jueves, 31 de marzo de 2016

J’étais l’éclair éteint et le rêve détruit…

Vertigineusement, j’allais vers les Etoiles…
Mon orgueil savourait le triomphe des dieux,
Et mon vol déchirait, nuptial et joyeux,
Les ténèbres d’été, comme de légers voiles…

Dans un fuyant baiser d’hymen, je fus l’amant
De la Nuit aux cheveux mêlés de violettes,
Et les fleurs du tabac m’ouvraient leurs cassolettes
D’ivoire, où tiédissait un souvenir dormant.

Et je voyais plus haut la divine Pléiade…
Je montais… J’atteignais le Silence Eternel…
Lorsque je me brisai, comme un fauve arc-en-ciel,
Jetant des lueurs d’or et d’onyx et de jade…

J’étais l’éclair éteint et le rêve détruit…
Ayant connu l’ardeur et l’effort de la lutte,
La victoire et l’effroi monstrueux de la chute,
J’étais l’astre tombé qui sombre dans la nuit.
 


Renée Vivien
La fusée

Islamic Extremism is a Product of Western Imperialism

Garry Leech
 
 
As we struggle to come to terms with the latest terrorist attacks in Brussels, it is important that we understand the causes of such extremism. After all, Islamic extremism was virtually unknown fifty years ago and suicide bombings were inconceivable. And yet today it seems that we are confronted with both on a daily basis. So what happened to bring Islamic fundamentalism to the forefront of global politics? While there are many factors involved, undoubtedly one of the primary causes is Western imperialism. Western intervention in the Middle East over the past century to secure access to the region’s oil reserves established a perfect environment in which Islamic fundamentalists could exploit growing anti-Western sentiment throughout the Islamic world with some establishing violent extremist groups. The most recent consequence of this process is the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, which emerged out of the chaos caused by the US invasion of Iraq.
 

Why is David Cameron so silent on the recapture of Palmyra from the clutches of Isis?

Robert Fisk
 
In the end, it was the Syrian army - and its Hizballah chums from Lebanon, and the Iranians, and the Russians - who drove the Isis murderers out of Palmyra
 
The biggest military defeat that Isis has suffered in more than two years. The recapture of Palmyra, the Roman city of the Empress Zenobia. And we are silent. Yes, folks, the bad guys won, didn't they? Otherwise, we would all be celebrating, wouldn't we?
 
Less than a week after the lost souls of the 'Islamic Caliphate' destroyed the lives of more than 30 innocent human beings in Brussels, we should - should we not? - have been clapping our hands at the most crushing military reverse in the history of Isis. But no. As the black masters of execution fled Palmyra this weekend, Messers Obama and Cameron were as silent as the grave to which Isis have dispatched so many of their victims. He who lowered our national flag in honour of the head-chopping king of Arabia (I'm talking about Dave, of course) said not a word.
 

Una fotografía de Berta Vicente



Firma como B erta en Flickr.



La sencillez de la belleza de Whistler - Muchacha con rosa roja


Así ve Dix a la periodista von Harden


El último autorretrato de Picasso


Una foto de Gewof


Visto en Deviantart.com

miércoles, 30 de marzo de 2016

Sonríe si....

Mys days were more exciting
when I was penniless.
 
Christopher McCandless

La música de Bitácora: Eddie Vedder, Society


Hermosa hasta el dolor: Into the wild


 Joseph Brodsky, Darker and Brighter

A spellbinding new biography rescues the poet from sentimentality and kitsch.
By Cynthia Haven 
 
 
In June 1972, a young poet from Leningrad stepped off a plane in Detroit and into a new life. His expulsion from the Soviet Union had won him international fame; yet he didn’t know how to drive, how to open a bank account or write a check, or how to use a toaster. His English, largely self-taught, was almost incomprehensible. He had dropped out of school at 15. Nevertheless, at age 32, he would soon start his first real job, and at a world-class institution: He was the new poet in residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Within a few years, Joseph Brodsky would be a colossus on the New York literary scene. Within 15, he would be awarded a Nobel Prize.
 
