To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession. -Robert Graves
Saturday…
Well, Mary got ill late yesterday, and the Rose Parade is off now for us. I do love wandering through the crowds on the way to the hotel to party with friends and watch the floats and bands go by. What is it about the parade that captures our attention? Humans seem to love getting dressed up, and trooping together in celebration. We seem to enjoy the movement and sounds. Wonderful really. A pleasure!
Rowan is in and out of the house, on his non-stop social whirl. It is kinda fun watching him go through this transition period. He is starting work soon, so more power to him for making the most of it.
Tomorrow has an event here in Portland, Gary Ewing Memorial Bash At The Crystal Ballroom I attended one of Gary’s LightShows back in 1969 at the student union at Reed College. It was pretty cool. All the lights were focused on a large inflatable dome, which you could wander into sit, or dance… This is a benefit for the family, so if you are in Portland, this promises to be a sweet event, originally organized by Gary for the 40th anniversary of the Portland Zoo Electric Band. I hope to be there, with Morgan and maybe others if I can be persuasive…
Tha is it for today, hope your life is sweet! Working today on the next issue of The Invisible College, and programming Radio Free EarthRites!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Loreena McKennitt – The Stolen Child (William Butler Yeats Poem)
Robert Graves Quotes
The Links
Two Countries
Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American Poet: To Any Would-Be Terrorist
From The Irish: Gabriel Rosenstock Poems…
Loreena McKennitt – Caravanserai
Art: Lawrence Alma-Tadema
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Loreena McKennitt – The Stolen Child
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Robert Graves Quotes:
“There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.”
Intuition is the supra-logic that cuts out all the routine processes of thought and leaps straight from the problem to the answer.
If I were a girl, I’d despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and-if he is lucky enough-know the love of an honest woman.
Love is a universal migraine / A bright stain on the vision / Blotting out reason.
We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall
Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest . . .
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The Links:
Shallal Brings ‘Poets’ Vision to EMU
Israeli peace activist wounded during a protest against roadblocks in Hebron
Preview of the Republican Convention…
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Two Countries
Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers–silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American Poet: To Any Would-Be Terrorists
I am sorry I have to call you that, but I don’t know how else to get your attention. I hate that word. Do you know how hard some of us have worked to get rid of that word, to deny its instant connection to the Middle East? And now look. Look what extra work we have. Not only did your colleagues kill thousands of innocent, international people in those buildings and scar their families forever, they wounded a huge community of people in the Middle East, in the United States and all over the world. If that’s what they wanted to do, please know the mission was a terrible success, and you can stop now.
Because I feel a little closer to you than many Americans could possibly feel, or ever want to feel, I insist that you listen to me. Sit down and listen. I know what kinds of foods you like. I would feed them to you if you were right here, because it is very very important that you listen. I am humble in my country’s pain and I am furious.
My Palestinian father became a refugee in 1948. He came to the United States as a college student. He is 74 years old now and still homesick. He has planted fig trees. He has invited all the Ethiopians in his neighborhood to fill their little paper sacks with his figs. He has written columns and stories saying the Arabs are not terrorists, he has worked all his life to defy that word. Arabs are businessmen and students and kind neighbors. There is no one like him and there are thousands like him – gentle Arab daddies who make everyone laugh around the dinner table, who have a hard time with headlines, who stand outside in the evenings with their hands in their pockets staring toward the far horizon.
I am sorry if you did not have a father like that. I wish everyone could have a father like that.
My hard-working American mother has spent 50 years trying to convince her fellow teachers and choir mates not to believe stereotypes about the Middle East. She always told them, there is a much larger story. If you knew the story, you would not jump to conclusions from what you see in the news. But now look at the news. What a mess has been made. Sometimes I wish everyone could have parents from different countries or ethnic groups so they would be forced to cross boundaries, to believe in mixtures, every day of their lives. Because this is what the world calls us to do. WAKE UP!
The Palestinian grocer in my Mexican-American neighborhood paints pictures of the Palestinian flag on his empty cartons. He paints trees and rivers. He gives his paintings away. He says, “Don’t insult me” when I try to pay him for a lemonade. Arabs have always been famous for their generosity. Remember? My half-Arab brother with an Arabic name looks more like an Arab than many full-blooded Arabs do and he has to fly every week.
