Love is all, it gives all, and it takes all. -Soren Kierkegaard

The U.S. War on Journalists
By Amy Goodman
May 7, 2008, © truthdig.com
Sami al-Haj is a free man today, after having been imprisoned by the U.S. military for more than six years. His crime: journalism.
Targeting journalists, the Bush administration has engaged in direct assault, intimidation, imprisonment and information blackouts to limit the ability of journalists to do their jobs. The principal target these past seven years has been Al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network based in Doha, Qatar. . . .

¡Felicidades al Real Madrid,
nuevo campeón de España!

Apología del drama
Cuando no se lo confunde con la violencia, hace del fútbol un espectáculo hipnótico
Por Alejandro Caravario
10 de mayo de 2008, © ESPNdeportes.com
BUENOS AIRES -- "Hay que quitarle dramatismo al fútbol", suele decirse con aires de corrección política. Entiendo que es una frase preventiva, que contempla conductas radicales, sobre todo de parte de los hinchas, que derivan en episodios graves. Pero quien apedrea a un árbitro desde la tribuna o el que da una patada asesina porque va perdiendo no están aportando dramatismo sino mera violencia, un componente tóxico que no es exclusivo de las canchas. El dramatismo es otra cosa. Y hace la diferencias, muchas veces, entre un partido interesante, bien jugado, y otro inolvidable. . . .

Es libre el que vive según elige. -Manuel Machado

Book Club of Champions
By Mike Levy
April 11, 2008, © In These Times
Guizhou University sits on the outskirts of Guiyang City, the sleepy capital of China’s poorest province. Undergraduate tuition is the equivalent of $250 per term, books and housing included. A meal of pulled noodles, hot pot or sweet and sour pork runs about $1, while the soup-and-rice special in the dining hall costs a dime. The two most popular courses at the school are Mao Tse Dung Economic Thought and an early morning Kung Fu class that meets on the soccer field. . . .

La raíz de todas las pasiones es el amor. De él nace la tristeza, el gozo, la alegría y la desesperación. -Lope de Vega

They Can’t Go Home Again
With their country ravaged by Bush’s war, Iraqi refugees find the United States indifferent to their plight
By Adam Doster
April 21, 2008, © In These Times
On a rainy March morning, in a drab office complex off one of Metro Detroit’s many expressways, I met Mona and Fadi Rabban. . . .

"I would be nothing without the Russian nineteenth century . . .,"
Camus declared, in 1958, in a letter of homage to Pasternak -- one of
the constellation of magnificent writers whose work, along with the
annals of their tragic destinies, preserved, recovered, discovered in
translation over the past twenty-five years, has made the Russian
twentieth century an event that is (or will prove to be) equally
formative and, it being our century as well, far more importunate,
impinging.

The Russian nineteenth century that changed our souls was an
achievement of prose writers. Its twentieth century has been, mostly,
an achievement of poets -- but not only an achievement in poetry.
About their prose the poets espoused the most passionate opinions: any
ideal of seriousness inevitably seethes with dispraise. Pasternak in
the last decades of his life dismissed as horribly modernist and self-
conscious the splendid, subtle memoiristic prose of his youth (like
Safe Conduct), while proclaiming the novel he was then working on,
Doctor Zhivago, to be the most authentic and complete of all his
writings, beside which his poetry was nothing in comparison. More
typically, the poets were committed to a definition of poetry as an
enterprise of such inherent superiority (the highest aim of
literature, the highest condition of language) that any work in prose
became an inferior venture -- as if prose were always a communication,
a service activity. "Instruction is the nerve of prose," Mandelstam
wrote in an early essay, so that "what may be meaningful to the prose
writer or essayist, the poet finds absolutely meaningless." While
prose writers are obliged to address themselves to the concrete
audience of their contemporaries, poetry as a whole has a more or less
distant, unknown addressee, says Mandelstam: "Exchanging signals with
the planet Mars . . . is a task worthy of a lyric poet."

Tsvetaeva shares this sense of poetry as the apex of literary endeavor
-- which means identifying all great writing, even if prose, as
poetry. "Pushkin was a poet," she concludes her essay "Pushkin and
Pugachev" (1937), and "nowhere was he the poet with such force as in
the 'classical' prose of The Captain's Daughter."

The same would-be paradox with which Tsvetaeva sums up her love for
Pushkin's novella is elaborated by Joseph Brodsky in his essay
prefacing the collected edition (in Russian) of Tsvetaeva's prose:
being great prose, it must be described as "the continuation of poetry
with other means." Like earlier great Russian poets, Brodsky requires
for his definition of poetry a caricatural Other: the slack mental
condition he equates with prose. Assuming a privative standard of
prose, and of the poet's motives for turning to prose ("something
usually dictated by economic considerations, 'dry spells,' or more
rarely by polemical necessity"), in contrast to the most exalted,
prescriptive standard of poetry (whose "true subject" is "absolute
objects and absolute feelings"), it is inevitable that the poet be
regarded as the aristocrat of letters, the prose writer the bourgeois
or plebeian; that -- another of Brodsky's images -- poetry be
aviation, prose the infantry.

Such a definition of poetry is actually a tautology -- as if prose
were identical with the "prosaic." And "prosaic" as a term of
denigration, meaning dull, commonplace, ordinary, tame, is precisely a
Romantic idea. (The OED gives 1813 as its earliest use in this
figurative sense.) In the "defense of poetry" that is one of the
signature themes of the Romantic literatures of Western Europe, poetry
is a form of both language and being: an ideal of intensity, absolute
candor, nobility, heroism.

The republic of letters is, in reality, an aristocracy. And "poet" has
always been a titre de noblesse. But in the Romantic era, the poet's
nobility ceased to be synonymous with superiority as such and acquired
an adversary role: the poet as the avatar of freedom. The Romantics
invented the writer as hero, a figure central to Russian literature
(which does not get under way until the early nineteenth century);
and, as it happened, history made of rhetoric a reality. The great
Russian writers are heroes -- they have no choice if they are to be
great writers -- and Russian literature has continued to breed
Romantic notions of the poet. To the modern Russian poets, poetry
defends nonconformity, freedom, individuality against the social, the
wretched vulgar present, the communal drone. (It is as if prose in its
true state were, finally, the State.) No wonder they go on insisting
on the absoluteness of poetry and its radical difference from prose.

Prose is to Poetry, said Valéry, as walking is to dancing -- Romantic
assumptions about poetry's inherent superiority hardly being confined
to the great Russian poets. For the poet to turn to prose, says
Brodsky, is always a falling off, "like the shift from full gallop to
a trot." The contrast is not just one of velocity, of course, but one
of mass: lyric poetry's compactness versus the sheer extendedness of
prose. (That virtuoso of extended prose, of the art of anti-
laconicism, Gertrude Stein, said that poetry is nouns, prose is verbs.
In other words, the distinctive genius of poetry is naming, that of
prose, to show movement, process, time -- past, present, and future.)
The collected prose of any major poet who has written major prose --
Valéry, Rilke, Brecht, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva -- is far bulkier than
his or her collected poems. There is something equivalent in
literature to the prestige the Romantics conferred on thinness.

That poets regularly produce prose, while prose writers rarely write
poetry, is not, as Brodsky argues, evidence of poetry's superiority.
According to Brodsky, "The poet, in principle, is 'higher' than the
prose writer . . . because a hard-up poet can sit down and compose an
article, whereas in similar straits a prose writer would hardly give
thought to a poem." But the point surely is not that writing poetry is
less well paid than writing prose but that it is special -- the
marginalizing of poetry and its audience; that what was once
considered a normal skill, like playing a musical instrument, now
seems the province of the difficult and the intimidating. Not only
prose writers but cultivated people generally no longer write poetry.
(As poetry is no longer, as a matter of course, something to
memorize.) Modern performance in literature is partly shaped by the
widespread discrediting of the idea of literary virtuosity; by a very
real loss of virtuosity. It now seems utterly extraordinary that
anyone can write brilliant prose in more than one language; we marvel
at a Nabokov, a Beckett, a Cabrera Infante -- but until two centuries
ago such virtuosity would have been taken for granted. So, until
recently, was the ability to write poetry as well as prose.

In the twentieth century, writing poems tends to be a dalliance of a
prose writer's youth (Joyce, Beckett, Nabokov . . . ) or an activity
practiced with the left hand (Borges, Updike . . . ). Being a poet is
assumed to be more than writing poetry, even great poetry: Lawrence
and Brecht, who wrote great poems, are not generally considered great
poets. Being a poet is to define oneself as, to persist (against odds)
in being, only a poet. Thus, the one generally acknowledged instance
in twentieth-century literature of a great prose writer who was also a
great poet, Thomas Hardy, is someone who renounced writing novels in
order to write poetry. (Hardy ceased to be a prose writer. He became a
poet.) In that sense the Romantic notion of the poet, as someone who
has a maximal relation to poetry, has prevailed; and not only among
the modem Russian writers.

An exception is made for criticism, however. The poet who is also a
master practitioner of the critical essay loses no status as a poet;
from Blok to Brodsky, most of the major Russian poets have written
splendid critical prose. Indeed, since the Romantic era, most of the
truly influential critics have been poets: Coleridge, Baudelaire,
Valéry, Eliot. That other forms of prose are more rarely attempted
marks a great difference from the Romantic era. A Goethe or Pushkin or
Leopardi, who wrote both great poetry and great (non-critical) prose,
did not seem odd or presumptuous. But the bifurcation of standards for
prose in succeeding literary generations -- the emergence of a
minority tradition of "art" prose, the ascendancy of illiterate and
para-literate prose -- has made that kind of accomplishment far more
anomalous.

