Greatest Hits – Page 29

January 30, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Wind power: four movements

Allegro

Out on a sailboat
secure in her windbreaker
she enjoys being buffeted so much
that her husband grows sullen & points
the boat toward shore

Andante

The wind took all my money
& threw it
in the gutter
says the poplar tree
& I’m left swaying like an idiot
with my arms still up

Adagio

He came home from Afghanistan
& couldn’t find the mountain at first

old Backbone Mountain had shrunk
almost to nothing

pinned down by 400-foot turbines
moaning through the night

Largo

Stiltgrass spreads like cancer between the pylons
a green feathery shroud for the clumps of feathers

the beaks & talons
blue as old ice

the delicate finger bones of forest bats
stripped of the brown parchment
on which they flew

What profit hath he
that hath labored for the wind?

& overhead the bone-white blades scything the air

__________

For more on the ecological and social impacts of industrial wind plants, go to windaction.org and browse the important documents section.

January 26, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Buddha is bigger than you. His scalp is great with child, & his patriarchal breasts bulge with dharma-milk. His arms multiply exponentially like the mother of all Swiss Army knives, & he juggles odd objects: fly whisks, vajras, capacitors, USB flash drives. The Buddha is bigger than you, and easier on my wallet. I found him at the landfill & brought him home & placed him on top of the television, & he’s been growing ever since. Now I can tune in the weather from Colombo and Phnom Penh. The Buddha is bigger than you, & whenever he touches the earth with the tip of the middle finger of his right hand, shit happens. Under those rust-green robes, he’s got an Elvis tattoo — don’t ask me how I know this — & the balls of a brass monkey. Like the number zero, he is both real & imaginary. Ask him anything! He rings when struck.

Prompted by (but not based upon) Katherine Durham Oldmixon’s short film “Daibutsu” at qarrtsiluni.

January 23, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Call to Prayer

Flame tree, smoke tree, a sky like sandpaper. Mobile phones have been programmed to issue the call to prayer: God is great. A man grazes horses where a lake used to wrinkle in the breeze & stares into the dry cup of his hands five times a day. God is great. The future has been recalled; too many people were dying of natural causes. All weather will now be provided by the private sector, they tell us, as trees belch with flame around the ancient temple of Artemis. I bear witness that there is no God but God. Lines of footprints in wet ash tell a story, but not ultimately a very interesting one. The wonderful thing about movies is that they are always true. I bear witness that Mohammed is the messenger of God. Here you can see where lizards went on pilgrimage to a puddle of water, steering with their tails. Here you can see where the toymaker’s assistants have been poaching charred olive wood. Hurry up please it’s time for prayer. Notice how the shadow grows smaller & blurrier as the bird gains in altitude — hard to say at what point it’s gone completely. What kind of bird? The black-diamond tail makes it a raven, I guess. The point is that weather-related incidents may no longer be ascribed to acts of God, thank God. Hurry up please it’s time for success. And if that’s the case, someone must do something about the suddenness of nightfall in the tropics & those ridiculous short days we have in winter, where applicable. It has been duly noted that the naked Germans on the beach are happy with the extra sun, although the locals are not: God is great. Flame tree, smoke tree, a sky like alabaster now that the last contrails have been delivered to the museum of blueprints. Ah, & the boys from the village are stalking grasshoppers with wooden machine guns. There is no God but God.

January 13, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Sleeping with places

To sleep somewhere, to surrender our unconscious bodies to a strange bed or a spot on the ground while our minds go wandering — how is it that we feel we haven’t really visited a place until we’ve done this? It is not enough merely to have looked, to have listened, to have smelt and touched and tasted, though all these things matter too.

Perhaps we desire intimacy with the land on the same terms we seek it with a lover. I think it’s more than a euphemism to say of a couple that they’re sleeping together. The language recognizes that what’s important is not the endlessly variable act of lovemaking itself, which is a private matter and doesn’t really concern the larger community, but the quality of a relationship, whose power and potential longevity are clearly signalled by this most basic form of communion. At one level, obviously, it’s a demonstration of mutual trust. At another level, it suggests a shared habitation, even if the partners retain separate residences or rarely sleep in the same place twice.

These speculations are necessarily tenuous because the science of sleep is still in its infancy; researchers argue over the most basic questions about why we need to sleep and dream at all. It’s evidently part of our shared heritage with other animals, which, lacking symbolic language, may rely on dreaming to sort and archive their memories. Even in many pre-literate societies, the world of the past and the ancestors is assumed to remain accessible through dreaming, where hints about the world to come can also be gathered. Conceptions of these worlds vary widely from one culture to the next, so generalization is difficult, but in most cases there’s a direct link between time and distance, and the ability of the dreamer to travel very rapidly or instantaneously from one place to another is key to her clairvoyance. Why this link? Because life is envisioned as a journey, a route along a network of paths; to travel back in time is to travel in space as well.

We know from our own experience how memories are tied to the specific matrices in which they were born, and can be triggered by detailed cues such as odors — which even our inferior primate noses can distinguish by the hundreds — or the gestalt of a place. If I want to relive a memory, my first step is to recall in as much detail as possible the place where it occurred. The modern demotion of place to mere setting or environment simply doesn’t jibe with lived experience.

Maybe sleeping in a place adds to our feeling of truly inhabiting it because it symbolizes its inclusion in these worlds of memory and prescience. It solidifies its position in time and space by dissolving the horizon, which we cannot do away with as long as we are awake and our physical bodies and perceptions still impose strict limits. This in turn suggests why sleeping together is so basic to making love: after the relatively fleeting ecstasy of sex itself, sleep offers another, longer-lasting way to dissolve boundaries. And even as the sex (depending on the partners) may create a new person, the shared sleep creates a new place from the intersection of paths.

January 11, 2008 by Dave Bonta

What it was like

The world outside of the story made no sense whatsoever — that’s why, as soon as they learned about something, they worked it in as best they could.

The twelve crows flying over the cathedral became twelve crows flying over the cathedral, just like that.

There was a balloon hanging from a tree, thwarted in its efforts to return to the ground. No, wait — it was only a traffic sign in another language.

A little girl in the back seat watched her father handing money out the window to a policeman and marveled at the gentle treatment accorded those dirty scraps of paper.

The roadsides were decorated with empty beverage containers, empty take-out boxes, empty plastic shopping bags advertising Everyday Low Prices. “Garbage in, garbage out,” intoned the priests. Junk DNA was found to account for over 80 percent of the human genome.

People talked. You couldn’t meet a trucker alone at the end of a deserted road without somebody finding out about it.

Fishermen’s tales were not to be believed — especially after the one that got away didn’t come back, ever, and the fleet rusted in the harbor.

No matter what happened, there were children watching. People claimed to love them, won their trust, then did despicable things to them — and for some reason, people didn’t talk about that. Some things simply remained outside the story.

Balloons were released with notes attached. They often travelled for hundreds of miles before some mountaintop tree managed to snag them. I found a few myself, over the years.

January 7, 2008 by Dave Bonta

Resolutions

Fresh snow on New Year’s.
I sweep the porch,
then stand at the railing
to trim my fingernails —

always an oddly satisfying job
with that click of a clean bite,
the surprising lack of sensation
in these beetle-hard walls that line
our primary instruments of touch.

I take care that each trimming
stays whole, a nearly perfect crescent
to admire for half a second before
I add it to the instant ground below.
__________

For the Read Write Poem prompt, “resolutions.” Links to the other participants’ poems are here.

December 16, 2007 by Dave Bonta

F-stop

Splendour of snow blown sideways
through the penitentiary yard,
plastering the brown scissor-blade legs
of cattails in the ditch, filling keyholes
& every available crack,
razor-wire softening into white ropes

when the bang of an unfastened corncrib door
brings everyone — the guards
& the guarded — to a full stop.
This was once an ordinary farm
with ordinary livestock.
Ghostly pigeons arrive
from a blurred-out depth of field.

