For the immortal spirit of Marija Gimbutas - "Old Europe" by Cyndi Dawson

Old Europe by Cyndi Dawson

I dreamed of an earth quake
That opened the ground
Unearthed a civilization
Laid bare before our eyes
Illustrious statues of fertile
Untouched
Completely preserved
Soft rains rinsing ash
Revealed
From the closing
Of the last eyes
To mine opening…
I dreamed
The pregnant spring
Sustaining a life of
Peace & prosperity
I dreamed the altar
A – flame
I saw their faces
A – glow
I felt their art
I felt their heart
What drove us to abandon our Selves?
To the call of unequal Gods and war?
Surrendering the rich soil
To the burial of bones & artefacts
To springs of dying crops
To fields of crosses scattered
Like black crows pecking at rotted flesh?
What drove us to abandon our potential?
For this turning history of man?
There was a fertile spring once
I dreamed mounds of clay that drenched primitive hands
Rose up from the crevice formed
Revealed itself in iconic pottery & relics
Revealed itself symbolically
Read openly to those who would care to listen closely
Who understood the handing down
There was a Civilization etched upon mind’s eye
We lived in peace
We lived in peace



An animation of the words of "Old Europe" - an epic poem by Cyndi Dawson. Her poem was in turn inspired by the documentary "Signs Out of Time" which was based on the life and work of Marija Gimbutas.



Music by Jair-Rohm Parker Wells and Tommy Aboussleman
Guitar: Tommy Aboussleman
Words/Vocals: Cyndi Dawson - "Nor' Easter"

Motherless City (By Cyndi Dawson)

Whip smart aren't we all at eighteen
Right out of school the only rule is free to be
No house to sneak back to no mother to fight with
Bodies to dance with friends to get high with
Turn the corner, here we are
Rent split four ways and four bodies in
Three beds who ate my friggin rice cakes,
Borrowed my leg warmers without asking...
I'm an angry girl, angry angry angry
Watch me peel my way past the big muscled
Bouncers watch me lead the way to the stage
Watch my body undulate it is the biggest weapon
I have watch me drink for free boys are so stupid
Boys are so beautiful watch me watch the boys
Whip smart aren't we all clutching our pillows,
Drowning out noise of a cavernous loft where a
Guitar sits against the wall, tired after seduction.
If I rise out of this self claimed spot in this
Lumpy bed I will have to walk past the spot where
You are holding a strange girl in your arms.
I miss my mothers house. One I left at fifteen.
I knew it all, then, as well. I knew it all. I needed no one.
I needed nothing. The umbilical cord officially severed.
Angry girl packs her bag and off she goes seeks fame and
Fortune, maybe cappuchinos. cappuchinos are cool, cool
Is essential in this city with no mother.
This is a motherless frenetic machine that spits the weak
Onto streets and I'm too angry for streets. Don't even try.
Watch me double dutch my strut watch me, watch me
There is nothing I need there is nothing I want that I cannot
Get for myself. I need no one. Watch me press the boy
Against the wall, slam shazaam watch me flip his
Switch look whose got the moves whip smart stupid girl
Girls are so stupid. Girls are so beautiful. I don't
Need no one or nothing. I just want to be eighteen and left the
Hell alone.
This is a motherless city.

Constantine P. Cavafy's poem Ithaca (1910, 1911)

One of the most famous Greek poems, read by Elli Lambeti. Music background by Mark Isham.

ITHACA (1910, 1911)

As you set out for Ithaca
hope that your journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
You'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare sensasion
touches your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope that your journey is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and learn again from those who know.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so that you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would have not set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithacas mean.

Til minne - Mahmoud Darwish - en elsket Palestinsk poet som forlot oss 10. august 2008

على هذه الأرض ما يستحق الحياة
تردد إبريل
رائحة الخبز في الفجر
تعويذة امرأة للرجال
أول الحب
عشب على حجر
أمهات يقفن على خيط ناي
وخوف الغزاة من الذكريات
على هذه الأرض ما يستحق الحياة
نهايات أيلول
سيدة تترك الأربعين بكامل مشمشها
ساعة الشمس في السجن
غيم يقلد سربا من الكائنات
هتافات شعب لمن يصعدون الى حتفهم باسمين
وخوف الطغاة من الأغنيات
على هذه الأرض ما يستحق الحياة
على هذه الأرض سيدة الأرض
أم البدايات, أم النهايات
كانت تسمى فلسطين
صارت تسمى فلسطين
سيدتي...أستحق لأنك سيدتي
أستحق الحياة

