The Good Gray Poet


















Song of Myself
6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;

How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and
women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

The Blue Bouquet

by Octavio Paz (1949), translated by Eliot Weinberger

I WOKE COVERED with sweat. Hot steam rose from the newly sprayed, red-brick pavement. A gray-winged butterfly, dazzled, circled the yellow light. I jumped from my hammock and crossed the room barefoot, careful not to step on some scorpion leaving his hideout for a bit of fresh air. I went to the little window and inhaled the country air. One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous. I returned to the center of the room, emptied water from a jar into a pewter basin, and wet my towel. I rubbed my chest and legs with the soaked cloth, dried myself a little, and, making sure that no bugs were hidden in the folds of my clothes, got dressed. I ran down the green stairway. At the door of the boardinghouse I bumped into the owner, a one-eyed taciturn fellow. Sitting on a wicker stool, he smoked, his eye half closed. In a hoarse voice, he asked:
“Where are you going?”
“To take a walk. It’s too hot.”
“Hmmm—everything’s closed. And no streetlights around here. You’d better stay put.”
I shrugged my shoulders, muttered “back soon,” and plunged into the darkness. At first I couldn’t see anything. I fumbled along the cobblestone street. I lit a cigarette. Suddenly the moon appeared from behind a black cloud, lighting a white wall that was crumbled in places. I stopped, blinded by such whiteness. Wind whistled slightly. I breathed the air of the tamarinds. The night hummed, full of leaves and insects. Crickets bivouacked in the tall grass. I raised my head: up there the stars too had set up camp. I thought that the universe was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket’s saw, the star’s blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken? I threw my cigarette down on the sidewalk. Falling, it drew a shining curve, shooting out brief sparks like a tiny comet.
I walked a long time, slowly. I felt free, secure between the lips that were at that moment speaking me with such happiness. The night was a garden of eyes. As I crossed the street, I heard someone come out of a doorway. I turned around, but could not distinguish anything. I hurried on. A few moments later I heard the dull shuffle of sandals on the hot stone. I didn’t want to turn around, although I felt the shadow getting closer with every step. I tried to run. I couldn’t. Suddenly I stopped short. Before I could defend myself, I felt the point of a knife in my back, and a sweet voice:
“Don’t move, mister, or I’ll stick it in.”
Without turning, I asked:
“What do you want?”
“Your eyes, mister,” answered the soft, almost painful voice.
“My eyes? What do you want with my eyes? Look, I’ve got some money. Not much, but it’s something. I’ll give you everything I have if you let me go. Don’t kill me.”
“Don’t be afraid, mister. I won’t kill you. I’m only going to take your eyes.”
“But why do you want my eyes?” I asked again.
“My girlfriend has this whim. She wants a bouquet of blue eyes. And around here they’re hard to find.”
“My eyes won’t help you. They’re brown, not blue.”
“Don’t try to fool me, mister. I know very well that yours are blue.”
“Don’t take the eyes of a fellow man. I’ll give you something else.”
“Don’t play saint with me,” he said harshly. “Turn around.”
I turned. He was small and fragile. His palm sombrero covered half his face. In his right hand he held a country machete that shone in the moonlight.
“Let me see your face.”
I struck a match and put it close to my face. The brightness made me squint. He opened my eyelids with a firm hand. He couldn’t see very well. Standing on tiptoe, he stared at me intensely. The flame burned my fingers. I dropped it. A silent moment passed.
“Are you convinced now? They’re not blue.”
“Pretty clever, aren’t you?” he answered. “Let’s see. Light another one.”
I struck another match, and put it near my eyes. Grabbing my sleeve, he ordered:
“Kneel down.”
I knelt. With one hand he grabbed me by the hair, pulling my head back. He bent over me, curious and tense, while his matchete slowly dropped until it grazed my eyelids. I closed my eyes.
“Keep them open,” he ordered.
I opened my eyes. The flame burned my lashes. All or a sudden he let me go.
“All right, they’re not blue. Beat it.”
He vanished. I leaned against the wall, my head in my hands. I pulled myself together. Stumbling, falling, trying to get up again. I ran for an hour through the deserted town. When I got to the plaza, I saw the owner of the boardinghouse, still sitting in the front of the door. I went in without saying a word. The next day I left town.

New Directions Publishing Corp.
Established 1936

The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World: A Tale For Children
Gabriel García Márquez (1968)

The first children who saw the dark and slinky bulge approaching through the sea let themselves think it was an enemy ship. Then they saw it had no flags or masts and they thought it was a whale. But when it washed up on the beach, they removed the clumps of seaweed, the jellyfish tentacles, and the remains of fish and flotsam, and only then did they see that it was a drowned man.

They had been playing with him all afternoon, burying him in the sand and digging him up again, when someone chanced to see them and spread the alarm in the village. The men who carried him to the nearest house noticed that he weighed more than any dead man they had ever known, almost as much as a horse, and they said to each other that maybe he'd been floating too long and the water had got into his bones. When they laid him on the floor they said he'd been taller than all other men because there was barely enough room for him in the house, but they thought that maybe the ability to keep on growing after death was part of the nature of certain drowned men. He had the smell of the sea about him and only his shape gave one to suppose that it was the corpse of a human being, because the skin was covered with a crust of mud and scales.

