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Wikileaks and Poetry

Mole

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Here is a poem called, "Here and After". The poem can be seen as text on the screen.

But.....the poem is illustrated by the great German choreographer Pina Bausch in the movie, "Pina", in 2011, by the great German director, Wim Wenders. And the music is wonderful.

I couldn't resist showing it to you. So just click on - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJYLHoRqIsI&feature=g-vrec
 

Mole

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Take the -

The Low Road

If the power comes on after a count of five, it means a swan hit the line.

In a pub at the end of the Scottish north, light matters.

Far from long sunsets over the San Andreas Fault & Soda Lake

I have imposed Solitary Confinement with single malt.

Some here remember Odin, god of bad weather,

Philosophy as commonplace as eating coastal cheddar, meat pie.

Sheep fleck landscape, wool & lunch on the hoof.

The suicide rate is low, even among magicians & poets,

Anomie almost unheard of, life is so hard

Like the ground, Bifrost Bridge lifting everyone's spirits.

Mirrored over the bar in amber & brown, fifty-nine reasons to keep drinking.

- Jo Sarzotti.
 

Mole

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While here it is Autumn, there it is a musical -

Spring, Finally

on Stenton. Sunlight
scat-sings along the wet fence.
The city's echo on the red sky
mugging in pooled rain
below two long measures
of birds on a power pole—
syncopated eighths, the opening
of "Satisfaction" in E.
Not-human and unreadable
simulacra—that blurred
mare on the Dixon estate,
a prima donna on a dark stage—
repeat through the tree breaks
in my side mirror then retreat
in the rearview. At the light
Stenton dead-ends at Butler
and on the power lines
swallows are quarter notes
against the blotted blue-black west:
A magnificat on the horizon,
Palestrina dotting the hills,
a dark road before me.

- J. T. Barbarese.
 

Mole

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Last night in Oz it was -

A Winter Night

The storm puts its mouth to the house
and blows to get a tone.
I toss and turn, my closed eyes
reading the storm's text.

The child's eyes grow wide in the dark
and the storm howls for him.
Both love the swinging lamps;
both are halfway towards speech.

The storm has the hands and wings of a child.
Far away, travellers run for cover.
The house feels its own constellation of nails
holding the walls together.

The night is calm in our rooms,
where the echoes of all footsteps rest
like sunken leaves in a pond,
but the night outside is wild.

A darker storm stands over the world.
It puts its mouth to our soul
and blows to get a tone. We are afraid
the storm will blow us empty.

(Text of the poem in the original Swedish)

- Tomas Tranströmer.
 

Mole

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It's winter here, but there it is -

Summer

Summer. And the sinking lights of summer.
And the sinking city lights of summer
Dancing down the long hips of the Hudson.

Dancing down the long hips of the Hudson.
Shrinking, enchanting with outrageous calm.
Until from just under, wood pikes peek out:

First like goose bumps, then like bones through skin.
Look down: MORTON STREET, carved into the ground.
And these stumps, tricked out with seagull scarecrows,

Still wait here for their ship: like that wet bruise
Lake Avernus still waits for Dante's soul,
Checking the reflection of every star

Trapped in its dim circles, and whispering
Per me si va ne la città dolente
To see if, from the memory, one flinches.

- Rowan Ricardo Phillips.
 

Mole

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We watch the -

Re-enactment

All the tiny abandoned halts along the Irwell
have been re-opened, their clocks
set ticking. And everyone
is here—
but not yet everyone:
across the bridge, past the terraced cottages

a last couple appear, he in khaki,
she in a red print dress, her blond hair
rolled immaculately.

There is a whistle in the valley.
Huffs of smoke move this way across the fields
like dropped clouds
and they start to run, holding hands
or try to run in her impossible heels
down the steep street, back

to where the others are already waiting
on the platform.
It happens so quickly

that the parting is over
before they know it is a parting.

The whistle comes again
and a shiver,
the ground trembling in anticipation.

- Caroline Price.
 

Mole

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The cabbage tells us when -

Winter Arrives in Beijing

All October the old acrobat of autumn,
An ace slipped up its sleeve.
Then, suddenly, on a single day,
By tradition, by government decree,
The season unleashes one basic need:
The scent of cabbage, millions of heads.
We see them everywhere, on the backs
Of pick-ups, horse-drawn wagons.
The full measure of spring's
Hundreds of pounds of them.
So desire, so love is born of hunger.
Now we know what we'll eat
This January: Stacked like firewood
Along the hutongs, lining tiled roofs
And courtyards. Come winter,
Almost gray by then,
We'll wash the coal dust off of them.
But today the passion, the rush
To bring them in. As if it feared
To miss its chance, the season
Seizes the moment, and in an instant,
In passing, bears down on us.
We look up from our work, we go out
On the street to mark the quick of it:
One man spread-eagle on a load
Of cabbage, smiling back
As the traffic floats him past.
What's pressing, what's to come,
As if he knew our place among
The last long-shadowed warmth of the sun.

