Why not begin the week with something beautiful?
Lou Harrison (1917-2003), Second Symphony (“Elegiac,” 1988); BBC National Orchestra of Wales
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never growing old
Mr. and Mrs.
Butterfly—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
soundtrack to a dream
Morton Feldman (1926-1987), The Viola in My Life; João Pedro Delgado (viola), et al., live, Portugal, 2014
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The Suicide’s Room
by Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012; MCOTD Hall-of-Famer), translated from Polish by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare CavanaghI’ll bet you think the room was empty.
Wrong. There were three chairs with sturdy backs.
A lamp, good for fighting the dark.
A desk, and on the desk a wallet, some newspapers.
A carefree Buddha and a worried Christ.
Seven lucky elephants, a notebook in a drawer.
You think our addresses weren’t in it?No books, no pictures, no records, you guess?
Wrong. A comforting trumpet poised in black hands.
Saskia and her cordial little flower.
Joy the spark of gods.
Odysseus stretched on the shelf in life-giving sleep
after the labors of Book Five.
The moralists
with the golden syllables of their names
inscribed on finely tanned spines.
Next to them, the politicians braced their backs.No way out? But what about the door?
No prospects? The window had other views.
His glasses
lay on the windowsill.
And one fly buzzed—that is, was still alive.You think at least the note could tell us something.
But what if I say there was no note—
and he had so many friends, but all of us fit neatly
inside the empty envelope propped up against a cup.
testify!
Sonz of God, “Show Me the Way,” live, Memphis, 2014
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The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest.
—Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
summer in the city
Chance The Rapper (1993-), “Wonderful Everyday: Arthur,” live, Chicago (Lollapalooza), 8/3/14
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Another take (recording with Wyclef Jean, Jessie Ware, et al., 2014)
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the only hope is to be the daylight
—W. S. Merwin, “Living with the News,” last line (New Yorker, 7/28/14)
back to church
“Wade in the Water,” St. James Missionary Baptist Church, Canton, Miss., 1978
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Serenity
by Nina Cassian (1924-2014)There’ll be a time, serene, a time for hymns.
I’ll underline the air with just one gesture,
and I will utter stainless words.I will say “sky” and “brook” and I’ll say “sun”
and “tear” and “music” and “immunity.”
There’ll be a time, a time when memory
of massacres won’t reach me anymore,
turning instead into a distant breeze of poetry
as sometimes blood itself exhales.From all that once had been promiscuous,
only the sacred will remain, and I will praise
the contrasts, reconciled, forgiven and forgiving.
So I’ll say “sky” and “sun” and “music”
and sky will be, and sun will be, and music
will be around me and around the world.
I’ll let the vowels all regain their halo.And it will come, that bright, sonorous time,
a time solemn and pure, a time for hymns,
and it will come, that time. Indeed, it will!
Nas, “Daughters,” 2012
My sons, now in their twenties, I love to pieces. But loving my guys doesn’t keep me from wishing I had a daughter, too.
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The funeral director opened the coffin
And there he was alone
From the waist upI peered down into his face
And for a moment I was taken aback
Because it was not GabrielIt was just some poor kid
Whose face looked like a room
That had been vacated.—Edward Hirsch (1950-), opening lines of “Gabriel,” a forthcoming book-length elegy for his son, who died in 2011 at the age of 22 (quoted in Alec Wilkinson, “Finding the Words,” New Yorker, 8/4/14)
sounds of Zimbabwe
Bhundu Boys, “Hupenyu Hwangu,” live, 1980s
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Yesterday’s email brought this from a reader.
The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
summer in the city
St. Vincent, live, Chicago (Pitchfork Music Festival), 7/19/14*
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the scrawny pine, too
looks extravagant . . .
summer moon—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827; translated from Japanese by David G. Lanoue)
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*Set list (courtesy of YouTube):
0:00 Introduction
0:45 Rattlesnake
5:39 Digital Witness
9:13 Cruel
13:10 Marrow
17:40 Every Tear Disappears / Shout (Tears for Fears)
22:16 Surgeon
27:35 Cheerleader
31:19 Prince Johnny
37:15 Birth In Reverse
41:10 Huey Newton
46:47 Bring Me Your Loves
50:52 Your Lips Are Red
testify
Neal Roberson, “Don’t Let the Devil Ride,” live
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I am running out of life, Olga thinks. What am I going to do? What is there without life?
—Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project