ونحن نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا
ونرقص بين شهيدين. نرفع مئذنة للبنفسج بينهما أو نخيلا
نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا
ونسرق من دود القز خيطاً لنبني سماءً لنا ونُسيج هذا الرحيلا
ونفتح باب الحديقة كي يخرج الياسمين إلى الطرقات نهاراً جميلا
نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا
ونزرع حيث أقمنا نباتاً سريع النمو، ونحصد حيث أقمنا قتيلا
وننفخ في الناي لون البعيد البعيد، ونرسم فوق تراب الممر صهيلا
ونكتب أسماءنا حجراً حجراً، أيها البرق أوضح لنا الليل، أوضح قليلا
نحب الحياة إذا ما استطعنا إليها سبيلا

**English Translation:

"On This Earth"

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the final days of September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples' applause for those who face death with a smile, a tyrant's fear of songs.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her name later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.
from:

http://hedgeguard.blogspot.com/2006/0...

"We love life whenever we can"

We love life whenever we can.
We dance and throw up a minaret or raise palm trees for the violets growing between two martyrs.
We love life whenever we can.
We steal a thread from a silk-worm to weave a sky and a fence for our journey.
We open the garden gate for the jasmine to walk into the street as a beautiful day.
We love life whenever we can.
Wherever we settle we grow fast-growing plants, wherever we settle we harvest a murdered man.
We blow into the flute the colour of far away, of far away, we draw on the dust in the passage the neighing of a horse.
And we write our names in the form of stones. Lightning brighten the night for us, brighten the night a little.
We love life when ever we can.




Mahmoud Darwish, The award-winning Palestinian poet, has died aged 67, after heart surgery in a Texas hospital. Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland takes a look at a man who widely loved man by Palestinians and poetry-lovers alike.

Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish has long been recognized as the leading poet of Palestine, the poetic voice of the exiled Palestinian people. He was born in the Palestinian village of Birwe in 1942; Birwe was one of over 400 Palestinian villages occupied by the Israeli army in 1948. His family fled to Lebanon but returned to become "internal refugees" whose legal status was at best precarious, subject to Israeli military authorities. He was several times imprisoned and placed under house arrest in his 20s for reciting his poetry and for his activities as editor of the Israeli Communist Party's newspaper. In 1971 he left Israel (for 25 years, as it turned out), going first to Cairo, then to Beirut where he joined the Palestine Liberation Organization and became the editor of its literary, cultural, and scholarly journal Al-Karmel. He left Beirut following the Israeli invasion in 1982, living variously in Cyprus and Paris, among other places. He was chosen a member of the PLO Executive Committee in 1987, but resigned in 1993 over disagreement with the leadership regarding some elements of the Oslo Accords. After having been denied entry into Israel for a number of years, he was finally allowed to return in 1997 and settled in Ramallah.

His earliest poetry was largely traditional Arabic love poetry, but he soon turned to drawing upon the political and social situations he knew first hand; one of his earliest successful peoms (in the sense of becoming widely known among Palestinians) was "Identity Card," based on his own experiences as an "internal refugee" in Israel:

"Identity Card"

Put it on record.

I am an Arab
And the number of my card is fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth is due after summer.
What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record.

I am an Arab
Working with comrades of toil in a quarry.
I have eight children
For them I wrest the loaf of bread,
The clothes and exercise books
From the rocks
And beg for no alms at your door,

Lower not myself at your doorstep.
What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record.

I am an Arab.
I am a name without a title,
Patient in a country where everything
Lives in a whirlpool of anger.

My roots
Took hold before the birth of time
Before the burgeoning of the ages,
Before cypress and olive trees,
Before the proliferation of weeds.

My father is from the family of the plough

Not from highborn nobles.
And my grandfather was a peasant

Without line or geneaology.
My house is a watchman's hut

Made of sticks and reeds.
Does my status satisfy you?

I am a name without a surname.

Put it on record.

I am an Arab.
Color of hair: jet black.
Color of eyes: brown.
My distinguishing features:

On my head the 'iqal cords over a keffiyeh
Scratching him who touches it.
My address:

I'm from a village, remote, forgotten,
It's streets without name
And all its men in the fields and quarry.


What's there to be angry about?

Put it on record.

