Away

[rejectomorph]

Outside all afternoon. There are only a couple of more days to soak up sunlight before the temperature starts sliding back down and the clouds return. If I'm to be frozen by that mass of Siberian air said to be headed this way, I want to absorb as much heat as possible before it arrives. The birds probably feel the same way. The afternoon was full of them, though they were mostly quiet. They were busy eating, eating, eating. Maybe I should take that as a sign.


I came across a website about an obscure Mexican-American composer named Cenobio Hernandez who died in 1950. Many years later his grandsons discovered a box full of music he had written, most of it dating from the decade of 1940-1950. A few brief clips of a half dozen of his compositions are featured on the website, as played on the piano by his grandson Ricky Hernandez. It's very odd listening to this music that was hidden away for so many years, and the strangeness is intensified by the fragmentary nature of the clips. I've been listening to them for half an hour, and I'm pretty sure they've pulled me through a time warp and into a dim taverna on a dusty San Antonio back street more than half a century ago. I'm not sure I want to come back.




Sunday Verse

Taking a Walk with You

by Mark Strand


Lacking the wit and depth
That inform our dreams'
Bright landscapes,
This countryside
Through which we walk
Is no less beautiful
For being only what it seems.
Rising from the dyed
Pool of its shade,
The tree we lean against
Was never made to stand
For something else,
Let alone ourselves.
Nor were these fields
And gullies planned
With us in mind.
We live unsettled lives
And stay in a place
Only long enough to find
We don't belong.
Even the clouds, forming
Noiselessly overhead,
Are cloudy without
Resembling us and, storming
The vacant air,
Don't take into account
Our present loneliness.
And yet, why should we care?
Already we are walking off
As if to say,
We are not here,
We've always been away.

Comments

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

I really like today's poem--a reminder that we are just passing through.