Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ‘til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
– Leonard Cohen
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic ‘til I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
– Leonard Cohen
Below is an excerpt from Alexievich’s Nobel Prize speech from 7th December 2015:
Second voice:
“We lived near the Chernobyl nuclear plant. I was working at a bakery, making pasties. My husband was a fireman. We had just gotten married, and we held hands even when we went to the store. The day the reactor exploded, my husband was on duty at the firе station. They responded to the call in their shirtsleeves, in regular clothes – there was an explosion at the nuclear power station, but they weren’t given any special clothing. That’s just the way we lived … You know … They worked all night putting out the fire, and received doses of radiation incompatible with life. The next morning they were flown straight to Moscow. Severe radiation sickness … you don’t live for more than a few weeks … My husband was strong, an athlete, and he was the last to die. When I got to Moscow, they told me that he was in a special isolation chamber and no one was allowed in. “But I love him,” I begged. “Soldiers are taking care of them. Where do you think you’re going?” “I love him.” They argued with me: “This isn’t the man you love anymore, he’s an object requiring decontamination. You get it?” I kept telling myself the same thing over and over: I love, I love … At night, I would climb up the fire escape to see him … Or I’d ask the night janitors … I paid them money so they’d let me in … I didn’t abandon him, I was with him until the end … A few months after his death, I gave birth to a little girl, but she lived only a few days. She … We were so excited about her, and I killed her … She saved me, she absorbed all the radiation herself. She was so little … teeny-tiny … But I loved them both. Can you really kill with love? Why are love and death so close? They always come together. Who can explain it? At the grave I go down on my knees …”
Third voice:
“I lived in a country where dying was taught to us from childhood. We were taught death. We were told that human beings exist in order to give everything they have, to burn out, to sacrifice themselves. We were taught to love people with weapons. Had I grown up in a different country, I couldn’t have traveled this path.
I have written five books, but I feel that they are all one book. A book about the history of a utopia …”
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2015/alexievich-lecture_en.html
Ode on Intimations of Immortality – Wordsworth
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;-- Turn wheresoe’er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the rose; The moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know, where’er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth. Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, And while the young lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound, To me alone there came a thought of grief: A timely utterance gave that thought relief, And I again am strong. The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep,-- No more shall grief of mine the season wrong: I hear the echoes through the mountains throng. The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, And all the earth is gay; Land and sea Give themselves up to jollity, And with the heart of May Doth every beast keep holiday;-- Thou child of joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy! Ye blesséd Creatures, I have heard the call Ye to each other make; I see The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee; My heart is at your festival, My head hath its coronal, The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all. O evil day! if I were sullen While Earth herself is adorning This sweet May-morning; And the children are culling On every side In a thousand valleys far and wide Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, And the babe leaps up on his mother’s arm:-- I hear, I hear, with joy I hear! --But there’s a tree, of many, one, A single field which I have look’d upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone: The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat: Whither is fled the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature’s priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a mother’s mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely nurse doth all she can To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came. Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, A six years’ darling of a pigmy size! See, where ‘mid work of his own hand he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother’s kisses, With light upon him from his father’s eyes! See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, Some fragment from his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song: Then will he fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride The little actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his ‘humorous stage’ With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, That life brings with her in her equipage; As if his whole vocation Were endless imitation. Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy soul’s immensity; Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, That, deaf and silent, read’st the eternal deep, Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind,-- Mighty Prophet! Seer blest! On whom those truths rest Which we are toiling all our lives to find, In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave; Thou, over whom thy Immortality Broods like the day, a master o’er a slave, A Presence which is not to be put by; To whom the grave Is but a lonely bed, without the sense of sight Of day or the warm light, A place of thoughts where we in waiting lie; Thou little child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being’s height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life! 0 joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That Nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benediction: not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blest, Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:-- --Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Fallings from us, vanishings, Blank misgivings of a creature Moving about in worlds not realized, High instincts, before which our mortal nature Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised: But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, Are yet a master-light of all our seeing; Uphold us--cherish--and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor man nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence, in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither; Can in a moment travel thither-- And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. Then, sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song! And let the young lambs bound As to the tabor’s sound! We, in thought, will join your throng, Ye that pipe and ye that play, Ye that through your hearts to-day Feel the gladness of the May! What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find Strength in what remains behind; In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering; In the faith that looks through death, In years that bring the philosophic mind. And 0, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, Forebode not any severing of our loves! Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; I only have relinquish’d one delight To live beneath your more habitual sway; I love the brooks which down their channels fret Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born day Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober colouring from an eye That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality; Another race hath been, and other palms are won. Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
Atardecer en el Cementerio de La Balanza, foto por Walter Domínguez
Mujer de Mirada Triste
Mujer de mirada triste
¿Dime qué ves en las velas,
son espectros de la noche
o son flores de la tierra?
