[Vision2020] Iraq And Beyond: Song In The Blood

[Ted Moffett]

SONG IN THE BLOOD- Jacques Prevert, translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

there are great puddles of blood on the world
where is it all going? all this spilled blood?
is it the earth that drinks it and gets drunk?
funny kind of drunkography then,
so wise,
so monotonous,
no,
the earth doesn't get drunk
the earth doesn't turn askew
it pushes its little car regularly, it's four seasons,
rain, snow, hail, fair weather,
never is it drunk
it's with difficulty it permits itself from time to time
an unhappy little volcano
it turns,
the earth,
it turns with its trees, its gardens, its houses
it turns with its great pools of blood
and all living things turn with it and bleed

it doesn't give a damn the earth
it turns
and all living things set up a howl,
it doesn't give a damn,
it turns
it doesn't stop turning
and the blood doesn't stop running

where's is it going
all this spilled blood?
murder's blood, war's blood,
misery's blood, and the blood of men tortured in prisons,
and the blood of children calmly tortured by their papa and their mama
and the blood of men whose heads bleed in padded cells
and the roofers blood if the roofer slips and falls from the roof
and the blood that comes and flows and gushes with the newborn
the mother cries,
the baby cries,
the blood flows
the earth turns
the earth doesn't stop turning,
the blood doesn't stop flowing

where's it going all this spilled blood?
blood of the blackjacked,
of the humiliated,
of the suicides
of firing squad victims
of the condemned
and the blood of those that die
just like that
by accident

in the street a living being goes by with all his blood inside
suddenly there he is,
dead
and all his blood outside
and other living beings make the blood disappear
they carry the body away
but it's stubborn blood
and there where the dead one was, much later
all black
a little blood still stretches
coagulated blood, life's rust, body's rust
blood curdled like milk, like milk when it turns, when it turns like the
earth like the earth
it turns with its milk, with its cows,
with its living, with its dead,
the earth that turns with its trees, with it's living beings, with its
houses
the earth that turns with marriages, burials,
shells, regiments, the earth that turns and turns and turns
with its great streams of blood.

by Jacques Prevert

Hear Joan Baez read this poem, with music and "orchestration" by Peter
Schickele, along with other poems of great significance, many put to music
and sung, by Joyce, Whitman, Yevtushenko, Blake, Lorca, Rimbaud etc. such as
"All In Green Went My Love Riding" by e. e. cummings, one of the most
astonishing heart rending romantic songs I have ever heard, on the album
"Baptism."  To hear this poem put to music and sung (what a glorious voice!)
by Baez is like a transmission from another mysterious culture, far, far
away from the triviality and silliness that romance in the USA is usually
reduced to.  Reading the poem does not express what the poem reveals when
put to music and sung by Baez; for those who might understand, and anyone
willing to try.  Many will find it incomprehensible or laughable...

**

*All in green my love went riding*
by: e.e. cummings


All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrows sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

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Vision2020 Post by Ted Moffett
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