SUPERNATURALSeason 15
Post-holidays triple feature.
Friday, January 31, 2020
Thursday, January 30, 2020
HUEY NEWTON
We [Black Panthers] have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppressed people in the society.
We [Black Panthers] have not said much about the homosexual at all, but we must relate to the homosexual movement because it is a real thing. And I know through reading, and through my life experience and observations that homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in the society. They might be the most oppressed people in the society.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
PHILIP LEVINE
“Blue”
Dawn. I was just walking
back across the tracks
toward the loading docks
when I saw a kid climb
out of a boxcar, his blue
jacket trailing like a skirt,
and make for the fence. He’d
hoisted a wet wooden flat
of fresh fish on his right
shoulder, and he tottered
back and forth like someone
with one leg shorter than
the other. I took my glasses
off and wiped them on the tails
of my dirty shirt, and all
I could see were the smudges
of the men wakening one
at a time and reaching for
both the sky and the earth.
My brother-in-law, Joseph,
the railroad cop, who talked
all day and all night of beer
and pussy, Joseph in his suit
shouting out my name, Pheeel!
Pheeel! waving a blue bandana
and pointing behind me to
where the kid cleared the fence
and the weak March sun
had topped the car barns,
to a pale watery sky, wisps
of dirty smoke, and the day.
“Blue”
Dawn. I was just walking
back across the tracks
toward the loading docks
when I saw a kid climb
out of a boxcar, his blue
jacket trailing like a skirt,
and make for the fence. He’d
hoisted a wet wooden flat
of fresh fish on his right
shoulder, and he tottered
back and forth like someone
with one leg shorter than
the other. I took my glasses
off and wiped them on the tails
of my dirty shirt, and all
I could see were the smudges
of the men wakening one
at a time and reaching for
both the sky and the earth.
My brother-in-law, Joseph,
the railroad cop, who talked
all day and all night of beer
and pussy, Joseph in his suit
shouting out my name, Pheeel!
Pheeel! waving a blue bandana
and pointing behind me to
where the kid cleared the fence
and the weak March sun
had topped the car barns,
to a pale watery sky, wisps
of dirty smoke, and the day.
Monday, January 27, 2020
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Friday, January 24, 2020
JORGE LUIS BORGES
A writer’s work is the product of laziness, you see. A writer’s work essentially consists of taking his mind off things, of thinking about something else, of daydreaming, of not being in any hurry to go to sleep but to imagine something … And then comes the actual writing, and that’s his trade. That is, I don’t think the two things are incompatible. Besides, I think that when one is writing something that’s more or less good, one doesn’t feel it to be a chore; one feels it to be a form of amusement. A form of amusement that doesn’t exclude the use of intelligence, just as chess doesn’t exclude it.
A writer’s work is the product of laziness, you see. A writer’s work essentially consists of taking his mind off things, of thinking about something else, of daydreaming, of not being in any hurry to go to sleep but to imagine something … And then comes the actual writing, and that’s his trade. That is, I don’t think the two things are incompatible. Besides, I think that when one is writing something that’s more or less good, one doesn’t feel it to be a chore; one feels it to be a form of amusement. A form of amusement that doesn’t exclude the use of intelligence, just as chess doesn’t exclude it.
Thursday, January 23, 2020
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
“XXIX [Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind]”
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent Tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
“XXIX [Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind]”
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, deep buried in the silent Tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee? Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss?—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
THOMAS JEFFERSON
From a letter to Peter Carr - Paris, August 19, 1785
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truth without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
From a letter to Peter Carr - Paris, August 19, 1785
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truth without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
MARGARET ATWOOD
"Frogless"
The sore trees cast their leaves
too early. Each twig pinching
shut like a jabbed clam.
Soon there will be a hot gauze of snow
searing the roots.
Booze in the spring runoff,
pure antifreeze;
the stream worms drunk and burning.
Tadpoles wrecked in the puddles.
Here comes an eel with a dead eye
grown from its cheek.
Would you cook it?
You would if.
The people eat sick fish
because there are no others.
Then they get born wrong.
This is not sport, sir.
This is not good weather.
This is not blue and green.
This is home.
Travel anywhere in a year, five years,
and you’ll end up here.
"Frogless"
The sore trees cast their leaves
too early. Each twig pinching
shut like a jabbed clam.
Soon there will be a hot gauze of snow
searing the roots.
Booze in the spring runoff,
pure antifreeze;
the stream worms drunk and burning.
Tadpoles wrecked in the puddles.
Here comes an eel with a dead eye
grown from its cheek.
Would you cook it?
You would if.
The people eat sick fish
because there are no others.
Then they get born wrong.
This is not sport, sir.
This is not good weather.
