Album: ‘Still Ill suite’ on Last FM

Still ill (i) – jazz improvisation on the song by The Smiths

Still ill (improvisation on the pop song) (ii – ideation “no true thing in words”)

Still ill (improvisation on the pop melody) (iii: eyes of a cow)

Still ill (improv) (iv: ‘There is no healing, only forgiveness’)

Still ill (improvisations on the pop song, parts i-iv)

That Old Devil Called Love (i: short take)

That Old Devil Called Love (ii: long, free take)

My Girl (free improv on the pop song).

The Long Decline (Improvisation on Dylan’s ‘House of the Rising Sun’)

O Make Me A Mask

 
O make me a mask and a wall to shut from your spies
Of the sharp, enamelled eyes and the spectacled claws
Rape and rebellion in the nurseries of my face,
Gag of a dumbstruck tree to block from bare enemies
The bayonet tongue in this undefended prayerpiece,
The present mouth, and the sweetly blown trumpet of lies,
Shaped in old armour and oak the countenance of a dunce
To shield the glistening brain and blunt the examiners,
And tear-stained widower grief drooped from the lashes
To veil belladonna and let the dry eyes perceive
Others betray the lamenting lies of their losses
By the curve of the nude mouth or the laugh up the sleeve.

–Dylan Thomas

 

A Crazed Girl

 
That crazed girl improvising her music,
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling she knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship
Her knee-cap broken, that girsl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, ‘O sea-starved hungry sea.’

1937
William Butler Yeats

 

Her Anxiety

 
Earth in beauty dressed
Awaits returning spring.
All true love must die,
Alter at the best
Into some lesser thing.
Prove that I lie.

Such body lovers have,
Such exacting breath,
That they touch or sigh,
Every touch they give,
Love is nearer death.
Prove that I lie.

1930
William Butler Yeats

 

Love’s Loneliness

 
Old fathers, great-grandfathers,
Rise as kindred should.
If ever lover’s loneliness
Came where you stood,
Pray that Heaven protect us
That protect your blood.

The mountain throws a shadow
Thin is the moon’s horn;
What did we remember
Under the ragged thorn?
Dread has followed longing,
And our hearts are torn

1929
William Butler Yeats

 
Thirteen hundred years since you were born
Whose quiet voice settled the date of Easter,
With your book history for the English
Was begun. After so many years
Familiar to us and venerable,
Like an old schoolmaster who taught the sixth
Form’s grandfathers, in a green and chalky gown.
The chieftains flickering outside your light
Found you a kind of Merlin, maker of runes,
No spell more binding this side the Wendel sea.
Sixty years almost on a spit of land
Above the Tyne! Northumbria bounded
By a wall the Romans built to keep out
Anarchy, the long ships of the Northmen
Would bring it in by sea.
Prayer, study, teaching was what you called
Commitment, in these ‘I ever took delight.’
To-day on Jarrow’s central square two figures
Stare from stone and both are Vikings.
Only destroyers need a monument.
The Church has placed you in her calendar.

– Frank McKay *

A LETTER FROM ROBERT GRAVES

 
By Courtnay Place, waiting for the lights to change,
A girl from a class I hardly knew
Slipped from the arm of her boy and held my thought
By the hands. Voice too urgent for greeting
She told how the poet of the three-fold
Goddess found time to write. Hair
Thrown to the wind, eyes blue with mystery,
She whispered his words:
                                ’Heroes of truth
And innocence are almost gone. Watch for them.’

The southerly blew through her eyes, tears
Came. ‘No,’ she cried, ‘there are none,
Not even one.’ The lights changed and she left me.
Her dress brushed the noses of throbbing cars.

– Frank McKay *

(* “This small collection of poems by Frank McKay has been printed by several student hands to mark his retirement after twenty years as a member of the Department of English, Victoria University of Wellington.”)

Rumpelstiltskin

 
Meeting you again
after all this time,
I’m afraid I won’t like you
Rumpelstiltskin,
King of Compression,
Lord of Inanimate Things!
Why must you stamp
your jewelled words
into the ground at my feet?
I will spin straw
into gold for you
if I must, but know,
cantankerous wretch,
that, being woman,
I am the queen of all
that is transformed.
Little King of Straw, think!
It is I who make you great.

– Meg Campbell

Only My Woes

 
Being unusually happy these
past few weeks, I have stopped
talking to you, my friend–
there is little to say. How can I
tell you of the seemingly trivial
things that elate, or calm me?
‘Tonight, Venus lies close
to the new moon. Tonight
he smiled at me, and I remembered
how his eyes used to burn approvingly.’
I won’t tell you these things
because my happiness bores you
in a way that my misery never does.
By the flickering of your eyes,
I know that your mind is elsewhere.
Something tells me you wish
to hear only my woes.

– Meg Campbell
 

Dream on a Good Friday

a love poem

I slept, and woke
and slept again
and dreamed, inside your arms,
of two darkened figures
moving quietly towards
a brilliant screen.
I was surprised to see
that they were irises–
purple, and black, like secrets
buried in me. I cried out,
and you hushed my mouth,
and took the night watch
and the haunting left me.

–Meg Campbell

8.

For you
or memory of you
my mind writes letters
composing phone calls
things to say, as every day
is rescued, by patterns of its own

these days
the dawn is something
worth getting up for –
kahawai in the estuary
a new neighbour to meet
plans for moving south

but there’s still you
or memory of you

and messages with nowhere to go

–Pat White*

(* on the inside cover of the book:
Prospero:
“What seest thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?”
– The Tempest: Act 1, Scene 2. )

Poems by obscure New Zealand poets, whose small, hand-set and printed volumes found in a Wellington second-hand bookshop.

By Matthew Arnold

1.
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel’s prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards o’er the starlit sea.

2.
And a look of passionate desire
O’er the sea and to the stars I send:
“Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!

3.
“Ah, once more,” I cried, “ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you!”

4.
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea’s unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer:
“Wouldst thou BE as these are? LIVE as they.

5.
“Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

6.
“And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

7.
“Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God’s other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see.”

8.
O air-born voice! long since, severly clear,
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
“Resolve to be thyself; and know that he
Who finds himself loses his misery!”

His own heart seemed to him to be much like an arrow stripped of the flashing white feathers that gave it direction.

His Majesty seemed to be rather more frail than his imperial father had been, and although he was listening to the reading of his own composition, his face showed no sign of complacency, but retained an icy composure. Kiyoaki suddenly shook in fear at the totally improbable notion that his Imperial Majesty was in fact suppressing an anger that was directed at him.

“I’ve dared to betray His Majesty. There’s nothing to do but to die.”

He held fast to that one thought as he stood there, the atmosphere around him heavy with the rich fragrance of incense, feeling as though he might collapse at any moment. A thrill ran through him, but whether of joy or dread he could not tell.

The rain was still falling outside the windows and veiled the courtroom in a bleak light which seemed to focus on Tomi Masuda. She stood there as though she were the sole representative of all the complex emotions of man, living, breathing, grieving, and crying out in pain. She alone was endowed with the privilege of emotion. Until a few moments before, the spectators had seen nothing but a plump, perspiring, thirty-one-year-old woman. But now with bated breath and staring eyes, they were looking at a human being wracked by her feelings, writhing like a fish carved up alive for the dinner table.

She had absolutely no protection from their gaze. The crime that she had once committed in darkness had now taken possession of her to reveal itself before the eyes of them all.

from ‘Spring Snow’, Yukio Mishima

“Stikovic was a born egoist and a monster, a man who could love no one and who as long as he lived, himself tormented and unsatisfied, would torture all those whom he deceived and who were near to him. Glasicanin did not speak much of his own love, but it was evident in every word, every glance and every movement. The girl listened to him, remaining silent for the most part. After every such conversation she felt more serene, more at peace with herself. For the first time after so many months she had moments of respite from her internal storms and for the first time succeeded in looking at herself as othes only an illusion even as her dream of love the previous summer had only been an illusion.”

——

“So be it, thought the hodja. If they destroy here, then somewhere else someone else is building. Surely there are still peaceful countries and men of good sense who know of God’s love? If God had abandoned this unlucky town on the Drina, he had surely not abandoned the whole world that was beneath the skies? But who knows? Perhaps this impure infidel faith that puts everything in order, cleans everything up, repairs and embellishes everything only in order suddenly and violently to demolish and destroy, might spread through the whole world; it might make of all God’s world an empty field for its senseless building and criminal destruction, a pasturage for its insatiable hunger and incomprehensible demands?”

“Anything might happen. But one thing could not happen; it could not be that great and wise men of exalted soul who would raise lasting buildings for the love of God, so that the world should be more beautiful and man live in it better and more easily, should everywhere and for all time vanish from this earth. Should they too vanish, it would mean that the love of God was extinguished and had disappeared from the world. That could not be.”

I am a maidservant. I had an affair
With a man in the SA.
One day before he went off
With a laugh he showed me how they go about
Catching grumblers.
With a stump of chalk from his tunic pocket
He drew a small cross on the palm of his hand.
He told me, with that and in civvies
He’d go to the labour exchanges
Where the unemployed queue up and curse
And would curse with the rest and doing so
As a token of his approval and solidarity
Would pat anyone who cursed on the shoulderblade, whereupon the marked man
White cross on his back, would be caught by the SA.
We had a good laugh about that.
I went with him for three months, then I noticed
That he’d taken over my savings book.
He had said that he’d keep it for me
Because times were uncertain.
When I challenged him, he swore
That his intentions had been honest. Doing so
He laid his hand on my shoulder to calm me down.
I ran away terrified. At home
I looked at my back in the mirror to see if it didn’t bear
A white cross.

Everything Changes

Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.
But what has happened has happened. And the water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again.

What has happened has happened. The water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again, but
Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.

Great Babel Gives Birth

…
Great Babel vomited and it sounded like FREEDOM! and coughed and it sounded like JUSTICE! and farted again and it sounded like PROSPERITY! And wrapped in a bloody sheet a squalling brat was carried on to the balcony and shown to the people with a ringing of the bells, and it was WAR.

Finland 1940

We are now refugees in
Finland.

My little daughter
Returns home in the evening complaining that no child
Will play with her. She is German, and comes
From a nation of gangsters.

When I exchange loud words during a discussion
I am told to be quiet. The people here do not like
Loud words from someone
Who comes from a nation of gangsters.

When I remind my little daughter
That the Germans are a nation of gangsters
She is glad with me that they are not loved
And we laugh together.

Understanding

I can hear you saying:
He talks of America
He understands nothing about it He has never been there.
But believe you me
You understand me perfectly well when I talk of America
And the best thing about America is
That we understand it.

An Assyrian tablet
Is something you alone understand
(A dead business of course)
But should we not learn from people
Who have understood how
To make themselves understood?
You, my dear sir
No one understands
But one understands New York.
I tell you:
These people understand what they are doing
So they are understood.