Actually, the frontier between prose and poetry has become more and
more permeable -- unified by the ethos of maximalism characteristic of
the modern artist: to create work that goes as far as it can go. The
standard that seems eminently appropriate to lyric poetry, according
to which poems may be regarded as linguistic artifacts to which
nothing further can be done, now influences much of what is
distinctively modern in prose. Precisely as prose, since Flaubert, has
aspired to some of the intensity, velocity, and lexical inevitability
of poetry, there seems a greater need to shore up the two-party system
in literature, to distinguish prose from poetry, and to oppose them.

Why it is prose, not poetry, that is always on the defensive is that
the party of prose seems at best an ad hoc coalition. How can one not
be suspicious of a label that now encompasses the essay, the memoir,
the novel or short story, the play? Prose is not just a ghostly
category, a state of language defined negatively, by its opposite:
poetry. ("Tout ce qui n' est point prose est vers, et tout ce qui n'
est point vers est prose," as the philosophy teacher in Molière'sLe
Bourgeois Gentilhomme proclaims, so that the bourgeois can discover
that all his life has been -- surprise! -- speaking prose.) Now it is
a catchall for a panoply of literary forms that, in their modern
evolution and high-speed dissolution, one no longer knows how to name.
As a term used to describe what Tsvetaeva wrote that couldn't be
called poetry, "prose" is a relatively recent notion. When essays no
longer seem like what used to be called essays, and long and short
fictions no longer like what used to be called novels and stories, we
call them prose.

Copyright © 2001 Susan Sontag

TE ADORO SAN LORENZO.
¡SOS EL MÁS GRANDE! ESTO ES HISTORIA.
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡OLÉ, OLÉ, OLÉ-----OLÉ, MATADOR¡¡¡¡¡¡¡

Caldo de gallina
ocho tazas de agua.
una gallina grande.
un kilo de patata amarilla.
medio kilo de fideo tallarin.
ocho huevos.
media taza de arverjas.
cebolla china.
ramitas de perejil y hierbabuena,
sal al gusto.

INSTRUCCIONES DE ELABORACIÓN:
en abundante agua cocina las presas de gallina durante aproximadamente dos horas. en realidad debe hervir hasta que la carne este tierna. para comprobarlo, pinchala con un tenedor o cuchillo; si el metal penetra facilmente, es que ya esta a punto. cuando esta bien cocida le agregas las guisantes, las patatas amarillas y el fideo tallarin. tomale el punto de sal. una vez que los fideos y patatas se hayan cocido, sirvela en platos soperos, adornandola con cebollita china finamente picada, o con ramitas de perejil y hierbabuena. en cada plato de caldo, coloca un huevo duro, y ten en cuenta que el exito de este plato radica en que al comensal le toque una buena presa de gallina.

The Too-Long Goodbye
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
May 8, 2008, © The New York Times
After the Tuesday primaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton now has maybe a 2 percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination. But if she pursues her losing battle, she has perhaps a 20 percent chance of costing the Democrats the presidency in the fall. . . .

Ex-Patriots Assistant Sends the N.F.L. Eight Tapes
By GREG BISHOP
May 8, 2008, © The New York Times
A former New England Patriots employee has sent the N.F.L. eight videotapes showing the team recorded play-calling signals by coaches of five opponents in six games between the 2000 and 2002 seasons, in violation of league rules. . . .

Les Fenêtres

Celui qui regarde du dehors à travers une fenêtre ouverte, ne voit jamais autant de choses que celui qui regarde une fenêtre fermée. Il n'est pas d'objet plus profond, plus mystérieux, plus fécond, plus ténébreux, plus éblouissant qu'une fenêtre éclairée d'une chandelle. Ce qu'on peut voir au soleil est toujours moins intéressant que ce qui se passe derrière une vitre. Dans ce trou noir ou lumineux vit la vie, rêve la vie, souffre la vie.

Par-delà des vagues de toits, j'aperçois une femme mûre, ridée déjà, pauvre, toujours penchée sur quelque chose, et qui ne sort jamais. Avec son visage, avec son vêtement, avec son geste, avec presque rien, j'ai refait l'histoire de cette femme, ou plutôt sa légende, et quelquefois je me la raconte à moi-même en pleurant.

Si c'eût été un pauvre vieux homme, j'aurais refait la sienne tout aussi aisément.

Et je me couche, fier d'avoir vécu et souffert dans d'autres que moi-même.

Peut-être me direz-vous: "Es-tu sûr que cette légende soit la vraie?" Qu'importe ce que peut être la réalité placée hors de moi, si elle m'a aidé à vivre, à sentir que je suis et ce que je suis?

-Charles Baudelaire (1821- 1867)

¿Me esperaban?
Piano a piano, paso a paso, victoria a victoria (9 de 10), el Ciclón ya es puntero. Se lo dio vuelta a Gimnasia con una actitud tremenda y un D'Alessandro inspirado.
DIEGO SANTONOVICH
Lunes 05, Mayo 2008, © Olé
Todos los insultos que habrán sonado para D'Alessandro durante el primer tiempo se transformaron en elogios después del descanso. Y lo mismo le cabe a todo San Lorenzo. Porque, pese a que con los resultados puestos sabía que si ganaba era uno de los líderes, se dejó manejar la pelota y el ritmo por Gimnasia. . . .

Merci, Canadien, merci pour le bon travail.

A Prison of Shame, and It’s Ours
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
May 4, 2008, © The New York Times
My Times colleague Barry Bearak was imprisoned by the brutal regime in Zimbabwe last month. Barry was not beaten, but he was infected with scabies while in a bug-infested jail. He was finally brought before a court after four nights in jail and then released. . . .

The All-White Elephant in the Room
By FRANK RICH
May 4, 2008, © The New York Times
BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive. . . .

Con el ánimo por las nubes
"Estamos con una dosis extra de confianza", aseguró Ramón Díaz.
Por: Fernando Gourovich
Viernes 02, Mayo 2008, © Clarín.com
En apenas 72 horas se sacó de encima a los dos superpoderosos: a Boca le ganó por el torneo local y a River en el primer chico copero. Los ánimos están por el cielo. La levantada, desde los números y también desde el nivel de juego, continúa: de los últimos 14 encuentros el equipo ganó 12. . . .

Fe en San Lorenzo
EDUARDO BEJUK
Viernes 02, Mayo 2008, © Olé
Estoy definitivamente loco. Enfermo. Sueño con Adrián levantando la Copa, con un gol sobre la hora a Boca en la semifinal, canto "ya vaaan a veeer" en la ducha, tengo palpitaciones, finjo humildad y decoro ("va a ser duro para los dos, eh", les digo a mis amigos plumapálidas, cuando en realidad por dentro maldigo a todos, desde Bernabé Ferreyra para acá), sumo cábalas, mensajitos de texto y tengo una larga lista de promesas que Diosito mío no me falles que te las cumplo sabés cómo. . . .

Chau número tres

Te dejo con tu vida
tu trabajo
tu gente
con tus puestas de sol
y tus amaneceres.

Sembrando tu confianza
te dejo junto al mundo
derrotando imposibles
segura sin seguro.

Te dejo frente al mar
descifrándote sola
sin mi pregunta a ciegas
sin mi respuesta rota.

Te dejo sin mis dudas
pobres y malheridas
sin mis inmadureces
sin mi veteranía.

Pero tampoco creas
a pie juntillas todo
no creas nunca creas
este falso abandono.

Estaré donde menos
lo esperes
por ejemplo
en un árbol añoso
de oscuros cabeceos.

Estaré en un lejano
horizonte sin horas
en la huella del tacto
en tu sombra y mi sombra.

Estaré repartido
en cuatro o cinco pibes
de esos que vos mirás
y enseguida te siguen.

Y ojalá pueda estar
de tu sueño en la red
esperando tus ojos
y mirándote.

-Mario Benedetti

Much Ado
By Stanley Fish
April 27, 2008
In 1952, when McCarthyism was at its height, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas labeled the investigative techniques of the junior senator from Wisconsin “guilt by association” (Adler v. Board of Education). Douglas added that McCarthyite tactics were “repugnant to our society” because, despite the absence of any overt wrongdoing, the pasts of those attacked were “combed for signs of disloyalty” and for utterances that might be read as “clues to dangerous thoughts.” . . .

Bowling 1, Health Care 0
By ELIZABETH EDWARDS
April 27, 2008, © The New York Times
FOR the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn? . . .

Campaign 1988 Lives!
By Robert Parry
April 24, 2008, © Consortiumnews.com
Hillary Clinton’s 10-point victory in the Pennsylvania primary should put to rest the wishful thinking of Barack Obama’s campaign that the United States has slid painlessly into some “new politics” that can transcend character smears and McCarthyistic tactics, the sort of ugliness that has defined U.S. elections for the past two decades. . . .

A Counterproductive 'War on Terror'
By Ivan Eland
April 23, 2008, © Consortiumnews.com
At the passing of the 25th anniversary of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon—the first large suicide bombing to target Americans—the time is right to ask the perennial question: has the Bush administration’s “war on terror” since 9/11 made Americans safer? . . .

