Deaths they have called music

According to my stat counter, my power politics posts on this thing run a lot hotter than all of the tender attention I am paying to what I consider to be a major publishing event, Nikos Stabakis' anthology Surrealism in Greece (University of Texas Press).

Since many popular blogs are niche rather than confluence in content, people seem to dip in and dip out of sites, looking for a specfic kind of thing. This makes me suspect that the power politics players think I'm whacked for dabbling in Greek Surrealism (assuming they notice at all ...), while the Surrealists probably think I am naieve for wasting my time in something as corrupted and resistant to change as power politics.

I guess I would agree with both, but ...

I involve myself in power politics to do my tiny bit toward keeping the world safe for Greek Surrealism, cabaret in St. Louis, obscure rock music, delicious craft beer. It's my view that if we stand by and do nothing while somebody like Ed Martin attacks Barack Obama, or somebody like Francis G. Slay tries to kill, still-born, a suspected attempt to unseat him as mayor, then we deserve what we get. I think Barack Obama will be better for the future of this country than John McCain and that St. Louis deserves better leadership than Francis Slay, so I do what little I can to influence the outcomes I desire.

Meanwhile, all the while, I may as well be wearing a ballcap that declares, "I'd rather be reading Greek Surrealism." So, let's read some Greek Surrealism. This is part of a poem, "The Voices," that appears in Nikos Engonopoulos' 1947 collection The Return of the Birds.

*

they call the cried-out eyes

"lady friend"

the cool scarlet lips

leaves

the erotic teeth

nightmare

love's crimson beds

abysses

the harbor's dark

waters

lamp

and they call the

rusty anchors

of dream

lament

[...]

they stand and weep

at the word hammer

they named silence

the word gate

deaths they have called

music between the

temples

and they call my

heart

a forest

in the night

*

The image is a scan of the oil painting Au rendez-vous Allemand, "Momento from the occupation. Athenean lady before the German conqueror" by the poet himself, Nikos Engonopoulos, from his website.