This is not blue and green.
This is home.
Travel anywhere in a year, five years,
and you’ll end up here.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Monday, January 20, 2020
ANNE SPENCER
"White Things"
Most things are colorful things—the sky, earth, and sea.
Black men are most men; but the white are free!
White things are rare things; so rare, so rare
They stole from out a silvered world—somewhere.
Finding earth-plains fair plains, save greenly grassed,
They strewed white feathers of cowardice, as they passed;
The golden stars with lances fine
The hills all red and darkened pine,
They blanched with their wand of power;
And turned the blood in a ruby rose
To a poor white poppy-flower.
"White Things"
Most things are colorful things—the sky, earth, and sea.
Black men are most men; but the white are free!
White things are rare things; so rare, so rare
They stole from out a silvered world—somewhere.
Finding earth-plains fair plains, save greenly grassed,
They strewed white feathers of cowardice, as they passed;
The golden stars with lances fine
The hills all red and darkened pine,
They blanched with their wand of power;
And turned the blood in a ruby rose
To a poor white poppy-flower.
BONNIE 'PRINCE' BILLY
“God’s Small Song”
I will wake up tomorrow
I have tended to God’s small song
And to Love’s small song
And closed my eyes to sleep so long
And tonight I’ll go
Into all of the places that you love
That is my place here
To have been in those
I will wake up tomorrow
I have amended some of the things
That some actions bring
And closed the head to be with you
In each eye there is an apple
Buried there before the eye
And out of sockets come the branches
And from the branches dangle I
“God’s Small Song”
I will wake up tomorrow
I have tended to God’s small song
And to Love’s small song
And closed my eyes to sleep so long
And tonight I’ll go
Into all of the places that you love
That is my place here
To have been in those
I will wake up tomorrow
I have amended some of the things
That some actions bring
And closed the head to be with you
In each eye there is an apple
Buried there before the eye
And out of sockets come the branches
And from the branches dangle I
Sunday, January 19, 2020
Saturday, January 18, 2020
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
"About a little girl"
Knowledge defeats its own end
approaching the state of heaven
when it envisions
through the glass
delicately adjusted in the
sliding tubes
—to prove death inevitable—
the red and blue dots
of anilene stained blood which
shout derisively at our despair
But the child
walks laughing from
room to room of her gentle home
She is eleven and
her parents love her very much
Over her
the trees hold their leaves
dripping with the rain
shining green
This afternoon she will ride in the bus
to the railroad station
There will be a locomotive
and cars and people running around—
bags to carry—The lake
beckons in the distance—
But
she is an angel, already in
heaven, the earth
is a toy balloon under her feet—
with her girlish shoes she
pushes it back—
it falls away into banality—
her wrinkling brown eyes have robbed it
of its meaning—
It is she
The Promenader—
whom men see and do not discover—
Princess Marion
eaten by curious wrongs
"About a little girl"
Knowledge defeats its own end
approaching the state of heaven
when it envisions
through the glass
delicately adjusted in the
sliding tubes
—to prove death inevitable—
the red and blue dots
of anilene stained blood which
shout derisively at our despair
But the child
walks laughing from
room to room of her gentle home
She is eleven and
her parents love her very much
Over her
the trees hold their leaves
dripping with the rain
shining green
This afternoon she will ride in the bus
to the railroad station
There will be a locomotive
and cars and people running around—
bags to carry—The lake
beckons in the distance—
But
she is an angel, already in
heaven, the earth
is a toy balloon under her feet—
with her girlish shoes she
pushes it back—
it falls away into banality—
her wrinkling brown eyes have robbed it
of its meaning—
It is she
The Promenader—
whom men see and do not discover—
Princess Marion
eaten by curious wrongs
Friday, January 17, 2020
Pardon me.
Do you have a few moments to talk about our lords and saviors, the great horned forest gods of Northern Europe that appeared almost a thousand years after y'alls little white Egyptian baby?
Oh, you haven't heard the good news? Then I am so gosh darn happy to have this opportunity to share.
[Can I just have the pamphlet please?]
W. S. MERWIN
"The Nails"
I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall
Like a calendar in one color.
I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn’t as simple as that.
Between no place of mine and no place of yours
You’d have thought I’d know the way by now
Just from thinking it over.
Oh I know
I’ve no excuse to be stuck here turning
Like a mirror on a string,
Except it’s hardly credible how
It all keeps changing.
Loss has a wider choice of directions
Than the other thing.
As if I had a system
I shuffle among the lies
Turning them over, if only
I could be sure what I’d lost.
I uncover my footprints, I
Poke them till the eyes open.
They don’t recall what it looked like.
When was I using it last?
Was it like a ring or a light
Or the autumn pond
Which chokes and glitters but
Grows colder?