I am an Arab.
You stole my forefathers' vineyards

And land I used to till,
I and all my children,
And you left us and all my grandchildren
Nothing but these rocks.
Will your government be taking them too
As is being said?

So!

Put it on record at the top of page one:
I don't hate people,
I trespass on no one's property.
And yet, if I were to become hungry

I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.
Beware, beware of my hunger
And of my anger!

(Translated by Denys Johnson-Davies)

Although there are suggestions of a threatened violence in the conclusion of "Identity Card," by and large Darwish has avoided appeals to violence as a solution; this is apparent in another early poem, one which is based on a conversation between Darwish and a young Israeli friend following the latter's participation in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War:

"A Soldier Dreams of White Tulips"

He dreams of white tulips, an olive branch, her breasts in evening blossom.
He dreams of a bird, he tells me, of lemon flowers.
He does not intellectualize about his dream. He understands things as he senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he tells me, is to drink my mother's coffee, to return at nightfall.

And the land? I don't know the land, he said.
I don't feel it in my flesh and blood, as they say in the poems.
Suddenly I saw the land as one sees a grocery store, a street, newspapers.

I asked him, but don't you love the land? My land is a picnic, he said, a glass of wine, alove affair.
--Would you die for the land?
--No!
All my attachment to the land is no more than a sotry or a fiery speech!
They taught me to love it, but I never felt it in my heart.
I never knew its roots and branches, or the scent of its grass.

--And what about its love?Did it burn like suns and desire?
He looked straight at me and said: I love it with my gun.
And by unearthing feasts in the garbage of the past
and a deaf-mute idol whose age and meaning are unknown.

He told me about the moment of departure, how his mother
silently wept when they led him to the front,
how her anguished voice gave birth to a new hope in his flesh
that doves might flock through the Ministry of War.

He drew on his cigarette. He said, as if fleeing from a swamp of blood,
I dreamt of white tulips, an olive branch, a bird embracing the dawn on a lemon branch.
--And what did your see?
--I saw what I did:
a blood-red boxthorn.
I blasted them in the sand . . . in their chests . . . in their bellies.
--How many did you kill?
--It's impossible to tell. I only got one medal.

Pained, I asked him to tell me about one of the dead.

He shifted in his seat, fiddled with the folded newspaper,
then said, as if breaking into song:
He collapsed like a tent on stones, embracing shattered planets.
His high forehead was crowned with blood. His chest was empty of medals.
He was not a well-trained fighter, but seemed instead to be a peasant, a worker, or a peddlar.
Like a tent he collapsed and died, his arms stretched out like dry creek-beds.
When I searched his pockets for a name, I found two photographs, one of his wife, the other of his daughter.

Did you feel sad? I asked.
Cutting me off, he said, Mahmoud, my friend,
sadness is a white bird that does not come near a battlefield.
Soldiers commit a sin when they feel sad.
I was there like a machine spitting hellfire and death,
turning space into a black bird.

He told me about his first love, and later, about distant streets,
about reactions to the war in the heroic radio and the press.
As he hid a cough in his handkerchief I asked him:
Shall we meet again?
Yes, but in a city far away.

When I filled his fourth glass, I asked jokingly:
Are you off? what about the homeland?
Give me a break, he replied.
I dream of white tulips, streets of song, a house of light.
I need a kind heart, not a bullet.
I need a bright day, not a mad, fascist moment of triumph.
I need a child to cherish a day of laughter, not a weapon of war.
I came to live for rising suns, not to witness their setting.

He said goodbye and went looking for white tulips,
a bird welcoming the dawn on an olive branch.
He understands things only as he senses and smells them.
Homeland for him, he said, is to drink my mother's coffee, to return, safely, at nightfall.

(Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché)

The body of Darwish's work is most particularly concerned with articulating the effects on the Palestinian people of the loss of their homeland:


"Athens Airport"

Athens airport disperses us to other airports. Where can I fight? asks the fighter.
Where can I deliver your child? a pregnant woman shouts back.
Where can I invest my money? asks the officer.
This is none of my business, the intellectual says.
Where did you come from? asks the customs' official.
And we answer: From the sea!
Where are you going?
To the sea, we answer.
What is your address?
A woman of our group says: My village is my bundle on my back.
We have waited in the Athens airport for years.
A young man marries a girl but they have no place for their wedding night.
He asks: Where can I make love to her?
We laugh and say:
This is not the right time for that question.
The analyst says: In order to live, they die by mistake.
The literary man says: Our camp will certainly fall.
What do they want from us?
Athens airport welcomes its visitors without end.
Yet, like the benches in the terminal, we remain, impatiently waiting for the sea.
How many more years longer, O Athens airport?

(Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché)

The homeland which now exists for Palestinians is that land found in memory and the imagination:

"We Walk Towards a Land"

We walk towards a land not of our flesh,
Not of our bones its chestnut trees,
Its stones unlike the curly goats
Of the Song of Songs.
We walk towards a land
That does not hang a special sun for us.
Mythic women clap:
A sea around us,
A sea upon us.
If wheat and water doe not reach you,
Eat our love and drink our tears.
Black veils of mourning for the poets.
You have your victories and we have ours,
We have a country where we see
Only the invisible.

(Translated by Rana Kabbani)

In a very real sense, the lost homeland of Palestine becomes what defines those who have lost her, and she becomes identified with the "beloved" of traditional Arabic poetry:

"On This Earth"

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: April's hesitation, the aroma of bread
at dawn, a woman's point of view about men, the works of Aeschylus, the beginning
of love, grass on a stone, mothers living on a flute's sigh and the invaders' fear of memories.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: the final days of September, a woman
keeping her apricots ripe after forty, the hour of sunlight in prison, a cloud reflecting a swarm
of creatures, the peoples' applause for those who face death with a smile, a tyrant's fear of songs.

We have on this earth what makes life worth living: on this earth, the Lady of Earth,
mother of all beginnings and ends. She was called Palestine. Her name later became
Palestine. My Lady, because you are my Lady, I deserve life.

(Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché)

For the Palestinian people, it is the fact of exile which is their defining characteristic:

"Without exile, who am I?"

Stranger on the bank, like the river . . . tied up to your
name by water. Nothing will bring me back from my free
distance to my palm tree: not peace, nor war. Nothing
will inscribe me in the Book of Testaments. Nothing,
nothing glints off the shore of ebb and flow, between
the Tigris and the Nile. Nothing
gets me off the chariots of Pharaoh. Nothing
carries me for a while, or makes me carry an idea: not
promises, nor nostalgia. What am I to do, then? What
am I to do without exile, without a long night
staring at the water?
Tied up
to your name
by water . . .
Nothing takes me away from the butterfly of my dreams
back into my present: not earth, nor fire. What
am I to do, then, without the roses of Samarkand? What
am I to do in a square that burnishes the chanters with
moon-shaped stones? Lighter we both have
become, like our homes in the distant winds. We have
both become friends with the clouds'
strange creatures; outside the reach of the gravity
of the Land of Identity. What are we to do, then . . . What
are we to do without exile, without a long night
staring at the water?
Tied up
to your name
by water . . .
Nothing's left of me except for you; nothing's left of you
except for me -- a stranger caressing his lover's thigh: O
my stranger! What are we to do with what's left for us
of the stillness, of the siesta that separates legend from legend?
Nothing will carry us: not the road, nor home.
Was this road the same from the start,
or did our dreams find a mare among the horses
of the Mongols on the hill, and trade us off?
And what are we to do, then?
What
are we to do
without
exile?

(Translated by Anton Shammas)

But Darwish's poetry reaches beyond the surface facts of Palestinian exile, especially in his later work where he explores the human experience, not just the Palestinian one, particularly in erotic and love poetry which probes the nature of love in a world in which we are all in a very real sense strangers and exiles:

"The Stranger Finds Himself in the Stranger"

We two are become one.
We have no name, strange woman,
when the stranger finds himself in the stranger.
What remains of the garden behind us is the power of the shadow.
Show what you will of your night's earth, and hide what you will.
We come hurriedly from the twilight of two places at once.
Together we searched for our addresses.
Follow your shadow, east of the Song of Songs,
herding sand grouse.
You will find a star residing in its own death.
Climb a deserted mountain,
you will find my yesterday coming full circle to my tomorrow.
You will find where we were and where, together, we will be.

We are two become one, strange man.
Go to the sea west of your book, and dive as lightly
as if you were riding two waves at birth,
you will find a thicket of seaweed and a green sky of water.
Dive as lightly as if you were nothing in nothing.
And you will find us together.