There is no greater crime than leaving

There is no greater crime than leaving.
In friends, what do you count on? Not on what they do.
You never can tell what they will do. Not on what they are.
That
May change. Only on this: their not leaving.
He who cannot leave cannot stay. He who has a pass
In his pocket – will he stay when the attack begins? Perhaps
He will not stay.
If it goes badly with me, perhaps he will stay. But if it goes
Badly with him, perhaps he will leave.
Fighters are poor people. They cannot leave. When the attack
Begins they cannot leave.
He who stays is known. He who has left was not known. What left
Is different from what was here.
Before we go into battle I must know: have you a pass
In your coat pocket? Is a plane waiting for you behind the battlefield?
How many defeats do you want to survive? Can I send you away?
Well, then, let’s not go into battle.

The burning of the books

When the Regime commanded that books with harmful knowledge
Should be publicly burned and on all sides
Oxen were forced to drag cartloads of books
To the bonfires, a banished
Writer, one of the best, scanning the list of the
Burned, was shocked to find that his
Books had been passed over. He rushed to his desk
On wings of wrath, and wrote a letter to those in power
Burn me! he wrote with a flying pen, burn me! Haven’t my books
Always reported the truth? And here you are
Treating me like a liar! I command you:
Burn me!

The Democratic Judge

In Los Angeles, before the judge who examines people
Trying to become citizens of the United Sates
Came an Italian restaurant keeper. After grave preparations
Hindered, though, by his ignorance of the new language
In the test he replied to the question:
What is the 8th Amendment? falteringly:
1492. Since the law demands that applicants know the language
He was refused. Returning
After three months spent on further studies
Yet hindered still by ignorance of the new language
He was confronted this time with the question: Who was
The victorious general in the Civil War? His answer was:
1492. (Given amiably in a loud voice). Sent away again
And returning for a third time, he answered
A third question: For how long a term are our Presidents elected?
Once more with: 1492. Now
The judge, who liked the man, realised he could not
Learn the new language, asked him
How he earned his living and was told: by hard work. And so
At his fourth appearance the judge gave him the question:
When
Was America discovered? And on the strength of his correctly answering
1492, he was granted his citizenship.

The Transformation of the Gods

The old heathen gods – this is a secret -
Were the first converts to Christianity.
Before the whole people they stepped through the grey oak hedges
Mumbled homely prayers and crossed themselves.

Throughout the entire middle ages they took their stand
As if absent-mindedly in the stone niches of God’s house
Wherever godlike figures might be required.

At the time of the French Revolution
They were the first to don the golden masks of pure reason
And as powerful concepts
They stepped, the old bloodsuckers and thought-stiflers,
Across the bent backs of the toiling masses.

Lullabies IV

…
When in the night I lie and stare unsleeping
Often I turn and reach out for your hand.
How can I make you see through their lying?
I know you’ve already been numbered for wars they’ve already planned.

Your mother, my son, has never pretended
You’re the special son of someone’s special daughter;
But neither did she bring you up with so much hardship
To hang on the barbed wire one day crying for water.
…

i always resented all the years, the hours, the
minutes i gave them as a working stiff, it
actually hurt my head, my insides, it made me
dizzy and a bit crazy — i couldn’t understand the
murdering of my years
yet my fellow workers gave no signs of
agony, many of them even seemed satisfied, and
seeing them that way drove me almost as crazy as
the dull and senseless work.

the workers submitted.
the work pounded them to nothingness, they were
scooped-out and thrown away.

i resented each minute, every minute as it was
mutilated
and nothing relieved the monotonous ever-
structure.

i considered suicide.
i drank away my few leisure hours.

i worked for decades.

i lived with the worst of women, they killed what
the job failed to kill.

i knew that i was dying.
something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become
them, accept.

then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
bit.
it needn’t be much, just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on
fire.
just a spark.
save it.

i think i did.
i’m glad i did.
what a lucky god damned
thing.

-charles bukowski

2010 Albums

(Hi res image here) Album: ‘Tomfoolery’ on Last FM (begun 2010: ongoing) Tracks: - Hallelujah: Deconstructing the h-theme: A (3:30) - Hallelujah: Deconstructing the h-theme: B (5:52) - Hallelujah: Deconstructing the h-theme: C (3:58) - God Bless the Chile (played straight) (7:23) - Hallelujah D: Reprise (5:08) - Improvisation with Atonalism (7:22) This is an album for ‘off-the-cuff’ or less serious tracks. The first three and the fifth are abstracted improvisatory variations on ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen.

Videos from this album God Bless the Chile Hallelujah A: deconstructing the h-theme Hallelujah B: deconstructing the h-theme Hallelujah C: decontructing the h-theme Hallelujah D: Hallelujah reprise Improvisation with Atonalism

Vicissitude Album: ‘Vicissitude’ on Last FM (begun 2010: unfinished) Tracks: - Extemporised melodies based on Itsukushimi Fukaki (9:30) - Uncomprehended (4:31) - Vicissitude (11:09) - Extended Coda (Vicissitude) as Aural Arabesque (minimal, concrete) (12:39) A stylistically varied collection. The track ‘Extemporised melodies based on Itsukushimi Fukaki’, a solo melodic free improvisation on the ‘head’ of a well-known tune, is recorded well and highly accessible. The other pieces are far more abstract.

Videos from this album Improvisation on Itsukushimi Fukaki Uncomprehended

	(Hi res image here) Album: ‘Penitence’ on Last FM (2007, 2010: unfinished) Tracks: - The ornaments of Love (7:27) - Nostalgic Monotony with the sound of breathing (14:07) - Here is Beautiful The main track in this collection – The Ornaments of Love – is a very accessible work – the most accessible of all my recent work – somewhat neo-classicistic, but quite ‘electro-pop’.
YouTube Videos from this album The Ornaments of Love Here is beautiful Nostalgic Monotony with the sound of breathing (part 1) Nostalgic Monotony with the sound of breathing (part 2)

(Hi res image here) Album: ‘Recurring Thoughts in 17 Sections’ on Last FM (2010) Tracks: (i) – opening sketch (2:14) (ii) – variation with random placement (2:23) (iii) – variation in miniature: 1 (0:55) (iv) – variation in miniature: 2 (0:36) (v) – melancholy (5:00) (vi) – variation in miniature: 3 (1:37) (vii) – variation with cascading delays (2:29) (viii) – thoughts beyond recall (2:27) (ix) – variation in miniature: 4 (1:15) (x) – variation in miniature: 5 (1:29) (xi) – self recrimination (2:03) (xii) – resurgence of optimism (1:51) (xiii) – miniature with the illusion of a beat (1:16) (xiv) – the things that never were (2:21) (xv) – closing sketch (2:04) (xvi) – in the flavour of jazz (4:49) (xvii) – repose (2:19) This is a single piece in 17 ‘movements’. It has neoclassicistic pretentions, being constructed in a post-modern ‘theme and variation style’. Improvised, deconstructed, reconstructed and recomposed.

Videos from this album ‘Girl’ (2002), Fassih Keiso.mp4 This video features two tracks from ‘Recurring thoughts in 17 Sections’, and images from a 2002 artwork by contemporary artist Fassih Keiso. Recurring Thoughts: (vi) variation in miniature Recurring Thoughts: (xi) Self Recrimination Recurring Thoughts: (xiii) miniature with the illusion of a beat’ ‘Recurring Thoughts’ : (xvi) variation with a jazz feeling Images of cherry blossoms, accompanying part 16 – the most accessible section – of ‘Recurring thoughts in 17 Sections’. Recurring thoughts (images of shibamata taishakuten temple) Photographing Shibamata Taishakuten temple – famous for its beautiful carvings – from the outside, the reflection in the windows on such a sunny day produced some very satisfying natural layering effects.

	The Minimal Essence of Minor (Hi res image here) Album: ‘The Minimal Essence of Minor’ on Last FM (2010) Tracks: i) All Summer Long (6:30) ii) Catalogues of Future Sunsets (8:30) iii) Lost Infinities (4:36) A single piece in three movements, in postmodern-improv-electro-neoclassicist style.
Videos from this album (i) All Summer Long (ii) Catalogues of Future Sunsets “Lost Infinities” (early photographs)

(Hi res image here) Album: ‘Harmonic Study of the Raag Marva’ on Last FM (2010) Tracks: i. Themes – Harmonic study on raag marva: I (5:54) ii. ‘Mr Honda’s Waterfall’ – Harmonic study on raag marva: II (6:17) iii. Freeform – Harmonic study on raag marva: III (8:22) A single piece in three movements, in postmodern-improv-electro-neoclassicist style. As the name suggests, it began as study of the harmonic possibilities of the North Indian Raag Marva.

YouTube Videos from this album The Raag Marva: (i) Themes The Raag Marva: (ii) Mr Honda’s Waterfall

Older Albums

	(Hi res image here) Album: ‘Spirit Genes’ on Last FM (begun 2002: unfinished) Tracks: - Embryo 2.3 (7:28) - S312 (4:55) - Embryo (pre-mix 1.6) (7:28) - Embryo (pre-mix 1.1) (7:28) Another as-yet unfinished collection, there are two tracks, plus two alternative mixes. These is a very ambient, abstract musical work. Not very accessible, but very intricate and absorbing for some.
YouTube Videos from this album Embryo 23 S312 Embryo 16 Embryo 11

Album: ‘The Heretic’ on Last FM (2002) Tracks: - Not of this World (6:02) - Amongst the Orbs (6:11) - The Enchantment (8:44) - Not of this world (strings) (4:44) - Under the Mountain (5:05) - As the gentle rain from heaven (8:09) - Quiet Inner Quiet (7:37) A complete, though somewhat short, album. Stylistically varied: the track ‘Not of This World’, was quite popular (as much as can be said of music that almost no one listens to), in two different versions – one electro-jazz. The track, ‘The Enchantment’ is highly abstract, a satisfying track for those who like the obscure – two nice alternative mixes of this track are on the album ‘Whispers’.

YouTube Videos from this album Not of This World (strings mix) The Enchantment Amongst The Orbs Not of This World (guitar mix)

Forgiveness Album: ‘Forgiveness’ on Last FM (2001) Tracks: - The passing (of Daisy Duck) (2:48) - Prayer: Love (4:22) - Forgiveness (4:30) - Spatial Mantra (mix 5b.5) (10:39) - Pure land of compassion (8:37) - The Fullness Of Time (5:06) - A Lover Lost In Dreams (5:34) - 100 Million Lifetimes (5:49) - Bedouin Bus (4:58) - He drew an ocean (7:55) - Delicate Trust (1:47) First and longest album. Most popular track was ‘The Passing of Daisy Duck’, which was also used in a theatre work by Director Samia Mikhael. Includes some accessible ambient jazz pieces (Forgiveness, The Fullness of Time, Prayer Love); abstract, free-tempo pieces (Pure land of compassion, Bedouin Bus, Delicate Trust, A Lover Lost in Dreams) similar to recent works; and a very long slow minimal improvisation over sparse backing (Spatial Mantra).