It could be all in the mind. Anyway
Nothing seems to bring it back to me.
And I’ve been to see
Your hands as trees borne away on a flood,
The same film over and over,
And an old one at that, shattering its account
To the last of the digits, and nothing
And the blank end.
The lightning has shown me the scars of the future.
I’ve had a long look at someone
Alone like a key in a lock
Without what it takes to turn.
It isn’t as simple as that.
Winter will think back to your lit harvest
For which there is no help, and the seed
Of eloquence will open its wings
When you are gone.
But at this moment
When the nails are kissing the fingers good-bye
And my only
Chance is bleeding from me,
When my one chance is bleeding,
For speaking either truth or comfort
I have no more tongue than a wound.
"The Nails"
I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall
Like a calendar in one color.
I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn’t as simple as that.
Between no place of mine and no place of yours
You’d have thought I’d know the way by now
Just from thinking it over.
Oh I know
I’ve no excuse to be stuck here turning
Like a mirror on a string,
Except it’s hardly credible how
It all keeps changing.
Loss has a wider choice of directions
Than the other thing.
As if I had a system
I shuffle among the lies
Turning them over, if only
I could be sure what I’d lost.
I uncover my footprints, I
Poke them till the eyes open.
They don’t recall what it looked like.
When was I using it last?
Was it like a ring or a light
Or the autumn pond
Which chokes and glitters but
Grows colder?
It could be all in the mind. Anyway
Nothing seems to bring it back to me.
And I’ve been to see
Your hands as trees borne away on a flood,
The same film over and over,
And an old one at that, shattering its account
To the last of the digits, and nothing
And the blank end.
The lightning has shown me the scars of the future.
I’ve had a long look at someone
Alone like a key in a lock
Without what it takes to turn.
It isn’t as simple as that.
Winter will think back to your lit harvest
For which there is no help, and the seed
Of eloquence will open its wings
When you are gone.
But at this moment
When the nails are kissing the fingers good-bye
And my only
Chance is bleeding from me,
When my one chance is bleeding,
For speaking either truth or comfort
I have no more tongue than a wound.
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA
"Dawn"
Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.
Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.
Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there.
And sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.
Those who got out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die;
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.
The light is buried beneath chains and noises,
an important warning to rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.
Translated by Greg Simon and Steven L. White
"Dawn"
Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.
Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.
Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there.
And sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.
Those who got out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die;
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.
The light is buried beneath chains and noises,
an important warning to rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.
Translated by Greg Simon and Steven L. White
Thursday, January 16, 2020
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
TOMAS TRANSTRÖMER
“Two Cities”
Each on its own side of a strait, two cities
one plunged into darkness, under enemy control.
In the other the lamps are burning.
The luminous shore hypnotizes the blacked-out one.
I swim out in a trance
on the glittering dark waters.
A muffled tuba-blast breaks in.
It’s a friend’s voice, take your grave and go.
Monday, January 13, 2020
"To Say For Going To Sleep"
____________________
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
by someone to sit and be,
I would like to rock you and croon you to sleep
and attend you in slumber and out.
I would like to be the only one in the house
who would know: The night was cold.
And you would like to hearken within and without
to you, to the world, to the woods,—
The clocks call striking to each other,
and one sees to the bottom of time.
And below a strange man passes yet
and rouses a strange dog.
Behind that comes stillness. I have laid
my eyes upon you wide;
they hold you gently and let you go
when something stirs in the dark.
Translated by M.D. Hester Norton
I would like to sing someone to sleep,
by someone to sit and be,
I would like to rock you and croon you to sleep
and attend you in slumber and out.
I would like to be the only one in the house
who would know: The night was cold.
And you would like to hearken within and without
to you, to the world, to the woods,—
The clocks call striking to each other,
and one sees to the bottom of time.
And below a strange man passes yet
and rouses a strange dog.
Behind that comes stillness. I have laid
my eyes upon you wide;
they hold you gently and let you go
when something stirs in the dark.
Translated by M.D. Hester Norton
WILFRED OWEN
"Exposure"
____________________
I
1 Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us ...
2 Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...
3 Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...
4 Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
5 But nothing happens.
6 Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
7 Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
8 Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
9 Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
10 What are we doing here?
11 The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...
12 We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
13 Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
14 Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,
15 But nothing happens.
16 Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
17 Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
18 With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,
19 We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,
20 But nothing happens.
II
21 Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces--
22 We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
23 Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
24 Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
25 Is it that we are dying?
26 Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed
27 With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
28 For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
29 Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed--
30 We turn back to our dying.
31 Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
32 Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
33 For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
34 Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
35 For love of God seems dying.
36 To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
37 Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp.
38 The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,
39 Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
40 But nothing happens.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)