My Palestinian cousins in Texas have beautiful brown little boys. Many of them haven’t gone to school yet. And now they have this heavy word to carry in their backpacks along with the weight of their papers and books. I repeat, the mission was a terrible success. But it was also a complete, total tragedy and I want you to think about a few things.
1. Many people, thousands of people, perhaps even millions of people, in the United States are very aware of the long unfairness of our country’s policies regarding Israel and Palestine. We talk about this all the time. It exhausts us and we keep talking. We write letters to newspapers, to politicians, to each other. We speak out in public even when it is uncomfortable to do so, because that is our responsibility. Many of these people aren’t even Arabs. Many happen to be Jews who are equally troubled by the inequity. I promise you this is true. Because I am Arab-American, people always express these views to me and I am amazed how many understand the intricate situation and have strong, caring feelings for Arabs and Palestinians even when they don’t have to. Think of them, please: All those people who have been standing up for Arabs when they didn’t have to. But as ordinary citizens we don’t run the government and don’t get to make all our government’s policies, which makes us sad sometimes. We believe in the power of the word and we keep using it, even when it seems no one large enough is listening. That is one of the best things about this country: the free power of free words. Maybe we take it for granted too much. Many of the people killed in the World Trade Center probably believed in a free Palestine and were probably talking about it all the time.
But this tragedy could never help the Palestinians. Somehow, miraculously, if other people won’t help them more, they are going to have to help themselves. And it will be peace, not violence, that fixes things. You could ask any one of the kids in the Seeds of Peace organization and they would tell you that. Do you ever talk to kids? Please, please, talk to more kids.
2. Have you noticed how many roads there are? Sure you have. You must check out maps and highways and small alternate routes just like anyone else. There is no way everyone on earth could travel on the same road, or believe in exactly the same religion. It would be too crowded, it would be dumb. I don’t believe you want us all to be Muslims. My Palestinian grandmother lived to be 106 years old, and did not read or write, but even she was much smarter than that. The only place she ever went beyond Palestine and Jordan was to Mecca, by bus, and she was very proud to be called a Hajji and to wear white clothes afterwards. She worked very hard to get stains out of everyone’s dresses — scrubbing them with a stone. I think she would consider the recent tragedies a terrible stain on her religion and her whole part of the world. She would weep. She was scared of airplanes anyway. She wanted people to worship God in whatever ways they felt comfortable. Just worship. Just remember God in every single day and doing. It didn’t matter what they called it. When people asked her how she felt about the peace talks that were happening right before she died, she puffed up like a proud little bird and said, in Arabic, “I never lost my peace inside.” To her, Islam was a welcoming religion. After her home in Jerusalem was stolen from her, she lived in a small village that contained a Christian shrine. She felt very tender toward the people who would visit it. A Jewish professor tracked me down a few years ago in Jerusalem to tell me she changed his life after he went to her village to do an oral history project on Arabs. “Don’t think she only mattered to you!” he said. “She gave me a whole different reality to imagine – yet it was amazing how close we became. Arabs could never be just a “project” after that.”
Did you have a grandmother or two? Mine never wanted people to be pushed around. What did yours want? Reading about Islam since my grandmother died, I note the “tolerance” that was “typical of Islam” even in the old days. The Muslim leader Khalid ibn al-Walid signed a Jerusalem treaty which declared, “in the name of God, you have complete security for your churches which shall not be occupied by the Muslims or destroyed.” It is the new millenium in which we should be even smarter than we used to be, right? But I think we have fallen behind.
3. Many Americans do not want to kill any more innocent people anywhere in the world. We are extremely worried about military actions killing innocent people. We didn’t like this in Iraq, we never liked it anywhere. We would like no more violence, from us as well as from you. HEAR US! We would like to stop the terrifying wheel of violence, just stop it, right on the road, and find something more creative to do to fix these huge problems we have. Violence is not creative, it is stupid and scary and many of us hate all those terrible movies and TV shows ma
de in our own country that try to pretend otherwise. Don’t watch them. Everyone should stop watching them. An appetite for explosive sounds and toppling buildings is not a healthy thing for anyone in any country. The USA should apologize to the whole world for sending this trash out into the air and for paying people to make it.
But here’s something good you may not know – one of the best-selling books of poetry in the United States in recent years is the Coleman Barks translation of Rumi, a mystical Sufi poet of the 13th century, and Sufism is Islam and doesn’t that make you glad?