- Stephen Haven.
 

Mole

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Please -

Letter from a Mental Hospital

From the heart of an old box of letters
I lift a small water-stained envelope.
Inside, a note card as thin and brittle as a frozen leaf
bears a message written fifty years ago
by a woman who shares my name.

She delivers no greeting, no sorry to have been away so long.
She leaves no record of visitors, rationed cigarettes,
group art, or the barren iceberg of treatment.

I imagine her listening to the ping of the radiator
on a snowy morning, seated in her nightgown and socks
by an open window. A bell rings in the hallway
but she doesn't move toward her robe or her slippers or her brush.

I see myself sitting beside her, reaching
toward her dull pencil to place my fingers over hers,
hand on hand, gliding over the words, moving
like two skaters on a lake tracing the solitary line—
Please come get me.

- Kim Lozano.
 

Mole

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And now a -

Scarecrow

Scarecrows grow scarce
since we no longer till fields.

Funereal figures
standing in the midst of harvest,

they flapped wildly in the wind
though never moved.

They wore the old clothes
of the dead men of the household

with sometimes a cap or a hat
which would often blow off.

Crossed staves in a field,
a home-made crucifixion,

or the gaunt autumnal brother
of the rotund snowman.

~

But I forgot the shrewdness
of the carrion crow. Before
the crop was gathered in
I swear I saw more than one
of those jagged black birds
happily settle on the arm
of that structure meant to warn.

- John Montague.
 

Mole

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A paper chase -

Papyrus Fragment Egerton 2

A little crowd, and the question came from him walking:
he spoke of a thing shut within its place ...
set there below invisibly ... its heaviness
past measuring ...

like Ives's Unanswered Question, all a-hang,
haze and mass of anti-matter, or of anti-question.

For the record says they were puzzled.
And that his next act was to stand on Jordan bank
extending his right hand, filling it,
sower to the river.

The verb for what happened next has gone downstream.
Before them, though, it became present and put forth
oodles of fruit whether figs, oranges, or olives
a gap now hides, and whether
the sudden orchard rooted, trunks browing water,
or bobbed and stilted away. But their joy,
that is recorded.

A question had gone unanswered. Or else that answered it,
everything enormous met with the lightest touch,
non sequitur.

Indeed it does not follow:
to cloud, swimming unfloored depth
apeiron the root of rebels.

Or it does, though as an iron check to explosion
sensing what pins one gazeless region to the other.

If it all floated away they must have followed
clamoring: a Winter's Tale, the statue swaying, breathing.
Sower. River. Fruit. And under them,
the ponder press of the enclosed thing, of the enciphered
megaton seed.

- John Peck.
 

Mole

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A song from -

The Singing Forest

A red and ocher forest near Žilina
was my earliest classroom,

my first wondrous library
and lavish sanctuary:

on autumn hillsides,
my just-widowed mother and I

would cull plump woodberries
and wild mushrooms.

As a towheaded, willing boy,
I was taught to venerate

each forest thing,
singing in Slovak,

in the treble clef,
dobre, dobre

(good, good)
as my spellbound eyes passed

from branch to glistening branch.
Don't stray too far, son;

don't step on the wand
of the Vila,

the sweet-souled forest witch,
my mother would tease me—

So when the schnapps-fueled German soldier
gestured and said,

Do you hear that music?
That's the singing forest,

I was whisked, rabbit quick,
to my childhood copse

to Mother's robust rendition
of How Does the Czar Drink His Tea?

to the stone ribs
of the flying castle of Lietava—

Amid the crows'
tattooing caws, I detected

a strange bellowing,
then I glimpsed them

above the Nazi's spittle-bright
jest and helmet:

a row of men hooked
to dispiriting poles.

And suddenly I grasped:
my cry, my unchecked agony

would be subsumed by theirs—
Dangling, ebbing, I imagined

Mother's consoling alto:
Quick, Slavomir, focus

on the streak of the deer,
like an August star—

Then, in a moment's match-burst,
someone cut me down,

convinced I was a corpse,
but I was stubbornly alive—

And the immense light, the prevailing
singing that supplants crucifixion,

parted the forest.