Carter: Hamas is willing to accept Israel as its neighbor
By KARIN LAUB
April 21, 2008, © The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
JERUSALEM -- Former President Carter said Monday that Hamas - the Islamic militant group that has called for the destruction of Israel - is prepared to accept the right of the Jewish state to "live as a neighbor next door in peace." . . .

Vienen los bosteros, y estamos listos.
¡¡¡Dale Dale Dale San Lorenzo!!!

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Clueless in America
By BOB HERBERT
April 22, 2008, © The New York Times
We don’t hear a great deal about education in the presidential campaign. It’s much too serious a topic to compete with such fun stuff as Hillary tossing back a shot of whiskey, or Barack rolling a gutter ball. . . .

When Language Can Hold the Answer
By CHRISTINE KENNEALLY
April 22, 2008, © The New York Times
Faced with pictures of odd clay creatures sporting prominent heads and pointy limbs, students at Carnegie Mellon were asked to identify which “aliens” were friendly and which were not. . . .

In Bush's world, global warming is a mere 'issue'
Gail Collins
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
George W. Bush says we're on track to meet the nation's goals for curbing global warming. . . .

Bon Travail, CANADIEN!!!

Friends... they cherish one another's hopes.
They are kind to one another's dreams.
-Henry David Thoreau

Road Map to Defeat
By BOB HERBERT
April 19, 2008
The Democrats are doing everything they can to blow this presidential election. This is a skill that comes naturally to the party. There is no such thing as a can’t-miss year for the Democrats. They are truly gifted at finding ways to lose. . . .

THE HUMAN ABSTRACT

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor,
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings Peace,
Till the selfish loves increase;
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears;
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head,
And the caterpillar and fly
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat,
And the raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The gods of the earth and sea
Sought through nature to find this tree,
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the human Brain.

-William Blake
____________

Before Summer Rain

Suddenly, from all the green around you,
something-you don't know what-has disappeared;
you feel it creeping closer to the window,
in total silence. From the nearby wood

you hear the urgent whistling of a plover,
reminding you of someone's Saint Jerome:
so much solitude and passion come
from that one voice, whose fierce request the downpour

will grant. The walls, with their ancient portraits, glide
away from us, cautiously, as though
they weren't supposed to hear what we are saying.

And reflected on the faded tapestries now;
the chill, uncertain sunlight of those long
childhood hours when you were so afraid.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

A Lack of Intelligence
By JACOB HEILBRUNN
April 13, 2008, © The New York Times
America’s intelligence services may try to work in secret, but they are increasingly being exposed to public scrutiny. After the 9/11 Commission chronicled their shortcomings in its best-selling 2004 report, the Bush administration and Congress backed sweeping reforms. But as accounts appear about fresh lapses, it doesn’t seem that much has changed. The surprising thing doesn’t seem to be when things go wrong, but when they go right. . . .

The View From My Pew
By DAN BARRY
April 13, 2008, © The New York Times
For many years a framed document adorned the dark-wood stairwell in the house of my wife’s childhood. It was a papal blessing from John XXIII — “Good Pope John” — honoring the 1959 wedding of my mother- and father-in-law and mystically connecting a ceremony in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., with a place far, far away: the Vatican. . . .

Revanche Is Sweet
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
April 13, 2008, © The New York Times
When a candidate for national office uses an unfamiliar word in public, the nation’s working vocabulary is immediately enriched — provided the voters take the trouble to look it up. . . .

Un Beso De Esos

Y te acordarás de noches
ya entrando en invierno
cuando volvíamos solos
vos y yo con las estrellas
y la luna, hablando poco,
sin horizontes, quietos
con ojos en las mansas
curvas de la carretera
desierta, manos y caras
tan cerca, sin saber
pero sabiendo a lo mejor
algo, cómodos juntos,
disfrutando el viaje
por ese nuevo mundo,
esa vida, esos minutos,
esas horas sin contar.
Sin prisa, sin dudas,
sin más que la sencilla
alegría de conocernos.

La verdad, aunque moleste,
es contagiosa. Encuentro
árboles que se agachan
dondequiera que vaya,
contándome sus secretos.
Me empapa la lluvia roja
y azul, de tantos colores.
Sos la isla que imagino.
Oigo arranques inciertos
de un antiguo piano ruso
que se ahoga, deslizando
pobres preludios, callando
hacía un mejor silencio.
Noto cambios en tu piel,
ruidos salen de tus dedos.
Tu mirada es de buho, fija
y luminosa, guiándome
para que siga tu soñar.
Estoy de acuerdo con todo
lo que me enviás. Tu voz
parte la niebla, mis labios
beben golpes de tu tambor,
preciosa jaula de costillas
que vibra con gritos acabados.
Duele la fuerza del bienestar,
de nuestra limpia conexión.

Doy gracias a la misteriosa
clemencia de todo lo santo
que te puso en mi camino.
Podríamos rastrear juntos
si queremos ver lo que hay
adelante, avanzar mano
en mano, boca a boca,
unidos por las tripas,
la memoria, brindando
por el futuro regalado.
Agradezco inundación
del Sí. No cabe miedo
en el repentino paraíso
que alimenta la ternura.
Te quiero lavar, peinar,
y no te secaré. Quiero
que te acostés sobre mí,
que me moje, me derrita
y me hunda la pureza
de tu deseo. Me enfermo,
lo acepto. Llamás, contesto.
No supe hasta que te fuiste,
ni sé ahora que no estás,
cuanto habías querido ver,
cuanto quedó por decir.

Cuando anoche me frenó
tu sabio reconocimiento
del despegue que intenté
negar me preguntaste
si me faltaba algo. Vos,
dije. Te busco bajo
este cielo de invierno,
despierto, pronunciando
nuestro frágil idioma,
lengua propia, palabras
hundidas en los huesos,
sal que me tiñe la boca
con huellas de tu ausencia.
Volé de noche y me asustó
no hallarte. Extraño tu luz,
tu aire que salva y cura.
Tengo barba, te aviso.
Me llena saber de vos
y quiero que lo sepas.
Respiro con vos. Guardo
las caricias que me diste
y te las voy a devolver
cuando llegue la ocasión.

No sé de donde vino
esa calima, esa cara
de ojo por ojo, ese labio
superior. Sigo sin idea
de otra música, añorando
la sombra de tu parpadeo.
Aún te huelo. Cierro cortinas
para ver lo que dejaste.
Ahorco preguntas, respuestas.
En vano intento curar dudas
fingiendo que no importan.
Tu cuerpo es mi mundo,
todo lo que veo. Tu sol
quiero ser, y ponerme
en tus hombros, sentirte
cerrar los ojos en el nido
de nuestro descanso. Adoro
la marcha de tu corazón,
esa corriente de sangre
que marca el compás
de mi averiado andar. Quedan
brasas del inesperado
desvelo. Recuerdo sin falta,
sin pena, sin fin la hermosura
de la sorpresa, la luna apenas
completandose, rodillas frías,
maleta sin hacer, las fotos
y frases colgadas en el espejo,
el despertador mudo, nariz
contra sábana. Tu cuerpo es
mi mundo. Acabáme la vida
con un beso de esos.

-Viggo Mortensen, from Skovbo
____________

Il y a des moments de la vie
ou une sorte de beauté naît
de la multiplicité des ennuis
qui nous assaillent.
-Marcel Proust

The Iraq Hearings, and the Skeptics
April 10, 2008, © The New York Times
Re “Petraeus Urges Halt in Weighing New Cut in Force”:
How many times have we heard that the latest war strategy is successful? The only difference this time is that, according to Gen. David H. Petraeus, lasting success may take many years to achieve. . . .

Bonne Chance Aux Canadiens!

____________

Le temps de vivre

Déjà la vie ardente incline vers le soir,
Respire ta jeunesse,
Le temps est court qui va de la vigne au pressoir,
De l'aube au jour qui baisse.

Garde ton âme ouverte aux parfums d'alentour,
Aux mouvements de l'onde,
Aime l'effort, l'espoir, l'orgueil, aime l'amour,
C'est la chose profonde ;

Combien s'en sont allés de tous les coeurs vivants
Au séjour solitaire,
Sans avoir bu le miel ni respiré le vent
Des matins de la terre,

Combien s'en sont allés qui ce soir sont pareils
Aux racines des ronces,
Et qui n'ont pas goûté la vie où le soleil
Se déploie et s'enfonce !

Ils n'ont pas répandu les essences et l'or
Dont leurs mains étaient pleines,
Les voici maintenant dans cette ombre où l'on dort
Sans rêve et sans haleine.

- Toi, vis, sois innombrable à force de désirs,
De frissons et d'extase,
Penche sur les chemins, où l'homme doit servir,
Ton âme comme un vase ;

Mêlée aux jeux des jours, presse contre ton sein
La vie âpre et farouche ;
Que la joie et l'amour chantent comme un essaim
D'abeilles sur ta bouche.

Et puis regarde fuir, sans regret ni tourment,
Les rives infidèles,
Ayant donné ton coeur et ton consentement
A la nuit éternelle...

