SOMBRERO GALAXY ~

for Susan

LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR ~

  Léopold Sédar Senghor 

 

  As Federico Garcia Lorca arrived and wrote his master stroke poems to New York City, so did Senghor, translated here by gay activist, professor and author Melvin Dixon

 

To New York


(for jazz orchestra and trumpet solo)



New York! At first I was bewildered by your beauty,

Those huge, long-legged, golden girls.

So shy, at first, before your blue metallic eyes and icy smile,

So shy. And full of despair at the end of skyscraper streets

Raising my owl eyes at the eclipse of the sun.

Your light is sulphurous against the pale towers

Whose heads strike lightning into the sky,

Skyscrapers defying storms with their steel shoulders

And weathered skin of stone.

But two weeks on the naked sidewalks of Manhattan—

At the end of the third week the fever

Overtakes you with a jaguar’s leap

Two weeks without well water or pasture all birds of the air

Fall suddenly dead under the high, sooty terraces.

No laugh from a growing child, his hand in my cool hand.

No mother’s breast, but nylon legs. Legs and breasts

Without smell or sweat. No tender word, and no lips,

Only artificial hearts paid for in cold cash

And not one book offering wisdom.

The painter’s palette yields only coral crystals.

Sleepless nights, O nights of Manhattan!

Stirring with delusions while car horns blare the empty hours

And murky streams carry away hygenic loving

Like rivers overflowing with the corpses of babies.



                                          II


Now is the time of signs and reckoning, New York!

Now is the time of manna and hyssop.

You have only to listen to God’s trombones, to your heart

Beating to the rhythm of blood, your blood.

I saw Harlem teeming with sounds and ritual colors

And outrageous smells—

At teatime in the home of the drugstore-deliveryman

I saw the festival of Night begin at the retreat of day.

And I proclaim Night more truthful than the day.

It is the pure hour when God brings forth

Life immemorial in the streets,

All the amphibious elements shining like suns.

Harlem, Harlem! Now I’ve seen Harlem, Harlem!

A green breeze of corn rising from the pavements

Plowed by the Dan dancers’ bare feet,

Hips rippling like silk and spearhead breasts,

Ballets of water lilies and fabulous masks

And mangoes of love rolling from the low houses

To the feet of police horses.

And along sidewalks I saw streams of white rum

And streams of black milk in the blue haze of cigars.

And at night I saw cotton flowers snow down

From the sky and the angels’ wings and sorcerers’ plumes.

Listen, New York! O listen to your bass male voice,

Your vibrant oboe voice, the muted anguish of your tears

Falling in great clots of blood,

Listen to the distant beating of your nocturnal heart,

The tom-tom’s rhythm and blood, tom-tom blood and tom-tom.



                                       III


New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood.

Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life

Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines.

Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored,

The reconciliation of the Lion and Bull and Tree

Idea links to action, the ear to the heart, sign to meaning.

See your rivers stirring with musk alligators

And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens.

Just open your eyes to the April rainbow

And your eyes, especially your ears, to God

Who in one burst of saxophone laughter

Created heaven and earth in six days,

And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep.

___________________

Léopold Sédar Senghor

from The Collected Poems 

translated by Melvin Dixon

University of Virginia Press

Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906–2001) was Senegal’s first democratically elected president from 1960 to 1981. A poet, writer, and statesman Senghor was born near Dakar in the town of Joal to a Fulbe mother and a Serer trader father. He was educated at the École Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer in Paris, where he became friends with Aimé Césaire who he co-founded the Negritude movement, which promotes distinctly African cultural values and aesthetics, in opposition to the influence of French colonialism and European exploitation. After earning his French citizenship, Senghor taught in Tours and Paris. He joined the French army during World War II and spent 18 months in a German prison camp. After serving successive terms representing Senegal in the French National Assembly, Senghor returned to his native land, where he led his nation’s independence movement in 1960.

Residing part-time in France, he wrote poems of resistance in French.  His nonfiction work includes numerous volumes on politics, philosophy, sociology, and linguistics.

He passed away at his home in France at the age of 95.

POSTCARD 25 ~

photo : ralph eugene meatyard
lucybelle crater and her close friend lucybelle crater
in the grape arbor
1971

DAVID SPEAR IN HAVANA ~

Ten Days in Havana
David M. Spear
Gnomon Press
P.O. Box 475
Frankfort, Kentucky
40602-0475

JO ANN KELLY ~

Jo Ann Kelly's Birthday!
(5 January 1944 — 21 October 1990)

Gone over twenty years ago now and remaining one of the finest bluesmakers there was

KISSING ~

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss — you can’t do it alone.” 