- Cyrus Cassells.
 

Mole

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Tiananmen a -

Suffocating City Square

Written in Beijing - third anniversary offering for 6/4

This city square the largest in the world
filled to the brink with crowds and cheers
in a blink liquid
mercury flash of fleeing
Now only fear
and an empty expanse remain
Against the ash-white pallor of the martyrs
dawn light dances on steel helmets
Those whom God judges
pass through certain windows
admire daybreak in a cup
that overflows with a bruise-colored liquid

The courage that infuses the man in the city square
infuses the solar system with each stride
Embers burn to daybreak
become the dim warmth of a word
bitter green fruit
ripening in death
A dedication to
the woman who needs no rose
her voice lights up the inferno
facing the vicious roar of a tank
standing unmoving
waving a weakened arm as if
opening a red umbrella on a gray rainy day

In a blink she collapses
empty expanse in four directions
Whose carelessly tossed paper scraps
fall onto her lifted chest
rise up again with a gust of wind
shroud a slender pair of arms
Even if she's never read the Holy Scriptures
God shouldn't abandon her to
the heaps of garbage along the road
wisps of long hair float into
a boy's dream, shouldn't
allow this bloodbath-fastness

If it was a different spring
she would walk across this city square
hand in hand with her boyfriend
She wouldn't have become
a random insect crushed underfoot
Marvel
at this moment, her bloodless lips
the stunned moth-grubs underground
they hesitantly stretch out their pincers
but only grasp the stench of blood

This death-hollowed city square
for the sake of absolute power
suffocates all life
This death-cast girl
has become a line of pure poetry
that surrenders all ideograms

- Liu Xiaobo.
 

Mole

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Making -

The Getaway

1

On the bed
a suitcase empty
but still open.

The room key's
ball and chain.
Your nightdress.

His passport
handed back
too quickly at the desk.

Look at him
and tell me
do you recognise this man?


2

Your heart is beating
behind bars.
The blinds are down.

That hammering
is neither wind nor rain
but somebody wants in.

He waits outside.
A fine mist
shrouds his face.

You call him by a name
already lost
so who is it that comes?


3

Between the pillow
and his head
an understanding.

Between the mattress
and your thigh
a sheet of ice.

Between his nakedness
and body heat
an absence.

Between your hunger
and his appetite
a shadow line.


4

The car you planned
to leave in
is unregistered.

Its ignition's tick
a flint
that will not catch.

The road ahead
has narrowed
to a vanishing perspective.

The way you came
without him
takes you home.

- John Mole.
 

Mole

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This is a poem -

In Which the Earth Splits Under Our Feet

All day the city readied for the snowstorm;
plows lined the corners of the parks, salt was thrown.
They cancelled the postal service, closed the schools—
kitchens stocked in milk and batteries,

the city was a closed organism, shut down,
and we would be caught in its damages.
All winter I've taught myself languages and music,
studied opposite words in opposite languages

collected arias in snow globes. This city is about
nothing at all—not the tall buildings or soaked corners.
Along the ocean, even the boardwalk understood the brief
credos, how one ruin should not hold all the failed

synchronisms. Across the street he sat at the table
again, head in hands—not that I would ever know him.
Across the country, he rented a car and drove himself
and gun into the woods—not that I would ever know him.

How long could we remain deliberate rib cages,
inconsolable at the bitten world that keeps us.
At this time, the most unrecognizable shadow has become
my own. I sat at bars. We sat at bars. We followed the weather.

We took light breaths with hope that the totality of winter
we carried inside would fade quickly outside.
I've looked for the right words to say the right things
to the landscape of split ranches and swing sets, two cars

buried in snow. A simple apology wasn't enough.
And then the cities we thought we would own,
to speak of their winters is to speak of the glove
that is meant to go missing, thrown salt.

Suitcases to the door, gun to teeth—
as a letter from one who loves the other—
what do we care for, facing fracture
the very bone-scrap leverage of the earth undone.

- Florencia Varela.
 