December 14, 2007 by Dave Bonta

After the sleet storm

“Greensleeves was all my joy…” A song that seems to fit the season, wronged as so many feel by the inclement weather, the cold, the diminishing light.

That’s not snow on the hillside, by the way; it’s sleet — close to an inch of it. We’ve gotten far greater accumulations of pellet ice here in the past. A couple times, so much sleet rolled down the steep slopes that our road was almost completely filled in and erased, briefly restoring the mountain to a semblance of its pre-settlement appearance. But even a small amount of ice changes the whole purlieu.

Christmas ferns sit with their oars at the ready, like Viking longships trapped in a sudden freeze-up. Various other plants and leaves expose their extremities, as if testing the air, or brandishing weapons from a simpler age.

A chestnut oak leaf curls possessively around its hoard of incidental light. Wait till my lady Greensleeves sees this! Even after the pellets fuse, the ground remains granular, faceted like the eye of an insect.

Strange thoughts, to be sure. But this is not the same dull world I am used to finding under my feet.

December 8, 2007May 30, 2016 by Dave Bonta

“El son de las hojas”: Five tree poems from Renaissance Spain

De los álamos vengo, madre,
de ver cómo los menea el aire.

De los álamos de Sevilla,
de ver a mi linda amiga.

De los álamos vengo, madre,
de ver cómo los menea el aire.

I come from the aspens, Mother,
from watching them tremble in the breeze.

From the aspen trees of Seville,
where I saw my beautiful lover.

I come from the aspens, Mother,
from seeing how they tremble in the breeze.

Tres morillas me enamoran
en Jaén:
Axa y Fátima y Marién.

Tres morillas tan garridas
iban a coger olivas,
y hallábanse cogidas
en Jaén:
Axa y Fátima y Marién.

Y hallábanse cogidas
y tornaban desmaídas
y las colores perdidas
en Jaén:
Axa y Fátima y Marién.

Tres moricas tan lozanas,
tres moricas tan lozanas
iban a coger manzanas
en Jaén:
Axa y Fátima y Marién.

Three Moorish girls caught my eye
in Jaén:
Axa and Fátima and Marién.

Three fine-looking Moorish girls
went out to pluck olives from the tree
and got themselves plucked
in Jaén:
Axa and Fátima and Marién.

Got themselves plucked
and returned in a tizzy,
all their color gone
in Jaén:
Axa and Fátima and Marién.

Three very lively Moorish girls,
Three very lively Moorish girls
went out to pick apples
in Jaén:
Axa and Fátima and Marién.

Las mis penas, madre,
de amores son.

Salid, mi señora,
de s’ol naranjale,
que sois tan fermosa
quemarvos ha el aire
de amores, sí.

These troubles I’m having, Mother,
are all from love.

Come out, my lady,
from under the orange grove,
for you are so beautiful
that the very air, I swear,
will ignite with love.

So ell encina, encina,
so ell encina.

Yo me iba, mi madre,
a la romería;
por ir más devota
fui sin compañía:
so ell encina.

Por ir más devota
fui sin compañía.
Tomé otro camino
dejé el que tenía:
so ell encina.

Halléme perdida
en una montaña,
echéme a dormir
al pie dell encina:
so ell encina.

A la media noche
recordé, mezquina;
halléme en los brazos
del que más quería:
so ell encina.

Pesóme cuitada
de que amanecía,
porque yo gozaba
del que más quería:
so ell encina.

Muy bendita sía
la tal romería:
so ell encina.

Beneath the holly oak, the holly oak,
beneath the holly oak.

I was going around
on pilgrimage, Mother,
and to show my full devotion,
I went alone,
beneath the holly oak.

To show my full devotion,
I went alone.
I took another road,
and left the one I was on,
beneath the holly oak.

I found I had lost my way
on the mountainside,
so I lay down to sleep
at the foot of a holly oak,
beneath the holly oak.

