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Relatives of one of the victims of the previous day’s blast at Istanbul Ataturk airport mourn in front of a morgue in Istanbul, Turkey: photo by Rosman Orsal / Reuters. 29 June 2016
Joseph Ceravolo: "Dark inside me every day..."
July 28, 1987
Dark inside me every day
I am nothing to be
or see, or hear, compared
to what I am not here.
Because what I am, I am not,
and what I am not I disappear
like light through dark:
Dark inside me every day.
Joseph Ceravolo (1934-1988): Untitled ("Dark inside me every day..."), 28 July 1987, from Collected Poems, 2012
Shattered glass from Tuesday’s suicide bombings at Istanbul’s main airport. The Turkish government blamed the Islamic State for the attack.: photo by Mauricio Lima for The New York Times, 29 June 2016
Shattered glass from Tuesday’s suicide bombings at Istanbul’s main airport. The Turkish government blamed the Islamic State for the attack.: photo by Mauricio Lima for The New York Times, 29 June 2016
Clearing debris in the cordoned off area of the airport. The chaos enveloping Turkey, including the series of attacks and an enormous influx of refugees that has strained resources, vividly illustrates how the civil war in Syria has rippled outward and destabilized neighboring countries.: photo by Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse, 29 June 2016
Clearing debris in the cordoned off area of the airport. The chaos enveloping Turkey, including the series of attacks and an enormous influx of refugees that has strained resources, vividly illustrates how the civil war in Syria has rippled outward and destabilized neighboring countries.: photo by Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse, 29 June 2016
TURKEY - A bullet impact on a window at Ataturk airport in Istanbul, a day after a suicide attack. By @ozannkosee: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 29 June 2016
Shattered glass from Tuesday’s suicide bombings at Istanbul’s main airport. The Turkish government blamed the Islamic State for the attack.: photo by Mauricio Lima for The New York Times, 29 June 2016
Shattered glass from Tuesday’s suicide bombings at Istanbul’s main airport. The Turkish government blamed the Islamic State for the attack.: photo by Mauricio Lima for The New York Times, 29 June 2016
Islamic State prime suspect in Istanbul airport attack: image via Reuters Top News @Reuters, 29 June 2016
Clearing debris in the cordoned off area of the airport. The chaos enveloping Turkey, including the series of attacks and an enormous influx of refugees that has strained resources, vividly illustrates how the civil war in Syria has rippled outward and destabilized neighboring countries.: photo by Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse, 29 June 2016
Clearing debris in the cordoned off area of the airport. The chaos enveloping Turkey, including the series of attacks and an enormous influx of refugees that has strained resources, vividly illustrates how the civil war in Syria has rippled outward and destabilized neighboring countries.: photo by Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse, 29 June 2016
A terrorist attack at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul left dozens dead. Officials blamed Islamic State militants, but the group has not claimed responsibility.: photo by Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse, 29 July 2016
A terrorist attack at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul left dozens dead. Officials blamed Islamic State militants, but the group has not claimed responsibility.: photo by Bulent Kilic/Agence France-Presse, 29 July 2016
#Turkey A mother of victims reacts after Istanbul airport suicide attack. By @Kilicbil #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 29 June 2016
Turkey - People assist a mother who lost a relative a day after Istanbul airport suicide attack. By @Kilicbil #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 29 June 2016
Relatives of victims outside a hospital in Istanbul. Early Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that early indications suggested that the Islamic State was behind the latest attack, although officials still had not released any information about the attackers by Wednesday afternoon.: photo by Defne Karadeniz via The New York Times, 29 June 2016
A triple suicide bombing and gun attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport has killed at least 36 people, including foreigners, with Turkey’s prime minister saying early signs pointed to an assault by ISIL.: photo by Emrah Gurel / AP, 29 June 2016
Relatives
of one of the victims at the forensic morgue in Istanbul. A majority of
the victims appeared to be Muslims, either Turks or visitors from
Muslim countries.: photo by Defne Karadeniz via the New York Times, 28 June 2016
Relatives
of one of the victims at the forensic morgue in Istanbul. A majority of
the victims appeared to be Muslims, either Turks or visitors from
Muslim countries.: photo by Defne Karadeniz via the New York Times, 28 June 2016
Hours
after the attack, a limited number of flights resumed, and workers
continued clearing debris and replacing shattered windows at the
airport: photo by Associated Press, 29 June 2016
Hours
after the attack, a limited number of flights resumed, and workers
continued clearing debris and replacing shattered windows at the
airport: photo by Associated Press, 29 June 2016
The attack prompted the temporary suspension of all flights at the airport -- one of Europe’s busiest hubs: photo by Defne Karadeniz via the National, 29 June 2016
Passengers leave on a bus from Istanbul’s Ataturk airport. Attackers began spraying bullets at the international terminal entrance before blowing themselves up at around 10pm Tuesday.: photo by Emrah Gurel / AP, 29 June 2016
Workers repair the damaged parts of the terminal building at Turkey’s largest airport, Istanbul Ataturk, following an attack by three suicide bombers the day before.: photo by Goran Tomasevic / Reuters, 29 June 2016
Workers wash the road in front of the Ataturk airport: photo by Osman Orsal/Reuters, 29 June 2016
Workers wash the road in front of the Ataturk airport: photo by Osman Orsal/Reuters, 29 June 2016
The funeral of Mohammad Eymen Demirci on Wednesday in Istanbul, a day after a suicide attack on Ataturk airport killed him and at least 40 others: photo by Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse, 29 June 2016
