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Prologue: Dead Boy
Radiant evening, water rises
in the ditch, a woman with child
walks in the field.
I remember you, Narcissus; you were
the color of the evening when the bells
tolled the knell.
I.) Returning to the Village
...
Midday chimes ring
festive in my village.
Yet what silence the bell
casts over the fields!
You haven’t changed, bell;
in awe I return to your voice.
“Time does not move:
behold the father’s smiles
in the children’s eyes
like rain on the branches.”
translation by Steven Sartarelli
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II.) The Day of My Death
In a city, [...]
along an avenue of lindens
when the leaves change
color in spring,
I shall fall down dead
under a sun burning
blond and high
and close my eyes,
leaving the sky to its light.
Under a linden warm with green
I shall fall into the black
of death, which the sun
and lindens will dispel.
Beautiful boys
will run in the light
that I’ve just left,
flying out of the schools,
curls falling onto their brows.
I shall be still young
in a bright shirt
my sweet hair streaming
in the bitter dust.
I shall be warm,
and a boy running down
the asphalt avenue
shall lay a hand upon
my crystal lap.
translation by Steven Sartarelli
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III.) 'I am a Force of the Past'
“…
I am a force of the Past.
My love lies only in tradition.
I come from the ruins, the churches,
the altarpieces, the abandoned
villages [...] where my brothers once lived.
I wander [...] like a dog without a master.
Or I see the twilights, the mornings, [...]
as the first acts of Posthistory
to which I bear witness, by arbitrary
birthright, from the outer edge
of some buried age. Monstrous is the man
born of a dead woman’s womb.
And I, a fetus now grown, roam about
more modern than any modern man,
in search of brothers no longer alive…”
translation by Steven Sartarelli
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IV.) 'These are the Last Days'
Survival: that too. It’s the old landscape, rediscovered
up here, where, for us, it’s more eternal.
These are the last days, or - which amounts to the same - the last years,
of plowed fields with tree trunks in rows over ditches,
of white mud around mulberry trees just pruned,
of embankments still green over dry canals.
Even here, where a pagan was once Christian, and with him
his land, his cultivated field…
A new age, with it dark years of barbarism,
its Romanesque Aprils, shall reduce all this
to nothingness, and so we may weep for it.
How can those who will not know this surviving earth
ever understand us? Or say who we once were?
Yet it is we who must understand them,
that they might be born, however lost to these bright days,
these magnificent winter stillnesses,
in the sweet, tempestuous South, the shadow-covered North…
Epilogue: Narcissus Dancing?
…
I arose amid violets
at the day’s first light,
sang a song forgotten
in the unchanging night.
I said to myself: “Narcissus!”
and a spirit with my face
darkened the grass
with the glow of his curls.
translation by Steven Sartarelli
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6. |
Benedictions (Live)
04:36
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I.
Between the coffee and the coffin, before I admit I’m alive,
I apologize to God and pray to you--
my favorite fractured prophet,
patron saint of impatience,
this is a eulogy
built of what we have left of you.
I’m not sure how to grieve you
when your obituary reads in fractures
Reducing our temple to questions.
I cannot help but fear death
not knowing where you went
or holding any promise but a crucifix.
I’ll never call you sacrifice
Never let your death be something lovely
I only want to know
for the love of God
why you felt you had to go.
I cannot tell you
I am hurting less
I cannot tell you
I am feeling at all
I can only tell you
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
I’m sorry.
II.
Between the rafters in the attic,
before I admit how to die,
I apologize to God for leaving you,
my favorite lonely poet,
cradle to grave Gabriel,
this is an apology
which is all I can offer you.
I apologize for leaving so soon,
but the sanctuary felt like hell
pressing collarbones into concrete.
I have not breathed a full breath
since I stepped hesitant
into a congregation of fists.
But never call me sacrifice
Never let my death be something lovely
I only want to know
all the love of God
I was never allowed to know.
I cannot tell you
I am somewhere better
I cannot tell you
I am anywhere at all
I can only tell you
I’m sorry
I’m sorry
I’m sorry.
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7. |
Text ⇆ Trace (Interlude)
00:38
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8. |
Ismael
03:52
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10. |
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