In the middle of the night,
I woke up, all miserable,
and found myself in the arms
of the one I love the best,
beneath the holly oak.

Poor me! I was so sorry
when morning came,
because I’d been enjoying
the one I love the best,
beneath the holly oak.

Oh blessed be
that pilgrimage
beneath the holly oak.

Con el viento murmuran,
madre, las hojas;
y al sonido me duermo
bajo su sombra.

Sopla un manso viento
alegre y suave,
que mueve la nave
de mi pensamiento;
dame tal contento
que me parece
que el cielo me ofrece
bien a deshora;
y al sonido me duermo
bajo su sombra.

Si acaso recuerdo
me hallo entre las flores,
y de mis dolores
apenas me acuerdo;
de vista las pierdo
del sueño vencida,
y dame la vida
el son de las hojas;
y al sonido me duermo
bajo su sombra.

The leaves murmur
in the wind, Mother,
and lull me to sleep
in their shade.

A breeze blows
soft and light,
moving the ship
of my thoughts.
It makes me feel
so content, it’s as if
I’ve been given
an advance taste
of heaven,
lulled to sleep
in their shade.

If I happen to wake,
I find myself
among flowers,
scarce able to recall
my cares —
lost to sight,
vanquished by dreaming —
and the sound of the leaves
brings me to life,
lulled to sleep
in their shade.

***

NOTES

These are all anonymous lyrics from the 15th and 16th centuries, translated with the help of a dictionary. I’m no scholar, but based on Cola Franzen’s translations in Poems of Arab Andalusia (City Lights, 1989), among other lines of evidence, I can only suppose that the vivid natural imagery in the Castillian cancioneros reflects strong Mozarabic influence. The association of trees with paradise and seduction seems especially Arab to me.

Tres morillas / Three Moorish girls
I resisted the urge to translate “tan lozanas” as “hot and spicy,” but somehow the racist stereotype of the vivacious, sexually available, brown-skinned southerner feels all too familiar.

So ell encina / Beneath the holly oaks
This song is in a woman’s voice.

The holly oak, or holm oak, Quercus ilex, sports leathery, evergreen leaves and “forms a picturesque rounded head, with pendulous low-hanging branches.” The Wikipedia article also says it’s one of the three best trees under which to grow truffles.

Romerías were annual pilgrimages to local or regional shrines associated with saints or the Virgin Mary, and were often quite festive events — a tradition that continues to this day.

Con el viento murmuran / The leaves murmur
This could be in the voice of either sex.
__________

The next edition of the Festival of the Trees will be at Hoarded Ordinaries on January 1. Send your tree-related links to zenmama (at) gmail (dot) com with “Festival of the Trees” in the subject line by December 30.

December 7, 2007 by Dave Bonta

Fishy

What might it mean to dream of catfish? They lived in burrows like prairie dogs, whiskered heads popping up as we walked past. “The ground was too saturated to plant this year,” the farmer said, “so I switched to fish.” The small ones were red, and the big ones were bluish gray. They watched us with what I imagined was deep suspicion, but it might just as well have been melancholy, or a blithe lack of concern. “You can watch ’em all day, and you’ll never see ’em blink,” the farmer said.

The other night, talking about politicians, my mother said, “I don’t know how they can look themselves in the face.” It was, dare I say, a quote worthy of the president she so despises.

But perhaps the truly gifted ones do manage that. I think Bill Clinton, for example, sees Bill Clinton in everyone he meets. That’s why he always looks so happy in a crowd.

Whereas his successor sees a potential mob: unreadable, as he is to himself. “There’s no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide,” he babbles. “I know the human being and fish can coexist.”

There’s a certain period every day around mid-morning when the squirrels run back and forth across the roof. I sit trying to type while claws rattle overhead.

At least, I think it’s squirrels. Maybe it’s another typist. It must be a pretty dull story, though, if I’m in it.
__________

Category: Greatest Hits