tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post2794301837840982743..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Earthly Reckonings: At least my flowers! At least my songs!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-31878650408229635362012-05-20T23:56:16.441-07:002012-05-20T23:56:16.441-07:00It has been difficult to realize that what is left...It has been difficult to realize that what is left can be considered flowers and songs when they may have been much more than that. (gardens, spells)<br />After all, who is so generous?<br /><br />I won't mention names--but, someone in that white hot rage who wrote letters regarding the blank faces of students--<br /><br />Thanks for the gentle schooling.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-57169097144924052362012-05-19T08:36:33.081-07:002012-05-19T08:36:33.081-07:00By the way -- very moving this: "...re-transm...By the way -- very moving this: "...re-transmit the signal, acting like repeater stations down the centuries."<br /><br />With characteristic acuity Hazen (who often sees what's going on here more clearly than I do) thus gives a terrific condensed version of the recursive "action" of this post -- the transmission circuit including the signal sent by the White Eagle, the woman in another century framing the Nahuatl poem on a ship-in-a-bottle blank check on the back of a landscape, and we here reading (or dreaming?) the same poem now ...TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-78975538049385591232012-05-19T03:19:45.597-07:002012-05-19T03:19:45.597-07:00Lovely comments.
Reading back into the Spanish tr...Lovely comments.<br /><br />Reading back into the Spanish translations of Nahuatl songs, one imagines souls passing in the mist along the shore, on both sides of the border between histories and worlds, equivocating about returning.<br /><br />In the mists and distances that keep us apart from these flowers, these songs, can we make out the the footsteps of <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/departed.html" rel="nofollow">The Departed</a>?<br /><br />What Chris saw written on the wall -- does the meaning remain hidden from us? <br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RHUhEP_cyY&feature=related" rel="nofollow">Lila Downs: Icnocuicatl (contemporary Nahuatl lyric by Natalio Hernåndez)</a><br /><br />Sorrows of time, and so many equivocations... are those bodies, passing through the half-light, in the indecisive mists?<br /><br />A 1947 bolero by Osvaldo Farres perhaps captures the contradictory in-betweenness of the twilights between worlds -- here it's interpreted by the same talented multilingual contemporary singer:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcrPF6vD_Y4&feature=related" rel="nofollow">Lila Downs: Quizás, quizás, quizás</a><br /><br />While lost in the borderland mists, though... this is my own favourite version of the equivocal classic:<br /><br />Ibrahim Ferrer & Omara Portuondo: Quizás, quizás, quizás<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSEiyF64z3o&feature=related" rel="nofollow">Así pasan los días, this distance always wider</a><br /><br />Siempre que te pregunto<br />Que cómo cuándo y dónde<br />Tú siempre me respondes<br />Quizás, quizás, quizás<br /><br />A sí pasan los días<br />Y yo desesperando<br />Y tú, tú contestando<br />Quizás, quizás, quizás,<br /><br />Estás perdiendo el tiempo<br />Pensando, pensando<br />Por lo que más tú quieras<br />Hasta cuando, hasta cuando<br /><br />Y así pasan los días<br />Y yo desesperando<br />Y tú, tú contestando<br />Quizás, quizás, quizás<br /><br />Still some will also remember not to forget:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=habWYM364RA&feature=related" rel="nofollow">Nat Cole: Quizás, quizás, quizás</a><br /><br />Would the ghosts permit us to leave out the cover by the immortal Celia Cruz?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUVmY3xy5kk&feature=related" rel="nofollow">Celia Cruz: Quizás, quizás, quizás</a><br /><br />... and to not quite complete the shadowy all night border-crossing passage, a wonderful update by the young Guatemalan singer Gaby Moreno:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdBM6N2Zbv4" rel="nofollow">Gaby Moreno: Quizás, quizás, quizás</a><br /><br />(In the end, I couldn't make up my mind...)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-54836492718720634232012-05-18T22:16:51.180-07:002012-05-18T22:16:51.180-07:00Thought-provokingly beautiful and stirring and whe...Thought-provokingly beautiful and stirring and when you stop to think of this poet's other name, it brings us even closer to the reality of living on/leaving this earth.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-41617985694490305762012-05-18T14:56:00.997-07:002012-05-18T14:56:00.997-07:00o es mejor así:
¿quedará algo de mi nombre?
¿o de ...o es mejor así:<br />¿quedará algo de mi nombre?<br />¿o de los días que pasé en la tierra?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17798947526389196282012-05-18T11:15:21.968-07:002012-05-18T11:15:21.968-07:00At least my flowers
at least my songs . . .
That...At least my flowers <br />at least my songs . . .<br /><br />That's a lot right there. Stunning. Al menos--stunning. Okay, that's not a poetic sound.<br />Esp with the auto-correct version --all menus.Nin Andrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12643167108589844026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-14668208668864519182012-05-18T11:11:09.940-07:002012-05-18T11:11:09.940-07:00White Eagle of Tecamachalco lives on, thanks to th...White Eagle of Tecamachalco lives on, thanks to the labyrinthine passage of this poem through many other lives, including Chris, and his grandmother, and Tom, and now numerous others. His lament on the ephemeral life seems also an attempt to anchor himself in time and memory—and this self-blessing has met with considerable success. We know of him today because his words have such power and resonance that other people, hearing and reading them, re-transmit the signal, acting like repeater stations down the centuries.<br /><br />So this is how I must go?<br />Like the flowers that perished?<br />Will nothing remain in my name?<br />Nothing of my passage here on earth?<br />At least flowers, at least songs!Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-82557928536530676402012-05-18T10:49:09.506-07:002012-05-18T10:49:09.506-07:00Thank you, Tom.
This fragment has stayed with m...Thank you, Tom. <br /><br />This fragment has stayed with me ever since I first read it in 1969 on the wall of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. I couldn't bear to quote the last beautiful line in the context of the dark pictures from Chapultepec Park. It's even better in Nahuatl:<br /><br />"Ma nel xochitl, ma nel cuicatl."Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04214178206307289834noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-27821584723288622122012-05-18T10:35:13.089-07:002012-05-18T10:35:13.089-07:00I am not sure if when translating I add words to c...I am not sure if when translating I add words to complete an idea,..I may spoil the poetic sound ...(?)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-60089903409759689562012-05-18T10:21:20.567-07:002012-05-18T10:21:20.567-07:00¿sólo vine por esto?
¿para apagarme como las flore...¿sólo vine por esto?<br />¿para apagarme como las flores?<br />¿que nada quede de mi nombre?<br />¿ni de los días que pasé en la tierra?<br />al menos mis flores, al menos mis cantosAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com