Der Ring des Nibelungen - Richard Wagner

 

The Mountain Wreath - Christmas Eve

 (Gun-shots are heard below. Vladika Danilo jumps on
his horse and rides off; and, lo! down the field are five
or six hundred men; he spurs on his horse to reach them.
On his arrival they gather round him. The Vladika, seeing
five of the Martinovitch family, Vuk Borilovitch, and three
of his servants blood-sprinkled, begins to question them.)

 

VLADIKA DANILO

Relate me now! Say what hath taken place;
What kind of men are ye - or wolves or foxes?
 

VOIVODA BATRITCH

The news is nought but good, my lord!
We bow the knee to God and to the Holy Child!
But first of all we give thee Christmas Greetings,
To thee and to all Montenegro!
We brothers five of clan Martinovitch,
And servants three of thine - most trusty three -
With Borilovitch-Vuk, the falcon-hearted,
Did last night fall a-fighting with the Turks.
All those who heard ran fast unto our help;
As quick as water fighters ran together; -
But why do I spin out the story? -
Though broad enough Cettigné’s Plain,
No single seeing eye, no tongue of Turk,
Escap’d to tell his tale another day!
We put them all unto the sword,
All those who would not be baptiz’d;
But who paid homage to the Holy Child
Were all baptiz’d with sign of Christian Cross,
And as brother each was hail’d and greeted.
We put to fire the Turkish houses,
That there might be nor stick nor trace
Of these true servants of the Devil!
From Cettigné to Tcheklitche we hied,
There in full flight the Turks espied;
A certain number were by us mow’d down,
And all their houses we did set ablaze;
Of all their mosques both great and small
We left but one accursèd heap,
For passing folk to cast their glance of scorn.
 

VLADIKA DANILO

Great gladness this for me, my falcons,
Great joy for me! Heroic liberty
Has resurrection morn to-day,
From every tomb of our ancestors dear!

Petar II Petrovic Njegos

Kurt Vonnegut - Palm Sunday / Playmates

"THE Class of '57" could be an anthem for my generation, at least. Many people have said that we already have an anthem, which is my friend Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," which starts off like this:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed

by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets

at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient

heavenly connection to the starry dynamo

in the machinery of night.

And so on.

I like "Howl" a lot. Who wouldn't? It just doesn't have much to do with me or what happened to my friends. For one thing, I believe that the best minds of my generation were probably musicians and physicists and mathematicians and biologists and archaeologists and chess masters and so on, and Ginsberg's closest friends, if I'm not mistaken, were undergraduates in the English department of Columbia University.

No offense intended, but it would never occur to me to look for the best minds in any generation in an undergraduate English department anywhere. I would certainly try the physics department or the music department first—and after that biochemistry.

Everybody knows that the dumbest people in any American university are in the education department, and English after that.

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

...   

    But Billy Pilgrim wasn't beguiled by the back of the store. He was thrilled by the Kilgore Trout novels in the front. The titles were all new to him, or he thought they were. Now he opened one. It seemed all right for him to do that. Everybody else in the store was pawing things. The name of the book was The Big Board. He got a few paragraphs into it, and then realized that he had read it before—years ago, in the veterans' hospital. It was about an Earthling man and woman who were kidnapped by extra-terrestrials.They were put on display in a zoo on a planet called Zircon-212. 

    These fictitious people in the zoo had a big board supposedly showing stock market, quotations and commodity prices along one wall of their habitat, and a news ticker, and a telephone that was supposedly connected to a brokerage on Earth. The creatures on Zircon-212 told their captives that they had invested a million dollars for them back on Earth, and that it was up to the captives to manage it so that they would be fabulously wealthy when they returned to Earth. 

    The telephone and the big board and the ticker were all fakes, of course. They were simply stimulants to make the Earthlings perform vividly for the crowds at the zoo—to make them jump up and down and cheer, or gloat, or sulk, or tear their hair, to be scared shitless or to feel as contented as babies in their mothers' arms. 

    The Earthlings did very well on paper. That was part of the rigging, of course. And religion got mixed up in it, too. The news ticker reminded them that the President of the United States had declared National Prayer Week, and that everybody should pray. The Earthlings had had a bad week on the market before that. They had lost a small fortune in olive oil futures. So they gave praying a whirl. 

It worked. Olive oil went up.

...