We are two become one.
We have yet to see how we were here, strange woman.
Two shadows opening and closing upon what had once been our two bodies.
A body appearing then disappearing in a body disappearing
in the confusion of unending duality.
We need to return to being two,
so we can go on embracing each other.
We have no name, strange woman,
when the stranger finds himself in the stranger.

(Translated by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché)

Kilde: hedgeguard.blogspot.com

For a free Palestine? Visit www.freegaza.org/

Vakker poemvideo fra Iran

Vakker film som viser landskap og historisk arkitektur i Iran. Musikk: Dariush Eghbali med tittel "Rumi". Resitasjon: Molana. Poesi: Rumi. Filmen ble laget 2007 i anledning Rumis 800 års fødselsdag.God reise!

I died from minerality and became plant;
And from plant I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearance through death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels;
After that, soaring higher than angels -
what you cannot imagine,
I shall be that.

- Rumi -

"Stealing Sugar from the Castle" av poeten Robert Bly (f. 1926)

"Stealing Sugar from the Castle" er skrevet og resiteres av den amerikanske poeten Robert Bly født 1926.

Only Breath fra 1300 årh. av Jalal ad-Din Rumi

Diktet "Only Breath" er skrevet i det 1300 årh. av Sulfimystikeren og poeten Jalal ad-Din Rumi, og er oversatt og resiteres av Coleman Barks. Filmen er hentet fra "Seasons of Peace".



Only Breath


Not
Christian
or
Jew
or
Muslim

not
Hindu
Buddhist
Sufi
or
Zen
.

Not
any
religion
or
cultural
system
.

I
am
not

from
the
East
or
the
West

not
out
of
the
ocean

or
up
from
the
ground

not
natural
or
ethereal

not
composed
of
elements
at
all
.

I
do
not
exist

am
not
an
entity

in
this
world

or
in
the
next

did
not
descend

from
Adam
and
Eve

or
any
origin
story
.

My
place
is
placeless

a
trace
of
the
traceless
.


Neither
body
or
soul
.


I
belong
to
the
beloved

have
seen
the
two
worlds

as
one

and
that
one

call
to
and
know

first
last
outer
inner

only
that
breath

breathing
human
being

The Raven av Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) framført av Vincent Price

Here is a virtual movie Edgar Allan Poe reading his great poem "The Raven"
This recording taken from a public domain audio website is qiute possibly my alltime favourite reading of this most dark lunatic frenzied poem.

Heres an excerpt of what the excellent Wikipedia says about this most famous of poems..

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the latter's slow descent into madness. The lover, often identified as being a student,[1][2] is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. The raven, sitting on a bust of Pallas, seems to further instigate his distress with its constant repetition of the word, "Nevermore." Throughout the poem, Poe makes allusions to folklore and various classical works.

Poe claimed to have written the poem very logically and methodically. His intention was to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes, as he explains in the follow-up essay: "The Philosophy of Composition". The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in the novel Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty by Charles Dickens.[3] Poe borrows the complex rhythm and meter of Elizabeth Barrett's poem "Lady Geraldine's Courtship".

The first publication of "The Raven" on January 29, 1845, in the New York Evening Mirror made Poe widely popular in his lifetime. The poem was soon reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Though some critics disagree about the value of the poem, it remains one of the most famous poems ever written"

Korpen (dikt)
Från Wikipedia

Korpen (engelska The Raven) är en berättande dikt av den amerikanska författaren och poeten Edgar Allan Poe. Den publicerades först i New York Evening Mirror den 29 januari 1845. "Korpen" utmärkts av sin musikalitet, sitt stiliserade språk och sin övernaturliga atmosfär. Den berättar om ett mystiskt besök av en talande korp hos en sorgtyngd älskande, och följer den älskandes långsamma fall ned i vansinne. När den publicerades gjorde den Poe populär, och den räknas än idag som en av världens mest kända dikter.

En känd översättning till svenska gjordes av Viktor Rydberg.

Dikten följer en ej namngiven berättare som sitter och läser "gammal lärdom" som ett sätt att glömma förlusten av sin älskade Lenore (namnet användes tidigare i Poes dikt med samma namn, Lenore). En knackning på hans kammardörr avslöjar ingenting men får hans själ att "brinna." En liknande knackning, något ljudligare, hörs vid hans fönster. När han går för att undersöka detta kliver en korp in i hans kammare. Korpen ägnar honom ingen uppmärksamhet och sätter sig på en byst av Pallas Athena.

