The bird (Octavio Paz)

This one really gets me going.  La luz! La luz!

The Bird

In transparent silence

day was resting:

the transparency of space

was silence’s transparency.

Motionless light of the sky was soothing

the growth of the grass.

Small things of earth, among the stones,

under identical light, were stones

Time sated itself in the minute.

And in an absorbed stillness

noonday consumed itself.

And a bird sang, slender arrow.

The sky shivered a wounded silver breast,

the leaves moved,

and grass awoke.

And I knew that death was an arrow

let fly from an unknown hand

and in the flicker of an eye we die.


from Bajo Tu Clara Sombra/"Under Your Clear Shadow"
1935-1944

Thoughts on the uprising in Egypt

Daniel Levine to Eliot Cardinaux  

That's cool. The situation in egypt is really interesting and I've only had time to follow it superficially. Maybe I can catch up on it this weekend. From what I understand this could be a really positive thing, but there are a lot of people interseted in exploiting the situation and it's too soon to say how things will unfold.. (?)  I saw footage of protestors in egypt and in washignton. It was really moving. These people feel like this is their moment and it's like an affirmation of humanity that everyone is protesting. I saw some footage of a clash in Egypt too, where people were throwing stones. I couldn't tell-- it seemed like they were all just throwing stones at a big fence in front of a big highway. It seemed really absurd and senseless. It looked like some people were trying to mediate things and talk to others in the crowd. It was so chaotic, and yet, it totally reminded me of new york, when something interesting happens, as it does from time to time.
Maybe this is just the beginning of a wave of peaceful revolutions in the mideast. And once the people there start running democracies on their own, well, we really wont have any moral justification to keep fucking with them. Maybe this could de-escalate the whole thing.

And eliot’s reply

Hard to say how it will turn out, I was struck by what it meant - what this wave of protests toward democracy in the middle east might lead to here - have you read Helen in Egypt?  its a poem by H.D. that's based on the idea that Helen was not in fact in Troy at all, and that the men were fighting over an illusion.  I think these protests are inherently a good thing, and I'm sad to see violence "at its core" (as the news has shown – , our government is falteringly trying to employ old rhetoric, and I do feel strongly the impact of the protests) here, its moving, and at the same time, saddening.  If looked at from a point of view of our government, I don't know how to handle it for long. 
 

    Feb. 4^th, 2011