Yağmur

 

Memo From the Cave - Louise Glück

O love, you airtight bird,

My mouse-brown

Alibis hang upside-down

Above the pegboard

With its dangled pots

I don't have chickens for;

My lies are crawling on the floor

Like families but their larvae will not

Leave this nest. I've let

Despair bed

Down in your stead

And wet

Our quilted cover

So the rot-

scent of its pussy-foot-

ing fingers lingers, when it's over.

Catalogue - Donika Kelly

You think about being small,

a child. No. Smaller,

a bird. Smaller still,

a small bird. You think

about the art of holding,

of being held. This hand

Can crush you. Pulp and feather you. Could release the air from all your little bones.

You grow. You are large.

You are a 19th century poem.

All of America is inside you,

a catalogue of lives and land

and burrowing things. You contain

your beloved: a field, a building

of softening wood. The birds.

Always. The Birds.

Soon you will be a person. Nothing

will change. Your body will be of a piece

with all other bodies: the thrush,

the dormouse, the great black bear.

When you open your mouth,

there will be only air.

Tighten your throat. Sound, 

inexplicably, like something lost.

Çileli Yaylalar

 

ne içtiysem size de vericem ulen söz

panik yapma

herkese yetecek kadar

atom bombası

ceset torbası
ve karanfil var
hem
kanserden daha insaflıdır bombalar
hiç bomba atılmayan yerlerde
kanserden korkar insanlar
bilirler ki
ne kadar sıkıcı yaşarsan
o kadar çok yaşarsın
halbuki hayat en fazla
cüceler için kısa
elhamdülillah
hepimiz karbonuz da
neticede birimiz çaycı
birimiz patronuz
oysa
suluyla kuruyu karıştırınca
ne demiş new yorklu derviş
hayat apaçilere güzelmiş
bu yüzden dik dur
boynunu bükme bebişim
boşunadır
niçün bizde seri katil yok serzenişlerin
kim bilir belki de bizde işler
göründüğünden daha sofistikedir
bu diyar ki
nesli tükenmek üzere olan bir balığı
zıpkınla avlayıp
pişirip yiyenlerin
ve bunu
belgesel diye tv'de verenlerin
yaşadığı yerdir
hangi floransalı
daha çılgın bir şey yapmış olabilir ki
hangi zürih pazarında
ten rengi ve dev gibi bir sütyen
kadar korkunç bir şey satılabilir
bu ne acayip iştir
fazıl say'ın halini görünce
nihat doğan'ın annesi
kim bilir nasıl şükretmiştir
alkışlamak istiyorum
bu ne uyanık ne kurnaz bir diyar
senin burada paran geçmez lafını
sadece parası olanlar duyar
eskiden ne güzeldi
tarık akan
manitayla evlendiği zaman
halit akçatepe
ondan daha çok bayram ederdi
peki ya sonra
sesli çekim moda oldu tarık üzüldü
vibratör icad edildi sertlik bozuldu
binlerce naif nereye kayboldu
artık kimse
dört dön de götünü ört
diye şaka yapmıyor
kimse kimseye konuşma teklif etmiyor
mektup yazmıyor
pul yalamıyor aşıklar
herkesin bir feysi
allah'ın bile bir tivitır hesabı
(ve 131 bin takipçisi) var
artık sadece
bir bilinmeyenli denklemde
eşitin diğer tarafındaki x'e mahsus yalnızlık
ve testlerde
üç yanlış bir doğruyu götürmüyor artık
üç kuluvalla bi elham yetiyor ygs'ye
ama umudunu kaybetme gene de
yüzbinlerce eğlence mekanında
binlerce valeye ihtiyaç var
bu gün hangi boğaziçi mezununa
on dakikada bir 30 lira veriyorlar
ah acı kader
hiçbir zaman ilk üçe giremeyen
kendini hep ikinci hayal eder
çocukken bize yalan söylediler
hep o boş vaatler yaktı kızları
modifiye pejo 205'le geldi
beyaz atlı prensleri
üstelik prens olamayacak kadar
tombul ve hoyrattılar
daha balayında tokadı çaktılar
çünkü onlar da kaldırılmıştı
binlerce kez denediler
ama hiç 31'e denk getiremediydiler
ve nihayet komple çıldırdılar
havaya zıplayıp
kollarını açarak
fotoğraf çektiriyor kızlar
sanal alemde
merve adıyla geziniyor oğlanlar
ah o politikacılar
ruh çağırma seansında
safları inandırmak için
götünü yırtan
yavşaklardır onlar
ya inanır
maden ocağında can verirsin
inanmazsan
biber gazını yersin
ya mucizeler nerede
onbirdeki birlerden birinin
herkese beleş olması gibi mesela
sonrasında ezan sesi duymadı mı
astronot lavuk ay'da
ah o tanrı
yetkiyi boş bulmuş nelerle uğraşıyor
çölde bir kuru ağacı kesiyorsun
içinde onun adı yazıyor
ah o sıcaklar
tanrıya şeytan
insana tanrı yarattırıyor
peki ya umut
piyango bileti kadar bol ve ucuz
büyük ikramiyeyle başlayan
amortiye razı olan kısa yolculuk
halbuki ilk ayağı kapatırsan
her gün beşli ganyan
dayan oğlum kemal kenan
birazdan ali ağlar
ablası can uyanır
uyuyormuş gibi yaparsan
yanağından öper
seni uyandırır
günaydın annecim dersin
günaydın oğlum
bana bir çizgi film açsana der
ve oyun biter