The funeral of Mohammad Eymen
Demirci on Wednesday in Istanbul, a day after a suicide attack on
Ataturk airport killed him and at least 40 others: photo by Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse, 29 June 2016
TURKEY - People carry the coffin of airport suicide attack victim in Istanbul during his funeral. By @ozannkosee: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 29 June 2016
Cabins for tourists are seen on the grasslands on the outskirt of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia: photo by, Jason Lee / Reuters, 29 June 2016
Water is released from the floodgates of the Xiaolangdi dam on the Yellow River near Luoyang, in China’s Henan province. The floodgates are opened every year in an operation to flush millions of tonnes of silt from the river bed.: photo by Agence France-Presse, 29 June 2016
San Francisco Giants’ Brandon Belt breaks his bat while grounding out against the Oakland Athletics in the sixth inning of a baseball game in San Francisco: photo by Jeff Chiu/Associated Press, 28 June 2016
Gregor Blanco of the San Francisco Giants is hit by a pitch from Marc Rzepczynski of the Oakland Athletics during the sixth inning at AT&T Park in San Francisco, California: photo by Jason O. Watson/AFP, 28 June 2016
Herder
Shagdarjaviiu Batsargal carries an injured sheep in the Gobi desert
near Luusiin, Mongolia, on June 28, 2016. Mongolians went to the polls
across their sprawling, sparsely populated country on June 29. The
country is more than twice the size of France, but with a population of
only three million. Lorries with mobile ballot boxes crisscrossed the
vast steppe to enable the sick and elderly to vote, while herders and
others streamed to polling stations set up in gers, the traditional
Mongolian tents.: photo by Johannes Eisele / Agence France-Presse. 29 June 2016
MONGOLIA - A man rides his horse next to a ger near Zuunmod south of Ulan Bator. By @johaynz #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 29 June 2016
Masked Palestinians gather during clashes with Israeli police during the holy month of Ramadan near The Dome of the Rock on the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City: photo by Ammar Awad/Reuters, 28 June 2016
We do not want just a few [scraps] of life in Aleppo
Ph: Baraa Al Halabi #STOPRUSSIA: image via baraa al halabi @baraaalhalabi, 27 June 2016
[Kurdish PKK fighter, Syria]: photo by Joey L. via Joey L.Verified account@joeyldotcom, 29 June 2016
@joeyldotcom's photos of Kurdish #PKK Fighters Deleted by #instagram #TwitterKurds: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 19 September 2015
#Turkey Shocked reactions as riot police fire rubber bullets at an #LGBT community rally in #Istanbul By @ozannkosee: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 29 June 2016
#Israel Tank fire during Israeli army manoeuvres near the border with #Syria. BY @menahemkahana @AFPphoto: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 29 June 2016
#Athens A woman sits next to tents at the unofficial camp for #refugees at the old airport. By @lgouliam @AFPphoto: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 27 June 2016
At the Euronext Stock Exchange in Paris’s financial district, the day after Britain voted to leave the European Union.: photo by Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse, 28 June 2016
At the Euronext Stock Exchange in Paris’s financial district, the day after Britain voted to leave the European Union.: photo by Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse, 28 June 2016
People walk past a mural on a restaurant wall depicting
U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir
Putin greeting each other with a kiss in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. Kestutis Girnius, associate professor of the Institute
of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius university,
told AFP “This graffiti expresses the fear of some Lithuanians that
Donald Trump is likely to kowtow to Vladimir Putin and be indifferent to
Lithuania’s security concerns. Trump has notoriously stated that Putin
is a strong leader, and that NATO is obsolete and expensive.”: photo by Petras Malukas / AFP, 13 May 2016
UK - Donald Trump kisses Boris Johnson on a mural in Bristol. By @geoff_caddick #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 24 May 2016
Ceravolo´s sounds like a pun !!
ReplyDeleteThat's a beautiful, sad little poem. It could be set to music.
ReplyDeleteIt's a stunning little poem, and/but I have a difficult time not thinking about the trying circumstances of its composition.
ReplyDeleteThe "riddling" quality puts me in mind of John Donne and his fascination with scholastic paradox, in particular paradoxes of Nothing, Negation and Infinity.
"If I an ordinary nothing were,/ As shadow, a light, and body must be here./ But I am none..."
In Donne's case, too, there is a personal burden, a weight of suffering, that make this interest something more than purely literary.
I am nothing to be
or see, or hear, compared
to what I am not here.
Because what I am, I am not,
and what I am not I disappear...
Terry, your own musical expertise would allow you to appreciate the songlike elements here.
To my knowledge no one has ever quite grasped how deep the lyric strain runs in Joe's poetry. And after all, according to the New Mechanical Canon, "lyric" is a dirty word, never to be applied to writers on the Approved List.
In the time when the influence of Donne and Jonson was being effaced by the proliferation of songbooks, Donne's poems were generally thought too complex for singing. But he certainly did understand the relation between vowel expansion and singability, and in fact a few of his lyrics did appear in the songbooks, most notably, for me, "The Expiration", which was set to music in Alfonso Ferrabosco's "Ayres" (1609).
... talking of which:
ReplyDeleteJohn Donne: The Expiration (as appearing in Alfonso Ferrabosco: "Ayres", 1609)
So, so breake off this last lamenting kisse,
Which sucks two soules, and vapours Both away,
Turne thou ghost that way, and let mee turne this,
And let our selves benight our happiest day,
We ask’d none leave to love; nor will we owe
Any, so cheape a death, as saying, Goe;
Goe; and if that word have not quite kil’d thee,
Ease mee with death, by bidding mee goe too.
Oh, if it have, let my word worke on mee,
And a just office on a murderer doe.
Except it be too late, to kill me so,
Being double dead, going, and bidding, goe.