YouTube Videos from this album The Fullness of Time The Passing of Daisy Duck Prayer Love Forgiveness Spatial Mantra 100 Million Lifetimes Delicate Trust Bedouin Bus

(Hi res image here) Album: ‘Whispers’ on Last FM (ongoing) Tracks: - The Enchantment (Right brain de-mix) (‘The Heretic’ outtakes) (8:26) - The Enchantment (left brain de-mix) (‘The Heretic’ outtakes) (8:44) - Not Of This World (Synth String track) (‘The Heretic’ outtakes) (3:58) - Amongst The Orbs (Synth String track) (‘The Heretic’ outtakes) (5:58) - Backing from Harmonic Study on Raag Marva III (8:22) - Backing from ‘Vicissitude’ (from the album Vicissitude) (11:06) This ongoing collection is for alternative mixes (although sometimes alternative mixes are included in the original collection). The ‘demixes’ (mixes with some parts removed) of ‘The Enchantment’ are both very good. The synth string tracks are – just as they sound – the string tracks from the tracks in question, minus the other instrumentation. The ‘backing’ tracks are – as they sound – the backing instrumentation of the tracks in question, minus the lead instrument.

YouTube Videos from this album The Enchantment (Right Brain Mix) The Enchantment (Left Brain mix)

	(Hi res image here) Album: ‘Sterile Worlds’ on Last FM (ongoing) Tracks: - Old worlds (4:27) - Collapse of Confidence (6:34) - Sad Words free download (4:42) This is an ongoing album for rough or demo tracks. There’s one track, ‘Old Worlds’, that’s actually a very nice composition reasonably played, although only recorded in demo quality. The other tracks are of less interest.
YouTube Videos from this album Old Worlds

Wrong directions

I nearly had an upsetting experience the other day. I was poised to get on a bus, but an Indian lady, of late middle age, somewhat older than myself, was having trouble communicating to a not-very-helpful lady bus driver.

“Can you take me please to Oxford Terrace, Newtown,” said the Indian lady, with that the lovely exaggerated vowels so common of Indian people. She was looking for an English School in Oxford Terrace.

“I don’t know, dear. I go through Newtown. Are you getting on?”

“Oxford Terrace I need.”

“I don’t know that, dear. I just drive the bus”

Being new in the city I was carrying a map and half the bus timetables of the city, and since the bus did pass through Newtown I was sure I could help her; so I suggested to her that she get on and we’d find it on the map together.

I looked at the map, it didn’t seem to be in the index (“typical she’ll-be-right Kiwi map, eh”); but Newtown isn’t very big, might as well just find it. Ah! Here it is, just off this main street. ‘xford, You can’t see the ‘O’ very well, there’s a big circle printed on top of it. I went forward to talk to the driver.

“Oh, what is it now?” she said. With a sing-song voice and rising inflection, she almost sounded polite!

OK, the driver’s no use (I’ll help you madam). I pointed out some obvious landmarks on the way, and told her about bus passes.

We’re nearly there, let’s just double check where we are…. oh no!! It doesn’t read ‘Oxford’ it says ‘Luxford’! The circle made me think it was an ‘O’, but underneath is printed ‘Lu’. We’re going to the wrong place!

“Madam we must get off!”

At his point I think I startled her, but she did as I suggested. We got off together. “Where is Oxford Terrace can you tell me?”

“Ummm, I’m not quite sure…” I was a little flustered, “you see, it says Luxford, not Oxford, I made a mistake, I’ll just text a friend, she’ll be next to her computer,” (texting nervously) “she’ll find it, madam… madam….”

The old lady was walking down the street, “I must find someone to ask directions. Can you tell Oxford Terrace?” (no, sorry, don’t know that one) “Oxford Terrace, please, can you tell me?” (No, I’m sorry I can’t help you).

“Please madam, I’m sure my friend can help us,” I called after her.

I followed after her. She quickened her pace away from me, apparently scared of me now. “I must ask for directions…”

OK, I’ve upset her. She thinks I’m strange. That’s fine. I’ll just find out where this street is, and I can sort all this out. (texting: “RU by internet, urgent, need 2 find oxford terrace newtown”). Oh dear… where did the lady go? She’s gone!

I received a text with directions, but I had lost the lost lady.

OK, I’m not in a hurry. I’ll find the place, come back, if I find her still hanging around asking for directions I’ll know where it is. Feeling rather guilty. Images of a dear old Indian woman wandering off lost and distressed in a foreign city.

It was a bit of a walk down the road, and not really in ‘Newtown’ according to my map, but in one of the neighbouring suburbs as far as I could tell, but I eventually found the place – thought, OK, I’ll head back the other way and see how the Indian lady got on, turned around. There she was, 50 metres away, asking people, “Oxford Terrace please, can you tell me?” (Yes, it’s just over there.)

Sigh of relief, she found the place herself without my unhelpful interference.

Bus stop.

Waiting at a bus-stop again. The bus was late.

A man pulled up in a ute, got out, walked over to the phone booths. He had cowboy-type boots on. He looked over the phone booths quickly, checking them for something; then loudly said, “F###! ….F###, F###!”.

He turned to me, “D’you know this area at all?”

“I know it a little,” I said, trying to sound helpful. I had actually walked up and down this street at least three times in the last week.

“Is there an escort agency near here?”

“I don’t know… Sorry,” I said timidly.

He strode back to his ute, angrily, “F###! F### this place is f###ing dump!” and drove off, to my relief.

The bus was still late. Right by the bus stop some interior decorators were pulling apart the inside of a Post Shop. A lady of early old age was talking to one of them through the glass.

“Is the Post Shop closing?”

A mumbled reply through the thick glass.

“Is it moving? Are you moving?”

The reply was clearer this time, “nah, it’s stayin’ here”. (down and up New Zealand inflection.)

The lady walked away, then came back, “I didn’t really hear you before. Is this post shop moving?”

Clearly this time, “no, it’s gonna stay here.”

Then she got angry. “I don’t believe you. I know when people are not telling the truth. You’re lying!”

Then she expressed what sounded like curse words or an angry expression in a Slavic language, perhaps Polish, which was unusual since she previously been speaking English with a very pronounced New Zealand accent.

During this time I had been checking the photos on my camera, through the viewfinder (it saves battery power).

“I hope you aren’t taking photos of me!” she said, somewhat threateningly for a woman of early old age, “you better not be taking photos of me.”

“No.” I said, a little too defiantly considering she was only an old lady.

And to my relief, she went away, too.

The bus was still late.

Extract: from Chapter 44, ‘Spring Snow’, Yukio Mishima

The circumstances that had led so rapidly to her renunciation of the world were as follows. When the Abbess had heard the entire story from Satoko that first morning, she had known at once that she must allow the girl to become a nun. Keenly aware that each of her predecessors at Gesshu had been an imperial princess, she felt bound to revere the Emperor above all else. And so she had come to the decision that she had to allow Satoko to enter even if this involved a temporary thwarting of the imperial will. She had concluded that, given the circumstances, there was no other way to discharge her loyalty to the Emperor. She had happened to uncover a plot directed at him, and she could not allow it to proceed unchecked. She was not one to countenance a breach of loyalty, no matter how elegant the cunning that disguised it.

Thus it was that the normally so discreet and gentle Abbess of Gesshu made up her mind, determined to give in neither to the force of authority nor to the threat of coercion. Even if all the world should be ranged against her, even if she were forced to ignore a particular imperial decree, she would persist in what she had to do — to be a silent guard of the sacred person of His Majesty.

Her resolve had a profound effect on Satoko, who became all the more determined to turn her back on the world. She had not expected the Abbess to grant her request so readily. She had had an encounter with the Lord Buddha, and the Abbess, her eye as keen as a crane’s, had immediately discerned the firmness of the girl’s decision.

Although it was customary for a novice to undergo a year of ascetic discipline before her formal induction as a nun, both Satoko and the Abbess felt that in the present circumstances this period should be dispensed with. But the Abbess could not bring herself to disregard the Ayakuras so completely as to allow Satoko to take the tonsure before the Countess returned from Tokyo. Moreover, there was the matter of Kiyoaki. Would it not be wise, she thought, to allow him and Satoko to bid each other a long farewell before she sacrificed what hair she had spared so far?

Satoko could hardly endure the delay. She came to the Abbess every day and, like a child teasing her mother to give her some candy, begged her to be allowed to take the tonsure. Finally, the Abbess found herself prepared to yield.

“If I were to allow you to take the tonsure.” she asked Atoko, “you would never be allowed to see Kiyoaki again. That wouldn’t trouble you?”

“No.”

“Well, once you make the decision not to see him ever again in this world and so advance to initiation, any later regrets would indeed be bitter ones.”

“I will have no regrets. In this world I shall never set eyes on him again. As for parting, we’ve had farewells enough. So please . . .”

Her voice as she replied was clear and firm.

“Very well. Tomorrow morning, then, I will preside at the tonsure ceremony,” the Abbess replied, allowing one more day of grace.

Countess Ayakura did not return in the interval.

From that first morning at Gesshu, Satoko had plunged herself, of her own volition, into the disciplined routine of convent life. The distinctive character of Hosso Buddhism was in placing greater emphasis on the cultivation of the mind than the practice of religious austerities. Gesshu Temple, futhermore, was traditionally dedicated to praying for the households registered with it as parishoners. Sometimes the Abbess would observe with gentle humour that the “Grace of tears” was something never encountered in Hosso Buddhism, thus underlining the contrast with the more recently arisen Amida cult of Pure Land Buddhism, with its great stress on ecstatic prayers of gratitude.

Then, too, in Mahayana Buddhism in general, there were no precepts to speak of. But for the rules of its monastic life the precepts of Hinayana Buddhism were often borrowed. In convents such as Gesshu, however, the rule was the “Precepts of a Bodhisattva” contained in the Brahamajala Sutra. Its forty-eight prohibitions began with ten major injunctions against such sins as the taking of life, stealing, excess of any sort, and lying, and it concluded with an admonishment against destroying Buddhist teachings.

Far more severe than any commandment, however, was the monastic training. In the brief time she had been at Gesshu, Satoko had already memorized both the “Sutra of the Enlightened Heart” and the “Thirty Verses” expounding the doctrine of Yuishiki, Each morning she got up early to sweep and dust the main hall of worship before the Abbess came for her morning devotions, in the course of which she then had an opportunity to practice the chanting of the sutras. She was no longer treated as a guest, and the senior nun, whom the Abbess had placed in charge of her, was now a changed woman in her severity of manner.

