Poema 20, "Puedo escribir los versos más tristes..." (Pablo Neruda)

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.

Escribir por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada, y tiritan,
azules, los astros, a lo lejos".

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

En las noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.

Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería
Como no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.

Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.

Qué importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.

Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca,
Mi corazón la busca, y ella no está conmigo.

La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles.
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuánto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.

De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.

Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.

Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos verso que yo le escribo.

--

I can write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example, "The night is filled with stars,
twinkling blue, in the distance."

The night wind spins in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times beneath the infinite sky.

She loved me, at times I loved her too.
How not to have loved her great still eyes.

I can write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don't have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.

What difference does it make if my love could not keep her.
The night is full of stars, and she is not with me.

That is all. In the distance, someone sings. In the distance.
My soul is not at peace with having lost her.

As if to bring her closer, my gaze searches for her.
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, of then, now are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, it's true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched for the wind which would touch her ear.

Another's. She will be another's. As before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, it's true, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is not at peace with having lost her.

Though this may be the final sorrow she causes me,
and these the last verses I write for her.

—Translated and © Mark Eisner 2004, from City Lights' The Essential Neruda

acl - live on hulu

some bukowski for a saturday morning

plea to a passing maid

girl in shorts, biting your nails, revolving your ass,
the boys are looking at you --
you hold more, it seems,
than Gauguin or Brahma or Balzac,
more, at least, than the skulls that swim at our feet,
your swagger breaks the Eiffel tower,
turns the heads of old newsboys long ago gone
sexually to pot;
your caged malarkey, your idiot's dance,
mugging it, delightful -- don't ever wash stained under-
wear or chase your acts of love
through neighborhood alleys --
don't spoil it for us,
putting on weight and weariness,
settling for TV and a namby-pamby husband;
don't give up that absurd dispossessed wiggle
to water a Saturday's front lawn --
don't send us back to Balzac or introspection
or Paris
or wine, don't send us back
to the incubation of our doubts or the memory
of death-wiggle, bitch, madden us with love
and hunger, keep the sharks, the bloody sharks,
from the heart.



poem for personnel managers:

An old man asked me for a cigarette
and I carefully dealt out two.
"Been lookin' for a job. Gonna stand
in the sun and smoke."

He was close to rags and rage
and he leaned against death.
It was a cold day, indeed, and trucks
loaded and heavy as old whores
banged and tangled on the streets . . .

We drop like planks from a rotting floor
as the world strives to unlock the bone
that weights its brain.
(God is a lonely place without steak.)

We are dying birds
we are sinking ships --
the world rocks down against us
and we
throw out our arms
and we
throw out our legs
like the death kiss of the centipede:
but they kindly snap our backs
and call our poison "politics."

Well, we smoked, he and I -- little men
nibbling fish-head thoughts . . .

All the horses do not come in,
and as you watch the lights of the jails
and hospitals wink on and out,
and men handle flags as carefully as babies,
remember this:

you are a great-gutted instrument of
heart and belly, carefully planned --
so if you take a plane for Savannah,
take the best plane;
or if you eat a chicken on a rock,
make it a very special animal.
(You call it a bird; I call birds
flowers.)

And if you decide to kill somebody,
make it anybody and not somebody;
some men are made of more special, precious
parts: do not kill
if you will
a president or a King
or a man
behind a desk --
these have heavenly longitudes
enlightened attitudes.

If you decide,
take us
who stand and smoke and glower;
we are rusty with sadness and
feverish
with climbing broken ladders.

Take us:
we were never children
like your children.
We do not understand love songs
like your inamorata.

Our faces are cracked linoleum,
cracked through with the heavy, sure
feet of our masters.

We are shot through with carrot tops
and poppyseed and tilted grammar;
we waste days like mad blackbirds
and pray for alcoholic nights.
Our silk-sick human smiles wrap around
us like somebody else's confetti:
we do not even belong to the Party.

We are a scene chalked-out with the
sick white brush of Age.

We smoke, asleep as a dish of figs.
We smoke, dead as fog.

Take us.

A bathtub murder
or something quick and bright; our names
in the papers.

