MOBY GRAPE ALL NIGHT ~

 

JAZRA KHALEED ~

 

Class Hatred Is Growing

 

Each day from morning till night

from night till morning

class hatred throughout the world is growing.

It's growing a hundred megajoules per second

ten spans per hectare, growing growing.

We never felt the earth so close to us, fallow and deserted

never was our throat parched by so much violence

never our days had so few feet to run with

never, never

it is carnivorous the nature of our class, voracious

its blows are calculated and its pain mortal

as it goes on burying its dead by memory.

Each day class hatred is growing

it piles in the produce market

it piles in construction sites

its piles in strawberry fields

it piles in telephone centers

it piles in office corridors

and in assembly lines

it piles up on my fingertips.

There's never been so much class hatred

in the breasts of proletarians

in their heartbeat and commotion

in their spelling and their syntax.

They wake up, brush their teeth

are dressed, go to work

and class hatred is always growing

filling with bones their words

filling with logic their insanity

filling with gravel their shoes

it's burning their lungs

it overflows out of their pockets

they don't know where to put it anymore.

Class hatred is growing

in both the short and median air waves

in analog and digital signals

in electric circuits.

When it passes through a resistor

the temperature isincreased

the electric loads are increased

the density of the suppression force is increased

on the condition that the system

is not subject to any reverse alteration.

Class hatred is always analogous

to the square of the devaluation of labor

and analogous to the intensity of exploitation.

Class hatred is a mathematical ratio

connecting the law of lavue

with the second law of thermodynamics

and my own skeletomuscular disorders.

Class hatred is an investment risk

class hatred doesn't yield a guaranteed dividend

it's capital's exposure to the denial of labor

it's a sure way to lose your money.

Class hatred is a case of lesser violence

a danger relative to industrial disasters

with malfunctions, sabotage and wild strikes.

Don't expose yourselves to class hatred

if you don't grasp the nature and the extent of risk

the economic damages you'll very likely incur.

Class hatred is growing in all continents

it's growing in all its rags and all its weapons

its growing in all languages and all dialects.

As it grows the stones blossom in the hands

the heart beats on the anvil

the horses gallop in the breast

and inside me,

World Poetry, 2025 ah comrades, inside me

it overflows the rivers pouring in my body.

translated by Angelos Sakkis

_________________________________

Jazra Khaleed

The Light That Burns Us

World Poetry, 2025

THE LOW ANTHEM TONIGHT ~

 

ONCE UPON A TIME CINEMA ~

 

R E A D   M E

     NYRB,  2023

VAN GOGH AND THE END OF NATURE ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Yale University

     2024

WOLVES & MEN ~

 

W O L V E S

       photo ~ Kyle Artelle

LESTER YOUNG ALL DAY ALL NIGHT ~

 

THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Seven Stories Press

      2024

A FEARLESS EYE : BARBARA RAMOS ~

 

B A R B A R A    R A M O S

       “Man Sleeping at Altamont.”Credit...Barbara Ramos

THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER TONIGHT ~

 

1955

     Charles Laughton, director

EUGENIO MONTALE ~

 

R E A D   M E

     NYRB 2024

BLIND BLAKE TONIGHT ~

 

JIM HARRISON DEVOURING TIME ~

 

R E A D   M E

      Black Stone Publishers

      2025

NACHOEM M. WIJNBERG ~

 

When I Was With You Song

When I was with you

I said to you:

take off my clothes,

remove my jewels,

lay them down carefully.

To help you

I will raise a foot

I will hold up an arm;

undress me slowly,

take off my shadow.

When I was with you

I said to you,

while my shadow moved

left, then right,

trying to hide.

Song

I have forgotten

what I discovered

because it is so long ago,

where do I sleep?

When I was a child

I thought I could be

between everyone

and the lights of the night.

That is what I thought,

that someone gets

what makes them shine

when they think of it.

That someone only knows

words for ever

and a day, quieter than

the day before.