On the morning of the initiation ceremony, she carefully performed the prescribed ablutions before putting on the black robes of a nun. In the hall of worship, she sat with her string of beads wrapped around her hands, which she held clasped together in front of her. After the Abbess herself had first taken the razor and begun the tonsuring, the old nun in charge took over. And as she shaved steadily with a skilled hand, the Abbess began to chant the “Sutra of the Enlightened Heart,” accompanied by the junior nun.

When she had consummated the works of perfection,
The Five Aggregates of living being became as
Things void before the Bodhisattva Kannon’s eyes,
And stricken from her was the yoke of human suffering.

Satoko, too, took up the chant, her eyes closed. And as she did so, her body became like a boat that is gradually lightened of all its cargo and freed of its anchor, and she felt herself being swept along on the deep swelling wave of chanting voices.

She kept her eyes shut. The main hall had the penetrating chill of an ice house, and so, although she herself was floating free, she imagined a vast expanse of pure ice gripping all the world around her. Suddenly the cry of a shrike came from the garden outside, and a crack raced across this icy plane with the swiftness of a jagged streak of lightning. But it sealed itself almost at once, and the ice became whole once more.

She felt the razor working its way with scrupulous care across her scalp. Sometimes she imagined the frenetic gnawing of a mouse’s tiny white incisors, sometimes the placid grinding of the molars of a horse or cow.

As lock after lock fell away, she felt her scalp begin to tingle with a refreshing coolness that was quite new to her. The razor was shearing off the black hair that had separated her from the world for so long, sultry and heavy with its sorry burden of desire; but her scalp was now being laid bare to a realm of purity whose chill freshness had not been violated by any man’s hand. As the expanse of shaved head broadened, she began to feel the skin coming more and more alive, just as if a cool solution of menthol was spreading over it.

She imagined that the chill must be like the surface of the moon, directly exposed to the vastness of the universe. The world she had known was falling away with each strand. And as it did so, she became infinitely removed from it.

In one sense, it seemed as though her hair were being harvested. Shorn black clumps, still saturated with the stifling brilliance of the summer sun, piled up on the floor around her. But it was a worthless crop, for the very instant that the luxuriant handfuls ceased to be hers, the beauty of life went out of them, leaving only an ugly remnant. Something that had once been an intimate part of her, and aesthetic element of her innermost being, was now being relentlessly thrown aside. As irrevocable as the amputation of a limb, the ties that bound her to the world of transience were being severed.

When her scalp at last shone with a bluish glint, the Abbess addressed her gently.

“The most crucial renunciation is the one that comes after formal renunciation. I have the utmost trust in your present resolution. From this day on, if you seek to purify your heart in the austerities of our life, I have no doubt that you will one day become the glory of our sisterhood.”

*

This was how Satoko’s premature tonsuring came about.

1: The harmonic series.

Music is an art, but it isn’t artificial. The reason melodies and harmonies sound sweet or harsh is completely scientific. For this reason, different human cultures independently developed similar musical systems.

The basis of melody and harmony is the ‘harmonic series’. When a vibrating body with a musical tone (like the string on a guitar or the column of air in a trumpet) vibrates, it does so ‘harmonically’. It vibrates along its whole length, but it also divides and vibrates with harmonic overtones.

To use an analogy of a guitar string…. The most important harmonic is the ‘fundamental’, the vibration of the whole length of the string. The string also vibrates in two halves, this is called the ‘first harmonic’; and in three thirds, the ‘second harmonic’ and so on. These vibrations all occur simultaneously.

The first 6 tones – the fundamental and the first 5 harmonics – are the most important. And it’s from these tones that the notes and harmonies of Western music, and most of the world’s musical systems, are derived. You will see that (in the key of C, for example) there are 3 Cs, 2 Gs and 1 E.

The notes of the scale.

The harmonic series gives us the notes C (‘tonic’ or root note, which appears at the fundamental and octave), G (the ‘fifth’) and E (the major third).

Transposed down to within the range of a single octave, G (produced by the string vibrating in 3 parts) has the ratio of 3/2 and E the ratio of (the string vibrating in 5 parts) the ratio of 5/4.

Placed on a diagram showing the equal semi-tones of the western chromatic scale, you notice that the pure harmonically derived notes are not an exact match to their ‘equal tempered’ notes used in modern Western music.

The ‘Blue Note’.

I’ve also included the 6th harmonic (7/8 the string in 7 equal parts). This note is quite flat by Western standards, and wasn’t included in the theoretical systems of Europe, India or China, but that tone, and notes derived from it are used all the time in music – it’s the ‘blue note’, the very beautiful and rather flat minor seventh or minor third used in jazz and blues.

The ‘just’ scale.

Simple extrapolations from these primary tones give us all the notes of the major scale. A note is included midway between the tonic (C) and third (E): this is produced by playing a fifth on top of a fifth 3/2 x 3/2 = 9/4 (transposed down to 9/8). A fifth below the tonic gives us the fourth (4/3, or 3/2 inverted). A major third above the fourth gives us the major sixth (4/3 x 5/4 = 20/12 -> 5/3), and a major third above the fifth gives us the major seventh (3/2 x 5/4 = 15/8).

Now we have all the notes of the major scale, plus the three major chords of the scale (C, G and F), all derived simply from the mathematical ratios of the harmonics. It’s not surprising that the major cultures of the world all discovered this scale independently.

The major third sits naturally between the tonic and the fifth, if you invert this interval, and extend the major third below the fifth, you get the minor third (3/2 x 4/5 = 6/5), and extending this interval from the fourth and fifth gives the minor sixth (4/3 x 6/5 = 8/5) and minor seventh (3/2 x 6/5 = 9/5).

Here are some other intervals. The semitone, or minor second (an inversion of the major seventh, although there are other ways to derive this interval that are slightly different); the blue notes (the blue third is fifth below the pure blue seventh: 7/8 x 2/3 = 7/12), and the ‘pythagorian third’. The pythagorian third is interesting – it’s somewhat dissonant when played in a chord, but sounds sweet and bright when played alone in a melody, and is the addition of two major seconds (9/8 x 9/8 = 81/64).

Have a look at where the blue note is. It’s a very natural thing, and sounds sad and pretty, to play a minor third or minor seventh about a third of a semitone flat. Singers often do this naturally without realising they are singing outside the traditional scale.

The modes.

Although the minor scale can be derived harmonically as above, there’s an easier way to derive it, you simply play the major scale starting at a different note! For example, the most famous and popular of the modes, the Dorian mode or ‘D’ mode, is simply the same notes as the major scale, played from the second (or D in the key of C).

And by the same process, the other modes can be derived. Note that in modal music, the original names for the major and minor scales were the Ionian mode and the Aeolian mode.

I’ve highlighted the tonic and fifth in these diagrams to show how the tones and semitones relate to these, the most important, notes.

In theory, there’s also another mode you could play, starting on ‘B’. It does have a name, it’s called the ‘Locrian’ mode, but because it doesn’t have a natural fifth (instead it has a flattened or ‘diminished’ fifth), it lacks a strong tonal centre and is rarely used, so I didn’t include it.

• Ionian Mode (C)

  The same as the major scale. In C, it uses the I, IV, V chords C, F, G

• Dorian Mode (D)

  In medieval times, this was the most popular mode, and it is now very popular again, being the basis of the blues scale, and is the most-used scale in modal jazz and jazz-fusion. It uses the I, IV, V chords Dm, G and Am

• Aeolian mode (A)

  The natural minor scale. With all minor chords, it uses the I, IV, V chords Am, Dm and Em.

• Lydian mode (F)

  Hugely popular in Indian music, like the major scale but with a sharp IV, which acts as a ‘leading tone’ to the fifth which gives it a brightness and playfulness jazz musicians also love. It doesn’t have a IV chord, but uses the I, V chords C and G.

• Phrygian mode (E)

  An all-minor mode with a flat second, this popular mode has an exotic Middle-Eastern or Eastern European sound to Western ears. The flat second interferes with the V chord, so it doesn’t have a simple V chord, but uses the I, IV chords Em and Am.

• Mixolydian mode (G)

  Despite its odd name, this is a common mode in modern music. It’s like the major mode with a minor seventh and uses the I, IV, V chords G, C and Dm.

Counterpoint and Harmony

The tonic-fifth relationship is a naturally occurring one, the most important in all music and one which exists in all the musics of the world. All music to some degree makes use the feeling of psychological resolution of melody and harmony away from and then back to the tonic or ‘home’ key. A multitude of songs and pieces from all cultures and eras begin in their home key, then move around somewhat, before returning, with a feeling of finality and resolution, to their home key at the end. There’s nothing unusual about this.

What we call ‘harmony’, in the medieval modal period was referred as ‘polyphony’. They saw their music more as multiple melodies playing together and, while aware of the chords, were not as concerned with chordal-based harmony.

But the resolution or ‘cadence’ of certain chords was important; in particular the V-I or ‘perfect cadence’. In the most emphatic form of a perfect cadence, the fifth will fall to tonic (V-I or g -> c) and the major third of the V chord will rise a semitone to the tonic (b -> c). Composers came to feel these notes, in particular the major seventh (‘b’), which is not normally present in the minor modes, because it was so important in cadence, was a necessary part of minor scales.

The other common cadence is the IV-I or Plagal cadence. This is the ‘amen’ cadence in church music.

With this new emphasis on cadence, the medieval modes were replaced with the major and minor scales. In fact the major scale is simply the Ionian mode, but the minor scale became something very different.

The minor scale

The need to incorporate the major seventh into the minor scale led to a curious hybrid scale. In Classical music musicians practice two minor scales, the harmonic minor – the scale which outlines the harmonies of the minor scale with a V-major / V-7 chord, and the melodic minor, which has a different descending and ascending form.

With these departures, Western music was becoming less tied to a particular key. Composers were experimenting with using cadence to move or ‘modulate’ from one key to another (at first usually from I to V and back again). The scales of music were becoming more flexible and chromatic.

Resolution and Tonality

J.S. Bach was famous for his masterful modulations within small-scale pieces. However, Western music, in the time of C.P.E. Bach (one of sons of J.S. Bach), developed a new compositional technique based on moving a piece of music away from its home key and then resolving it back, in a very specific, formal way. C.P.E. Bach is actually credited with inventing this; it’s sometimes called ‘tonalism’ or ‘tonality’ or ‘Classical harmony’, and it underpins the Sonata and Symphony forms in Classical music.

These large-scale musical forms depend upon a sense of key (or ‘tonal centre). Compositions are given a strong sense of structure or ‘form’ (hence the term ‘Classical’ – like the structure of Classical Greek architecture), by moving themes away from the tonal centre and then back again. This is why parts of Sonatas and Symphonies are called ‘Movements’.