Mannen roas av korpens komiskt allvarliga uppsyn och ber fågeln att säga sitt namn. Korpens enda svar är "förbi" ("Nevermore"). Berättaren blir faktiskt förvånad över att korpen kan tala, men den säger inget mer. Plötsligt blir mannen bestört och anmärker att hans "vän" korpen snart kommer att flyga ut ur hans liv, som andra vänner har flugit förut och som hans tidigare förhoppningar. Som till svar säger korpen åter "förbi". Berättaren är övertygad om att det ordet är allt som fågeln kan säga, möjligen inlärt från en tidigare ägare som var otursförföljd.

Berättaren drar ändå fram sin stol direkt framför korpen, beslutsam att lära sig mer om den. Han tänker djupt på detta utan att säga något, men hans tankar vandrar tillbaka till hans förlorade Lenore. Han tror att luften blir tätare och känner änglars närvaro. Berättaren förvirras av att associera fågeln med änglar, blir arg och kallar korpen "ond" och "profet." När han skriker mot korpen svarar den bara "förbi." Slutligen frågar han korpen om Lenore är i himlen. När korpen svarar med sitt typiska "förbi" skriker han och befaller korpen att återvända till sitt avgrundsrike. Korpen rör sig dock aldrig och, synbarligen vid tiden för berättarens recitation av dikten, sitter kvar på bysten av Pallas och kastar sin skugga över hans själ.

The Last War by Bruce Larson - fredsrefleksjoner

The Last War

Freedom, Peace and Security will NEVER be won nor secured by the sword, another war will always need to be fought to end the fear of the sharp blade against the vital thoughts of change.

The last war will be waged without soldiers or freedom fighters, without blood shed or death, no rockets red glare, no bombs bursting anywhere.

The last war will not cause suffering, broken hearts, splintered spirits, or shattered bodies and souls, the creation of nature and man will not be crushed under the rolling thunder of armored machines, chemicals will not rain down from above, maniacal viruses will not attack from within, suicide terror raids, genocide, and nuclear holocaust will have no place in the last war, the casualties will be the end of competition, industry, government and religion which plan for and carry out the destruction, addiction and control of others.

The last war will be waged BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE, a war where all things will be TREATED as equal, a war employing weapons of MASS COOPERATION, battles fought and won with tolerance for all, understanding of difference, awareness of responsibility, a war in which compassion and love conquer and destroy the final evil enemy of humankind, the last war, the mother of all wars, the war to end all wars, must be waged upon fear.

We the People, declare a global war on fear.

How do we the people start this war, how do we wage this war, how do we the people win the last war ?

We start by turning away from those who support fear, by denying our services, our employment, our political, financial, moral and spiritual support to those who build and profit from the economy of competition, addiction and war.

We wage the last war by demanding that our energy and environment be clean and renewable, by demanding that the thousands of billions of dollars spent yearly on making the weapons and means of war be shifted and added to the nearly meaningless hundreds of billions which is reluctantly parted out for social, health, education and domestic infrastructure.

We win the last war by simply entrusting our votes, our support, our children's and grandchildren's lives to those of US whose words and actions - DELIVER - compassion, love and truth.

We the people can, will and must defeat fear.

Carl Michael Bellmans Berättelse

Reportasje om Carl Michael Bellmans liv fra "Rikets kultur" 29.januar 1990. Reporter Kjell Åke Hansson.

Stockholm hyller sin Bellman 26.juni 1931

Selskapet Par Bricole hyller Bellman 1931, den 26.juli for 103:e gang.

Last night, as I was sleeping av Antonio Machado (1875-1939)

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

Translated by Robert Bly

Antonio Machados kone døde da hun var svært ung. Det er gjennom hans livslange smerte over dette tapet at en slags hellig, åndelig lengsel trenger fram hos ham. Antonio begynner å se sin avdøde kone som sin guddommelige elskede, alltid til stede og alltid kallende på ham. Fordi de ikke kan nå hverandre, kan de bare forenes gjennom en mystisk og hemmelig omfavnelse. På denne måten blir hans utilfredsstilte romantiske lengsel opphøyet til en åndelig erfaring som samvarer med erfaringene til trubadurmystikerne flere hundre år tidligere.

Når diktet taler om hans elskede kone, bør man lese det i betydningen "guddommelige kone". Se hvilken mening som da trer fram i teksten.

Se artikkelen "Hauge og Machado - sjelefrendar?" hvis du vil bli bedre kjent med Antonio Machado




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