Song

The joke is

I would have liked to be with someone

who was the beginning and the end for me.

When I am old

I will say what I like about love

like a girl who's not afraid of it.

Because I thought

it wouldn't happen again

that someone could love me.

That's me, put me down somewhere

where something is about to begin

and I will start.

Is there something

I mustn't joke about here

but only outside?

But if you're with me

you don't need to laugh at it

or only after you've turned it into a song

And sung it bakwards,

from the end to the beginning,

and then laugh as if in a gale.

At the Seaside

The girl walks to the sea

and at the seaside a man

asks: are you the girl

I was looking for?

She shakes her head,

holds out an open hand

on which he puts a ring

she will never lose for long.

He tells her how

she can recognize him

if she sees him again: he will

choose the other hand.

_______________

Nachoem M. Wijnberg

translated by David Colmer

NYRB 2022

VIDYA BY ANDREW SCHELLING ~

 

Old Time Love Song Magic

2

My lord,

your eye

is a fresh blue river

                a balance of soft grass —

to your nearest friends luck

to the enemy ruin

unseen through my woman's

                 body it races.

                                    Meter: Puspitagra

                              Flowering Branch Tip

18

What rival warlords

beneath the orbiting moon & sun

have you not deposed?

Deva, I think you

the earth's finest warrior.

                You circled my body

                seized the black ropes of my hair

                                slipped the blouse off

                                and clasped my hips freely

                your hand now approaches the

                fragrant zone.

                                             

                                        Meter: Sardula-vikriditam

                                                       Tiger's Play

20

Black swollen clouds

drench the far

forests with rain.

Scarlet kadamba petals toss on the storm.

In the foothills peacocks dance

they make love and none of it

                touches me.

It's when the lighting

exposes an amorous flash

bright legs and arms

like a rival —

in grief

lonely grief

                I am drenched.

                              

                                   Meter: Sardula-vikriditam

                                                Tiger's Play

26

Monsoon season

                the Rainbow Girl rises

her heart childlike

shifting about

one hue for another

she's a lute with no string

a song that changes

                she dares you

               to catch her.

                          

                        Meter: Arya

                            Noble Lady

                            

31

Shamelessly orange like a

parrot's beak,

arousing with a lover's

touch the clustered

lotus buds,

I praise this

great wheel the sun

Rising

it is an

earring for

the Lady of the East.

                

                Meter: Arya

                Noble Lady

______________________________

Vidya

Old Time Love Song Magic

translated from the Sanskrit by Andrew Schelling

Circumference Books, 2025

               

AMITAV GHOSH'S PLANET ~

 

E A R T H   T O   E A R T H

     University of Chicago

   2016

LIGHTNING HOPKINS TEXAS BLUES MAN TONIGHT ~

 

All songs composed by Sam "Lightning" Hopkins Recorded by Chris Strachwitz on portable equipment in Houston, Texas, on December 18, 1967 Cover Photo by Chris Strachwitz Cover design by Wayne Pope Producer: Chris Strachwitz

TATSUYA NAKADAI ~

 

TATSUYA  NAKADAI

WALKING ON THIN AIR ~

 

R E A D   M E

     Westbourne Press

     2023

AMY LOWELL ~

The Garden by Moonlight

A black cat among roses,

Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,

The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.

The garden is very still,

It is dazed with moonlight,

Contented with perfume,

Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.

Firefly lights open and vanish

High as the tip buds of the golden glow

Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.

Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,

Moon-spikes shafting through the snow ball bush.

Only the little faces of the ladies' delight are alert and staring,

Only the cat, padding between the roses,

Shakes a branch and breaks the chequered pattern

As water is broken by the falling of a leaf.

Then you come,

And you are quiet like the garden,

And white like the alyssum flowers,

And beautiful as the silent sparks of the fireflies.

Ah, Beloved, do you see those orange lilies?

They knew my mother,

But who belonging to me will they know

When I am gone.

_________________________________________________

AMY LOWELL

Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, 1914