-Anna de NOAILLES (1876-1933)
____________

Pido disculpas al maestro Francisco Canaro por confundirme en la fiesta del Centenario de nuestro querido San Lorenzo, donde dije que la siguiente canción era del quemero Homero Manzi. Guido es un boludo descontrolado. Esta es mi versión torturada de la hermosa "Te Quiero", algo alterada por motivos cuervos, seguida por la letra:

TE QUIERO

Te quiero,
como no te quiso nadie,
como nadie te querrá.
Te adoro,
como se adora en la vida,
la mujer que se ha de amar.
Te quiero,
como se quiere a la vida
cuando la vida es beldad;
como se quiere a un hermano;
como se quiere a una madre,
con ese amor sin igual,
como se quiere en la vida
una vez, y nada más.

Hoy te quiero más que ayer,
pero menos que mañana;
y no hay fuerza sobrehumana
que detenga mi querer.
Son muy lindas las caricias,
si nacen del corazón;
y son lindos los amores
que conservan la ilusión.

Y si un querer lo provoca,
es sublime, hasta el dolor,
y las penas, no son penas,
cuando son penas de amor.

Hoy te quiero más que ayer
pero menos que mañana;
mi pasión es azulgrana*,
y reclama tu fervor*.

(Música: Francisco Canaro
Letra: Francisco Canaro)
*(Detalles cuervos, ofrecidos respetuosamente y, rogamos, con la bendición del maestro Canaro)
____________

A BUENOS AIRES

Primogénita ilustre del Plata,
En solar apertura hacia el Este.
Donde atado a tu cinta celeste
Va el gran río color de león;
Bella sangre de prósperas razas
Esclarece tu altivo salvaje
Pinta su nombre sazón.

Arca fuerte de nuestra esperanza.
Fuste insigne de nuestro derecho.
Como el bronce leal sobre el pecho
Asegura al país tu honra fiel.
La genial Libertad, en tu cielo
Fino manto a la patria blasona,
Y eres tú quien le porta en corona
El decoro natal del laurel.

En tu frente, magnífica torre
De la estirpe, tranquila campea
corno amable paloma la idea
De ser grata a los hombres de paz...
esperanza la impulsa y, parece
Cuando así su remonte acaudalas.
Que de cielo le empluma las alas
Aquel soplo pujante y audaz.

Joya humana del mundo dichoso
Que te exalta a su bien venidero.
Como el alba anticipa al lucero
Aun dormida en su pálido tul,
Cada vez que otro día dorado
Te aproxima a la nueva ventura.
Se diría que el sol te inaugura
Sobre abismos más hondos de azul.

Certidumbre de días mejores
La igualdad de los hombres te inicia
En un vasto esplendor de justicia
Sin iglesia, sin sable y sin ley
Gajo vil de ignorancia y miseria
Todavía espinando retoña
Sobre la áspera Cruz de Borgoña
Que trozaste en los tiempos del rey.

-Leopoldo Lugones

Sin nombramiento
06.04.2008, © Mundoazulgrana.com
Son muchos los bares que también derrochan un pedazo de historia en su interior y no son considerados notables. O sí lo son, pero no gozan de la categoría oficial que les dieron a sólo 53. El tradicional Bar San Lorenzo es uno de ellos. A no olvidar . . .

(The Late) M.L. King Still Silenced
By Jeff Cohen
April 4, 2008
Soon after Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday became a federal holiday in 1986, I began prodding mainstream media to cover the dramatic story of King’s last year as he campaigned militantly against U.S. foreign and economic policy. . . .

¡Gracias Marcelo!
-Guido

Para los de Boedo, porque esta noche tambien venimos a festejar con ustedes con los colores puestos y los corazones abiertos:

Boedo y San Juan

De aquí, de Boedo y San Juan,

voy a cantar
un tango triste y sentido...
Porque quiero saludar y recordar,
el barrio donde he nacido...
Dónde quedó la emoción
de mi niñez,
con cielo azul de rayuelas...
¡Barriletes de color,
ilusiones de papel,
que ya el viento se llevó!...
Todo aquello, ¿dónde está,
esquinitas de mi ayer,
de aquí, de Boedo y San Juan?

Hoy, que empiezo a encanecer
y a comprender
lo que es la vida...
¡Qué daría por volver
y por tener
la edad perdida!
Hoy, que empieza el otoñal
anochecer
de mi existencia...
¡Cómo añoro lo que fue
el paisaje tan fugaz
de aquel claro amanecer!...

De aquí, de Boedo y San Juan
salí una vez
y me perdí en la distancia...
¡Quién no sueña en el café
alguna vez,
hacerse un viaje hasta Francia!...
¡Allí mi barrio quedó
lejos de mí,
pero muy cerca de mi alma!
Y en las noches de París
su recuerdo se agrandó
y en diez años no volví...
Y al volver, yo lo encontré
tan cambiado, que lloré
igual que cuando me fui...

Hoy, que empiezo a encanecer
y a comprender
lo que es la vida...
¡Qué daría por volver,
y por tener
la edad perdida!
Hoy, que empieza el otoñal
anochecer
de mi existencia...
¡Cómo añoro lo que fue
el paisaje tan fugaz
de aquel claro amanecer!...
Todo aquello, ¿dónde está,
esquinitas de mi ayer,
de aquí, de Boedo y San Juan?

-Enrique Cadícamo

¡FELÍZ CUMPLEAÑOS A SAN LORENZO DE ALMAGRO!

Todos los que se ven en las fotos y los videos o golpeando o llevando armas - incluso cinturones y todo lo que se pueda usar para dañar a la gente - o celebrando actos de violencia - incluso riendose de los heridos - en cualquier cancha de fútbol: a la cárcel. Y desde ahora en adelante no hay ningún simpatizante en la próxima fecha de ningún partido. Si los visitantes se portan perfectamente bien pueden en la próxima fecha local de ellos ir a su cancha. Punto. Que suframos todos. Si no, no se aprende nada. Viggo.

Orgullo Cuervo
EDUARDO BEJUK
Lunes 31, Marzo 2008, Olé
No somos los más poderosos, ni queremos serlo (porque nuestra raíz está en el pueblo y ahí el poder se concibe de otra forma). . . .

SAN LORENZO, ESE SENTIMIENTO
Por Carlos Poggi
Abril 2008, © El Gráfico
Cuando Los Forzosos y el Padre Lorenzo le daban forma a un club que estaba destinado a hacer historia, el píbe, desde su cuna improvisada en la habitación de la planta alta del Mercado Spinetto, que Don Carlo había alquilado junto con el puesto de venta de carne, lloraba del hambre, algo natural a los 18 meses de vida. No habría de ser la única coincidencia entre Plácido Carlos Poggi, el dueño de aquellas lágrimas, y San Lorenzo. Porque así como la entidad fundada el 1° de abril de 1908 se mudó de Almagro a Boedo, el futuro Don Carlos (jamás usó el Plácido, nombre que no le gustaba ni medio) junto con su papá y su mamá dejaba la vivienda de Balvanera para afincarse en Pavón y Quintino Bocayuva, a tiro de lo que años más tarde sería el Gasómetro. . . .

Viejo ciego

Con un lazarillo llegás por las noches
trayendo las quejas del viejo violín,
y en medio del humo
parece un fantoche
tu rara silueta
de flaco rocín.
Puntual parroquiano tan viejo y tan ciego,
al ir destrenzando tu eterna canción,
ponés en las almas
recuerdos añejos
y un poco de pena mezclás al alcohol.

El día en que se apaguen tus tangos quejumbrosos
tendrá crespones de humo la luz del callejón,
y habrá en los naipes sucios un sello misterioso
y habrá en las almas simples un poco de emoción.

El día en que no se oiga la voz de tu instrumento
cuando dejés los huesos debajo de un portal
los bardos jubilados, sin falso sentimiento
con una "canzonetta" te harán el funeral.

Parecés un verso
del loco Carriego
parecés el alma
del mismo violín.
Puntual parroquiano tan viejo y tan ciego,
tan llena de pena, tan lleno de esplín.

Cuando oigo tus notas
me invade el recuerdo
de aquella muchacha
de tiempos atrás.

A ver, viejo ciego,
tocá un tango lerdo
muy lerdo y muy triste
que quiero llorar.

Música: Sebastián Piana / Cátulo Castillo
Letra: Homero Manzi

Richard Widmark: 1914-2008
Kim Morgan
March 26, 2008 , © The Huffington Post
And just after my tenth (eleventh?) viewing of one of my favorite film noir, that daylight ménage à trois (or rather, ménage à trois by way of intimidation, which only makes the picture all the more fascinating and kinky) -- Road House -- just when I was really wrapping my head around my obsession with both the movie and that hot blonde laughing lunatic of menace and twisted sex appeal, he ups and leaves me.
One of motion pictures greatest actors, an icon of film noir and an intelligent, decent man in real life has left us. Richard Widmark died Monday at the age of 93-years-old. . . .

Ethnic groupthink imperils Democrats
by Gene Lyons
03/24/2008, © The Herald-Standard
Perhaps due to naive Americanism, I've long resisted ethnic groupthink. Judging by this year's Democratic presidential contest, I'm in the minority. But will quarrelsome Democrats throw away the general election? As of today, I'd say the odds favor President McCain. . . .

All things must change to something new, to something strange. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

FREE MARKET HYPOCRITES
by Jim Hightower
March 24, 2008, © JimHightower.com
Here’s today’s provocative question from professor Hightower: Why do so many giant corporations hate the marketplace?
Yes, hate. Oh, sure CEOs loudly proclaim themselves to be free market worshippers, and they piously preach against the cardinal sin of government interference in the awesome workings of the holy marketplace. But after church, these corporate executives slink into the back alleys of devilish government to procure subsidies, regulations, and other favors to satisfy their profit lust. . . .