¿Qué guardas en tu regazo,
llena de luz, transparente,
si hasta el aire del espacio
tu piel morena parece?
Doble llama en el sentido,
doble dolor, doble ausencia,
las flores se han vuelto ríos
y los perfumes se quejan.
Contemplación de la noche,
velación de la quimera,
manojo de luces, ecos,
trasnochándome la espera…
Mujer de mirada dulce,
las llamas sacan sus lenguas
¿Se están burlando del tiempo
o están latiendo las treguas?
En tu rostro iluminado
la vida rejuvenece,
noche de oro en la mirada
para los que aman la muerte.
Para los que aman la vida
es noche de desconcierto,
la cera besa las flores
y la llama el sentimiento.
– Julie Sopetrán
Invictus
And you as well must die, belovèd dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell,this wonder fled,
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how belovèd above all else that dies.
– Edna St. Vincent Millay
“what you see around you is your education. of course i know this because i was like them [children] once. they might not say much when they are little but they are taking in the world around them all the time. and it all comes back. it’s discussed. children always remember.” – Toller Cranston
dearest Toller – every time we think of you, we will think in the brightest of colours. how we will miss seeing you so very much in SMA when we visit our Omi. what will we most remember? the things you said to us, your words of wisdom, the angels surrounding your pool, your ice-cream feasts, your funny face, the eggs we painted with you, your crazy cowboy belt and very very pointy boots. thank you for being our friend and for sharing your magical paradise with us. we will never forget. promise. love you and hope you are painting even more wildly in the heavens above; we will look up from time to time and see you swirling. – love, philomena & luna
Abre las ventanas al amor
Deja penetrar su claridad
Dile no al pasado y su dolor
Sin negar todo lo bueno que te dio.
Piensa en la alegría de vivir
De tener de nuevo una ilusión
Siempre hay esperanza si el amor te alcanza
Deja penetrar su luz
Abre las ventanas al amor
Sueña sin temor al que dirán
Que quien dices sueño, sueños son
Se equivoca cuando se hacen realidad
Tienes que volver a sonreír
Darle rienda suelta a la emoción
Todo es mas bonito todo es infinito
Al amar todo es mejor
Abre las ventanas al amor
Busca ser feliz una vez más
Pídele a la vida otro color
Que la vida si lo quieres te lo da
Di de nuevo si sin titubear
Haz lo que te manda el corazón
Abre las ventanas al amor
No es para mañana lo que puedes hacer hoy
Abre las ventanas al amor
Busca ser feliz una vez más
Pídele a la vida otro color
Que la vida si lo quieres te lo da.
– Roberto Carlos
“My mother is a daughter of Zion. One side of her family fled from Russian pogroms in the Pale of Settlement, the other was caught up in the rise of Nazism in the cauldron of 20th-century Europe… My father’s family belongs to the other camp. He was only a boy when the Irgun and Haganah came rolling into Jaffa on the waves of tanks and mortars… I have a daughter now who carries both bloodlines and must somehow learn to live at peace with the two sides of her heritage.” – Claire Hajaj