.
A Syrian civil defense worker led an injured man to safety after airstrikes in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria: photo by Amer Almohibany/Agence France-Presse, 12 February 2016
lontano lontano
come un cieco
m'hanno portato per mano
..................Versa il 15 febbraio 1917
An Afghan woman begged in Kabul, Afghanistan, a the country that still relies on foreign aid for most of its national income.: photo by Hedayatullah Amid/European Pressphoto Agency, 10 February 2016
as from a distance
as from a distance
as from a distance
like one blinded
they led me by the hand
..........Versa, 15 February 1917
GIuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970): Lontano (15 February 1917), from Allegria di naufragi, 1919; English approximation TC
Chinese burned incense to worship the God of Fortune at Guiyuan Temple on the fifth day of Lunar New Year in Wuhan, China: photo by China Stringer Network/Reuters, 12 February 2016
A Greek farmer clashed with the police over proposed pension changes outside the Agriculture Ministry in Athens: photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters, 12 February 2016
Syrian emergency workers carried a body after the airstrikes in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area on the outskirts of Damascus: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/Agence France-Presse, 12 February 2016
Syrian emergency workers carried a body after the airstrikes in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area on the outskirts of Damascus: photo by Abdulmonam Eassa/Agence France-Presse, 12 February 2016
Poultry arrived in Syria on a truck from Turkey near Kilis, a border crossing in southeastern Turkey: photo by Osman Orsal/Reuters, 12 February 2016
Pakistani
mourners gathered around the bodies of people killed when a tanker
carrying gas collided with a car in Pakistan’s Punjab province: photo by Arif Ali/Agence France-Presse, 10 February 2016
Yemenis inspected a building that
destroyed in what appeared to be a Saudi airstrike in Sana, Yemen. A
family of five was killed.: photo by European Pressphoto Agency, 10 February 2016
Syrians waited to cross into Syria at the Oncupinar border crossing in the southeastern city of Kilis, Turkey, on Thursday: photo by Osman Orsal/Reuters, 12 February 2016
The Oncupinar crossing gate. Syrians who went to Turkey to earn money have been unable to get back into Syria to bring their families to safety.: photo by Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse, 12 February 2016
The body of a Syrian teenager killed in a mortar attack in Douma, Syria, was brought to a mosque before the funeral: photo by Abd Doumany/Agence France-Presse, 11 February 2016
Migrants and refugees build a church in the “jungle” of Calais: photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP, 11 February 2016
A rally was held protesting North Korea in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, in part to condemn the North for a recent nuclear test and rocket launching: photo by Chung Sung-Jun via New York Times, 11 February 2016
A family waved a flag on Thursday in support of the last of the occupiers at Malheur Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Oregon: photo by Rob Kerr/Agence France-Press, 11 February 2016
A puddle in a road in Minsk, during warm winter weather: photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP, 1 February 2016
A woman is reflected in a puddle as she crosses a road in Minsk, during warm winter weather: photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP, 1 February 2016
Migrants and refugees build a church in the “jungle” of Calais: photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP, 11 February 2016
A
rally was held protesting North Korea in Seoul, the capital of South
Korea, in part to condemn the North for a recent nuclear test and rocket
launching: photo by Chung Sung-Jun via New York Times, 11 February 2016
like a blind man
they led me A Syrian civil defense worker led an injured man to safety after airstrikes in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria: photo by Amer Almohibany/Agence France-Presse, 12 February 2016
The body of a Syrian teenager killed in a mortar attack in Douma, Syria, was brought to a mosque before the funeral: photo by Abd Doumany/Agence France-Presse, 11 February 2016
9 comments:
Tens of thousands of displaced Syrians continue to flock to Turkish border camp: AFP-TV, 12 February 2016
Giuseppe Ungaretti: Contro la guerra e l'imperialismo
Nanci Griffith: From a Distance (from Irish TV, with Nanci's Blue Moon Orchestra plus Mary Black, Mark O'Connor and Philip Donnelly, 1990)
Aborted version of amazing bobbysox rendition: Nanci Griffith - LIVE! From a Distance: The LATE SHOW Irish TV Gaye Byrne (c. late 1980s)
Charlatans (UK): A Man Needs To Be Told (Live @ Manchester Deaf Institute, 13 March 2011)
I love "From a Distance," which first turned me on to Nanci Griffith years ago. She and I both wish we had written it. The song reminded me of Michael Lally's "In the Distance":
IN THE DISTANCE
In the distance called My Father
I rode my innocence down, rode it
down on its hand and knees like
the people whose dance created the world
What do we know about the world
or the distance we create for our personal atmosphere
What we know is the way we fall
when we fall off the little we ride
when we ride away from the things we’re given
to make us forget the things we gave up
How far is it to where my son
will break my bones and dance on them
lejo lejos
como a un ciego
me han llevado de la mano
saludos Tom!
