I've Looked So Much....

Youth Lagoon - July (2011: The Year of Hibernation)

memory is more neat

when it disappears

By Lena Retamoso

(Translated by the author)

Panda Bear - Ponytail (2007: Person Pitch)

“I’ve looked on beauty so much

that my vision overflows with it.

The body’s lines. Red lips. Sensual limbs.

Hair as though stolen from Greek statues,

always lovely, even uncombed,

and falling slightly over pale foreheads.

Figures of love, as my poetry desired them

.... in the nights when I was young,

encountered secretly in those nights.”

By Konstantinos Kavafis (Greece, 1863-1933)

Poem: I’ve Looked So Much.... (Translated by Edmund Keeley / Philip Sherrard)

"This song makes me feel like being showered under thousands of shooting stars."

 - Lena Retamoso

Green Mountain

Björk - Unravel (1997: Homogenic)

To have, long between my hands, your shadow

Facing the sun

Your memory pursues me or drags me, harassing,

Without exit without stopping without refuge without a word without air

Time becomes a house of ill fame

In longitudinal felling of trees where your image dissolves in smoke

The bitterest taste that man’s history records

The dying brilliance and the shadow

The opening and closing of doors leading to the enchanted dominion of your name

Where everything perishes

An immense barren field bitten by weeds and interpretable stones

A hand on a severed head

Feet

Your brow

Your flood shoulder

Your downpour belly and lightning thigh

A stone turning another that rises and sleeps standing

An enchanted horse a stone shrub a stone bed

A stone mouth and that shimmering which encircles me sometimes

To explain myself according to rules no longer observed the

         mysterious prolongations of your hands which turn back

         with the menacing attitude of a modest room with a red

         curtain opening on to hell

Sheets night sky

Sun air rain wind

Only the wind which carries your name

By César Moro (Peru, 1903-1956)

Poem: Battle at the Edge of a Cataract

From the book of poetry: La tortuga ecuestre (Translated by Philip Ward)

Julianna Barwick - White Flag (2011: The Magic Place)

       “You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain; 

        I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care. 

      As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown, 

       I have a world apart that is not among men.”

By Li Bai (China, 701-762)

Poem: Green Mountain (Translated by Kenneth Hope)

Intimate Voices

Philip Glass - String Quartet No. 3 (Mishima): Mishima Closing (1985: Kronos Quartet)

“    It is an enormous spider that now cannot move;

a colorless spider, whose body,

a head and an abdomen, bleeds. 

    Today I watched it up close. With what effort

toward every side

it extended its innumerable legs.

And I have thought about its invisible eyes,

the spider’s fatal pilots.

    It is a spider that tremored caught

on the edge of a rock;

abdomen on one side,

head on the other. 

    With so many legs the poor thing, and still unable

to free itself. And on seeing it

confounded by its fix

today, I have felt such sorrow for that traveler. 

    It is an enormous spider, impeded by

its abdomen from following its head.

And I have thought about its eyes

and about its numerous legs…

And I have felt such sorrow for that traveler!”

By César Vallejo (Peru, 1892-1938)

From the poem: The Spider (Translated by Clayton Eshleman)

RatTail - Gasmask (2009: Demo)

3

To all, I closed my heart without wanting to.

I have lost the little key.

Perhaps it has fallen in a channel

Or it floats, confused,

In the river that separates human beings.

But I am not afraid:

Maybe one day you’ll find it

Opening in a birthday

A surprise.

By Luis Hernández (Peru, 1941-1977)

From the poem: Intimate Voices (Translated by Lena Retamoso)

Waking Dream

Charles Trénet - La Mer (1946: La Mer)

“I dream with my eyes

open and always, by day

and night, I dream.

And over the foam

of the wide and restless sea,

and through the spiraling

sands of the desert,

upon a mighty lion,

monarch of my breast,

blithely astride

its docile neck,

always I see, floating,

a boy, who calls to me!”

By José Martí (Cuba, 1853-1895)

From the poem: Waking Dream

Ennio Morricone - E la donna creò l'uomo (1964: ...e la donna creò l'uomo)

Gentle willow

almost gold, almost amber,

almost daylight

By José Juan Tablada (Mexico, 1871-1945)

From the poem: Willow (Translated by Roberto Tejada)

Five in the Afternoon

Goran Bregović/Traditional - Ederlezi (1988: Dom za vešanje/Time of the Gypsies)

I. Cogida and Death

At five in the afternoon. 

It was exactly five in the afternoon. 

A boy brought the white sheet 

at five in the afternoon. 

A frail of lime ready prepared 

at five in the afternoon. 

The rest was death, and death alone 

at five in the afternoon. 

The wind carried away the cotton wool 

at five in the afternoon. 

And the oxide scattered crystal and nickel 

at five in the afternoon. 

Now the dove and the leopard wrestle 

at five in the afternoon. 

And a thigh with a desolate horn 

at five in the afternoon. 

The bass-string struck up 

at five in the afternoon. 

Arsenic bells and smoke 

at five in the afternoon. 

Groups of silence in the corners 

at five in the afternoon. 

And the bull alone with a high heart! 

At five in the afternoon. 

When the sweat of snow was coming 

at five in the afternoon, 

when the bull ring was covered in iodine 

at five in the afternoon. 

death laid eggs in the wound 

at five in the afternoon. 

At five in the afternoon. 

Exactly at five o'clock in the afternoon. 

A coffin on wheels is his bed 

at five in the afternoon. 

Bones and flutes resound in his ears 

at five in the afternoon. 

Now the bull was bellowing through his forehead 

at five in the afternoon. 

The room was iridescent with agony 

at five in the afternoon. 

In the distance the gangrene now comes 

at five in the afternoon. 

Horn of the lily through green groins 

at five in the afternoon. 

The wounds were burning like suns 

at five in the afternoon, 

and the crowd was breaking the windows 

at five in the afternoon. 

At five in the afternoon. 

Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! 

It was five by all the clocks! 

It was five in the shade of the afternoon! 

By Federico García Lorca (Spain, 1898–1936)

From the poem: Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

Nymph - Snow Song (2010: Nymph)

CXXIII

I BREATHED enough to learn the trick,  

  And now, removed from air,  

I simulate the breath so well,  

  That one, to be quite sure  

   

The lungs are stirless, must descend          

  Among the cunning cells,  

And touch the pantomime himself.  

  How cool the bellows feels!

By Emily Dickinson (USA,1830–86)

From the poem: Time and Eternity