Joan of Arc: Issa's Sunday Service, #162

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For awhile, back in the day, say the 40s, 50s & 60s, there was something of a Joan of Arc revival, a Joan of Arc heyday. Sometime over the last year, my partner and I watched a number of film adaptations from back then, both in search of the one iconic version we remembered. I believe the Jean Seberg version was the one I remembered best, but there have been so many it really is hard to say. Though I'm an Ingrid Bergman fan, her version seemed rote to me.

Leonard Cohen writes a pretty good film via song, and I'd forgotten about this particular song until a couple weeks ago. I purchased the album (again - who knows where the LP I bought so many decades ago is) it was on and discovered there was another song on the album referencing Joan. I'll have to go back for a listen to see which one it was. Meanwhile, this will serve as today's Sunday Service selection. 

Joan of Arc

Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc
As she came riding through the dark;
No moon to keep her armour bright,
No man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, I’m tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
A wedding dress or something white
To wear upon my swollen appetite.

Well, I’m glad to hear you talk this way,
You know I’ve watched you riding every day
And something in me yearns to win
Such a cold and lonesome heroine.
And who are you? she sternly spoke
To the one beneath the smoke.
Why, I’m fire, he replied,
And I love your solitude, I love your pride.

Then fire, make your body cold,
I’m going to give you mine to hold,
Saying this she climbed inside
To be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.

It was deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of Joan of Arc,
And then she clearly understood
If he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
But must it come so cruel, and oh so bright? 
 

What follows first is a turn of the century rendition of the story, around 10 minutes long, which somehow manages to hit most of the bases. Done by Georges Melies, the cinema pioneer (he of the rocket in the eye of the Man and the Moon and whom Martin Scorsese paid tribute to in his delightful film "Hugo") it exhibits all of his outstanding techniques used in so many of his early films.


 

Next is the full length of the restored "The Passion of Joan of Arc" by Carl Dreyer. I haven't seen it in its entirety but soon will. It looks incredible.
 

   

The list of movies is extensive; here's one that seems fairly comprehensive, though it appears to need an update to cover recent years.

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Photo by Telstar Logistics

misty day--
no doubt Heaven's saints
bored stiff

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don   

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Alexandra Leaving: Issa's Sunday Service, #144

C. P. Cavafy

 

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This is, indeed, an interesting twist for this week's Sunday Service: one poet (Leonard Cohen) reworking the work of another poet (C. P. Cavay) into song.  First the song, then the poem.

"Alexandra Leaving"

Suddenly the night has grown colder.

The god of love preparing to depart.

Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder,

They slip between the sentries of the heart.

Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure,

They gain the light, they formlessly entwine;

And radiant beyond your widest measure

They fall among the voices and the wine.

It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving,

A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;

Even though she wakes you with a kiss.

Do not say the moment was imagined;

Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for this to happen,

Go firmly to the window. Drink it in.

Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing.

Your firm commitments tangible again.

And you who had the honor of her evening,

And by the honor had your own restored –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving;

Alexandra leaving with her lord.

Even though she sleeps upon your satin;

Even though she wakes you with a kiss.

Do not say the moment was imagined;

Do not stoop to strategies like this.

As someone long prepared for the occasion;

In full command of every plan you wrecked –

Do not choose a coward’s explanation

that hides behind the cause and the effect.

And you who were bewildered by a meaning;

Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed –

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving.

Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost.

The god forsakes Antony

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear

an invisible procession going by

with exquisite music, voices,

don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,

work gone wrong, your plans

all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.

Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say

it was a dream, your ears deceived you:

don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.

As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

as is right for you who were given this kind of city,

go firmly to the window

and listen with deep emotion, but not

with the whining, the pleas of a coward;

listen—your final delectation—to the voices,

to the exquisite music of that strange procession,

and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing.

- Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard 

According to Leonard Cohen's website, here is what the poem is about:

Anthony, in Cavafy's poem is, of course, Marcus Antonius, Cleopatra's lover. The poem refers to Plutarch's story (Read it) that, when Anthony was besieged in Alexandria by Octavian, the night before the city fell into enemy hands, he heard an invisible troupe leaving the city. He heard the sounds of instruments and voices making their way through the city. Then, he passed out; the god Bacchus (Dionysus), Antony's protector, was deserting him. It is obviously a poem with many layers of meaning; but, I see it as a poem / lesson on how someone must face a great loss (Alexandria being a symbol for a beloved city, woman, past glory, but, above all else, life itself). It is a beautiful lesson on how to face death.

Now Mr.Cohen has changed Alexandria (a beloved city) to Alexandra (a beloved woman), thus giving a lesson on how to face a lost love.

