Saturday, 25 July 2015

"Everything is sighing" (Joseph Ceravolo: Come Clean)

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Young men clean second-hand shoes to sell them on a market in Bujumbura on July 24, 2015. Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza is set to win a controversial third term in office, but analysts say his victory will be hollow, with the country divided, isolated and facing aid cuts

Young men clean second-hand shoes to sell them in a market in Bujumbura on Friday. Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza is set to win a controversial third term in office: photo by Phil Moore/AFP, 24 July 2014
Everything upsets me,
sick people suffering,
friends leaving, friends parting.
Even having to tell you this,
having to admit that
I am burning out like the edges
of lava. But I think it is related
to you as I try to understand,
because I am not brilliant
like a nuclear formula.
But I think it is related to you
and only music seems to breathe,
only insects seem to speak.
I do not want to be a fool
who struggles within my own breast forever.

Now the sun is coming out
and the sting within my breast crawling away,
troubled, spiked with insanity

Everything is sighing, even
the trees without the wind that you possess.

...............................August 1, 1986

Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): Come Clean, 1 August 1986, from Collected Poems, 2013

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Men carry tables on their heads through the streets of Bujumbura @AFPphoto @fil: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 24 July 2015

Palestinian protesters from the village of Beit Ummar near Hebron, West Bank, clash with Israeli soldiers in the village on 23 July 2015. Following the funeral of Falah Abu Maria, 53, who was shot dead by Israeli soldiers during a raid on his home early 23 July 2015 to arrest his son, in the southern West Bank town of Beit Ummar. The man's two sons, both in their 20s, were injured in the raid

Palestinian protesters from the village of Beit Ummar near Hebron, West Bank, clash with Israeli soldiers in the village on Thursday: photo by Abed Al Hashlamoni/EPA, 23 July 2015


Funeral of 22-year-old Mohammed Alawneh on July 22 in the West Bank village of Birqin. @AFP Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh @fil: image via Aurelia BAILLY @Aurelia BAILLY, 22 July 201

A man uses a cane as he walks past a store in the Poto Poto popular district, of the Congolese capital Brazzaville
 
A man uses a cane as he walks past a store in the Poto Poto popular district of the Congolese capital Brazzaville: photo by Frederico Scoppa/AFP, 23 July 2015
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6 comments:

  1. TC25 July 2015 at 12:40

    Joseph Ceravolo's poems have seriousness and vision, touch and flow.

    Though the poet has left the room, the poems remain here for us, a gift to fortify the soul.

    "What the world needs now..."

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  2. Hazen25 July 2015 at 13:18

    “I do not want to be a fool who struggles within my own breast forever.” Much wisdom in Ceravolo's lines. The body (this body, at least) has its own melancholy awareness of coming to the end of things—(but not just yet, as Augustine petitioned in another context)—squeezing out a few more hours, days; even a decade wouldn’t seem too much to withstand. It’s been a good life. I’ve got the scars to show for it.

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  3. Anonymous25 July 2015 at 15:29

    "only music seems to breathe, only insects seem to speak." ...love that line !

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  4. TC26 July 2015 at 12:13

    Let's keep breathing, with the music, then.

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  5. STEPHEN RATCLIFFE27 July 2015 at 08:23

    Yes, let's keep breathing with the music, please . . .

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  6. TC27 July 2015 at 12:21

    Thanks, Steve.

    And while we're at it, let's wash our...

    shoes? eyes? souls?

    Not easy to articulate this, but for me, Joe's poems have a strange purity very close to innocence, a way of causing one, while reading and then, after-rippling, to come clean... with oneself.

    For that lovely little while at least.

    ReplyDelete