The use of tonality was hugely exciting development in Western music. It added a completely new dimension of semantic meaning to phrases and sections.

Naturally enough, Mozart was a wonderful exponent; and it isn’t just on a large scale – from movement to movement – that he makes use of it. On the smaller scale, of musical phrasing, he plays with our sense of key very subtly and expertly. In this way he adds a new level of context to his phrasing. Melodies are not just harmonised for colour, they take on a kind of abstract meaning depending on their relationship to the tonal centre. The effect is difficult to describe, but very powerful to the listener.

Someone might say of Mozart, ‘it feels so balanced’ – what they’re experiencing is the feeling of the balance and tensions of the melodic phrases moving around the tonal centre.

‘Two-Five-One’

The usual pattern in early Sonata form (prior to Beethoven who began an era of much more adventurous use of tonality) was to move from I to V and back to I again. The resolution from V to I is a natural one; but in order to rest on the V for a while, the music must first cadence or resolve to it. So cadence will begin on the fifth of the fifth, which is II, and cadence to the V, then from the V cadence to the I.

From that we get the II-V-I (‘two-five-one’) progression.

This became a very important progression in Jazz. If you have a look at the long chorus in the Jazz standard ‘That Old Devil Called Love’ you can see that, as well as a lot of chromaticism, it’s full of II-V-I progressions based on different tonal centres.

Fm-Bb-Eb (II-V-I to Eb) … Cm7-Fm-Bb (II-V-I to Bb) … D7-(Ab in passing)-Gm7-C7 (II-V-I to C) … C7-F9-Bb7 (II-V-I to Bb) …

The Circle of Fifths

It’s possible to extend the II-V-I further, starting at a fifth above each chord and resolving, so you you get VI-II-V-I, or III-VI-II-V-I … or further: in theory you can go all the way round the ‘circle of fifths’ and back to the starting point. Although few songs extend that far, Classic Jazz is full of such segments of the Circle of Fifths.

The cadencing of the resolving fifths gives a satisfying feeling of forward movement, and the changes in key (or ‘tonality’) give the player melodic material to work from.

Modern modalism

During the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, adventurous Classical composers felt they had extended tonalism as far as it would go; some began to use new techniques of ‘atonalism’, but others began to explore earlier music, including medieval modalism.

In avante-garde Jazz during the 60s, the II-V-I pattern common to Jazz standards started to many musicians to feel like a cliche – the same chord patterns again and again, the same repeating key changes like gear changes in a car. It was predictable and boring. It was probably in part the influence of 20th Century classical music, and also partly the influence of blues and rock, which have always naturally used a lot of Dorian mode; but Jazz musicians during this time also returned to modalism as a freer, simpler, spacier basis for their compositions.

zero.enmity
‘Extemporised melodies based on Itsukushimi Fukaki’

mp3 download available here.

I call it ” think of this one as ‘post-modern retro’ – it’s an improv/extemporisation based on the popular Japanese ‘sambika’ (hymn/song of praise). You might recognise the theme, it’s well known by its English name.

The song ‘Itsukushimi Fukaki’ is usually translated as ‘Deep Affection’, but the word Itsukushimu (itsukushimi is sort of a participle form of the verb) means so much more – especially in it’s ‘sun’ form, it’s one of those Chinese-derived words with a meaning that’s sort of very subtle and specific, but also – in English terms – very broad.

Itsukushimu (that’s the native Japanese or ‘kun’ form), means to be affectionate, loving or to treat tenderly.

‘Ji’ also means those things, and also ‘universal love, compassion, benevolence and loving kindness.
According to my kanji dictionary, it forms a part of the compound words ‘jihi’ (慈悲 mercy/compassion); jiai (慈愛 loving affection); jizen (慈善 charity); jibo (慈母 an affectionate, loving mother); and ‘jiu’ (慈雨 welcome rain).

(more kanji info here)

Aieressera, oi’ ne’, me ne sagliette,
tu saie addo’?
Addo’ ‘stu core ‘ngrato cchiu’ dispietto farme nun po’!
Addo’ lo fuoco coce, ma si fuie
te lassa sta!
E nun te corre appriesso, nun te struie, ‘ncielo a guarda’!…
Jammo ‘ncoppa, jammo ja’,
funiculi’, funicula’!

Ne’… jammo da la terra a la montagna! no passo nc’e'!
Se vede Francia, Proceta e la Spagna…
Io veco a tte!
Tirato co la fune, ditto ‘nfatto,
‘ncielo se va..
Se va comm’ ‘a lu viento a l’intrasatto, gue’, saglie sa’!
Jammo ‘ncoppa, jammo ja’,
funiculi’, funicula’!

Se n’ ‘e’ sagliuta, oi’ ne’, se n’ ‘e’ sagliuta la capa già!
E’ gghiuta, po’ e’ turnata, po’ e’ venuta…
sta sempe cca’!
La capa vota, vota, attuorno, attuorno,
attuorno a tte!
Sto core canta sempe
nu taluorno
Sposammo, oi’ ne’!
Jammo ‘ncoppa, jammo ja’,
funiculi’, funicula’!

English translation 1

Do you know where I got on, yesterday evening, baby?
Where this ungrateful heart can’t be spiteful to me more!
Where the fire burns, but if you
run away it let you go!
And it doesn’t run after you,
doesn’t tire you, looking at sky!…
Let go on, let go, let go,
funiculi’, funicula’!

We go from the ground to the
mountain, baby! Without walking!
You can see France, Procida and
Spain…
I see you!
Pulled by a rope, no sooner said
than done, we go to the skies..
We go like the wind all of a sudden, go up, go up!
Let go on, let go, let go,
funiculi’, funicula’!

The head has already got on,
baby, got on!
It has gone, then returned, then
come…
It is still here!
The head turns, turns, around,
around,
around you!
This heart always sings one of these days: Get married to me, baby!
Let go on, let go, let go,
funiculi’, funicula’!

English translation 2

Yesterday evening, my love, I went up,
do you know where?
Where this ungrateful heart cannot spite me any more!
Where the fire burns, but if you flee
it lets you be!
And it doesn’t chase you, it doesn’t burn you, to see the sky!…
Let go together, let’s go there,
funicular downhill, funicular uphill!

Let’s go from the ground to the mountain, my love! Without walking!
You can see France, Procida and Spain…
and I see you!
Pulled by a rope, no sooner said than done,
we go to the skies..
We go like the wind all of a sudden, go up, go up!
Let’s go together, let’s go there,
funicular downhill, funicular uphill!

We’ve climbed it, my love, we’ve already climbed to the top!
It has gone, then returned, then come back…
It is still here!
The empty empty summit, around, around,
around you!
This heart still sings
and is not petulant
Let’s be married, my love!
Let’s go together, let’s go there,
funicular downhill, funicular uphill!

Richard Le Gallienne

Jeremiah 6:26
Dear Daughter. Weep most bitterly, as for an only child.

Jeremiah 31:15
[ Mercy on Ephraim ] Thus says the LORD: “ A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted for her children, Because they are no more.”

John 11:33-35
35 Jesus wept.

Thus says the LORD:
“ A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamentation and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted for her children,
Because they are no more.”

Rev21:4
4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

Matthew 5:4
Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.

MOTHER COURAGE: He must be a very bad commander.

THE COOK: Just a greedy one. Why bad?

MOTHER COURAGE: Because he needs brave soldiers, that’s why. If his plan of campaign was any good, why would he need brave soldiers, wouldn’t plain, ordinary soldiers do? Whenever there are great virtues, it’s a sure sign something’s wrong.

THE COOK: You mean it’s a sure sign something’s right.

MOTHER COURAGE: I mean what I say. Listen. When a general or a king is stupid and leads his soldiers into a trap, they need the virtue of courage. When he’s tight-fisted and hasn’t enough soldiers, the few he does have need the heroism of Hercules – another virtue. And if he’s a sloven and doesn’t five a damn about anything, they have to be as wise as serpents or they’re finished. Loyalty’s another virtue and you need plenty of it if the king’s always asking too much of you. All virtues which a well-regulated country with a good king or a good general wouldn’t need. In a good country virtues wouldn’t be necessary. Everybody could be quite ordinary, middling, and, for all I care, cowards.

– Bertolt Brecht, ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’

We all know that we are material creatures, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and not even the power of all our feelings combined can defeat those laws. All we can do is detest them. The age-old faith of lovers and poets in the power of love, stronger then death, that ‘finis vitae sed non amoris’, is a lie, useless and not even funny. So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow cosmic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox…

That liquid giant had been the death of hundreds of men. The entire human race had tried in vain to establish even the most tenuous link with it, and it bore my weight without noticing me any more than I would notice a speck of dust. I did not believe that it could respond to the tragedy of two human beings. Yet its activities did have a purpose… True, I was not absolutely certain, but leaving would mean giving up a chance, perhaps an infinitesimal one, perhaps only imaginary… Must I go on living here then, among the objects we both had touched, in the air she had breathed? In the name of what? In the hope of her return? I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation. Since she had gone, that was all that remained. I did not know what achievements, what mockery, even what tortures still awaited me. I knew nothing, and I persisted in the faith that the time of cruel miracles was not past.

– Stanislaw Len, ‘Solaris’

The room is large with a high ceiling. Plastered and papered, it responds to sound with warm, dampened reverberation. All around there is a purposeful muttering, over which carry clear waves of airy, extemporised piano music, meditative with a hint of the ecstatic, played quietly in with pleasant major modal harmonies.

From ordinary faces, bowed, flow soft voices; whisper and murmur; saturated with emotion and meaning, but soft like the rustle of leaves in a slight breeze or the fluttering of tiny wings; sometimes rising in a gentle rumbling like the sound of many faraway hooves; sometimes falling almost silent to a dry whisper like winter wind. Now and again, someone there is a throaty sniff from a stifled sob.

In the sound: great silence; amongst the people: deep solitude. In the quietest of voices, spoken too softly to be understood, they admit their hopes, fears, joys and sorrows.

At other times I have heard soft singing and chanting blending with the soothing chords of the music, but today all prayers are spoken. On every occasion, the feeling is of the release something long held confined; not with an odour stale or stagnant, but with the scent of stillness.

The Fifth Wheel

We are with you in the hour when you realise
That you are the fifth wheel
And you hope goes from you.
But we
Do not realise it yet.

…

You rise in mid-sentence
You say crossly that you want to go
We say: stay! and we realise
That you’re the fifth wheel.
But you sit down.

…

I know you no longer hear
But
Do not say loudly that the world is bad
Say it softly.

For the four wheels are not too many
But the fifth is
And the world is not bad
But
Full.

–Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht – 1940

My young son asks me: Must I learn mathematics?
What is the use, I feel like saying. That two pieces
Of bread are more than one’s about all you’ll end up with.
My young son asks me: Must I learn French?
What is the use, I feel like saying. This State’s collapsing.
And if you just rub your belly with your hand and
Groan, you’ll be understood with little trouble.
My young son asks me: Must I learn history?
What is the use, I feel like saying. Learn to stick
Your head in the earth, and maybe you’ll still survive.

Yes, learn mathematics, I tell him.
Learn your French, learn your history!

Short poems by Bertolt Brecht

MOTTO

And I always thought: the very simplest words
Must be enough. When I say what things are like
Everyone’s heart must be torn to shreds.
That you’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself
Surely you see that.

MOTTO

This, then, is all. It’s not enough, I know.
At least I’m still alive, as you may see.
I’m like the man who took a brick to show
How beautiful his house used once to be.

CHANGING THE WHEEL

I sit by the road side
The driver changes the wheel.
I do not like the place I have come from.
I do not like the place I am going to.
Why with impatience do I
Watch him changing the wheel?

The Refugees

In the shabby train no seat is vacant.
The child in the ripped mask
Sprawls undisturbed in the waste
Of the smashed compartment. Is their calm extravagant?
They had faces and lives like you. What was it they possessed
That they were willing to trade for this?
The dried blood sparkles along the mask
Of the child who yesterday possessed
A country welcomer than this.
Did he? All night into the waste
The train moves silently. The faces are vacant.
Have none of them found the cost extravagant?
How could they? They gave what they possessed.
Here all the purses are vacant.
And what else could satisfy the extravagant
Tears and wish of the child but this?
Impose its canceling terrible mask
On the days and faces and lives they waste?
What else are their lives but a journey to the vacant
Satisfaction of death? And the mask
They wear tonight through their waste
Is death’s rehearsal. Is it really extravagant
To read in their faces: What is there we possessed
That we were unwilling to trade for this?

—Randall Jarrell

Next Day

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I’ve become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I’d wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water—
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know … Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work—I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: “You’re old.” That’s all, I’m old.

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her and I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I’m anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

—Randall Jarrell

Eighth Air Force

If, in an odd angle of the hutment,
A puppy laps the water from a can
Of flowers, and the drunk sergeant shaving
Whistles O Paradiso!—shall I say that man
Is not as men have said: a wolf to man?

The other murderers troop in yawning;
Three of them play Pitch, one sleeps, and one
Lies counting missions, lies there sweating
Till even his heart beats: One; One; One.
O murderers! … Still, this is how it’s done:

This is a war … But since these play, before they die,
Like puppies with their puppy; since, a man,
I did as these have done, but did not die—
I will content the people as I can
And give up these to them: Behold the man!

I have suffered, in a dream, because of him,
Many things; for this last saviour, man,
I have lied as I lie now. But what is lying?
Men wash their hands, in blood, as best they can:
I find no fault in this just man.

—Randall Jarrell

He sat on the balcony
trying to touch the fingers of the wind
playing with his hair
When the wind moved a flower
he would say it was a hand.
When lightning flashed across the sky
he would say it was a glance,
a smile that might have
left lips
to come and rest with him.

He sat on the balcony
trying to think of some people
to fill the empty seats around him.

– Wadih Sa’adeh
Translated from the Arabic by Anne Fairbairn

…many more here…

A Poem For The Two Of Us

(PESMA ZA NAS DVOJE)

I know,
it must be like that:
the two of us have never met,
although we keep searching for each other
because of her happiness
and my happiness.

Drunk rain whips and strikes,
wind pulls willows’ hair out.
Where am I going?
Which town should I stop by?

The day is spilled over opaque fields.
I’m dragging around two empty eyes
staring into faces of passerbys.
Who should I ask, hungry and wet,
why have we never met?

Or it already happened?
Missed a step?
Maybe she came all the way next to me.
But me,
stopped by a pub, bitter,
and she
not knowing – passed by.

I don’t know.
We’ve been around the world
in passion, crazy
even,
and we missed each other for a step.

Yes, it must’ve been like that….

–Mika Antic

DECISION

ODLUKA

Life is all something from the beginning.
Yesterday and the day before don’t count tomorrow.
There are no two the same Fridays in the world,
two the same Sundays,
two the same Wednesdays.

What are disappointments for then?
If one love is – blank,
dreams are immediately different and nicer.
And when you are the saddest and bitter
you think of some new eyes
and realize that you are flying… you’re more beautifully flying.

Who has ever seen a boy suffer?
snoozing cranky and crying?
Every time, you must know again
to love better, to love stronger.
Not to find excuses.
Not to console yourself.
But to truly, all the way to the sky, smile.

There are no two the same Wednesdays in the world,
two the same Tuesdays,
two the same Fridays.
All new loves count differently.
We live, every time, from the beginning.
We live never to fall.
To be stronger after a storm.
And right now already, in your heart
a hundred golden stars can be heard.

–Mika Antic

PREMONITION

(PREDOSECANJE)

I recognized you when snow was melting
melting, and a soft wind blowing
closeness of spring intoxicating my soul
intoxicating, so I cravingly inhale the air.

With gentleness I watched your footsteps trace
trace on white snow
and I knew that you would be dear to me
dear throughout my life.

I recognized you on a reverberant day
a drunk, fresh and soft day
I had a feeling I’d always known you
known though I just recognized you.

With gentleness I watched your footsteps trace
trace on white snow
and I knew that you would be dear to me
dear throughout my life.

I recognized you when ice was melting
ice, when spring breath is melting when
day is one moment rosy, one moment wistful
pale, when happiness and sadness collide.

With gentleness I watched your footsteps trace
trace on white snow
and I knew that you would be dear to me
dear throughout my life.

–Desanka Maksimovic

MAGIC

(CAROLIJA)

To someone stars are forbidden.
To someone wings or swallows,
I don’t forbid anything
everything that is not allowed is allowed.

I have only one request,
try not to grow
not an inch, in spite of everyone,
until the end of this poem.

In the song you live
freely, nicely and crazy
You can invent fantasize,
Do everything backwards.

In it, even the biggest miracle,
stops being a miracle,
because everything you wish for
when you close your eyes
— remains forever like that.

Get those childish spites out
bravely and wonderfully,
and lie to yourself,
everything that is not allowed is allowed.

And more than everything is allowed!
My only one: don’t grow
in spite of you and me
until the end of this song.

And every time they break you,
so you have to create a new dream,
don’t dream it in the dark,
run faster to the dawn,
at the doorstep of this song
so, wonderfully, fight.

And when you only blink,
and smile slowly
Count till ten,
and turn that into eternity
and everything that you think of with your eyes closed,
will stay like that always.

–Mika Antic

Love poem

(Ljubavna pesma)

You are my moment and my dream,
My glorious word within the sounds,
You are as beautiful as you are secret,
You are the truth as much as the lust.

Stay unreachable, silent and far,
For the dream of happiness is more than happiness itself.
Be a one time flame, as youth.
Let your shadow and echo be all to be remembered by.

The heart writes its history on a falling tear,
On an immense pain whereon love marks its target.
Truth is only the dreaming of the soul.
A kiss is the most beautiful meeting in the world.

You are the image of my apparition,
Your sunny décor knitted through my dream.
You were the fascination of my thought,
Symbol of all conceits, defeated and icy-cold.

But you don’t exist, nor have you ever done.
Born within my silence and despair,
From the Sun of my heart you were shining
Because everything we worship – we have created ourselves.

–Jovan Ducic

ZA NAIVNE

I seek amnesty
For the naïve
For those who believe
that all are equal,
poor and rich,
weak and strong,
the untired and the untiring prisoner,
the armless and the man with both arms,
the absolved and the man who has lost his faith,
the invited
and the one who waits at the door,
for them, for myself,
for everyone,
I seek amnesty.

–Desanka Maksimovic

NOTICE

OPOMENA

It might be good to know this too:
we are desired only when we desire.
And if we give ourselves completely,
only then we can be complete.

We will find out, only when we say
words true, identical.
And only when we also search,
only then might someone meet us too.

–Mika Antic

(truthhope.net)

Looking at human beings, and noticing our imperfections, is like looking at a painting by Rembrandt or Van Gough, and thinking, “this is rough — shouldn’t the brush work be smoother than that?”

What seems to be imperfection is really the touch of the Artist

It is the touch of our Creator. We are perfect in our humanity.

Here is one example: parenting.

‘Perfect’ parents are actually not the best parents; to be perfect as a parent can be quite harmful for children.

The children of ‘perfect’ parents — parents who are always calm, always right, who never make mistakes, who always do the right thing — often suffer terribly! Many of these kids end up with the worst psychological problems, as drug addicts or criminals.

We all know this is true: the children of pastors, ministers and the best Christians are much more likely to go wrong in life than other kids. It’s one of the great mysteries of life.

One family I knew — of wonderful Christians — had a son who became a teenage arsonist! And the son of a minister was one of the worst kids in our High School.

But the reason is so simple.

My eldest daughter has experienced a very imperfect father. He makes lots of mistakes, he is inconsistent, he gets angry, he gets sad, he is unreasonable, stubborn and stupid; he tries and he fails; he has to apologise a lot.

However, because of her father’s imperfections, she is developing a wonderful character.

She is finding goodness in herself. She is learning to love and forgive an imperfect man.

And she knows, in her heart, that perfection is not required or expected of her. She will model herself on this experience; and by loving, accepting and forgiving her father’s imperfections, she will learn to love, accept and forgive herself.

If her father was a perfect parent, she would feel intense pressure to live up to those standards — to be perfect herself — which of course is impossible.

My daughter might either try and meet those impossible standards, and could end up unhappy and filled with feelings of unworthiness, or (more likely, knowing her) she would decide to create her own standards — ones that she could meet — and choose an opposite life, perhaps one that would be damaging to her.

What we think of as perfection is not the best way to be, and not what God wants us to be. To be human, and no more than that, is true perfection.

It sounds crazy, but it’s true!

The way to know God is not to seek perfection, but to seek to be more human. That is one of my philosophies.

It’s not an original philosophy. This is ‘European Romanticism’: the philosophy of William Blake, Beethoven, Dostoyevski and others.

After she was born, her mother and I used to take her to an early intervention centre. With the best of intentions, we were keen to push to her do the best she could as early as possible, which was a reasonable aim.

However, we pushed much too hard. We were always encouraging her to go one step further, physically and intellectually. We weren’t unkind to her, but children are very sensitive, and we caused her a lot of unnecessary stress. When she was about 3 years old, she started to develop behaviour problems, she was always unhappy and she lost a lot of hair (Down’s Syndrome kids are prone to this). So we mellowed our own behaviour, we enrolled her in a much more fun and relaxed special learning centre, her hair grew back and she became the happy kid we have now.

