zk/diary/2021-01-01.md

%title Ideas for some music

Art songs, poems by Dwale.

But also maybe I want to write a strangely personal analysis á là *Pale Fire* or maybe *House of Leaves*.

From *Face Down in the Leaves*, 2019, Weasel Press.

-----

p.26

'''
The seasonal storms have poured upon the grassy flat,
The leafless stalks abound like thirsty mouths.
Puddles form and soon are swarmed with little fish,
And all the arid life has fled despair.

And here, wrapped in rain, lies the oldest soul,
The changes wrack his bones with painful cold.
His skin is like the sky at night, as many scars
Have marked his hide as there are glinting stars.

At once he feels his lungs become bereft of breath,
His daughter nudges him, to no effect.
She walks away rememb'ring days they stalked the plains,
Within her womb there grows a golden bloom.
'''

```
- u-- u - u -u - u- u
- u- u -u - u- u
u- u - u - u - u - u
- u - u- u - u -u

- u u - u u - u- u
- u- u - u - u- u
- u - u - u - u - u- u
- u - u - u - u- u

- u - u - u -u -u - u
- u- u- u - u -u
- u -u -u- u - u - u
-u - u - u - u- u
```

-----

p.8

'''
Summer, season of hot insomnia,
That much never seems to change at all.
Laying awake in the red desert night,
I shape forest from shade and wait for fall.

Ten years now gone, and who thought I would miss
Cricket songs, cicadas and katydids?
Then I'd gladly have grabbed a big hammer,
Smashed them flat as Pinocchio's conscience.

Testing palisades of clocks and yardsticks,
No advent waits for the restive dreamer.
I bandage my tattered, bitten left hand
And shed the smoke rings on my cloven finger.
'''

-----

*Face down in the leaves*

p.9

'''
We crawl through moist humus like millipedes,
Feasting on dirt and dead, crumbling leaves
While striped skies cycle through violet hues,
While time's kisses take the shape of a bruise.
Endeavors wear the warmer years away,
Reduced at last to heaven's dormant clay.
Alive, I lick brambles until my tongue
Tears, despairing ever being so young.

I think of you. I don't smile when I do.

A moment more and then the day is gone,
In evening grey, we mourn the vanished dawn,
And so on, maybe waiting for someone
To come drag us back to where we belong.
In dreams we interred, with your pure throat bare,
I know your breath, your jasmine-scented air.
Alive, a god to mites and mud-daubers.
The harvestmen scuttle and bob onwards.
'''

-----

*Dirt Garden*

p.5

'''
My garden of foxtails and milk-thistle,
Alive and wild, more so than tended rows
In growth, has died. I killed them a little,
The crab-grass clumps, Datura and nettle.
"Time and time, I commit these small murders,
To whose benefit?" I ask why and wonder,
The scent of sap on scuffed and bloody hands.
If I indwelt some luring scrap of land
Far from here, secluded, my own to call,
I would welcome these same weeds, one and all,
To plant their roots in my warm, earthen roof,
Just they and I, with no need of reproof,
And thank the thorns for making a hale fence,
The compost for being my winter blanket.
'''

-----

## Analysis

### Related

"Winter" by Eric Whitacre, text by Edward Esch - https://ericwhitacre.com/music-catalog/winter

'''
I.
The snow is falling,
sleeping,
whispering,
dreaming of water.

II.
Gold, silver, iron, stone;
pure and gentle, silently melting,
the sun sings softly through the quiet ice.

III.
A single snowflake awakens,
shimmers,
glows,
watches the world with weary eyes,
darkens,
settles,
and disappears.
'''

From "Mid-Winter Songs" by Morten Lauridsen, text by Robert Graves - https://genius.com/albums/Morten-lauridsen/Mid-winter-songs

'''
*Lament for Pasiphaë*

Dying sun, shine warm a little longer!
My eye, dazzled with tears, shall dazzle yours
Conjuring you to shine and not to move
You, sun, and I all afternoon have laboured
Beneath a dewless and oppressive cloud--
A fleece now gilded with our commen grief
That this must be a night without a moon
Dying sun, shine warm a little longer!

Faithless she was not: she was very woman
Smiling with dire impartiality
Sovereign, with heart unmatched, adored of men
Until Spring's cuckoo with bedraggled plumes
Tempted her pity and her truth betrayed
Then she who shone for all resigned her being
And this must be a night without a moon
Dying sun, shine warm a little longer!

*Like Snow*

She, then, like snow in a dark night
Fell secretly. And the world waked
With dazzling of the drowsy eye
So that some muttered 'Too much light,'
And drew the curtains close
Like snow, warmer than fingers feared
And to soil friendly;
Holding the histories of the night
In yet unmelted tracks

*She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep*

She tells her love while half asleep
In the dark hours
With half-words whispered low:

As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And puts out grass and flowers
Despite the snow
Despite the falling snow

*Mid-Winter Waking*

Stirring suddenly from long hibernation
I knew myself once more a poet
Guarded by timeless prinicipalities
Against the worm of death, this hillside haunting;
And presently dared open both my eyes

O gracious, lofty, shone against from under
Back-of-the-mind-far clouds like towers;
And you, sudden warm airs that blow
Before the expected season of new blossom
While sheep still gnaw at roots and lambless go--

Be witness that on waking, this mid-winter
I foudn her hand in mine laid closely
Who hsall watch out the Spring with me
We stared in silence all around us
But found no winter anywhere to see

*Intercession in Late October*

How hard the year dies: no frost yet
On drifts of yellow sand Midas reclines
Fearless of moaning reed or sullen wave
Firm and fragrant still the brambleberries
On ivy-bloom butterflies wag

Spare him a little longer, Crone
For his clean hands and love-submissive heart
'''

Haiku by Issa - https://archive.org/details/autumnwindselect0000koba/page/10/mode/2up

'''
Heedless that the dews
mark the passing of our day ---
we bind ourselves to others

(Mi no ue no tsuyu to mo shirade hodashikeri - p.11 - spring)

O winds of autumn!
Nearer we draw to the Buddha
As the years advance

(Akikaze yo hotoke ni chikaki toshi no hodo - p.11 - autumn)

Floating weeds,
as blow the winds of the floating world ---
drifting and drifting

(Ukigusa ya ukiyo no kaze no iu mama ni - p.18 - spring)

A blessing indeed ---
This snow on the bed-quilt,
This, too, is from the pure land

(Arigata ya fusama no yuki mo Jodo yori - p.46 - winter)

Is this it, then,
My last resting place ---
Five feet of snow!

(Kore ga maa tsui no sumika ka yuki goshaku - p.37 - winter)

On the hill of summer
Stands the slender maiden flower
In a solitary humor

(Natsuyama ya / Hitori kigen no / Ominaeshi - p.65 - summer)

Red dragon-fly ---
He's the one that likes the evening,
Or so it seems.

(Akatombo / Kare mo yubo ga / Suki ja yara - p.65 - autumn)

Heedless that the tolling bell
Marks our own closing day ---
We take this evening's cool

(Mi no ue no kane tomo shirade yusuzumi - p.39 - summer)
'''

Some underlines in *19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei* by Eliot Weinberger, 2016, New Directions Publishing Corporation.