Poetry
aardvarchaeology | June 17, 2007Here's a translation of one of my first brushes with absurdism, Swedish rocker Eddie Meduza's 70s song "Va den grön så får du en ny" (original lyrics here with ugly popups).
If It Was Green, Then I'll Replace It
By Eddie Meduza
I'd bought myself a vacuum flask
In a store down in Målilla
It was real pretty until I poured coffee into it
But then it broke into pieces
So I called Mr. Chin
He's the man with the store
(You see, he's got a really big chin)
And I told him, my flask is busted
Do they come with a guarantee?
Yeah, said Mr. Chin, gravelly and really slowly
He was speaking really slowly…
aardvarchaeology | June 12, 2007I am almost completely unable to enjoy Chinese pop music. In fact, I can barely stand listening to it: I find it saccharine-yet-bland and silly and clichéd. But there's one aspect of it that's kind of fun, though I can only appreciate it with the help of an interpreter. Chinese musicians record cover versions of a lot of Western pop hits, and the lyrics they write are amazing. When compared to the originals, that is.
Here are snippets of two late-70s song lyrics, translated by my wife from Chinese to Swedish and by myself from Swedish to English.
The birds are singing and cawing
Telling me to…
jlynch | April 13, 2007Requiem
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.
Kurt Vonnegut
jlynch | April 6, 2007
Ode to a Trilobite
Frank P. Zeidler (1935)
The stone mason who split the limestone block
With lucky stroke of hammer left quite whole
The imprint that you gave Niagara rock
When you met death in open sea or shoal.
He little thought, that workman did, when he
Began to pound the stone to make it square
That ancient bodies of Silurian time
Did die to make a stony bottomed sea,
While later years exposed to open air
The creatures that had died, as massive lime.
I found your mark before the weather wore
The stone too smooth; I cut you from your grave;
I took you home to swell my fossil store…
jlynch | March 8, 2007
Ode to a Trilobite
Timothy A. Conrad (1840)
Thou large-eyed mummy of the ancient rocks,
The Niobe of ocean, couldst thou tell
Of thine own times, and of the earthquake shocks
Which tore the ocean-bed where thou didst dwell;
What dream of wild Romance would then compare
With the strange truths thy history might unfold?
How would Geologists confounded, stare
To find their glittering theories were not gold?
Methinks I see thee gazing from the stone
With those great eyes, and smiling as in scorn
Of notions and of systems which have grown
From relics of the time when thou wert born.
Thou ne'er…
chaoticutopia | March 8, 2007Sticking to this week's theme of the surreal and subjective, here's a poem that I wrote, late last night:
Too Many Breaths
Burning through too much stuff
Organizing too many projects
Too many ideas floating in my head
Yet
I breathe
Working too much of the time
Commuting too many miles
Too many people in this land
Yet
I breathe
Using too much of the oil
Cutting down too many mountains
Too much consumption to keep on
Yet
I breathe
Learning too much to remember
Finding too many possibilities
Too much knowledge for one poem
Yet
I breathe
Understanding we're too insignificant
Seeing too many…
aardvarchaeology | March 8, 2007I just realised that the lyrics of this traditional Swedish children's song read just like the recounting of a hallucinogen experience or a psychotic episode. Imagine a goggle-eyed grizzled old hippie buttonholing you at a vegetarian restaurant and forcing you, giggling, to listen to the story of his life-changing episode back in '68.
It was really funny
I've gotta laugh
This triangular old man came in
He wore wooden clogs and a birch-bark jacket
And a hat trimmed with sausage skin
He sat down on a stool in the kitchen
And pulled a harmonica out of his pocket
And started playing so everything…
aardvarchaeology | March 7, 2007 Gruff Rhys, front man of trippy Welsh popsters The Super Furry Animals, released his second solo album back in January, Candylion. (Here's the promo site.) Its mellow quirky tunes will appeal to fans of the Furries. I particularly like the title track, "Beacon in the Darkness" and the hummable "The Court of King Arthur".