I learnt something quite important from this.

She has her limits. We can help to achieve her maximum, but she is disabled, she’s got a limit beyond which — barring a miracle from God — she isn’t going to go. She’s not going to be a great academic or an athlete.

And that’s OK.

And then I thought, well, I have my limits, too. I’m never going to Einstein or Newton, and that’s OK too. We all have our maximum. God created us with certain gifts, some of them in one area and some in another, but, as Jesus said, none of us can make ourselves taller just by thinking about it, and none of us can go further than the furthest we can go.

We can fulfil our potential, or at least try, but we’re never going to go beyond it.

It was good to realise that. It made me more relaxed about myself, and more relaxed about my other daughter. Living in Japan now, where most parents place a lot of unnecessary pressure on their kids, I am even more glad to have the chance to learn that.

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?

– Rabia al-Adawiyya

What are you going to do with your ego?

Suppose you can recite a thousand holy
verses from memory.
What are you going to do
with your ego, the true
mark of the heretic?

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir – “Nobody, Son of Nobody”

To your mind

To your mind feed understanding,
to your heart, tolerance and compassion.
The simpler your life, the more meaningful.

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir – “Nobody, Son of Nobody”

Best forgotten

Those with no sense of honor and dignity are best avoided.
Those who change colors constantly
are best forgotten.

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir – “Nobody, Son of Nobody”

“The broken ones are my darlings”

Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart,
never give up, never losing hope.
The Beloved says, “The broken ones are My darlings.”
Crush your heart, be broken.

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir – “Nobody, Son of Nobody”

Burn me in Hell

O Lord,
If I worship You
From fear of Hell, burn me in Hell.

O Lord,
If I worship You
From hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.

But if I worship You for Yourself alone
Then grace me forever the splendor of Your Face.

– Rabia al-Adawiyya

Spring Morning

Opening my eyes
On a cozy spring morning,
Woke up so late,
The sunlight is already high above
Every corner filling with the sounds
Of birds singing outside cheerfully.

Last night
In my half-woken dream
I heard
The wind blowing,
The rain drops spattering down
On roofs. On petals.
How many flowers have been
Blown down and smashed by the ruthless rain?

Who would be concerned about that?

–Mèng Hàorán
translation: Peng Qiu Lin [ May 2009 ]

Another beautiful translation by Qiu Lin.

The theme of this poem is very meaningful to me. Good times are so wonderful, they make us forgetful.

Life is full of sorrow. All our happiness happens against a background of sorrow. The human spirit is in a continuous battle against despair. All our eras of prosperity have been preceded by eras or suffering or war. Happy times make us forget the sadness that came before: the loved ones who aren’t with us, who died: so many of them.

Perhaps that forgetfulness is a good thing. How could we ever enjoy a lovely Spring morning if we mourned for every flower smashed by the rain?

Late Spring

Late Spring:
Petals. Fallen. Whirling. Constantly.
Even if withered
They still try to blossom;
In more and more passions.

Swallow’s nest under the
Dwarfish roof of my thatched cottage.
Every day, the birds are flying, coming and going.

Deep, late in the night,
the cuckoo was still singing:
So devoted! So shrilly,
Until she was bleeding.

The songbird doesn’t believe that
With her enthusiasm,
she cannot bring back
The spring now passed away.

–Wang Ling
translation: Peng Qiu Lin [ May 2009 ]

My friend Qiu Lin made this translation.

She says Chinese classical poetry is usually translated very badly. The translations try to be exact, but the effect they create is very dry; quite unlike the feeling of the original Chinese. Chinese is rich in connotation; and the vocabulary of these short poems is rich in layers of subtle meaning, which she has attempted to convey in her freer translation.

I think it’s very good. The result in English is a very beautiful poem. Qiu Lin has a great intuition for the right word to use in English. I’ve read translations Chinese poetry before, but none of them have touched me until now.

This translation also makes much clearer the many levels of metaphorical meaning in the poem — much more so than a dry translation would. Getting older, I feel like that songbird, trying to call back past times with her defiant but futile enthusiasm!

More Sufi poetry…

The one who tastes, knows

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?

– Rabia al-Adawiyya

What are you going to do with your ego?

Suppose you can recite a thousand holy
verses from memory.
What are you going to do
with your ego, the true
mark of the heretic?

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir – “Nobody, Son of Nobody”

To your mind

To your mind feed understanding,
to your heart, tolerance and compassion.
The simpler your life, the more meaningful.

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir – “Nobody, Son of Nobody”

Best forgotten

Those with no sense of honor and dignity are best avoided.
Those who change colors constantly
are best forgotten.

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir – “Nobody, Son of Nobody”

“The broken ones are my darlings”

Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart,
never give up, never losing hope.
The Beloved says, “The broken ones are My darlings.”
Crush your heart, be broken.

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir – “Nobody, Son of Nobody”

Burn me in Hell

O Lord,
If I worship You
From fear of Hell, burn me in Hell.

O Lord,
If I worship You
From hope of Paradise, bar me from its gates.

But if I worship You for Yourself alone
Then grace me forever the splendor of Your Face.

– Rabia al-Adawiyya

More poems by Wadih Sa’adeh.

Life

        
Wasting time,
he sketched a vase.
He drew a flower in the vase.
Perfume rose from the paper.
He drew a jug.
Having sipped a little water,
he poured some over the flower.
He drew a room
with a bed,
then he slept.
        
When he awoke
he drew an ocean,
a fathomless ocean,
which swept him away.

– Wadih Sa’adeh
translated by Anne Fairburn

The Dead Are Sleeping

        
They were innocent people.
They would caress their children’s hair in the dusk,
dropping off to sleep.

        
They were innocent, simple people,
sweating during the day and smiling.
On their way home they would pause before shop windows,
measuring with their eyes the size of children’s clothes,
then walk on.

        
They would take one step
in the early breath of dawn
to touch the tree trunks.
During January frosts,
while they were watching,
some branches would bear fruit.
Their scythes yearned for the fields,
the air in the village was waiting for their cries.
Suddenly their wheat became ribs,
the breeze and grass, rooted
in their bodies.

        
They were innocent, simple people.
Every evening the sun slid its silky mantle
over their souls.

– Wadih Sa’adeh
translated by Anne Fairburn

If

        
The last thing he saw
was the cat, seeing him off at the door.
He had locked the door but he returned
and unlocked it,
so neighbours could enter as always,
if they wished to do so.

– Wadih Sa’adeh
translated by Anne Fairburn

There’s a disconnect between the Middle East and the West: Wadih Sa’adeh is a highly regarded writer in Arabic, but in the West he’s almost unknown.

The poems above are from “A Secret sky”, a book of Wadih’s poems translated
from Arabic by Anne Fairburn. It’s a sad book, very gentle: about the war in Lebanon, the dead, the dispossessed and the refugees.

I met Wadih several times, at my friend, Fassih Keiso’s home. They would be drinking coffee, tea or Arak, speaking mostly Arabic. I would plunk away on the guitar, then we would converse in English for a while, then back to Arabic and plunking. It was all very relaxed and very normal, but special, too. He’s a very nice gentleman: extremely interesting and intelligent, with a deep, soft voice.

Sometimes you know people; you just think of them as people you like: it’s easy not to realise how special and precious moments are. You may feel a real bond of love or friendship with someone; spend time with them, that you enjoy very much; all the while living in the illusion that this is your normal life, that can be enjoyed at leisure, again and again.

Then, suddenly, maybe sometimes after the briefest of acquaintances, that phase of your life is cut short; gone forever.

The ironic thing is, during this time, we were discussing “The Secret Sky,” that had just been translated, and the theme of so many is the poems is just that: how life is full of seemingly ordinary moments are really something exquisite and rare, that at any time could be cut short, by death, disaster, or just …ordinary events. Then you look back, much later, and something that seemed so ordinary at the time you realise in distant hindsight, was something quite beautiful.

(truthhope.net)

Life There

There she buried
her child, and waited
to lie beside him for years.
When finally
they lowered her down
into that soil,
She was only one day old
while he was already
an old man.

– Wadih Sa’adeh
Translated from the Arabic by Sargon Boulus

Night Visit

         They were telling their children about
the guardian angel of plants;
about a nightingale that had flown there at dawn
to sing in the mulberry tree above their window.
         They were telling them about the grapes
they would sell to buy new clothes.
About the special surprise the children
would find under their pillows at bedtime.
But some soldiers arrived,
stopped their stories,
leaving red splashes on the walls
         as they departed.

– Wadih Sa’adeh
Translated from the Arabic by Anne Fairbairn

Threshold

         He was dead
but he could feel their fingers on his forehead.
They laid his body in the centre of the house
on a bed they had hired,
like the one he should have bought.
         They dressed him
in clothes like those he had seen in city shops.
When they carried him out to be buried,
he left something strange on the threshold.
After that, whenever they entered the house
they shivered without knowing why.

– Wadih Sa’adeh
Translated from the Arabic by Anne Fairbairn

Sufi poetry…

Love so needs to love

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky’s mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I sing those words.

– Jalal Al-Din Rumi

Come, Come, Whoever You Are

Come, come, whoever you are,
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.

– Jalal Al-Din Rumi

The whole world is a marketplace for Love

The whole world is a marketplace for Love,
For naught that is, from Love remains remote.
The Eternal Wisdom made all things in Love.
On Love they all depend, to Love all turn.
The earth, the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars
The center of their orbit find in Love.
By Love are all bewildered, stupefied,
Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.

From each, Love demands a mystic silence.
What do all seek so earnestly? ‘Tis Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts,
In Love no longer “Thou” and “I” exist,
For self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul
Behold the Friend, Incomparable Love.
He who would know the secret of both worlds
Will find that the secret of them both is Love.

– Farid ud Din Attar

Two eyes wet with weeping

These spiritual window-shoppers,
idly ask, ‘How much is that?’ Oh, I’m just looking.
They handle a hundred items and put them down,
shadows with no capital.

What is spent is love and two eyes wet with weeping.

– Jalal Al-Din Rumi

Here I am

All night, a man called “God”
Until his lips were bleeding.
Then the Devil said, “Hey! Mr Gullible!
How comes you’ve been calling all night
And never once heard God say, ‘Here, I am’?
You call out so earnestly and, in reply, what?
I’ll tell you what. Nothing!”

The man suddenly felt empty and abandoned.
Depressed, he threw himself on the ground
And fell into a deep sleep.
In a dream, he met Abraham, who asked,
“Why are you regretting praising God?”

The man said, “I called and called
But God never replied, ‘Here I am.’ ”
Abraham explained, “God has said,
‘Your calling my name is My reply.
Your longing for Me is My message to you.
All your attempts to reach Me
Are in reality My attempts to reach you.
Your fear and love are a noose to catch Me.
In the silence surrounding every call of “God”
Waits a thousand replies of “Here I am.”

