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.

 

Read more: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/30/islamic-extremism-is-a-product-of-western-imperialism/

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.

 

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-is-david-cameron-so-silent-on-the-recapture-of-palmyra-from-the-clutches-of-isis-a6955406.html

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

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/

Espejos: Cómo saber de quién...

F.: Rafael Suárez

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

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.

 

Leer más: http://elpais.com/elpais/2016/03/17/opinion/1458217563_366928.html

La música de bitácora: Gimme Shelter

The Clintons’ $93 Million Romance with Wall Street

by Richard W. Behan

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.

 

Leer más: http://www.huffingtonpost.es/2016/03/17/arsenal-mendigos-aficionados_n_9483138.html

Don´t wait for the perfect moment, take the moment and make it perfect

 

 

F.: Rafael Suárez