"It is kindness, not money, rules the world." —Emeric Pressburger to Michael Powell on the meaning of their film I Know Where I'm Going!
Persist.
The truth lies, Dunya, not in one dream alone but in many dreams.
Hearing the symphony a crane in Turkey, transfixed, delicately bends her leg
beneath the roiling sea, beneath the tsunami now I see
I hear I hear the Moscow symphony
listening all day here in Greenwich Village editing Gonzo interviews
to all Beethoven's quartets on i-Tunes beginning to end
Persist
o lion kill me for my love Zumurrud is gone away
what? you don't want to kill me?
you want me to follow you to
the magic city (Isfahan in Pasolini's Arabian Nights)
in these new times, as simple a change as clicking the remote from fascism
a big surprise awaits
she is the black love king
Persist
music of the death of mother leads me to one story after another
you tell me yours wherein someone tells you hers wherein someone tells her his wherein someone tells him his wherein someone tells him hers wherein
let us write great poems against the invader and the occupier
civilization began here
the two rivers of life from which comes all of us
I take my hand to pen to clay to cuneiform berry juice to cave wall to keyboard
my sibling artists it is good to weep for our bloody world
the greenest meadows after all the greenest meadows
(the couple dance forever in the green world beneath)
the greenest meadows after worst battles red soaking into green
don't blame the grasses they take what they are given they do not judge drinking when they can
I realized I could write great poetry against the invaders even if from my own country
Persist the truth lies in many dreams
The Ring goes on 18 hours a Chinese opera 28
from "Persistence" (1970)
I am an old man nearing the red sandy hills of Afghanistan. I'm into year 170 of my immortality.
I don't know what I'll be doing, I can't imagine this future, no one near at hand, only my own society, own claws, the hills .….
Sister Alice 1957: at Baldwin School near Bryn Mawr College
Alice writes two papers: "Afghanistan" and "The Effects of War on Men"
what was that? Sister Saint Alice of Baldwin dead of smoking 1987 (age 48)
Michael and Emeric dearest sister on our clan home isle of Colonsay
in I Know Where I'm Going Joan Webster trying to get to "Kiloran," actually Colonsay
kindness not money
o mio tesoro, mia vita
a little sea's breath away from Dad's Coleraine
o mio tesoro, mia vita sing Poppea and Nero Gwyneth Jones, Jon Vickers
Sister St. Alice led me
Now I pass once more Father Demo Square at Sixth and Bleecker
where I made a pact one silvery luminous winter solstice afternoon sitting there alone
I was thirty, 1973, at the center of the whirling world
I will be here I will write "Italy '76" "Pictures from Bosch" "A New Requiem" "I Am Astro Place" The Death of the Forest Life Begins Tomorrow The Gospel According to RFK "Life During the Coup" "The Coming of Fascism to America" "Many Dreams: Or Persistence" etc.
I was there 35 years ago making my pact.
From POW-MIA
to MBA-CEO.
Now comes that Beethoven quartet, Gonzo, a dance of grateful joy heavy-footed Mark danced when he could still dance and I remembered that dance of thanksgiving heavy-footed Ludwig wrote playing in my head as I learned I was not soon to die at 42
I remember in 2008 the horror of 2000
& the joy these days
age of taser gone etc.
St. Alice Saints Michael and Emeric our clan the people of ancient knowledge, the people before the Celts, the, well, yes, faeries,
today the 75 yr old xmas tree came to Rocky Center fed manure its long life to be so beautiful
Gonzo first uses "fear and loathing" November 22, 1963
Eliot Weinberger = Edmund Wilson
Obama-like young woman on subway, reading I Ching
it supplied first two words, "The wanderer," of my first poem,
as Martin Amis did for "The Coming of Fascism to America"
("The information") which Bob Holman brought to the attention of one Salman Rushdie
as Amis walked by
prunes and poetry
Joan trying to get to Kiloran
the beginning was bitter but the end is sweet
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