Everyone is talking about the suffering that ethnic Americans are going through. Many will no doubt go through more of it, but I would like to thank everyone who has sent me a consolation card. Americans are usually very kind people. Didn’t your colleagues find that out during their time living here? It is hard to imagine they missed it. How could they do what they did, knowing that?
4. We will all die soon enough. Why not take the short time we have on this delicate planet and figure out some really interesting things we might do together? I promise you, God would be happier. So many people are always trying to speak for God – I know it is a very dangerous thing to do. I tried my whole life not to do it. But this one time is an exception. Because there are so many people crying and scarred and confused and complicated and exhausted right now – it is as if we have all had a giant simultaneous break-down. I beg you, as your distant Arab cousin, as your American neighbor, listen to me. Our hearts are broken, as yours may also feel broken in some ways we can’t understand, unless you tell us in words. Killing people won’t tell us. We can’t read that message. Find another way to live. Don’t expect others to be like you. Read Rumi. Read Arabic poetry. Poetry humanizes us in a way that news, or even religion, has a harder time doing. A great Arab scholar, Dr. Salma Jayyusi, said, “If we read one another, we won’t kill one another.” Read American poetry. Plant mint. Find a friend who is so different from you, you can’t believe how much you have in common. Love them. Let them love you. Surprise people in gentle ways, as friends do. The rest of us will try harder too. Make our family proud.
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From The Irish: Gabriel Rosenstock Poems…
Cé HÍ?………………………………. Who Is She?
Cé hí an bandia seo agat? ……………Who is this goddess of yours?
Cé hí? …………………………………………Who is she?
Fantaisíocht, cuirfidh me geall.………..Pure fantasy, I wager.
An é nach léir duit í?……………………..Is she not clear to you?
Ní léir!…………………………………………No, she is not.
Is léire ná an lá í……………………………’Clearer than day is she’
‘is léire ná an oíche…’………………………clearer than night
Ní léir domsa í
…………………………….Not clear to me
Sí an lá san oíche í……………………………Day in night is she
an oíche sa lá
’ ………………………………’night in day
Ní fheicim í
…………………………………. I see her not
Féach ionat féinig! ………………………….. Look inside yourself!
Deacair
………………………………………..Difficult
Féach mar sin…………………………………….Then look
ar shioc an bhandé………………………………at her frost
ar an bhféar.………………………………………covering the grass.
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A Daisy Picked
Nóinín a phiocas
Nóinín a phiocas Duit
Agus ba ghrian chomh millteach sin é
Gur dalladh mé
Ach chneasaigh na piotail
I gceann na haimsire mé
Do ghéaga áthasacha
Ina gceann is ina gceann
A daisy picked
A daisy picked for You
Such a massive sun
I was blinded
But the petals healed me
In time
Your joyous limbs
One by one
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For More Than A Thousand Years
Le Breis is Míle Bliain
Mo ghrá Thú!
Gach soicind.
Nuair a chorraíonn an ghaoth an féar
Lingim Chugat ionam
Id bharróg dhorcha soilsím
Is mé Aimhirghin cé eile?
Mholas Tainm thar chách
For More than a Thousand Years
I love You!
Every second
When wind rustles the grass
Now and tomorrow
I leap to You in me
In your dark embrace I shine
I am Amergin who else
I have praised Your name over all.
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You Are In Me
Taoi ionam
A bhé luisneach
A ghrian gan choinne i mí Feabhra
A bhláth roimh am
Soilsíonn Tú an oíche
Titeann Tú Id réalta reatha
Sprais i ndiaidh spraise
Is tá mo spéirse anois lom
Taoi ionam
You are in me
Brightest of beings
In sun-surprised February
Flower out of season
You illuminate the night
A falling star
Shower after shower
My sky is empty now
You are in me
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Gabriel Rosenstock
Born in Kilfinane, Co. Limerick in 1949, he studied at University College Cork, where he associated with the Innti group of poets. He has written or translated more than 100 books, principally in Irish. Rogha Rosenstock, a selection from 10 different volumes of his poetry, appeared in 1994, and a selection of his children’s poetry, Dánta Duitse, was published in 1998. More recently, he published another volume of poetry, Syójó, and A Treasury of Irish Love, a compilation. A former chairman of Poetry Ireland, he is a member of several international haiku associations, and holds an honorary life membership of the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’ Society. He is assistant editor with An Gúm, an Irish language publisher. He lives in Dublin.
From: Arts Council of Ireland
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Loreena McKennitt – Caravanserai
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