Happy Easter, Happy Rebirth and Renewal to one and all from
Perceval Press!  

The following, recently published quote from the current pope tells us all we need to know about the damage done for centuries by the hardening of official doctrines of the major religions originating in the Near East - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - with their gradual rejection of the potential for individual spiritual experience and personal transformation in favour of an insistence on our thinking of ourselves as separate from anything we might call God, Goddess, or Holy. An insistence that we believe ourselves separate, therefore, from one another and from the world we live in. This rigid and alienating teaching that the greatest meaning or mystery of life is unknowable and forever out of our reach keeps in place a serious obstacle to our potential for truthful and profound communion with Nature, for interpreting and understanding, in our time, the personal meaning and application of received symbols and metaphors. This emphasis on our seeing ourselves as separate from God is the real stumbling block standing in the way of our individual spiritual journeys. It would doom us to be ignorant of our shared experiences, irresponsible and unconscious in our lives among others:

"People who trust in themselves and in their own merits are, as it were, blinded by their own 'I', and their hearts harden in sin."
-Pope Benedict XVI (Found in USA Today, on Good Friday 2008)

"Mythology is an organization of symbolic images and narratives metaphorical of the possibilities and fulfillment in a given time. Mythology is a metaphor. God, angels, purgatory, these are metaphors."
-Joseph Campbell (In The New York Times, February, 1985.)
____________

"Be what you is, cuz if you be what you ain't, then you ain't what you is."
(Original 19th century epitaph on a grave marker in Boothill Cemetery, Tombstone , Arizona.)
____________

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. -Bertrand Russell
____________

To A Stranger
Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall'd as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.
-Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
____________

Ninguna

Esta puerta se abrió para tu paso.
Este piano tembló con tu canción.
Esta mesa, este espejo y estos cuadros
guardan ecos del eco de tu voz.
Es tan triste vivir entre recuerdos…
Cansa tanto escuchar ese rumor
de la lluvia sutil que llora el tiempo
sobre aquello que quiso el corazón.
No habrá ninguna igual, no habrá ninguna,
ninguna con tu piel ni con tu voz.
Tu piel, magnolia que mojó la luna.
Tu voz, murmullo que entibió el amor.
No habrá ninguna igual, todas murieron
en el momento que dijiste adiós.

Cuando quiero alejarme del pasado,
es inútil… me dice el corazón.
Ese piano, esa mesa y esos cuadros
guardan ecos del eco de tu voz.
En un álbum azul están los versos
que tu ausencia cubrió de soledad.
Es la triste ceniza del recuerdo
nada más que ceniza, nada más…

Música: Raúl Fernández Siro
Letra: Homero Manzi
(Tango -1942)
____________

Nature must be viewed humanely to be viewed at all. That is , her scenes must be associated with one's native place, for instance. She is most significant to a lover. A lover of Nature is preeminently a lover of man. If I have no friend, what is Nature to me ? She ceases to be morally significant. -Thoreau

"It seems to be the notion of some people that I should 'select' my friends--accept and reject and so forth. Love, affection , never selects -- just loves , is just affectionate." -Whitman
____________

God divided beauty and ten carried it away

Soap, henna and silk -- these are three

The plough, the flocks, the swarms of bees

That's six

The sun when it rises on the mountain tops --

That's seven.

The crescent moon, thin as a Christian's knife --

That's eight

With horses and with books we come to ten.

(Berber poem)

An American myth
Our European forefathers didn't come here in search of religious freedom; far from it, says author KEVIN J. HASSON
March 23, 2008, © The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
As Christians celebrate Easter today, it is easy to take for granted some of the religious liberties this country affords. Most people buy into the myth that the Pilgrims came from England in search of religious freedom. They found it in Plymouth Colony, took a break for Thanksgiving dinner, then somebody passed the First Amendment and we all lived happily ever after. . . .

Bush Whacks the Wall of Separation
John Nichols
03/22/2008, © The Nation
Thomas Jefferson observed in his January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists that America was not a church state.
As such, he explained, it was the president's duty to refrain from displays of religious devotion. . . .

Pa' que sepan como soy

Abran cancha... y no se atoren que hay pa' todos y tupido,
tome nota la gilada que hoy da cátedra un varón,
y aunque nunca doy consejos, porque no soy engrupido,
quiero batir mi prontuario... pa' que sepan cómo soy.

No me gusta ser ortiva, ni nací pa' lengua larga,
y aunque me apure la yuta sé callar en la ocasión,
no le doy bola a los grasas que me miran y se amargan,
conservando la distancia sé engrupir con distinción.
En la timba soy ligero, yo nací pa'l escolaso,
no se afane la muñeca cuando sobra calidad,
yo conozco muchos vivos que cayeron en el lazo,
el que liga y se embalurda se deschava sin pensar.

Pa' las pilchas soy de clase
siempre cuido mi figura,
para conquistar ternuras
hay que fingir posición.
Yo conozco bien el fato
para mí el chamuyo es juego
lo bato sencilio y reo
pa' que sepan cómo soy.

Sé muy bien que entre los buscas hay algunos que me chivan,
y me quieren dar la cana por envidia o por rencor,
pero para mí no hay contra, los dejo tragar saliva,
son borrados que no corren, son bagayos de ocasión.
Con guita, cualquiera es vivo, son anzuelos los canarios.
La cuestión es ser un seco y que te llamen señor;
yo la voy de bacanazo, mas si junan mi prontuario
sabrán que soy sin más vueltas... ¡un porteño flor y flor!

Música: Emilio González
Letra: Norberto Aroldi
(tango)

Hillary's Problem with the Truth
March 22, 2008, © Consortiumnews.com
To the dismay of some Hillary Clinton supporters, Consortiumnews.com has noted a disturbing trend in the candidate’s handling of the truth, as she and her advisers have exaggerated her accomplishments and sometimes distorted Barack Obama’s words. . . .

Pedacito de cielo

La casa tenía una reja
pintada con quejas
y cantos de amor.
La noche llenaba de ojeras
la reja, la hiedra
y el viejo balcón...
Recuerdo que entonces reías
si yo te leía
mi verso mejor
y ahora, capricho del tiempo,
leyendo esos versos
¡lloramos los dos!

Los años de la infancia
pasaron, pasaron...
La reja está dormida de tanto silencio
y en aquel pedacito de cielo
se quedó tu alegría y mi amor.
Los años han pasado
terribles, malvados,
dejando esa esperanza que no ha de llegar
y recuerdo tu gesto travieso
después de aquel beso
robado al azar...

Tal vez se enfrió con la brisa
tu cálida risa,
tu límpida voz...
Tal vez escapó a tus ojeras
la reja, la hiedra
y el viejo balcón...
Tus ojos de azúcar quemada
tenían distancias
doradas al sol...
¡Y hoy quieres hallar como entonces
la reja de bronce
temblando de amor!...

Música: Enrique Francini
Letra: Homero Expósito
(vals)

The Royalty Scam
By BILLY BRAGG
March 22, 2008, © The New York Times
LAST week at South by Southwest, the rock music conference held every year in Austin, Tex., the talk in hotel lobbies, coffeeshops and the convention center was dominated by one issue: how do musicians make a living in the age of the Internet? It’s a problem our industry has struggled with in the wake of the rising popularity of sharing mp3 music files. . . .

Heartland: A Leader Is Born
by Nina Rothschild Utne
Mar.-Apr. 2008, © Utne Reader
Van Jones. Even his name has charisma—and it is a name you will be hearing more and more. In his work as a cofounder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, he has been an effective advocate for changing California’s criminal justice system. But it is his eloquent articulation of a national strategy combining social justice and environmentalism that is bringing him broader attention. . . .

Paul Scofield, British Actor, Dies at 86
By BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE
March 21, 2008, © The New York Times
Paul Scofield, the renowned British actor who created the indelible role of Sir Thomas More in Robert Bolt’s “Man for All Seasons” and then recreated it on film in 1966 with an Oscar-winning performance, died on Wednesday near his home in southern England. He was 86. . . .

I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world.
-Stanley Kunitz

Blithe Bush wears failure well
Robert Scheer
March 21, 2008, © Creators Syndicate
That idiotic "what me worry?" look just never leaves the man's visage. Once again, there was our president, presiding over disasters, in part of his making and totally on his watch, grinning with an aplomb that suggested a serious disconnect between his worldview and reality. Be it in his announcement that Iraq is being secured on a day when bombs ripped through that sad land or posed between his treasury secretary and the Federal Reserve chairman to applaud the government's bailout of a failed investment bank, President Bush was the only one inexplicably smiling. . . .

The Malign Magic of Misdirection
By Terry J. Allen
March 4, 2008, © In These Times
It’s the oldest trick in the book. The magician flashes the shiny object to misdirect the audience’s attention from the real action. In the theater of politics and economics, the magic consists in getting people to focus on poor options so as to shift their sight from wider, more fundamental possibilities for reform. Distracted by half-truths and seduced by shortsighted strategies, we squander time, energy and political capital. . . .