At the moment the plane landed, however, Brodsky became the poster boy for Soviet persecution: a “victim,” in other words, and therefore a cliché. He wasn’t the cliché, but publicity would grant him instant power and prestige in his adopted land. The American voices suddenly clamoring around him could not fathom the forces that had shaped him: KGB arrest, prison, psychiatric hospitals, a courtroom trial, and a sentence of hard labor and internal exile near the Arctic Circle. It was the stuff of legend and contributed to a barrage of media coverage. A Cold War Stations of the Cross was easier to package for mass consumption than an accounting of the musicality, metaphorical ingenuity, compression, and raw intelligence of Brodsky’s verse, which had barely appeared in English at all, and only in the most select publications.

Read more.: http://www.thenation.com/article/joseph-brodsky-darker-and-brighter/

martes, 22 de marzo de 2016

The road not taken

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference.
 
Robert Frost

domingo, 20 de marzo de 2016

Sans amour et sans haine

Il pleut doucement sur la ville.
Arthur Rimbaud


Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville,
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon coeur ?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits !
Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie
Ô le chant de la pluie !

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui s'écœure.
Quoi ! nulle trahison ?
Ce deuil c'est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi,
Sans amour et sans haine,
Mon coeur a tant de peine !

Paul Verlaine
 Il pleut dans mon coeur...

Saltamontes

Manuel Vincent
 
Escucha, pequeño saltamontes: cuando seas muy mayor llegará un día en que dejarás de cumplir años. Te dará igual tener 70 que 80. A esa edad solo cumplirás estados de ánimo, periodos de salud o de enfermedad. Estar bien o sentirte mal será el único dilema, de modo que los análisis y radiografías tendrán mucha más importancia que el número de tacos de almanaque que lleves a la espalda.
 
La vejez es, sin duda, una tragedia irreversible, pero solo algunos seres privilegiados son capaces de convertirla en una obra de arte. Atiende, pequeño saltamontes, a lo que pasa en la mesa.
 

viernes, 18 de marzo de 2016

La música de bitácora: Gimme Shelter


The Clintons’ $93 Million Romance with Wall Street



For 24 years Bill and Hillary Clinton have courted Wall Street money with notable success. During that time the New York banks contributed:
* $11.17 million to Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1992.
*$28.37 million for his re-election in 1996.
*$2.13 million to Hillary Clinton’s senatorial campaign in 2002.
*$6.02 million for her re-election in 2006.
*$14.61 million to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008.
*$21.42 million to her 2016 campaign.

Read More: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/16/the-clintons-93-million-romance-with-wall-street-a-catastrophe-for-working-families-african-americans-and-latinos/

Aficionados del Arsenal imitan a los del PSV y se mofan de mendigos de Barcelona

La bajeza del ser humano volvió a reflejarse en un grupo de aficionados del Arsenal que imitaron a los del PSV holandés al mofarse de mendigos de Barcelona.
 
Si el 'juego' de los aficionados holandeses era lanzar monedas al suelo para que unas mujeres rumanas las recogieran, el de los fans ingleses era hacer como que introducían un billete en el sombrero de un mendigo para, acto seguido, quitarlo entre risas y vítores.
 

miércoles, 9 de marzo de 2016

Variaciones de violín

 A mi amada N.
Que la tierra te sea leve.
 

Me levanté con mi preciada libertad, pero sin ocultar el dolor. Renovado pero herido. Una vez más, después de fundirme en una bodega de poesía, para gozar la última mirada a la cama, donde una vez, lejana ya, fuiste mía.

No era una mañana de melancolía. Eran lirios de temores y risas, que deshacen el dolor, o al menos, quema más rápido el camino, y si bien, languidece el alma, las sombras arden, dejando, únicamente fotografías de soles negros y miradas de averno en el corazón.

Se agita el violín. Variaciones sacadas de sudarios envuelven el encaje de mis dedos.


Es necesario. Así sea. Lo llevo hasta el último grave. Y se repite.

 
Oscila mi mano en el mástil. Cada vez era más rápido que la anterior. En una cascada de hechizos.

Vibra y me llama. Tiemblo. Lágrimas se derraman de mis ojos. Así sea.

Es inquieta la larga lucha y el sentido solitario que juzga la Perfección. Es un color no visto pero real. Es destierro y regreso. Es extraño y hecho. Es orden sin cloroformo. Era cerrar el batiente claro con sucias palabras. Con el hambre inmóvil de una noche de sangre. Ni la barrera de mi Mar, violentó las desconocidas rejas que simultáneamente permiten espejos, mudos reflejos de finos deseos. Párpados que recorren, como soldados, armaduras. Manantiales de luz sin ojos.