I keep an eye open for pop lyrics having to do with archaeology. Here and here, for example, are two songs about bog bodies. And on Candylion we find the following fine example, indicating that Mr Rhys has been watching Time Team:
The Court of King Arthur
By Gruff Rhys…
jlynch | March 6, 2007Back in July I reported on the "ID Arts Initiative" - an attempt by Access Research Network to establish the relevance of their particular brand of creationism to the fine arts. Well now they have a website and a blog featuring some fairly horrific poetry. Witness "GIGANTOPITHECUS, WE HARDLY KNEW YE: IN SEARCH OF MISSING LINKS" by
Robert Voss (shouting caps in the original):
BUILT UP FROM A SKULLCAP AND ORANGUTAN'S JAW,
IN MANY OLD TEXTBOOKS, PILTDOWN MAN WE ALL SAW,
TEETH FILED TO LOOK HUMAN, AND STAINED TO LOOK OLD,
HIS LESSON FOR US: DON'T BELIEVE ALL YOU'RE TOLD.
TEN YEARS LATER,…
jlynch | March 2, 2007
The Lay of the Trilobite
May Kendall (1861 - 1943)
A mountain's giddy height I sought,
Because I could not find
Sufficient vague and mighty thought
To fill my mighty mind;
And as I wandered ill at ease,
There chanced upon my sight
A native of Silurian seas,
An ancient Trilobite.
So calm, so peacefully he lay,
I watched him even with tears:
I thought of Monads far away
In the forgotten years.
How wonderful it seemed and right,
The providential plan,
That he should be a Trilobite,
And I should be a Man!
And then, quite natural and free
Out of his rocky bed,
That Trilobite he spoke to me
And…
jlynch | February 16, 2007
For All
Ah to be alive
on a mid-September morn
fording a stream
barefoot, pants rolled up,
holding boots, pack on,
sunshine, ice in the shallows,
northern rockies.
Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters
stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes
cold nose dripping
singing inside
creek music, heart music,
smell of sun on gravel.
I pledge allegiance
I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
Gary Snyder
As today sees me in San Francisco for the AAAS meeting, and…
chaoticutopia | February 14, 2007
Last Valentine's Day, I posted a few fictional pieces describing different aspects of romantic relationships-a tender sonnet for the hopelessly romantic and a wicked horror story for the bitter and jaded.
This year, I seem to be running behind. So, rather than highlight the extremes of love, I thought I'd go for the ambiguous. The following poem is a recent work of mine, and I haven't had time to polish it up as I would like, so it is a little rougher than usual. It captures the idea I was looking for... that a relationship of any sort requires some give and take, some yielding, in order…
jlynch | February 9, 2007
Long seeking it through others,
I was far from reaching it.
Now I go by myself;
I meet it everywhere.
It is just I myself,
And I am not itself.
Understanding this way,
I can be as I am.
Tung-Shan (806-869)
aardvarchaeology | February 3, 2007
For about a week, the relentless riff from ZZ Top's 1973 hit song "La Grange" has been playing in my head. Such a great, great song, not least the powerful and exact drumming. And the vocals are really funny, with the singer sounding like a right old lecher.
So I got the album, Tres Hombres, and read up a little on ZZ Top. Like the Stones, they're the kind of great band you never think to get any records from, because they're all over rock radio anyway.
I was kind of stunned to find that the trio's members were 23, 24 and 24 in 1973. They must have looked pretty incongruous, three fresh-…
jlynch | February 2, 2007
Buddha in Glory
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
Rainer Maria Rilke
jlynch | January 25, 2007
Widgeon
For Paul Muldoon
It had been badly shot.
While he was plucking it
he found, he says, the voice box -
like a flute stop
in the broken windpipe -
and blew upon it
unexpectedly
his own small widgeon cries.
Seamus Heaney
jlynch | January 18, 2007
The Dismantled Ship
In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay,
On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore,
An old, dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, disabled, done,
After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd up at last and
hawser'd tight,
Lies rusting, mouldering.
Walt Whitman (1888)
jlynch | January 12, 2007
The Moment
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It…
jlynch | January 5, 2007
The Thought Fox
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Besides the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,…
jlynch | December 29, 2006
Memento
And you are waiting, expecting that one thing,
which infinitely enriches your life;
the mighty, tremendous,
the awakening of the stones,
depths, turned to you.
Dawning in the bookshelves
are volumes in gold and brown;
and you think of encompassed lands
of images, of the garments of
women lost again.
And suddenly you realise: that was it.
You rise to your feet and before you stands
a past year's
fear and guise and prayer.
Ranier Maria Rilke
Rilke died 29th December 1926,