GETTING TO THE MEAT OF THE PROBLEM
by Jim Hightower
March 18, 2008, © JimHightower.com
It’s ironic that people who hate government – corporate interests and right-wing ideologues –are now in charge of running it. Not surprisingly, they do a sorry job of it – either because they’re incompetent or they just don’t want government to work. Putting them in charge, however, is more than ironic – it is downright dangerous for the larger public that counts on a vigorous government. . . .

Small Businesses Offer Alternatives to Gang Life
By JAMES FLANIGAN
March 20, 2008, © The New York Times
IN Los Angeles, a corporation that runs several small businesses is demonstrating that the training and discipline of working in a small company can make a big contribution to changing the lives of former gang members. . . .

(from The Dream)

... Love is not love until love's vulnerable.
She slowed to sigh, in that long interval.
A small bird flew in circles where we stood;
The deer came down, out of the dappled wood.
All who remember, doubt. Who calls that strange?
I tossed a stone, and listened to its plunge.
She knew the grammar of least motion, she
Lent me one virtue, and I live thereby.

She held her body steady in the wind;
Our shadows met, and slowly swung around;
She turned the field into a glittering sea;
I played in flame and water like a boy
And I swayed out beyond the white seaform;
Like a wet log, I sang within a flame.
In that last while, eternity's confine,
I came to love, I came into my own

-Theodore Roethke
____________

You shoot at men who are fathers: war is completely stupid.
-Lazare Ponticelli, France's last surviving World War I veteran,
reflecting on his experience of war shortly before his death in Paris, age 110
____________

I Knew a Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in a chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proferred hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant notes to sieze;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).

-Theodore Roethke
____________

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.
-Theodore Roethke

The Iraq War: 5 Years and Counting
March 18, 2008, © The New York Times
To the Editor:
Thank you for including the essays of the “experts on military and foreign affairs” on the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war and occupation (Op-Ed, March 16). The request for what surprises they’ve encountered since the start of the war exposed some of the callous indifference to the cause they once championed so tirelessly. . . .

On The Beach At Night

On the beach, at night,
Stands a child, with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.

Up through the darkness,
While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading,
Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky,
Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east,
Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter;
And nigh at hand, only a very little above,
Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades.

From the beach, the child, holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower, victorious, soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.

Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears;
The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky--shall devour the stars only in
apparition:
Jupiter shall emerge--be patient--watch again another night--the
Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal--all those stars, both silvery and golden, shall
shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again--they
endure;
The vast immortal suns, and the long-enduring pensive moons, shall
again shine.

Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?

Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,
Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades.

-Walt Whitman
____________

do NOT, absolutely NOT give up sex to end any war. life is death,
death is life, war is not without sex. sex is not without war.

Los hinchas de San Lorenzo sufrimos con los de Vélez, y con la familia de Emanuel Álvarez. Rogamos por la paz y la compasión, en el fútbol y en el mundo.
SALVEMOS AL FUTBOL PROPONE Y SUGIERE
A LA CIUDADANÍA: que DENUNCIE todo hecho de violencia en el fútbol (incluido  los manejos fraudulentos de los clubes que generan muchísima violencia). Que venza el temor y denuncie, o recurra a nuestro asesoramiento. O informe para que nosotros denunciemos. . . .

Ya no seré feliz
Ya no seré feliz. Tal vez no importa.
Hay tantas otras cosas en el mundo;
un instante cualquiera es más profundo
y diverso que el mar. La vida es corta
y aunque las horas son tan largas, una
oscura maravilla nos acecha,
la muerte, ese otro mar, esa otra flecha
que nos libra del sol y de la luna
y del amor. La dicha que me diste
y me quitaste debe ser borrada;
lo que era todo tiene que ser nada.
Sólo que me queda el goce de estar triste,
esa vana costumbre que me inclina
al Sur, a cierta puerta, a cierta esquina.
-Jorge Luis Borges

Dominic Monaghan
“Happy Accidents,” A Photography Exhibit
Will run from March 14 to April 27, 2008 at Hamilton-Selway Fine Art in West Hollywood.

Clinton's Child-Health Hype
By Robert Parry
March 17, 2008, © Consortiumnews.com
A centerpiece of Hillary Clinton’s case for her candidacy – that she rebounded from the disaster of her health-care plan in 1994 to help enact a popular state-by-state program for children’s health insurance three years later – looks to be largely a fabrication. . . .

What’s Left
by SCOTT McLEMEE
March 16, 2008
For any American citizen with faith in the possibility of progressive reform, these are exciting times. Of late, the Democratic presidential campaigns have often had the air of revival meetings. It will be no surprise, of course, if the Republicans continue to beat the drums of fear and resentment; one does not abandon an orientation so tried and true. (Social science research shows that the candidate who pushes the fear button most tends to have an advantage.) But who could have expected such a change of temper on the other side? Who knew that the old rhetoric of progress, of facing the future with confidence, still had such appeal? . . .

VERDE EMBELESO

Verde embeleso de la vida humana,
loca esperanza, frenesí dorado,
sueño de los despiertos intrincado,
como de sueños, de tesoros vana;

alma del mundo, senectud lozana,
decrépito verdor imaginado;
el hoy de los dichosos esperado,
y de los desdichados el mañana:

sigan tu sombra en busca de tu día
los que, con verdes vidrios por anteojos,
todo lo ven pintado a su deseo;

que yo, más cuerda en la fortuna mía,
tengo en entrambas manos ambos ojos
y solamente lo que toco veo.

-Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz

House Moves to Stop Media Consolidation Proposal
March 14, 2008, © Commoncause
A bipartisan group of five members of Congress today introduced a Resolution of Disapproval aimed at sending a contentious new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule back to the drawing board. This new rule, passed by the FCC in December despite public objection, would end a 32-year-old ban on radio and television broadcasters owning newspapers in many of the nation’s largest media markets.Take Action . . .

U.N. Urges Iraq to Address Human Rights During Lull
By ERICA GOODE
March 16, 2008, © The New York Times
BAGHDAD — The United Nations on Saturday called on the Iraqi government and the United States to take advantage of a period of reduced attacks to address the human rights problems that plague Iraq, including violence against civilians, abuse of detainees, persecution of women and ethnic minorities, and a lack of food and shelter for displaced people. . . .

Iraq war's cost: Loss of U.S. power, prestige, influence
By Warren P. Strobel
March 15, 2008, © McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — It was a decision that only President Bush had the power to make: At about 9 a.m. on March 19, 2003, in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, he gave the "execute order" to begin Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. . . .

Supreme Court Inc.
By JEFFREY ROSEN
March 16, 2008, © The New York Times
I.The headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, located across from Lafayette Park in Washington, is a limestone structure that looks almost as majestic as the Supreme Court. The similarity is no coincidence: both buildings were designed by the same architect, Cass Gilbert. Lately, however, the affinities between the court and the chamber, a lavishly financed business-advocacy organization, seem to be more than just architectural. . . .

Soft Shoe in Hard Times
By MAUREEN DOWD
March 16, 2008, © The New York Times
Everyone here is flummoxed about why the president is in such a fine mood. . . .

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this. -Paul Robeson

Ferraro, Clintons Love the Race Card
By Matthew Rothschild
March 12, 2008, © The Progressive
Barack Obama scored another impressive victory on Tuesday, crushing Clinton 61% to 37% in Mississippi. . . .

I do not hesitate one second to state clearly and unmistakably: I belong to the American resistance movement which fights against American imperialism, just as the resistance movement fought against Hitler. -Paul Robeson

Election Madness
By Howard Zinn
March 2008 Issue, © The Progressive
There’s a man in Florida who has been writing to me for years (ten pages, handwritten) though I’ve never met him. He tells me the kinds of jobs he has held—security guard, repairman, etc. He has worked all kinds of shifts, night and day, to barely keep his family going. His letters to me have always been angry, railing against our capitalist system for its failure to assure “life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness” for working people. . . .

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness. -Joseph Campbell

¡Viven!
MARIANO DAYAN
Miércoles 12, Marzo 2008, © Olé
El Cuevo estaba en la lona y renació en 16' con un milagro. Tuvo coraje para correr en la altura y festejó como un título con el penal de Aureliano. Histórico. . . .

Llorá, Cuervo
EDUARDO BEJUK
Miércoles 12, Marzo 2008, © Olé
Te juro, Dios lo sabe, que estoy llorando. Loco. Feliz. Lloro. Ah, soy periodista. Qué me importa. Lloro. Corro. Me acuerdo de mi viejo. De mi vieja. De mi hermano. De mis amigos. De todos los que me cargaron antes de tiempo porque, pobres, no entienden nada, esto es San Lorenzo, vos que lo sabés desde la cuna, vos que nunca tendrás el privilegio de vestirte de Cuervo y lees igual, de curioso, para saber por qué un tipo grande llora como un nene. . . .

Love is a friendship set to music. -Joseph Campbell

Follow Bernie Sanders’ Lead
03/11/2008, © The Nation
In countless speeches over the past seven years, Democrats have rightly slammed "the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy" as reckless, unnecessary, and unjust. Yet Senator Bernie Sanders has provided Senate Democrats with ample opportunity to put their money where their mouth is and his colleagues have failed to seize that opportunity. . . .

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. -Joseph Campbell

Nadler Disses Voters on Impeachment
By Ray McGovern
March 11, 2008, © Consortiumnews.com
You would not know it for the news blackout, but New Yorkers of Congressman Jerrold Nadler’s district held a Town Hall/Impeachment Forum on Sunday to encourage Nadler, chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, to begin impeachment proceedings against Vice President Dick Cheney. . . .