kemal kenan

bone dog

 coming home is terrible whether the dogs lick your face or not,

whether you have a wife,
or just a wife-shaped loneliness waiting for you.

coming home is terribly lonely
so that you think of the oppressive barometric pressure
back where you have just come from in fondness,
because everything’s worse when you’re home.
you think of the vermin clinging to the grass stalks,
long hours on the road,
roadside assistance and ice creams,
and the peculiar shapes of certain clouds and silences with longing,
because you did not want to return.

coming home is just awful.
and the home-style silence and clouds contribute to nothing but the general malaise.
clouds, such as they are, are in fact suspect and made from a different material from those you left behind.
you yourself were cut from a different cloudy cloth,
returned,
remaindered,
ill-met by moonlight,
unhappy to be back,
slack in all the wrong spots.
seamy suit of clothes, dishrag-ratty, worn.
you return home, moon-landed, foreign.

the earth’s gravitation pull, an effort now redoubled,
dragging your shoelaces loose and your shoulders,
etching deeper the stanza of worry on your forehead.
you return home deepened, a parched well linked to tomorrow by a frail stand of anyway.

you sigh into the onslaught of identical days, one might as well, at a time.
well anyway, you’re back.

the sun goes up and down like a tired whore,
the weather immobile like a broken limb while you just keep getting older.
nothing moves, but the shifting tides of salt in your body.
your vision blears, you carry your weather with you; the big, blue whale; your skeletal darkness.
you come back with x-ray vision,
your eyes have become a hunger.
you come home with your mutant gifts to a house of bone.

everything you see now
all of it
bone.

YETER

 

Şıhlıyurdunda Gece

 

Moda Dediler

Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W.H. Auden

Midsummer Night's Dream - Act III Scene I

Snout: O Bottom, thou art changed! what do I see on thee?

Bottom: What do you see? you see an ass-head of your own, do you?

Quince: Bless thee, Bottom! bless thee! thou art translated.

Bottom: I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this place, do what they can: I will walk up and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid.

The ousel cock so black of hue,

    With orange-tawny bill,

The throstle with his note so true,

    The wren with little quill;

Titania [Awaking]: What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?

Bottom [Sings]:

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,

    The plain-song cuckoo gray,

Whose note full many a man doth mark,

    And dares not answer nay: -

for indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry "cuckoo" never so?

Titania: I pray thee gentle mortal,sing again:
Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me
On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.

Sharing Eve's Apple - John Keats

I

O blush not so! O blush not so!

    Or I shall think you knowing;

And if you smile the blushing while,

    Then maidenheads are going.

II

There's a blush for won't, and a blush for shan't,

    And a blush for having done it:

There's a blush for thought and a blush for naught,

    And a blush for just begun it.

III

O sigh not so! O sigh not so!

    For it sounds of Eve's sweet pippin;

By these loosen'd lips you have tasted the pips

    And fought in an amorous nipping.

IV

Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,

    For it only will last our youth out,

And we have the prime of the kissing time,

    We have not one sweet tooth out.

V

There's a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,

    And a sigh for I can't bear it!

O what can be done, shall we stay or run?

    O cut the sweet apple and share it!

 

L'Azur - Stéphane Mallarmé

De l’éternel Azur la sereine ironie
Accable, belle indolemment comme les fleurs,
Le poëte impuissant qui maudit son génie
A travers un désert stérile de Douleurs.

Fuyant, les yeux fermés, je le sens qui regarde
Avec l’intensité d’un remords atterrant,
Mon âme vide. Où fuir? Et quelle nuit hagarde
Jeter, lambeaux, jeter sur ce mépris navrant?