Here is the video:

   

Cohen has appeared on the Sunday Service previously and, no doubt, will again in the future. He, and his work, are simply stunning.

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Woodblock by Utagawa Hiroshige

lazy--
leaving blossoms and moon
for tomorrow

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

One quick note before closing - the coffers at Wednesday Haiku are getting a little low. I'm thinking of going back to one poem per week if things get any thinner. So, now would be a great time to send in work. Here's the details on how:

Wednesday Haiku submissions

best,
Don 

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John Bennett: Golden Buddha in a Blade of Grass

Golden Buddha in
a Blade of Grass

John Bennett

I'm wading through Stranger Music, Leonard Cohen's collected poems, written before his diamond-clean Book of Longing. "The Death of a Lady's Man" section is particularly trying. So much bitterness anchored in shattered illusions of love.

And then, out of nowhere and way out of context, Cohen's Zen master pops up in two poems and dispels the darkness.

It has something to do with absolute acceptance. It has something to do not only with not casting judgment but not suppressing the urge to cast judgment: with not having the urge to cast judgment.

"Kone," says Roshi, deep into a bottle of Courvoisier, "you should write cricket poem."

It's the summer of 1977, and they're sitting in the dark in a cabin on Mt. Baldy with the door open to let the breeze in, listening to the crickets.

"I've already written a cricket poem," says Leonard. "Two years ago. Right here in this cabin."

They sit in the darkness a while longer, and then Roshi says, "Kone, what is the source of this world?"

When Leonard can provide no answer, Roshi says, "Ah...difficult..." And then, in a soft voice: "Yah, Kone...you should write more sad."

Then he rings a little bell by his side, and Leonard bows and leaves.

Photo by Diciu

Summer-Haiku

Silence

and a deeper silence

when the crickets

hesitate

Leonard Cohen

Photo by S. Sparrow

about as good
as the morning-glories...
temple bell

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,

Don

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Take This Waltz : Issa's Sunday Service, #90

Photo by Lourdes Cardenal

Leonard Cohen recorded a gorgeous homage to Federico Garcia Lorca entitled "Take This Waltz," the lyrics of which are an English version of Garcia Lorca's poem "Pequeño vals vienés," and which is today's featured song on Issa's Sunday Service.  According to the website, Poetry Connection, in"1986 Leonard Cohen's English translation of the poem "Pequeño vals vienés" by Lorca reached #1 in the Spanish single charts."

The mystery of Garcia Lorca's death has never been solved - whether his killing was purely political or whether it was personal or some combination of both - though just two years ago, the story was back in the news when an unsuccessful attempt was made to find his grave.  In a previous edition of the Sunday Service, The Pogues sang of Garcia Lorca's horrific end in the song "Lorca's Novena," and posited that, before his killers were able to return and mutilate his body as planned, he simply got up and walked away.

So, Garcia Lorca walks on these many years later.  If you would find him, look in the lines of his poetry.

If you would find him, look in your heart.

Here are two fine brief examples of his exquisite work.

Debussy

My shadow glides in silence
over the watercourse.

On account of my shadow
the frogs are deprived of stars.

The shadow sends my body
reflections of quiet things.

My shadow moves like a huge
violet-colored mosquito.

A hundred crickets are trying
to gild the glow of the reeds.

A glow arises in my breast,
the one mirrored in the water.

Sonnet

I know that my profile will be serene
in the north of an unreflecting sky.
Mercury of vigil, chaste mirror
to break the pulse of my style.

For if ivy and the cool of linen
are the norm of the body I leave behind,
my profile in the sand will be the old
unblushing silence of a crocodile.

And though my tongue of frozen doves
will never taste of flame,
only of empty broom,

I'll be a free sign of oppressed norms
on the neck of the stiff branch
and in an ache of dahlias without end.

Federico Garcia Lorca

And here is the version of the poem recorded by Cohen:

Take This Waltz
Now in Vienna there's ten pretty women
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows
There's a tree where the doves go to die
There's a piece that was torn from the morning
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws

Oh I want you, I want you, I want you
On a chair with a dead magazine
In the cave at the tip of the lily
In some hallway where love's never been
On a bed where the moon has been sweating
In a cry filled with footsteps and sand

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take its broken waist in your hand
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging its tail in the sea

There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking
They've been sentenced to death by the blues
But who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
Take this waltz it's been dying for years

There's an attic where children are playing
Where I've got to lie down with you soon
In a dream of Hungarian lanterns
In the mist of some sweet afternoon
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow
All your sheep and your lilies of snow

Aey, aey, aey, aey
Take this waltz, take this waltz
With its, I'll never forget you, you know
This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz
With its very own breath of brandy and death
Dragging its tail in the sea

And I'll dance with you in Vienna
I'll be wearing a river's disguise
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
My mouth on the dew of your thighs
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook
With the photographs there, and the moss

And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty
My cheap violin and my cross
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
To the pools that you lift on your wrist
Oh my love, oh my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz
It's yours now, it's all that there is

Aey, aey, aey, aey

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And, finally, a fine live rendition of the song:

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This week's featured poem comes from Lilliput Review, #109, originally published in April 2000.   Enjoy.