"In the Distance" is an amazing poem. I was unfamiliar with it; thank you so much for including it here.
Gracias a todos!
From a Distance, writ in '85, had a pretty good back-kick over the ensuing half-decade thanks to Nanci and to the Gulf War, whose song, in many ways it was. Thus I hear it and will always hear it as a song of losing, which resonated in a time of our first inkling of the Total Loss which these past decades of interference and destabilization in the Middle East have wrought. Back then such hopeful/peaceful sentiments still seemed almost viable, however innocent and sweetly unrealistic they may seem now in retrospect. But what other sentiments fit? Lovely melodic anthems to Despair will never lead to Bette Midler bringing the house down at Vegas, after all.
My one abiding gripe with the song, I must curmudgeonishly admit, is the God bit, which I have always chosen to take to mean, as though Kierkegaard had been the co-pilot in the cockpit of the hymnal, that God is so far off as to no longer be a factor. This distant God whom I introduce into the song by main-force of imaginative demand can neither judge nor change what happens (thank gods!); this remote, useless, dispassionate God is just THERE, off in the wings, floating free and permanently detached from the module.
A few of the cover versions, principally that of Fairport Convention in 1987, seem to have shared a similar anxiety re. the God business, and, accordingly, these versions have whisked God right out of the Gold song altogether.
But you can't take the God out of the Gold as easily as that, and, after Bette had moved 4 million units with the full-on balls-out Vegas God version, Julie came round and told us so, explaining that, yes, she did indeed mean to be designating an "immanent God", yet.
So, sigh, it's her song too, sort of. But the idea that all you can ever find in a poem or a song is what the author intended to stash there has always made me nervous. The meaning tends to jump out of the sardine can and turn into a flying fish, or a gnat, or an elephant, in almost any place and at almost any moment.
Another way of saying that, I guess, might be to point to the uncomfortable possibility that this famous immanent God is sitting there watching all this go down, for example the 70,000 humans now at the Turkish border without water or a roof, and looking the other way, declining to do anything about it because, what --? Too busy? -- and that later, when ready, this endlessly patient and cruel and unforgiving and forgiving immanent God will go into action, and then look out... huh? -- no, that doesn't seem quite right either.
And since no insertion of God into a picture of Hell makes any sense at all until we grasp the fact that God cannot really be God-as-we-know-Him/Her/It if Hell is allowed to exist and bloom and fester and flare up and engulf every last speck of Earth under His/Her hegemonic overview, we come inevitably to conclude that such a God would be/is worse than useless.
More people on the planet paid attention to Beyoncé and Cam Newton last weekend. God must be jealous, the last thing we saw was the fleeing Gucci handbag.
Anyhoo... yes, indeed lovely of Terry to bring us Michael Lally's swell poem...
And as harmonics provide not only an aesthetic instrument but a major chord of meaning in From a Distance --
From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
-- perhaps it's only fair to give a bit of credit to the great singer who's doing the harmonies with Nanci in the Irish TV version given first here... Mary Black.
Here's Mary Black and friends:
Mary Black, Emmylou Harris & Dolores Keane: Sonny (1991)
Finally, the wonderful Ungaretti's indignation against the warmongers in that late interview clip I've given -- there's experience behind it. He fought with the Italian army in the Isonzo campaign in the first World War. His poems of that war are dreadful and beautiful and true, unforgettable. This is one of them.
"Sonny" is a great song, and I would have a hard time picking a favorite from among these three great singers. We did some gigs with DeDanann in the late '70s/early '80s when Mary Black & Dolores Keane were the band's lead singers. That's Donal Lunny, legendary musician and producer, directing things in the video (from, I think, a documentary called Bringing It All Back Home), but I'm not sure who the other musicians are.
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