Species of the dark #13

A return to a reading of my teenage years, when I was deeply concerned about the hurting of wars; like now, but, well...

[...]
Oh blood and thunder! and oh blood and wounds!
These are but vulgar oaths, as you may deem,
Too gentle reader! and most shocking sounds:
And so they are; yet thus is Glory's dream
Unriddled, and as my true Muse expounds
At present such things, since they are her theme,
So be they her inspirers! Call them Mars,
Bellona, what you will--they mean but wars.

All was prepared--the fire, the sword, the men
To wield them in their terrible array.
The army, like a lion from his den,
March'd forth with nerve and sinews bent to slay,--
A human Hydra, issuing from its fen
To breathe destruction on its winding way,
Whose heads were heroes, which cut off in vain
Immediately in others grew again.

History can only take things in the gross;
But could we know them in detail, perchance
In balancing the profit and the loss,
War's merit it by no means might enhance,
To waste so much gold for a little dross,
As hath been done, mere conquest to advance.
The drying up a single tear has more
Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore.
[...]

Lord Byron, "Don Juan" (VIII)

Specie of the dark #12

An image, and I'm nothing, by Violent Femmes.

I-M-N-O-T-H-I-N
I-M-N-O-T-H-I-N
I'm nothing'
I'm nothin'
Are you a republican or a democrat
A liberal fascist full of crap
I'm nothin'
I'm nothin'
Somebody somewhere might be something
But everybody everywhere
Knows that I'm nothin
Politics and dirty tricks
I got no time for stones and sticks
Politics and dirty tricks
I got no time I'm chasing chicks
I'm nothin'
I'm nothin'
Somebody somewhere might be something
But everybody everywhere
Knows that I'm nothing
I'm nothing but I'm not proud
'Cause being nothing it's not allowed
Are you a gay or are you straight
Do you believe in love
Or do you believe in hate
I'm nothin'
I'm nothin'
Somebody somewhere said he was something
But to everybody everywhere
I'm saying I'm nothing
I'm nothing. I'm like a cloud
I'm free to be alone in a crowd
What's your reality. It's not real to me
What's your anomaly. It is my destiny
I-M-N-O-T-H-I-N
I-M-N-O-T-H-I-N
I'm nothin'
Nothin'
Nothin'
I'm nothing now and I'll be nothing when
This nothing world has it's nothing end

Violent Femmes, "I'm nothing". Play the song with this widget:

Specie of the Dark #7

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me:
I will not, cannot go.

Emily Brontë, "The Night".

Specie of the Dark #6

I shall hate you
Like a dart of singing steel
Shot through still air
At even-tide,
Or solemnly
As pines are sober
When they stand etched
Against the sky.
Hating you shall be a game
Played with cool hands
And slim fingers.
Your heart will yearn
For the lonely splendor
Of the pine tree
While rekindled fires
In my eyes
Shall wound you like swift arrows.
Memory will lay its hands
Upon your breast
And you will understand
My hatred.

Gwendolyn Bennett, "Hatred".

Specie of the Dark #5

Hard seeds of hate I planted
That should by now be grown,—
Rough stalks, and from thick stamens
A poisonous pollen blown,
And odors rank, unbreathable,
From dark corollas thrown!
At dawn from my damp garden
I shook the chilly dew;
The thin boughs locked behind me
That sprang to let me through;
The blossoms slept,—I sought a place
Where nothing lovely grew.
And there, when day was breaking,
I knelt and looked around:
The light was near, the silence
Was palpitant with sound;
I drew my hate from out my breast
And thrust it in the ground.
Oh, ye so fiercely tended,
Ye little seeds of hate!
I bent above your growing
Early and noon and late,
Yet are ye drooped and pitiful,—
I cannot rear ye straight!
The sun seeks out my garden,
No nook is left in shade,
No mist nor mold nor mildew
Endures on any blade,
Sweet rain slants under every bough:
Ye falter, and ye fade.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Blight".

Specie of the Dark #4

The worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain
In the field that is stored with its millions of slain ;
The charnel-grounds widen, to me they belong,
With the vaults of the sepulchre, sculptured and strong.
The tower of ages in fragments is laid,
Moss grows on the stones, and I lurk in its shade ;
And the hand of the giant and heart of the brave
Must turn weak and submit to the worm and the grave.

Daughters of earth, if I happen to meet
Your bloom-plucking fingers and sod-treading feet—
Oh ! turn not away with the shriek of disgust
From the thing you must mate with in darkness and dust.
Your eyes may be flashing in pleasure and pride,
'Neath the crown of a Queen or the wreath of a bride ;
Your lips may be fresh and your cheeks may be fair—
Let a few years pass over, and I shall be there.

Cities of splendour, where palace and gate,
Where the marble of strength and the purple of state ;
Where the mart and arena, the olive and vine,
Once flourished in glory ; oh ! are ye not mine ?
Go look for famed Carthage, and I shall be found
In the desolate ruin and weed-covered mound ;
And the slime of my trailing discovers my home,
'Mid the pillars of Tyre and the temples of Rome.

I am sacredly sheltered and daintily fed
Where the velvet bedecks, and the white lawn is spread ;
I may feast undisturbed, I may dwell and carouse
On the sweetest of lips and the smoothest of brows.
The voice of the sexton, the chink of the spade,
Sound merrily under the willow's dank shade.
They are carnival notes, and I travel with glee
To learn what the churchyard has given to me.

Oh ! the worm, the rich worm, has a noble domain,
For where monarchs are voiceless I revel and reign ;
I delve at my ease and regale where I may ;
None dispute with the worm in his will or his way.
The high and the bright for my feasting must fall—
Youth, Beauty, and Manhood, I prey on ye all :
The Prince and the peasant, the despot and slave ;
All, all must bow down to the worm and the grave.

Eliza Cook, "Song of the worm".

Specie of the Dark #3

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

Emily Dickinson, 650.

Specie of the Dark Nº2 (Again)

A brighter version, to try some brighter appreciation of something darker.



This tango, my fellow reader, oh, this tango... Oh, the high piece of art it is, oh my, so big, so high. This poem --where the parallelism of a lifetime as a (theatre) play in drunkenness, coming from a poetic character sinking his pain of love in alcohol- have immense appreciation here in Argentina. I don't know if it's needed to be argentinian to fully appreciate it, but here's a translation that don't make justice to the amazing treatment of the language on the original, and down below there's a gadget to play it.

My heart, bandoneon, is hurt
by your maliciously groaning curse.
Your tears of rum take me
to the deep underworld
where the mud is in upheaval.

I know, don't tell me! You are right!
Life is an absurd wound,
and it is all so fleeting
that it is a drunkenness, my confession,
nothing more!

Tell me of my sentence,
tell me your failure,
don't you see the pain that has wounded me?
And speak simply to me
about that absent love
in search of a fragment of oblivion.
I know that it harms me!
I know that I hurt you
crying my wine sermon.
But it's the old love
that trembles, bandoneon,
and searches in a liquor that stuns
the drunkenness, that at the end
finishes the show,
drawing a curtain over the heart.

A little bit of remembrance and nausea
is dripping with your slow moan.
Your liquor dizzies and prods
the little heard on the left of the chest
with the strain of the last drunkenness.
Close the window;
the sun burns
its slow snail of sleep.
Don't you see that I come from a land
of oblivion, forever gray,
behind the alcohol?...

Cátulo Castillo, "The last drunkenness" (La última curda, Argentinian tango).
A. Troilo orchestra, R. Goyeneche singing; click to play: