Thank you, Frederick! I liked these a lot. Hey, didn't that scoundrel
Bircumshaw of Leicester outlaw words such as 'shard' a while back? I cringed
as I read that, since I had used it myself in an English version of a poem
of mine. And 'mannerism' (re Pamina) as enjoyable as it can be, pure
entertainment, is deadening (in the end, as everything). And 'mannerism' may
easily be applied to the Hollywood movie, which refers to another, current,
thread on this list.
Best
Árni
--
Árni Ibsen
Stekkjarkinn 19,
220 Hafnarfjördur,
Iceland
tel.: +354-555-3991
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/
on 12/1/02 11:46 PM, Frederick Pollack at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Gadget
>
>
> An instrument so sensitive
> it can pick up thoughts
> around artifacts, and in the penumbra
> of a site, far out into the desert.
> But from people, never,
> or other living things,
> however rich with dead
> the soil they eat.
> It's a kick to wear the earphones
> and sample relics
> of love and hunger on an evening breeze.
> Someone at my last dig
> said, rather wistfully,
> it confirmed and destroyed poetry.
>
> Which is why we're distressed when
> it doesn't work (if that's what's happening).
> This shard, bead,
> vegetable matter from
> five evil-smelling clay
> and sandstone meters down
> should be talking about gods,
> or the harvests and babies gods
> are for. Not
> some melancholy inaudible obsession,
> some cruel wish to sleep.
>
>
> Pamina
>
> *Pamina lebet noch*
> - The Magic Flute
>
> Cosmology, like other aspects
> of culture, seems to be entering
> a mannerist phase.
> Other universes
> forever unreachable (unless
> their light slowly rounds
> a tight, distant bend
> to appear as ours) - yet,
> as the impossible crow flies,
> only millimeters away <sum>
> The idea seems to justify
> someone I knew
> who sat by a wall,
> whispering to it. One couldn't tell
> if there was hope
> for response, or belief
> in a presence
> behind it, or merely
> a place briefly safe
> from the vehement dash and élan
> of some enemy.
>
> Meanwhile, in a time of
> mergers, failures, increased costs
> and the universal triumph
> of pop, the few surviving
> independent classical
> labels have come around to
> my taste
> for the out-of-the-way, the unfairly
> neglected.
> So high is the volume, one
> feels it will, of itself, create
> a world where things
> go right: where Tiessen
> regains popularity and energy
> after the *Hitlerzeit; where Duparc,
> instead of attending mass
> for fifty years, manages
> to transcribe the angelic theme; where
> Rott, after a month
> in the asylum, decides
> he is not being pursued and poisoned
> by the Brahmsians.
>
> And today, up the street, near
> the big new houses, on
> those telephone poles
> that perennially bear
> sad xeroxed shots
> of cats, another
> picture, words other than
> "Reward" - Pamina
> has been found! Pamina, aged
> three, has been returned
> to Emily, age six,
> who in the photo hugs
> the cat tightly to her and
> whose face displays
> that emotion one
> should never have to, or should always, feel.
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