Buried
   Buried in a pile
   of camellia petals:
   camellia petals.

   David Rosenthal

a new year--
the same nonsense
piled on nonsense

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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Go to the LitRock web site for a list of all 90 songs

Hear 'em all at once on the the LitRock Jukebox

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The Story of Isaac: Issa's Sunday Service, #67

In Memory of May 4, 1970: Kent State - Abraham & Isaac - George Segal, 1978.

One of the more controversial pieces of art over the last 50 years, George Segal's bronze sculpture in memory of the Kent State killings, utilizing the Abraham and Isaac biblical story as analogy, still remains an emotional flashpoint for those who remember the murders of Jeffrey Glenn Miller, age 20, Allison B. Krause, age 19, William Knox Schroeder, age 19, Sandra Lee Scheuer, age 20.

Leonard Cohen's song "The Story of Isaac" utilized the same story to similar purposes on his album Songs from a Room, recorded ten years earlier.  The opening verses are a simple lyrical retelling of the story.  The final two verses, however, plainly draw the analogy to the Vietnam War, which was at its worst around the time of the song's composition:

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain
And my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now,
Forgive me if I inquire,
"Just according to whose plan?"
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
Man of peace or man of war,
The peacock spreads his fan

In Memory of the Kent State Massacre. Photo by John Filo.

This is Cohen's first appearance on ISS, though his song "Hallelujah" was covered early on by Popa Chubby.

Since I'm thinking about (and now watching) Popa Chubby's rendition, I couldn't in good conscious not acknowledge the finest rendition of all, sans Cohen himself: Jeff Buckley:









And, in memory:









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From the archive this week a poem from Lilliput Review #123 by one of my favorite unknown poets, W. T. Ranney:

Counterfeit father of an Industrial City,
mama encased in Europe,
my life sways like a kite line
thru rented rooms odd jobs,
to days I only thot had ended
before I was born

W. T. Ranney

the trainer lets
his monkey hold it...
New Year's kite

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue 

best,
Don

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Issa's Sunday Service, #7.5

This one is by request (see previous comments)







And since there is supposed to be some kind of LitRock connection on Issa's Sunday Service, I'm stretching the rules and counting Popa Chubby's version of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, because he's a poet, plain and simple:

the goddess of spring
missed a few spots...
mottled mountain

Issa
translated by David Lanoue

best,
Don

Swimming Up Ladders, All Our Different Ways

Contributor copies for issues #159 & 160 went out in the mail this past weekend, so the full run of Lillies will be following over the coming weeks. My apologies to subscribers as things are even later than usual.

I just finished Tristram Shandy today and I can’t praise it enough. Just a fantastic, hilarious piece of fiction. Sterne is right up there with Swift, Rabelais, Voltarie and Cervantes as an early satiric genius, if not the best of them all. Also, I’ve been working my way through Let Us Compare Mythologies, Leonard Cohen’s first book of poems, recently reissued in a 50th anniversary edition. Sadly, I can’t recommend it. A selected edition of his work might be able to scrape 2 or 3 poems from this volume; even that might be pushing it. I enjoy Cohen immensely, both song and lyric. This is just one book that should have remained obscure.

Also I was working my way through Mary Oliver’s House of Light when I ran across this unexpected (by me anyway) gem.


The Buddha’s Last Instruction

“Make yourself a light,”
said the Buddha
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal—a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire—
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.


Issue #130 of Lilliput is a broadside of the work of the wonderful Miriam Sagan. Entitled Fish Ladder: 19 Tanka, here is a modest selection:


Through the fish window
we saw the silver salmon
swim up the ladders
of the dam, and thought
suddenly of our lives

You don’t dream
of anything—
not the sea
not the past
not those
houses that open

Watching
the silver-backed gorillas
watch us through the glass
you wonder what it means
to be “a person”

Girl-child by the edge
of the sea, you have come down
to crab shell,
rounded
beach stone, tide swell, where
everything changes.

We all give thanks in such different ways … Don