Brouillards, montez! Versez vos cendres monotones
Avec de longs haillons de brume dans les cieux
Que noiera le marais livide des automnes
Et bâtissez un grand plafond silencieux!

Et toi, sors des étangs léthéens et ramasse
En t’en venant la vase et les pâles roseaux,
Cher Ennui, pour boucher d’une main jamais lasse
Les grands trous bleus que font méchamment les oiseaux.

Encor! que sans répit les tristes cheminées
Fument, et que de suie une errante prison
Éteigne dans l’horreur de ses noires traînées
Le soleil se mourant jaunâtre à l’horizon!

––Le Ciel est mort.––Vers toi, j’accours! donne, ô matière,
L’oubli de l’Idéal cruel et du Péché
A ce martyr qui vient partager la litière
Où le bétail heureux des hommes est couché,

Car j’y veux, puisqu’enfin ma cervelle, vidée
Comme le pot de fard gisant au pied d’un mur,
N’a plus l’art d’attifer la sanglotante idée,
Lugubrement bâiller vers un trépas obscur.

En vain! l’Azur triomphe et je l’entends qui chante
Dans les cloches. Mon âme, il se fait voix pour plus
Nous faire peur avec sa victoire méchante,
Et du métal vivant sort en bleus angélus!

Il roule par la brume, ancien et traverse
Ta native agonie ainsi qu’un glaive sûr;
Où fuir dans la révolte inutile et perverse?
Je suis hanté. L’Azur! l’Azur! l’Azur! l’Azur!

Nas - Halftime (verse 2)

It's like that, you know it's like that
I got it hemmed, now you never get the mic back
When I attack, there ain't a army that could strike back
So I react never calmly on a hype track
I set it off with my own rhyme
‘Cause I'm as ill as a convict who kills for phone time
I'm max like cassettes, I flex like sex
In your stereo sets, Nas'll catch wreck
I used to hustle, now all I do is relax and strive
When I was young I was a fan of the Jackson 5
I drop jewels, wear jewels, hope to never run it
With more kicks than a baby in a mother's stomach
Nasty Nas has to rise ‘cause I'm wise
This is exercise 'til the microphone dies
Back in '83 I was an MC sparkin'
But I was too scared to grab the mics in the parks and
Kick my little raps ‘cause I thought niggas wouldn't understand
And now in every jam I'm the fuckin' man
I rap in front of more niggas than in the slave ships
I used to watch "CHiPs", now I load Glock clips
I got to have it, I miss Mr. Magic
Versatile, my style switches like a faggot
But not bisexual, I'm an intellectual
Of rap I'm a professional, and that's no question yo
These are the lyrics of the man, you can't near it, understand?
‘Cause in the streets I'm well-known like the number man
Am I in place with the bass and format?
Explore rap and tell me, "Nas ain't all that"
And next time I rhyme, I be foul
Whenever I freestyle I see trial, niggas say I'm wild
I hate a rhyme-biter's rhyme
Stay tuned, I assume, the real rap comes at halftime

Aeneid - Book 3 / Publius Vergilius Maro

'There is a country - the Greeks called it Hesperia, Land of the West,
an ancient land, mighty in war and rich in soil.
Oenotrians settled it; now we hear their descendants
call their kingdom Italy, after their leader, Italus.
There lies our true home. There Dardanus was born,
there Iasius. Fathers, founders of our people.
Rise up now! Rejoice, relay our message, certain
beyond all doubt, to your father full of years.
Seek out the town of Corythus, sail for Italy!
Jove denies you the fields of Dicte: Crete.'

Hamlet Act 5 Scene 2

"Not a whit. We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all. Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes? Let be."

Beware the ides of March

  The Tragedy of Julius Caesar - Act I, Scene II

• Soothsayer. Caesar!

• Caesar. Ha! who calls?

• Casca. Bid every noise be still: peace yet again!

• Caesar. Who is it in the press that calls on me?100
  I hear a tongue, shriller than all the music,
  Cry 'Caesar!' Speak; Caesar is turn'd to hear.

• Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March.

• Caesar. What man is that?

• Brutus. A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.105

• Caesar. Set him before me; let me see his face.

• Cassius. Fellow, come from the throng; look upon Caesar.

• Caesar. What say'st thou to me now? speak once again.

• Soothsayer. Beware the ides of March.

• Caesar. He is a dreamer; let us leave him: pass.110
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  

         

Whiskey

"How solemn and beautiful is the thought, that the earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization, is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, never the Sabbath-school, never the missionary—but always whiskey!" - Mark Twain