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Darko R. Suvin: YOU, GIACOMO LEOPARDI [1,500 WORDS, 300 L.]
Per Daniele Pieroni 1. BITTER DAYS
...bitter days To follow the serene ones we have been given. How did we get to so perverse an age? ("sopra il monumento di Dante")
O Giacomo, sickly brother mine, Indomitable in your frail body, constantly Wounded! Never ceasing to look With eagle eye around you, to aspire, for your woman, For Italy, for the broken wand of earthly Domination & salvation:
Shall our sceptres all lie broken up, Brought low in the mud, & nobody Raise the fragments up & unite them In power? ("sopra il monumento di Dante")
Stone & mud. Muddy footprints on stony ground. Rock beats scissors beats paper. Paper wraps only rocks Mud & blood.
2. CAN WE?
O could i In the dismal age, in this nefarious air Keep the high image! ("Alla sua donna") O could i O could we Can we? If we do then we can But how?
East wind has lost strength. Flowers have withered. In Spring the silk-worm spins thread. Then he ends. Then he's put into scalding water. The thread is taken away. Towards morning candles burn down to wick's ash. The grey hour is when we die. Tears then dry out.
3. THE ENLIGHTENED TREATS A POISON ARROW
Abject part Are we of things, & the bloodied clod Or hollow caverns resounding with our howls Are not moved by our ills & wars: Nor does human disaster discolour the stars. ("Bruto Minore" )
Yes Giacomo: you speak true, looking thru your Inverted telescope from Voltaire's Sirius or the Andromeda Nebula. Yet also Karuna and Upeksha are only Two of the Four Boundless Virtues*/. Further Truths of virtue can be given shape looking from Nearer on at many bodies together, Conjured up, striven for. Hear now the Enlightened's Parable of the Poisoned Arrow, sovrapposta:
"You ask: What is the reason i was hit by the arrow? Was it fated or was i accidentally in its way? Are there Higher powers that guide the arrow's flight? Is the universe Finite & eternal, so that everything has already happened,
And i have been lying shot already a million times? Or is it infinite & contingent? Permit me to observe We have no time for such questions now. Whether the universe Is finite or infinite, in any case you are here, Lying on the jungle floor, poison seeping into you And your life-blood seeping into the ground. So we must Quickly find a healer to pull out the arrow & begin Counteracting the poison, to save your life, & also
Identify the evil-doer & break his bow, so that all of us Will not get bushwhacked & killed off for good.
After we are all safe, you may ask again
(In the next kalpa)."
4. IDENTIFY THE EVIL-DOER
So then:
Who disjoined the sword from your hand? Who was the traitor? what art or industry Or what gigantic power Toppled your gracious rule? How fell you, or when From such heights into a low place? Nobody left to fight for you now? nobody Of your own to defend your own? ("All'Italia" )
5. LE CENERI DI TITO (BERLIN DAY, END OF C20)
German winter elder ladies with mink coats Peroxide hair too much makeup Lines slashing from both mouth corners down & out I burrow into sleep quietly on morning islands At the bottom of the ocean schools of fish Soft murmur of weary voices They are bombing Beograd & Novi Sad No more theatre festivals in springtime Blood silting up all rivers.
Whispering of fish jealousy of fish If sharks were men Big gangsters eat little gangsters Peasants are burned out of their villages City people bombed out of their homes Thousands of Munch faces screaming Humans from their womb humanity forcibly ripped By progressive technology & humanism Demanding oceans of blood
Western brainwashed in uniform shoot at Balkan brainwashed The center doesn't tolerate too much periphery Top dollar American mercenaries bomb scared Serbian draftees Bristly bearded gangsters from Beograd cleaning Albanians out of medieval monasteries They are madly in love with the Serbian destiny to suffer Smooth shaven gangsters from Washington upgrading armament technology They are madly in love with the profits of arms industries Booms in Balkan skies booms on the stockmarkets Communicating slaughterhouse vessels
Oceans of blood oceans of profit Who is king of the world jungle must be made quite clear Sharks are not so clever except in fable
Now you can touch what we lost with Tito's brotherhood & unity Now you see how a people's revolution is eradicated One million & three quarters dead in the partizan war A ton of TNT to wipe out every dead partizan These dead are dangerous they must be killed again by bombs & lies Counter-revolution by the center against the periphery Blood on stone blood & stones Thou shalt not get out from under world banks fish mouth silently This is Moses & the prophets
6. FLOATING ISLANDS
is there peace in this world? the torture of humans continues evening light island just floating shaking like a baby carriage
even archeologists perish in the end . (Hayashi Fumiko, 1930)
7. DOUBLE-ENTRY BOOKKEEPING: BOTH/ AND
8. HORIZON
For on this rock we shall erect The Church that works from downside up The Third Age church of Holy Bodies Both personal & congregational:
See: hunger, killings are not needful The pie in TV skies deceives Give us today our daily sweets Give us down here the sacred hearts & sense.
Return to body its merry pump Rid of the fat that has enclogged it The overeating brought by hunger The ulcers caused by profit slash & burns.
Return to brain its hormonal bath Disturbed by wolfish enmities To people & birds & beauteous trees-- When heart & brain work well, we shall be saved.
If you, O masters, will not let us Be saved, entirely we must Remove you: profit is the fat In bloodstream, profit brings the early stroke.
Your lying church will be dismantled Our Earth at last inhabitable, Polluted eyes may see no godheads The cleansed may go to many-coloured stars.
When holiness meets wholeness & the people absolute, Washed clean of Class Division Sin We may aspire to the cosmic Lute.
9. CONCLUSIVE
What is left? Has the green Been divested from things? ("Ad Angelo Mai" )
Who may know?
Dark twisters whirl all around our adrift life In this drift nothing can be taken for granted Road signals horrify us like pestilent dragons We are strangers amid corrupt beefy policemen
Pleasure comes smelling of closed plastic bags You talk to me polite as a smiling automaton Filled to the brim with quarters No sense of a her or his story that would be ours
But ah! the balcony on Barbados, The sea's azure expanse over the cannibal global market How the teenage harlots' curse Runs in blood down World Bank walls
Doctrine [with thanks to Henri Heine]
Drummer, drum on & have no fear & kiss the bare-breast Liberty! This is the whole of science & art The sum of all philosophy.
Drum & inveigle the drowsy people Send the snake's hiss & roar of lions, One step in front, ready to die, This is the sum of art & science.
This is old Karl's dialectics Of all philosophy it is the Summa. I've understood it because i'm not stupid, & saw the Revolution one Summer.
*/ The Four Boundless Virtues (catvary apramanani) of Buddhism are Maitri = friendliness for all; Karuna = Compassion/sorrow for all; Mudita = rejoicing for all; and Upeksha = Detachment from all, including the first three. Tho still properly atheistic, as in Gautama, mine is a rather heretic Buddhism. 11-251200
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