Es recuerdo apagado de pasión agonizante. Es existe y ama.

 
Era primavera frente a oro, frutos rojos descendiendo del cuerpo amante y de un corazón dichoso, que sintió puertas en el alma herida. Sombras cada vez más altas, eternas. Diferentes.
 
El fin restituido. Prenda salvada que siempre cruje cuando es recibida como agua que encuentra conocidos cómplices de deseos. Cuencas de molino para violentar los árboles no ya tan verdes.
Fúnebres entierros, pues, que excluyen los baños de rayos iguales. Los grillos ya no cantan. Mi violín ya dejó de vibrar. Una vez más, termino llorando sólo.
 
Ya no hay abanicos que viajan con fragancias desnudas, ya mi dedo no versa tu espalda. Ya mi cuerpo no se apodera de las espinas.
 
Muerde todavía, el frío amarillo que levanta otro amanecer. He aquí la única nieve que en mi ventana, apaga mis ojos.
 
Es un viento que gira, una y otra vez, y desgasta mi alma: Es un límite en mi vida, que hiela gélida, la espera apartada del compás. Fue otro espasmo. Uno más. Ya son demasiados jardines. ¿Dónde están las campanas del alba de este luto? O acaso, ¿mi luto debe ser eterno?
Es un exilio de un furtivo marzo. Fue un espejo de pupilas.
 
Lo que las palabras perdidas, como azarosa hierba rápida al viento. Son cenizas que se rinden consigo mismas. Son viudas negras que irradian el norte: ¿Cómo no llorarla?
 
Cuando una huida de piedra, emprende el rigor del nunca en los ojos, solo una nube de suspiros fúnebres, antorchan mi memoria: Transcurre temblorosa, lágrimas de alma. Lágrimas de dulzura. Humildes, Leales. Instaladas en mi vida, rajan lentamente los labios a gritos de fiera, fuente doliente de vidas nombradas, y amores tendidos. Escucha como retoma mi violín, el trabajo. Como marcha la libertad a ocultar su dolor en la boda de perdiciones. Así sea. Así me rompa.
 
Rafael Suárez

martes, 8 de marzo de 2016

The Mortal Danger of Opposing a Dam

By: Sarah Bardeen

In Sudan last week, dozens of peaceful protesters were injured when Sudanese police used force to break up a protest against the Kajbar and Dal dams.

For some, it was deja vu – a painful echo of 2006-07, when Sudanese security forces took the lives of at least seven people who were opposing the Merowe and Kajbar dams.

For others, the protests in Sudan reminded of a stark truth that’s seldom talked about: opposing a dam project can get you killed.

We all know it. And it’s true around the world, not just in Sudan.

A few days ago, we received notice that Goldman Award winner Berta Caceres and 200 members of communities impacted by the Agua Zarca Dam in Honduras were harassed by dam supporters during a protest.
 
Read more:http://www.internationalrivers.org/blogs/433-15

The Cult of the Reagans

by Jeffrey St. Clair - Alexander Cockburn

The queen of head is dead. At 94, the life of Nancy Reagan, the pin-up girl for the genocidal War on Drugs, finally blinked out. Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford, who frequently appeared on Ronald Reagan’s General Electric Theatre, wrote in his memoir that Nancy gave the best blowjobs in Hollywood. It’s one of the most benign things you could say about the woman who saw herself as a kind of Catherine the Great for the American Imperium. 

Already the airwaves are throbbing with misty tributes to the Reagan years, an age than never really was. Here then is a corrective to the manufactured history of Ron and Nancy and their court that Alexander Cockburn and I wrote on the centenary of Reagan’s birth. –JSC

The script of the recurring homages to the Reagans remains unchanging: with the Gipper’s straightforward, sunny disposition and aw-shucks can-do style the manly Reagan gave America back its confidence. In less flattering terms, Reagan and his PR crew catered expertly to the demands of the American national fantasy: that homely common sense could return America to the vigor of its youth and the economy of the 1950s.

When Reagan took over the Oval Office at the age of 66 whatever powers of concentration he might have once had were failing. The Joint Chiefs of Staff mounted their traditional show-and-tell briefings for him, replete with simple charts and a senior general explicating them in simple terms. Reagan found these briefings much too complicated and dozed off.