Mole

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The sound of the -

Clarinet

Every time someone peels an orange
something tears in me
as I remember the smell
of peels lingering in that velvet case,
their humidity staying
in the wood long after drying
into forgotten skins. Then
the reeds, how the knife would lift
a thin dust from top and edge
of cut cane, the thin stick
of green bamboo pressing
the warped white edge into roundness,
how rubbing the back of the reed
with newsprint sealed the pores,
made it ring, and how fine,
when finished, the pleasure
of rubbing oily thumb against the grain
in my pocket
in autumn rain
until, in the light again, each pulp heart
glowed and spread with touch
of tongue to fiber, silky threads
vanishing in movement, burn of hot wind
spinning through wood and spring, vein
and bore, beads of condensation
curing the ebony's openness.

I forgot how many times
it brought me to that burning light,
that spinning wheel, but tonight
in the shower, before
our guests arrived, I pressed my ear
to your narrow back and heard the rain—
the singular, metronomic beat,
the legato hum of your voice breaking
the cylinder of your body.

- Joanne Diaz.
 

Mole

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The rape of -

The Sabine Women

O Ravishers, O Husbands, you have won:
We are the country that is tamed by children.
Light-footed maidens now waddle behind
Bellies in which two histories quicken the future.
Tomorrow will dawn with a pang, like breaking waters.
Oh you have yoked us, yes, but you have yoked
Us to yourselves—now, see, you too are bounded
On all sides not by enemies but in-laws.
A sigh has turned the heart into a hearth:
Let marriage be a truce—for from now on
The war between us is a civil war.

- A. E. Stallings.
 

Mole

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Ah -

[CHORUS:] Everything is half here

This false world,—allas!—who may it leve?
—Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (II.420)


Everything is half here,
like the marble head
of the Greek warrior
and the lean torso
of his favorite.
The way the funnel cloud
which doesn't seem
to touch ground does—
flips a few cars, a semi—
we learn to walk miles
above our bodies.
The pig farms dissolve,
then the small hills.
As in dreams fraught
with irrevocable gestures,
the ruined set seemed larger,
a charred palace
the gaze tunnels through
and through. How well
we remember the stage—
the actors gliding about
like petite sails, the balustrade
cooling our palms.
Not wings or singing,
but a darkness fast as blood.
It ended at our fingertips.
The fence gave way.
The world began.

- Francesca Abbate.
 

Mole

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Welcome to -

The Swimming Pools of California

(California light comes waltzing in across the swimming pool)

A YOUNG MAN.
I'd like a little something to brighten up my drink

A YOUNG WOMAN.
Maybe an ice cube would you like an ice cube?

A YOUNG MAN.
That sounds great

A YOUNG WOMAN.
And maybe a twist of lemon?

A YOUNG MAN.
Yes a twist of lemon and a splash more vodka

A YOUNG WOMAN.
A splash more vodka

A YOUNG MAN.
You better make it a couple splashes

A YOUNG WOMAN.
A couple three or four splashes and ice and a twist of lemon

A YOUNG MAN.
A lemon from our very own lemon tree

A YOUNG WOMAN.
We grow our lemons for just this very thing
 

Mole

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In Bedlam an -

Alphabet of Scratches

At St. Mary Bethlehem (which the world calls Bedlam), Jeremy Watt, shut up for insanity, discovered in a maze of scratches scribed by others' lunatic hands an alphabet with which he might invoke things not apparent to the eye. So it was that on a late November afternoon while winter rehearsed in the soot and shadows of the ward, Watt alchemized the asylum into a Moorfields mews where—in a fusty upper-storey room—his wife, who had denounced him to the magistrate, was partnered in adultery with a pie man. Uttering an uncouth scratch of noise (unintelligible to the madhouse staff), Watt slaughtered her remorselessly with an airy dagger—a perfect telepathic murder for which the pie man was condemned and hung.
 

Mole

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The mistress is -

The President's Companion

While I was a young woman with my hair long and tied back, I
walked outside, lost in thought, scuffing my boots. You spoke from
your post through the speakers and the televisions, and when you
paused to take a breath, you heard the sounds of a young woman
walking. Two people unknown to each other.

Soon I took notice of the armed guards in the subway and looked
closely at these extensions of you. Called to, I kept walking,
disappearing into the river of passengers leaving the station.

And then I stopped walking. I sat in contemplation and the signs
of your attention poured over me. I had been your counterpoint all
along and I chose to join you in your gardens and rooms.

That we found ourselves together in the ritual of the everyday, in the
ritual of opening the notebook and writing, the ritual of consulting
the newspaper, the ritual of standing before the questioning crowds,
does not speak to my ingenuity but to the way of the world forever.

Your back slumped as you sat at your desk preparing to leave this
office. I, older now, will meet you on the other side. Everything I
have learned about consequence, I've learned from you.
 
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