Known, at last, for a moment
to millions of careless and grape-dull eyes
that hold themselves private
to only flicker and flame
at the poor cracker-barrel jibes
of their conceited, pampered correct comedians.

Known, at last, for a moment,
as they will be known
and as you will be known
by an all-gray man on an all-gray horse
who sits and fondles a sword
longer than the night
longer than the mountain's aching backbone
longer than all the cries
that have a-bombed up out of throats
and exploded in a newer, less-planned
land.

We smoke and the clouds do not notice us.
A cat walks by and shakes Shakespeare off of his back.
Tallow, tallow, candle like wax: our spines
are limp and our consciousness burns
guilelessly away
the remaining wick life has
doled out to us.

An old man asked me for a cigarette
and told me his troubles
and this
is what he sad:
that Age was a crime
and that Pity picked up the marbles
and that Hatred picked up the
cash.

He might have been your father
or mine.

He might have been a sex-fiend
or a saint.

But whatever he was,
he was condemned
and we stood in the sun and
smoked
and looked around
in our leisure
to see who was next in
line.



both from the days run away like wild horses over the hills

espn + uefa cup + rogue wave = smile

rogue wave - harmonium

Re: Hum's song "Stars" in Cadillac commercial

this was too good not to share. there's another one out too, but i can't find it on youtube. both ads -- this one, and "hammer" -- are up here.

tracking it down was half as fun as watching the thing. realizing the first source google finds is the first place i should have looked, i know better -- openingbands.com, the community local music portal back in champaign. and these guys are all having similarly crazed reactions (mine was a verbal "holy shit!")...

Re: Hum's song "Stars" in Cadillac commercial
They did make good use of that short clip. Actually gave me shivers a bit.

me too, baby. what a good commercial. what a simple, guilty pleasure. openingbands thread.



until next time,

rock
paper
scissors

End of the Road for Internet Radio?

I don't usually do something like this, but I'm e-mailing everyone because this is personal and kind of a big deal. If you have some free time this afternoon and can catch up on the issue, the links on this page are great resources. I understand that "calling a senator" seems daunting, but it's really not. The link in the first paragraph walks you through step-by-step, and even gives you a little cue card to read from. Thanks! -Ryan

From WOXY's blog, The Futurist, this morning:

We got word here this morning that yesterday afternoon that the US Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. denied webcasters' emergency motion for a stay of the new royalty rates set to crush the Internet broadcasting industry. This means that now the rates will officially go into effect this Sunday, July 15th, and many webcasters are facing retroactive royalty bills of tens of thousands of dollars (millions for the big guys).

First things first – CALL YOUR SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES TODAY! Urge them to support the "Internet Radio Equality Act." If they've already co-sponsored, thank them and tell them to fight to bring it to the floor for an immediate vote. Even if you've already called, call again. If the line is busy, call back. This is our last good chance to make some noise about this before lots (and I mean LOTS) of Internet radio operations go silent.

Where will it go from here? What happens on July 16th? Hard to tell at this point. Webcasters really have three options: cough up the piles of cash required to keep broadcasting and the tens or hundreds of thousands that they owe in back royalties (not an option for most webcasters); not pay and keep broadcasting (which will put you legally in violation of US Copyright Law); or shut it down (which still doesn't relieve you of paying the thousands of dollars in retroactive royalties back to January 1, 2006). It's a difficult choice to be sure. While the fight to overturn the royalty rates will surely continue after July 15th, I think the majority of small webcasters will be unwilling to take the financial and legal risk of staying on-the-air and will simply go silent.

We'll post more updates here at The Futurist as we get em. Also some great resources for the latest news on the situation are KurtHanson.com, SaveNetRadio.org, and for a more in-depth legal analysis check out David Oxenford's excellent Broadcast Law Blog.

--

I just called my two senators and asked them to cosponsor this, and thanked my representative for already cosponsoring but to please bring it to the floor immediately... kind of exciting... do it!!

talking

And then a scholar said, "Speak of Talking."

And he answered, saying:

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;

And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.

And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.

For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words many indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.

The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.

And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.

And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.

In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.

When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.

Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;

For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered

When the color is forgotten and the vessel is no more.

from the prophet by kahlil gibran