They did not even have to clean off his face to know that the dead man was a stranger. The village was made up of only twenty-odd wooden houses that had stone courtyards with no flowers and which were spread about on the end of a desert like cape. There was so little land that mothers always went about with the fear that the wind would carry off their children and the few dead that the years had caused among them had to be thrown off the cliffs. But the sea was calm and bountiful and all the men fitted into seven boats. So when they found the drowned man they simply had to look at one another to see that they were all there.

La Cité des Enfants Perdus

My poor baby.

Who has stolen the child's dream?

The mad genius Krank
in his evil scheme.

To what vicious depths
will he not descend?

Will the tale turn to tragedy...

or have a happy end?

TV On the Radio - "Golden Age" & "Dancing Choose"

Ulysses

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1833)

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known-cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all-
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil;
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Dragons of Zynth

Dragons of Zynth:
Live on Daytrotter
Live on Dublab

TV On The Radio Rarities

In anticipation of the Sept. 23 release of Dear Science, I've gathered together a collection of links to rare, live, and promotional materials that TV On The Radio have left in their wake over the past few years. With bold defiance of genre, rampant experimentation and a healthy mix of lyrical depth and humor, TVOTR have proven themselves to be one of the most interesting and entertaining bands of the new millennium. The links provided here collect material that frequently reveals the craftsmanship that underlies the layered soundscapes that they create in the studio.

Official Releases
"Dry Drunk Emperor" (2005) - free download offered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
"You Could Be Love" and a vocal demo of "Staring at the Sun" (2004) - available from Touch & Go Records

Early Demos
OK Calculator (2002)
Tunde Adebimpe - The Colophone EP

Promotional Downloads
Live on The Current, MPR: 10/8/2006 - great take of "Dry Drunk Emperor"
Live on KEXP: 10/24/2006 - "Blues From Down Here" from this session is a personal favorite
Live on The Interface, Spinner: 11/2006 - great versions of "Wash the Day" and "Province"
Kyp Malone, Live on Má Fama: 7/24/2007 - fascinating solo cuts by Kyp with a revealing take on "Playhouses"

Other Promotional Material
Xfm, X-posure Live: 2/6/2004
Live on KEXP: 11/6/2004
Live on KCRW: 9/22/2006 - nice session; audio or video
Live on World Cafe, NPR: 12/21/2006 - superlative session and interview
NapsterLive

Because pretension is the worst quality in artists, a healthy dose of humor in the form of the Return To Cookie Mountain Advertising Campaign:
Pass It On
Lyrics
Mr. President
Breakdown City
Street Account
Dance Off

And while I'm at it, a collection of music videos thus far:
Staring at the Sun - from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
Dreams - from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes
Dreams - from Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes (unofficial video)
Modern Romance - from New Health Rock EP (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover)
Wolf Like Me - from Return To Cookie Mountain
Province - from Return Cookie Mountain

Summer Reading List

Read in Honors HUM-105, The History of Great Ideas:

• Leo Tolstoy - "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886)
  
• Plato - "Allegory of the Cave" from The Republic (≈ 360 B.C.)
• Aristotle - "Aristotle on Slavery" from Politics (≈ 330 B.C.)
• Selections from the Rig-Veda (≈ 15th-10th Century B.C.), Upanishads, & the Bhagavad Gita (≈ 8th Century B.C.)
• Asvaghosa - "The Enlightenment of the Buddha: Buddhacarita" (2nd Century A.D.)
  
• Confucius - Selections from The Analects (5th Century B.C.)
• "Moses and the Ten Commandments: Israel at Mount Sinai" from The Torah (Events ≈ 13th Century B.C.)
• "The Night Journey" from The Koran (650)
• The Dalai Lama - "The Ethic of Compassion" from Ethics for the New Millennium (1999)
• Lao-tzu - Selections from the Tao-te Ching (6th Century B.C.)
• Alan Watts - "Beat Zen, Square Zen and Zen" (1958)
• C. S. Lewis - "Meditation in a Toolshed" from God In the Dock (1979)
  
• Niccolò Machiavelli - "The Qualities of the Prince" from The Prince (1513)
• Francis Bacon - "The Four Idols" from Novum Organum (1620)
• Voltaire - Candide: Or, Optimism (1759)
• Jonathan Swift - Gulliver's Travels (1726)
  
• Jonathan Swift - "A Modest Proposal" (1729)
• Margaret Killjoy & Colin Foran - Selections from A Steampunk's Guide to the Apocalypse (2007)
  
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau - "Origin of Civil Society" from The Social Contract (1762)
• Thomas Jefferson - "The Declaration of Independence" (1776)
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton - "Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions" (1848)
• Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - The Communist Manifesto (1848)
• Charles Darwin - "Natural Selection" from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859)
• Stephen Jay Gould - "Nonmoral Nature" (1982)
• William Paley - Selection from Natural Theology (1802)
• Sigmund Freud - "The Oedipus Complex" from The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
• Howard Gardner - "A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences" (1993)
• Frederick Douglass - Selection from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
• Jamaica Kincaid - Selections from A Small Place (1988)

Currently reading for fun:

• Robert Louis Stevenson - Treasure Island (1883)
  
• Herman Melville - Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851)