stand it

There looks to be enough room

How do you live in this world without desire

When the stuff of stars is in your veins

Distant, cold and fine, but there?

                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                    

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

 

 

10:56 - Wednesday 23 December 2009 - comments {1} - post comment

Where's Wal Now? (XXX)

Currently reading:

Ron Slate (USA), The Great Wave, 2009

Currently listening:

Arvo Pärt (EST), Orient & Occident, 2002

 

10:36 - Wednesday 23 December 2009 - comments {1} - post comment

POEM: "It's Almost Christmas"

                                                                                                                                          

I'm listening to La Bartoli

Sing magnificently of the castrato

And damned if I know that I can

Get my ears past any barber's knife

That promised to settle the future —

Why does a woman singing of dreams

Touch my battered soul like this?

It's almost Christmas this is true

When we hardly look a beggar in the eye

But adjust the sack on our shoulders

March on there's a music we didn't hear —

Beneath my gods the sweet angels

Have never stopped their singing.

I probably wouldn't mention this joy

If today I hadn't seen so much kindness

Or if out of the corner of my eye

I didn't see you coming toward me

A voice as painful as all others

Speaking like some other angel

Moving somewhat awkwardly.

                                                                                                                                               

©ROB SCHACKNE (2009)

13:52 - Thursday 17 December 2009 - comments {0} - post comment