– Jalal Al-Din Rumi

Who is man

Who is man?
    
The reflection of the Eternal Light.

What is the world?
    
A wave on the Everlasting Sea.

How could the reflection be cut off from the Light?

How could the wave be separate from the Sea?

Know that this reflection and this wave are that very Light and Sea.

– Jami (1414-92) (Nur al-Din ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Ahmad al-Jami)

Pursuit of the Friend

The heart left,
       
and the Friend is also gone.
I don’t know whether I should go after the Friend
       
or after the heart!
A voice spoke to me:
       
“Go in pursuit of the Friend,
          
because the lover needs a heart
          
in order to find union with the Friend.
       
If there was no Friend,
          
what would the lover do with his heart?”

– Sheikh Ansari – Kashf al_Asrar

The path of Love

Piousness and the path of love
are two different roads.
Love is the fire that burns both belief
and non-belief.
Those who practice Love have neither
religion nor caste.

– Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir (Abu Sa’id ibn Ab’il Khair ) (967 – 1049)

Mere words

All that is left
to us by tradition
is mere words.

It is up to us
to find out what they mean.

– Muhammed Ibn ‘Ali Ibn ‘Arabi (1165 – 1240 AD)

My master taught me no other letter

There is nothing on the tablet of my heart but my love’s tall alif.
What can I do? My master taught me no other letter.

…

Wipe the tears from Hafiz’s face with soft curls
or else this endless torrent will uproot me.

– Hafiz of Shiraz (1230-91)

The Puzzle

Someone who keeps aloof from suffering
is not a lover. I choose your love
above all else. As for wealth
if that comes, or goes, so be it.
Wealth and love inhabit separate worlds.

– Abû’l-Majd Majdûd b. Adam Sanâ’î (1118-1152)

The Friend Beside Me

You know why I am happy:
          
It is because I seek Your company,
          
not through my own efforts.

You decided and I did not.
          
I found the Friend beside me
          
when I woke up!

– Sheikh Ansari – Kashf al_Asrar

This Marriage

May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade
like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcomes the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe
how spirit mingles in this marriage.

– Kulliyat-i-Shams 2667

It makes absolutely no difference

Start a huge, foolish project,
like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference
what people think of you.

– Jalal Al-Din Rumi

The Computation. by John Donne

FOR my first twenty years, since yesterday,
    I scarce believed thou couldst be gone away;
For forty more I fed on favours past,
    And forty on hopes that thou wouldst they might last ;
Tears drown’d one hundred, and sighs blew out two;
    A thousand, I did neither think nor do,
Or not divide, all being one thought of you;
    Or in a thousand more, forgot that too.
Yet call not this long life; but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die ?

What a painful and beautiful poem.

“For my first twenty years, since yesterday”

You poor man, twenty years after your wife’s death, the pain is still fresh.

“For forty more I fed on favours past,
And forty more on hopes that thou wouldst they might last”

‘Would’ in Elizabethan English means something like ‘would wish’ or ‘would hope’. Forty years of living in the happy memories, then another forty in the hope that he had made her happy while she lived. How kind he must have been.

“…Or not divide, all being one thought of you;
Or in a thosand more, forgot that too”

Poor man, so depressed, lost in his grief. His ony thoughts are of his wife. Or finally just completely desolate, barely thinking at all, as really depressed people are. (this is so authentic, clearly an honest first hand account of what we in our clinical modern way would call deep depression)

“Yet call this not long life; but think that I
Am, by being dead, immortal; can ghosts die?”

A sweetly sad ending. He can’t bear to tell us of his grief, so he makes a wry joke of it — not even that funny, how could it be? Of course he hasn’t lived 2000 years, his sadness has just felt that long. But what a sad punch line to the joke — he hasn’t lived 2000 years, he has been dead 2000 years, with his beloved gone joy is gone, life is like death, dead inside, dead to the world.

And yet, in that last couplet, a tiny suggestion of hope, delicately emphasised by the slight touch of humour. The words ‘immortality’ and ‘ghost’, both with a Christian meaning — ghost (as in ‘Holy Ghost’) in Elizabethan English also having the meaning of spirit. So there is just the faintest allusion (within the context of his other poems) of his faith in eternal life and reunion with his beloved.

The music of the words is delightful. Delicate like a little painted miniature. Simple and almost childlike, with few words of more than two syllables: ‘yesterday’, then ‘immortal’, that one jumps out at you, subtly emphasising again the Christian hope (his audience would have been attuned to these references, so they only needed to be very subtle).

Childlike also with it’s little counting game. This has a touch of the ‘sing song’ about it, and reminds me a little of Ophelia’s mad scene in Hamlet. Grief drives people mad, because madness is a refuge when reality is more than you can bear. But the counting game is then brushed aside in the last couplet, which contains that little joke, but also the poems most serious thoughts, delivered rapier swift.

Imagine this poem read to an audience, and this change in tone would become much more distinct. The last couplet fades, and it takes many seconds for its inner depths to sink in, even for Donne’s sophisticated audience. There is a hush, one of the ladies dabs away a tear.

A beautiful and heartfelt poem. So simple. So honest, authentic and sincere. So very very sad. And yet not self pitying, but thoughtful, with a slight touch of humour, even a little philosophical, and with an expression of hope for others who might be grieving.

Good old John Donne, you really are one of the greatest poets of all.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
   The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly–and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.


The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes–or it prospers; and anon,
   Like Snow upon the Desert’s dusty Face
Lighting a little Hour or two–is gone.

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,
And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,
   Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn’d
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.


Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
   One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
   About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour’d it to grow:
   And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d–
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”

–Omar Khayyam
–Translator: Edward Fitzgerald

Viola:
    And so they are: alas, that they are so;
    To die, even when they to perfection grow!

“If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved.”

“.. in love the heart surrenders itself entirely to the one being that has known how to touch it. That being is not selected; it is recognised and obeyed.”

“What establishes superstitions is haste to understand.”

“They say dying animals go into hiding; and I could understand that instinct. There are phases of distress when help is neither possible nor desired.”

God created pain, yearning and sorrow for this sake:
so that happiness may occur by means of its opposite.

Thus, hidden things are revealed by their opposites.
And since God has no opposite, He is hidden.

–Rumi

“Don’t cry, Mother,” he answered. “Life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we refuse to see it. If we would, we should have heaven on earth the next day.”

Everyone wondered at his words, he spoke so strangely. We were all touched and wept.

Friends came to see us . “Dear ones,” he would say to them, “what have I done that you should love anyone like me, and how was it I did not know, I did not appreciate it before?”

…

I this mood he would get up every day, more an more sweet and joyous and full of love. When the doctor, an old German called Eisenschmidt, came he would ask, joking: “Well, Doctor, have I another day in this world?”

“You’ll live many days yet,” the doctor would answer. “And months and years too.”

“Months and years!” my brother would exclaim. “One day is enough for a man to know all happiness. My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let’s go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate each other and glorify life.”

“Your son cannot last long,” the doctor told my mother, as she accompanied him to the door. “The disease is affecting his brain.”

The windows of my brother’s room looked out into the garden. Our garden was a shady one, old trees in it which were coming into bud. The first birds of spring were chirping and singing in the branches. And looking at them and admiring them, my brother began suddenly begging their forgiveness too. “Birds of heaven, happy birds, forgive me, for I have also sinned against you.” None of us could understand these words at the time, but he shed tears of joy. “Yes,” he said, “there was such always such a glory of God about me: birds, trees, meadows, sky, only I lived in shame and dishonoured it all and did not notice the beauty and glory.”

“You take too many sins on yourself,” Mother used to say, weeping.

“Mother, darling, it’s for joy, not for grief I am crying. Though I can’t explain it to you, I like to humble myself, for I don’t know how to love enough. If I have sinned against everyone, yet all forgive me, too, and that’s heaven. Am I not in heaven now?”

–Notes of the life of the deceased priest and monk, the Elder Zossima

Fairest isle, all isles excelling,
Seat of pleasure and of love
Venus here will choose her dwelling,
And forsake her Cyprian grove.
Cupid from his fav’rite nation
Care and envy will remove;
Jealousy, that poisons passion,
And despair, that dies for love.

Gentle murmurs, sweet complaining,
Sighs that blow the fire of love
Soft repulses, kind disdaining,
Shall be all the pains you prove.
Ev’ry swain shall pay his duty,
Grateful ev’ry nymph shall prove;
And as these excel in beauty,
Those shall be renown’d for love.

Authorship: John Dryden (1631-1700)
Musical setting: Henry Purcell (1658/9-1695)

Purcell is magic. A marvellous of this song version here, her lovely voice accompanied only by Lute.

–Yususf Islam

I went to Kameari Kristokyokai this morning, for a change — I’ve been meaning to visit for a while, since I enjoyed their very nice Christmas Concert.

Look what they gave me! This is their newsletter — that’s my home town, Christchurch! Not only that: Kristokyokai literally means “Christ church”.

Amazing coincidence, isn’t it?

By the way, the service was very nice. The music was great, the Pastor charismatic — I could only understand parts of what he said, but those parts were very good!

The band sang (in Japanese) ‘the Lord’s Prayer’: you know, the famous version that swells at the end: “for thine….. is the ki-ingdowm… and the po-ower… and the glo-o-ry….” (the famous version). Very nicely done.

“On the contrary, there is no place in the world where the amenities of courtesy should be so carefully maintained as in the home. There are no hearts that hunger so for expressions of affection as the hearts of which we are most sure. There is no love that so need its daily bread as the love that is strongest and holiest. There is no place where rudeness or incivility is as unpardonable as inside our own doors and toward our best beloved. The tenderer the love and the truer, the more it craves the thousand little attentions and kindnesses which so satisfy the heart.

It is not costly presents at Christmas and on birthdays and anniversaries that are wanted; these are only mockeries if the days between are empty of affectionate expressions. Jewelry and silks and richly bound volumes will never atone for the want of warmth and tenderness. Between husband and wife there should be maintained, without break or pause, the most perfect courtesy, the gentlest attention, the most unselfish amiability, the most affectionateness.

Coleridge says: “The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions, the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeing.” These may seem trifles, and the omission of them may be deemed unworthy of thought; but they are the daily bread of love, and hearts go hungry when they are omitted. It may be only carelessness at first in a busy husband or a weary wife that fails in these small, sweet courtesies, and it may seem a little matter, but in the end the result may be a growing far apart of two lives which might have been forever very happy in each other had their early love but been cherished and nourished.

“For love will starve if it is not fed,
And true hearts pray for their daily bread.”

Home-Making by J. R. Miller, 1882