Sharing the Pain
By BOB HERBERT
March 11, 2008, © The New York Times
Now that the economic crunch is reaching those near the top of the pyramid, there is finally a sense that the U.S. is facing a real crisis. . . .

Obama and the Bigots
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
March 9, 2008, © The New York Times
The ugliest prejudices in this campaign season are not directly about race. Barack Obama’s skin color may cost him some working-class white voters, but it’s also winning some votes among blacks and among whites eager to signal their open-mindedness. . . .

Missile Defense: "Longest Running Scam" Exposed
Katrina Vanden Heuvel
03/07/2008, © The Nation
In Congress yesterday, Representative John Tierney, Chair of the House National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, convened the first in a series of hearings to examine a US missile defense program that is out of control, straining relations with allies, and renewing an arms race with Russia. . . .

Shiloh
A Requiem

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,
The swallows fly low
O'er the field in clouded days,
The forest-field of Shiloh -
Over the field where April rain
Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain,
Through the pauses of the night -
That followed the Sunday fight
Around the church of Shiloh, -
The church so lone, the log-built one,
That echoed to many a parting groan
And natural prayer
Of dying foemen mingled there -
Foemen at morn, but friends at eve -
Fame or country least their care:
(What like a bullet can undeceive!)
But now they lie low,
While over them the swallows skim,
And all is hushed at Shiloh.
-Herman Melville (1866)

The Next Page: What's going down in Big Cypress Swamp
By Don Hopey
March 09, 2008, © Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
OCHOPEE, Fla. -- I'm following Clyde Butcher into the nearly waist-deep water of the Big Cypress Swamp and trying not to think about that old hiker's joke about the hungry grizzly bear. Yeah, the one with the punch line that goes, "You don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun one other person." . . .

Rock Has Come For Your Daughters
Sandra Fu
March 7, 2008, © The Huffington Post
As the '90s passed, so did the trend toward powerful women in rock, such as Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon or Breeders/Pixies lifer Kim Deal. They were quickly replaced in the mainstream by vacuous vessels like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson, and so the proliferation of young women whose cultural capital was stored in their scantily clad bodies retook the music scene, where they hooked up with MTV's ever-present video hos, Girls Gone Wild, and instantly available internet porn. It is partially in reaction to this sexualized environment that Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls was born. . . .

Furit aestus
Un falco stride nel color di perla:
tutto il cielo si squarcia come un velo.
O brivido su i mari taciturni,
o soffio, indizio del súbito nembo!
O sangue mio come i mari d'estate!
La forza annoda tutte le radici:
sotto la terra sta, nascosta e immensa.
La pietra brilla più d'ogni altra inerzia.

La luce copre abissi di silenzio,
simile ad occhio immobile che celi
moltitudini folli di desiri.
L'Ignoto viene a me, l'Ignoto attendo!
Quel che mi fu da presso, ecco, è lontano.
Quel che vivo mi parve, ecco, ora è spento.
T'amo, o tagliente pietra che su l'erta
brilli pronta a ferire il nudo piede.

Mia dira sete, tu mi sei più cara
che tutte le dolci acque dei ruscelli.
Abita nella mia selvaggia pace
la febbre come dentro le paludi.
Pieno di grida è il riposato petto.
L'ora è giunta, o mia Mèsse, l'ora è giunta!
Terribile nel cuore del meriggio
pesa, o Mèsse, la tua maturità.
- Gabriele D'Annunzio

Eyewitnesss 1825: Pittsburgh honors 'The Nation's Guest'
By Len Barcousky
March 09, 2008, © Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Readers of southwestern Pennsylvania newspapers received regular reports on the progress of the Marquis de Lafayette as he traveled up the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys toward Pittsburgh in the spring of 1825. . . .

As the dust has by now nearly settled on the release of "Eastern Promises" in theatres and on DVD around the world, I take this opportunity to wish the good and honest law enforcement professionals in Russia and in all other countries continued courage and luck. We need you now more than ever in our troubled times. It is to those all too few noble individuals that I dedicated my impersonation of 'Nikolai Luzhin'. Thank you for your brave efforts to serve truth, compassion, and justice. V.M.

And one who is just of his own free will shall not lack for happiness; and he will never come to utter ruin.
-Aeschylus

Losing Iraq and Afghanistan
By Ivan Eland
March 6, 2008, © Consortiumnews.com
Editor’s Note: The Bush administration has succeeded in getting the U.S. press corps and much of the public to focus on minor security improvements in Iraq and on the need for more allied troops in Afghanistan, while missing the bigger picture.
America is an amazing place—one of the wealthiest and freest nations on earth. Yet because Europe has so many more cultures and languages in one contained area, Americans, compared to their European brethren, seem like country bumpkins in their knowledge and understanding of what is happening in the world. . . .

Tan sólo

...Tan sólo una mirada,
una pupila sólo para todas las cosas.
Para la aurora y el ocaso,
para el amor y el odio,
para el amante y el verdugo,
la paloma y la víbora,
la estrella y la luciérnaga.

Solamente unas manos
para el cáliz y el látigo,
para la rosa y para el cacto.
Solamente unas manos
para la arena y el rocío,
para mecer la cuna,
y acariciar la sien del esperado,
y abrir el último agujero.

Una boca tan sólo
para el beso y el grito
y para la oración y la blasfemia.
Para el suspiro y la mentira,
para el perdón
y la condena.

Y tan sólo una sangre
para escuchar el tiempo,
para regar los sueños,
para comprar la herida y la agonía,
y destilar las lágrimas.

Ah, tan sólo una sangre
una boca, unas manos,
una mirada solo.

-Josefina Plá

Sachez avoir tort. Le monde est rempli de gens qui ont raison. C'est pour cela qu'il écoeure.
-Louis Ferdinand Céline

No doing without some ruing. -Sigrid Undset

McCain Channels His Inner Hillary
By FRANK RICH
March 2, 2008, © The New York Times
BEFORE they were sidetracked into a new war against The New York Times, the Rush Limbaugh posse had it right about John McCain. He is a double agent. Some Democrats do admire and like him. So does Jon Stewart, and so do many liberal editorial boards and card-carrying hacks in the mainstream American press. So, in fact, do many at The Times, including myself. As long as I don’t look too hard at the fine print. . . .

La canción desesperada

Emerge tu recuerdo de la noche en que estoy.
El río anuda al mar su lamento obstinado.

Abandonado como los muelles en el alba.
Es la hora de partir, oh abandonado !

Sobre mi corazón llueven frías corolas.
Oh sentina de escombros, feroz cueva de náufragos !

En ti se acumularon las guerras y los vuelos.
De ti alzaron las alas los pájaros del canto.

Todo te lo tragaste, como la lejanía.
Como el mar, como el tiempo. Todo en ti fue naufragio !

Era la alegre hora del asalto y el beso.
La hora del estupor que ardía como un faro.

Ansiedad de piloto, furia de buzo ciego,
turbia embriaguez de amor, todo en ti fue naufragio !

En la infancia de niebla mi alma alada y herida.
Descubridor perdido, todo en ti fue naufragio !

Te ceñiste al dolor, te agarraste al deseo.
Te tumbó la tristeza, todo en ti fue naufragio !

Hice retroceder la muralla de sombra.
anduve más allá del deseo y del acto.

Oh carne, carne mía, mujer que amé y perdí,
a ti en esta hora húmeda, evoco y hago canto.

Como un vaso albergaste la infinita ternura,
y el infinito olvido te trizó como a un vaso.

Era la negra, negra soledad de las islas,
y allí, mujer de amor, me acogieron tus brazos.

Era la sed y el hambre, y tú fuiste la fruta.
Era el duelo y las ruinas, y tú fuiste el milagro.

Ah mujer, no sé cómo pudiste contenerme
en la tierra de tu alma, y en la cruz de tus brazos!

Mi deseo de ti fue el más terrible y corto,
el más revuelto y ebrio, el más tirante y ávido.

Cementerio de besos, aún hay fuego en tus tumbas,
aún los racimos arden picoteados de pájaros.

Oh la boca mordida, oh los besados miembros,
oh los hambrientos dientes, oh los cuerpos trenzados.

Oh la cópula loca de esperanza y esfuerzo
en que nos anudamos y nos desesperamos.

Y la ternura, leve como el agua y la harina.
Y la palabra apenas comenzada en los labios.

Ése fue mi destino y en él viajó mi anhelo,
y en él cayó mi anhelo, todo en ti fue naufragio!

Oh sentina de escombros, en ti todo caía,
qué dolor no exprimiste, qué olas no te ahogaron.

De tumbo en tumbo aún llameaste y cantaste
de pie como un marino en la proa de un barco.

Aún floreciste en cantos, aún rompiste en corrientes.
Oh sentina de escombros, pozo abierto y amargo.

Pálido buzo ciego, desventurado hondero,
descubridor perdido, todo en ti fue naufragio!

Es la hora de partir, la dura y fría hora
que la noche sujeta a todo horario.

El cinturón ruidoso del mar ciñe la costa.
Surgen frías estrellas, emigran negros pájaros.

Abandonado como los muelles en el alba.
Sólo la sombra trémula se retuerce en mis manos.