J o h n   C h e e v e r

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/opinion/sunday/the-loneliness-of-the-long-distance-reader.html?hp&rref=opinion

JOHN CAGE'S ROARATORIO ~

Performers ~

John Cage, Voice

Joe Heaney, Singer

Seamus Ennis, Uillean pipes

Paddy Glackin, Fiddle

Matt Malloy, Flute

Peadher Mercier, Mell Mercier,

Bodhran

http://www.themodernword.com/joyce/music/cage_roaratorio.html

to peter garland

SNOW, SNOW

photo © bob arnold

NEARLY JACK LONDON ~

"A Speck in the Sea"

by Paul Tough

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/magazine/a-speck-in-the-sea.html?pagewanted=1&hp

photo : daniel shea

J.D. WHITNEY ~

A Two-Booklet-in-One publication

designed as two way traffic on the foldout page

J.D. Whitney gives us poems that match and pair and touch one another

what the poet terms "dually" in the best sense of the word

 

 a sample of one section of the booklet

copyright J.D. Whitney

Use Paypal? Order now with free shipping ~ $12!

A NEW YEAR KINDA GUY ~

Townes Van Zandt

(2013)


All tracks previously unissued
Omnivore Recordings
Produced for release by Cheryl Pawelski
Liner notes Colin Escott

TVZ
(March 7, 1944 – January 1, 1997)

POSTCARD 24 ~

Chic Johnson in "Sons of Fun", 1941
photograph by W. Eugene Smith

BE MY HUSBAND ~

ANTONY & THE JOHNSONS










Antony Hegarty was born in Chichester, West Sussex, England, UK, in 1971.

Block out all knowledge — in other words go blank and float — and receive the sounds of Antony:
 an aura who seems vocally out of Pavarotti and whales calling.
 No judgements. No conclusions. Allowance.


songs compiled by BA from recordings below

ALBUMS



Antony and the Johnsons, 1998
I am a Bird Now, 2005
The Crying Light, 2009
Swanlights, 2010

(Live recordings)

Live at St. Olave's, 2003
Cut the World, 2012
Del suo veloce volo, 2012
(w/ Franco Battiato)

SOON ~

~ for Edie & Kathy ~

ODE ~

Pablo Neruda

Ode to the First Day of the Year
Oda al Primer dia del ano



We identify it
as if
it were
a wooden horse
different from
all horses.
We adorn
its forehead
with a ribbon,
we hang
on its neck colorful rattles,
and at midnight
we get ready to receive it
as if it were
an explorer descending from a star.

The way bread resembles
yesterday's bread,
a ring all rings:
the days
blink
clearly, jingling, fleetingly,
and lie down in the dark night.

I see the last
day
of this
year
on a train, toward the rains
of a distant purple archipelago,
and the man
on the machine,
complicated like a clock from heaven,
lowering his eyes
to the infinite
ruler of the rails,
to the shining handles,
to the nimble bonds of fire.

Of conductor of trains
accelerating
toward the black
stations of the night,
this end
of the year,
without wife or children,
is it not the same for the one gone, the one coming?
From the roads
and workshops,
the first day, the first dawn
of the starting year,
has the same rusty
color as the iron train:
and people along the way
greet it,
cows, villages,
the vapor of the first light of day,
without knowing
it is
the year's door,
a day
heralded
by bells,
adorned with plumes and carnations.

The earth
does not
know it:
it will receive
that golden
day, gray, heavenly,
it will extend it over hills,
it will wet it with
arrows
of translucent
rain,
and then
it will curl it
in a tube,
will store it in the shadows.
It is thus, but
a small
door of hope,
new year's day,
although you are
like the bread
of all breads,
we will live you in a different way,
we will eat you, flower you,
wait for you.
We will place you
like a cake
in our lives,
we will light you
like candelabra,
we will drink you
as if
you were a topaz.
New
Year's
Day,
electric day, fresh,
all the leaves
emerge green
from
the trunk of time.

Crown us
with
water,
with open
jasmine,
with all the aromas
deployed,
yes,
even though
you're
only
a day,
a poor
human day,
your halo
beats
over so many
tired
hearts,
and you are,
oh new
day,
oh forthcoming cloud,
bread unseen before,
permanent
tower!


P A B L O   N E R U D A
translated by Ilan Stavans



____________________

All the Odes
Pablo Neruda
edited by Ilan Stavans
Farrar 2013

POSTCARD 23 ~

odilon redon
"sita", 1893

BASIA BULAT ~

On the music scene since 2004 as vocalist and playing guitar, autoharp, hammered dulcimer, piano, ukelele, charango, Basia Bulat grew up in Etobicoke, Ontario where her mother was a music teacher who taught piano and guitar. She is an honorary member of Ontario's "Polonia" Polish community.

selections compiled by bob arnold from the albums below

Studio Albums

_______________________

Oh, My Darling (2007)
  Heart of My Own (2010

Tall Shadow (2013)

http://basiabulat.com/

POSTCARD 22 ~

photo : lisa law
janis joplin
big brother & the holding company
1967

A DAY LATER ~

drawing © bob arnold

BIRDHOUSE ~

photo © bob arnold