Ah más allá de todo. Ah más allá de todo.

Es la hora de partir. Oh abandonado !

-Pablo Neruda

Foes of Big Coal fighting uphill battle in West Virginia
'Coal River' by Michael Shnayerson
By Diana Nelson Jones
March 02, 2008, © Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Mountaintop-removal mining and the hard knot of activism against it in Appalachia are this era's great pitched coal-field battle -- much deadlier than the Battles of Blair Mountain and Matewan. . . .

Don't save yourself

Do not remain still
by the side of the road
do not freeze bliss
do not love without desire
don't save yourself now
or ever
      don't save yourself
don't fill with calm
don't keep from the world
your own quiet corner
don't let your eyelids fall
heavy as judgements
don't become lipless
don't sleep when not tired
don't think yourself bloodless
don't judge yourself out of time

but if
      in spite of it all
you can't avoid it
and freeze bliss
and love without desire
and save yourself now
and fill with calm
and keep from the world
your own quiet corner
and let your eyelids fall
heavy as judgements
and dry up without lips
and sleep when not tired
and think yourself bloodless
and judge yourself out of time
and remain still
by the side of the road

and save yourself
     then
do not stay with me.

-Mario Benedetti (translation V.M.)
____________

L'homme et la mer

Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer !
La mer est ton miroir : tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.

Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image ;
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton cœur
Se distrait quelquefois de ta propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.

Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets :
Homme, nul n'a sondé la profondeur de tes abîmes ;
Ô mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets !

Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remords,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
Ô lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables !

-Charles Baudelaire

Man and the Sea

Free man, you will always cherish the sea!
The sea is your mirror; you contemplate your soul
In the infinite unrolling of its billows;
Your mind is an abyss that is no less bitter.

You like to plunge into the bosom of your image;
You embrace it with eyes and arms, and your heart
Is distracted at times from its own clamoring
By the sound of this plaint, wild and untamable.

Both of you are gloomy and reticent:
Man, no one has sounded the depths of your being;
O Sea, no person knows your most hidden riches,
So zealously do you keep your secrets!

Yet for countless ages you have fought each other
Without pity, without remorse,
So fiercely do you love carnage and death,
O eternal fighters, implacable brothers!

—(translation by William Aggeler)
____________

A Form Of Women

I have come far enough
from where I was not before
to have seen the things
looking in at me from through the open door

and have walked tonight
by myself
to see the moonlight
and see it as trees

and shapes more fearful
because I feared
what I did not know
but have wanted to know.

My face is my own, I thought.
But you have seen it
turn into a thousand years.
I watched you cry.

I could not touch you.
I wanted very much to
touch you
but could not.

If it is dark
when this is given to you,
have care for its content
when the moon shines.

My face is my own.
My hands are my own.
My mouth is my own
but I am not.

Moon, moon,
when you leave me alone
all the darkness is
an utter blackness,

a pit of fear,
a stench,
hands unreasonable
never to touch.

But I love you.
Do you love me.
What to say
when you see me.

-Robert Creeley
____________

NO TE SALVES

No te quedes inmóvil
al borde del camino
no congeles el júbilo
no quieras con desgana
no te salves ahora
ni nunca
            no te salves
no te llenes de calma

no reserves del mundo
sólo un rincón tranquilo
no dejes caer los párpados
pesados como juicios

no te quedes sin labios
no te duermas sin sueño
no te pienses sin sangre
no te juzgues sin tiempo

pero si
            pese a todo
no puedes evitarlo
y congelas el júbilo
y quieres con desgana

y te salvas ahora
y te llenas de calma
y reservas del mundo
sólo un rincón tranquilo
y dejas caer los párpados
pesados como juicios
y te secas sin labios
y te duermes sin sueño
y te piensas sin sangre
y te juzgas sin tiempo
y te quedas inmóvil
al borde del camino
y te salvas
            entonces
no te quedes conmigo

-Mario Benedetti
____________

A Psalm of Life

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To my lips I raise this greenness,
This viscous vow of leaves,
This vow-violating earth,
Mother to snowdrops, maples, young oaks.

Look at me—I grow stronger, blinder,
Stooping before these submissive roots;
Can my eyes endure the grandeur
of this thunderous grove?

And the voices of the croaking ones,
They all come together, like drops of mercury,
And the twigs become branches,
And the mist becomes make-believe.

—Osip Emilyevich Mandelstam
(Translation by Stanislav Shvabrin and VM)

When the Terrorists Were 'Our Guys'
By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
February 22, 2008, © Consortiumnews.com
In 1976, when George H.W. Bush was CIA director, the U.S. government tolerated right-wing terrorist cells inside the United States and mostly looked the other way when these killers topped even Palestinian terrorists in spilling blood, including a lethal car bombing in Washington, D.C., according to newly obtained internal government documents. . . .

In Case You Missed These Stories
February 11, 2008, © Consortiumnews.com
Editor’s Note: One shortcoming in our effort to publish more and more articles is that some special stories fly by without getting the attention they deserve. So, periodically, we’ll publish this “in case you missed it” feature with links to stories that we feel fall into this category. . . .

A Campaign to Stop Stoning
Katha Pollitt
02/11/2008, © The Nation
Iranian judges apparently didn't get the memo about the moratorium on stoning issued in 2002 by Ayatollah Shahroudi, head of the judiciary. According to Amnesty International, nine women and two men are currently in prison awaiting this cruel and barbaric punishment, which is usually meted out for sexual transgressions. . . .

Voices Of the Night

Pleasant it was, when woods were green,
And winds were soft and low,
To lie amid some sylvan scene,
Where, the long drooping boughs between
Shadows dark and sunlight sheen
Alternate come and go;

Or where the denser grove receives
No sunlight from above
But the dark foliage interweaves
In one unbroken roof of leaves,
Underneath whose sloping eaves
The shadows hardly move.

Beneath some patriarchal tree
I lay upon the ground;
His hoary arms uplifted he,
And all the broad leaves over me
Clapped their little hands in glee,
With one continuous sound;-

A slumberous sound,-a sound that brings
The feelings of a dream,-
As of innumerable wings,
As, when a bell no longer swings,
Faint the hollow murmur rings
O'er meadow, lake, and stream.

And dreams of that which cannot die,
Bright visions, came to me,
As lapped in thought I used to lie,
And gaze into the summer sky,
Where the sailing clouds went by,
Like ships upon the sea;

Dreams that the soul of youth engage
Ere Fancy has been quelled;
Old legends of the monkish page.
Traditions of the saint and sage,
Tales that have the rime of age,
And chronicles of Eld.

And, loving still these quaint old themes,
Even in the city's throng
I feel the freshness of the streams,
That, crossed by shades and sunny gleams,
Water the green land of dreams,
The holy land of song.

Therefore, at Pentecost, which brings
The Spring, clothed like a bride,
When nestling buds unfold their wings,
And bishop's-caps have golden rings,
Musing upon many things,
I sought the woodlands wide.

The green trees whispered low and mild,
It was a sound of joy!
They were my playmates when a child
And rocked me in their arms so wild!
Still they looked at me and smiled
As if I were a boy;

And ever whispered, mild and low,
"Come, be a child once more!"
And waved their long arms to and fro,
And beckoned solemnly and slow;
O, I could not choose but go
Into the woodlands hoar;

Into the blithe and breathing air,
Into the solemn wood.
Solemn and silent everywhere!
Nature with folded hands seemed there,
Kneeling at her evening prayer!
Like one in prayer I stood.

Before me rose an avenue
Of tall and sombrous pines;
Abroad their fan-like branches grew,
And, where the sunshine darted through
Spread a vapor soft and blue,
In long and sloping lines.

And, falling on my weary brain,
Like a fast-falling shower,
The dreams of youth came back again,
Low lispings of the summer rain,
Dropping on the ripened grain,
As once upon the flower.

Visions of childhood! Stay, O stay!
Ye were so sweet and wild!
And distant voices seemed to say,
"It cannot be! They pass away!
Other themes demand thy lay;
Thou art no more a child!

The land of Song within thee lies,
Watered by living springs;
The lids of Fancy's sleepless eyes
Are gates unto that Paradise;
Holy thoughts, like stars, arise,
Its clouds are angels' wings.

Learn, that henceforth thy song shall be
Not mountains capped with snow,
Nor forests sounding like the sea,
Nor rivers flowing ceaselessly,
Where the woodlands bend to see
The bending heavens below.

There is a forest where the din
Of iron branches sounds!
A mighty river roars between,
And whosoever looks therein,
Sees the heavens all black with sin,-
Sees not depths, nor bounds.

Athwart the swinging branches cast,
Soft rays of sunshine pour;
Then comes the fearful wintry blast;
Our hopes, like withered leaves, fall fast;
Pallid lips say, 'It is past!
We can return no more!

Look, then, into thine heart, and write!
Yes, into Life's deep stream!
All forms of sorrow and delight,
All solemn Voices of the Night,
That can soothe thee, or affright,-
Be these henceforth thy theme.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Meat recall largest in history of U.S.
Action taken after video showed cruel treatment of cattle unable to stand
By Stephen J. Hedges
February 18, 2008, © Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced yesterday that a California meat packing company had launched the recall of 135 million pounds of beef -- the largest meat recall in U.S. history -- following questions about the company's treatment of cattle that were slaughtered even though they could not stand up. . . .

Life Is Fine

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my