KBYD May 25, 2010

Playlist:

Bufflekill - Jaguar Jones
A Thousand Ays - Kitten Tank
Cannibal Queen - Miniature Tigers
The Devil's Dancefloor - Pete Roe
I Ain't Gonna Marry - Jim Kweskin
The Twilight End - The Lucid Dream
Frozen Heart - Smoke Fairies
Shyness - Thieves Like Us
I Got The Devil - The Lucid Dream
I'm A Fly - Laura Marling
Foreign Thoughts - There Will Be Fireworks
Locked Doors - Sebastian Dangerfield
Dear Darling - Pete Roe
Nah - Kitten Tank

Tell the bands you love them and heard them on KBYD with Cassie D

(Delight! Delight!)



Poems:

Old Tiger
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

You are right about it; that wary,
presumptuous young baboon is nothing to you; and the chimpanzee?
An exemplary hind leg hanging like a plummet at the end of a

string--the tufts of fur depressed like grass
on which something heavy has been lying--nominal ears of black glass--
what is there to look at? And of the leopard, spotted underneath and on

its toes; of the American rattler,
his eyes on a level with the crown of his head and of the lesser
varieties, fish, bats, greyhounds and other animals of one thickness,

the same may be said, they are nothing
to you and yet involuntarily you smile; as at the dozing,
magisterial hauteur of the camel or the facial expression

of the parrot; you to whom a no
is never a no, loving to succeed where all others have failed, so
constituted that opposition is pastime and struggle is meat, you

see more than I see but even I
see too much; the select many are all but one thing to avoid, my
prodigy and yours--as well as those mentioned above, who cannot commit

an act of self-destruction--the will
apparently having been made part of the constitution until
it has become subsidiary, but observe: in that exposition

is their passion, concealment, yours, they
are human you are inhuman and the mysterious look, the way
in which they comport themselves and the conversation imported from the

birdhouse, are one version of culture.
You demur? To see, to realize with a prodigious leap is your
Version and that should be all there is of it. Possibly so, but when one

is duped by that which is pleasant, who
is to tell one that it is too much? Attempt to brush away the Foo
dog and it is forthwith more than a dog, its tail superimposed on its

self in a complacent half spiral--
incidentally so witty. One may rave about the barren wall
or rave about the painstaking workmanship, the admirable subject;

the little dishes, brown, mulberry
or sea green, are half human and waiving the matter of artistry,
anything which cannot be reproduced is “divine.” It is as with the

book--that commodity inclusive
of the idea, the art object, the exact spot in which to live,
the favorite item of wearing apparel. You have “read Dante’s Hell

till you are familiar with it”--till
the whole surface has become so polished as to afford no little
seam or irregularity at which to catch. So here, with the wise few;

the shred of superior wisdom
has engaged them for such a length of time as somehow to have become
a fixture without rages or a superfluous dog’s ear by which to seize

it and throw it away before it
is worn out. As for you--forming a sudden resolution to sit
still--looking at them with that fixed, abstracted lizardlike expression of

the eye which is characteristic
of all accurate observers, you are there, old fellow, in the thick
of the enlightenment along with the cultured, the profusely lettered,

the intentionally hirsute--made
just as ludicrous by self-appointedly sublime disgust, inlaid
with wiry, jet black lines of objection. You, however, forbear when the

mechanism complains--scorning to
push. You know one thing, an inkling of which has not entered their minds; you
know that it is not necessary to live in order to be alive.


Inferno: Canto XXXIV
(Dante Alighieri 1265-1321, Tr. H.W. Longfellow)

"'Vexilla Regis prodeunt Inferni'
Towards us; therefore look in front of thee,"
My Master said, "if thou discernest him."

As, when there breathes a heavy fog, or when
Our hemisphere is darkening into night,
Appears far off a mill the wind is turning,

Methought that such a building then I saw;
And, for the wind, I drew myself behind
My Guide, because there was no other shelter.

Now was I, and with fear in verse I put it,
There where the shades were wholly covered up,
And glimmered through like unto straws in glass.

Some prone are lying, others stand erect,
This with the head, and that one with the soles;
Another, bow-like, face to feet inverts.

When in advance so far we had proceeded,
That it my Master pleased to show to me
The creature who once had the beauteous semblance,

He from before me moved and made me stop,
Saying: "Behold Dis, and behold the place
Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself."

How frozen I became and powerless then,
Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,
Because all language would be insufficient.

I did not die, and I alive remained not;
Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit,
What I became, being of both deprived.

The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous
From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice;
And better with a giant I compare

Than do the giants with those arms of his;
Consider now how great must be that whole,
Which unto such a part conforms itself.

Were he as fair once, as he now is foul,
And lifted up his brow against his Maker,
Well may proceed from him all tribulation.

O, what a marvel it appeared to me,
When I beheld three faces on his head!
The one in front, and that vermilion was;

Two were the others, that were joined with this
Above the middle part of either shoulder,
And they were joined together at the crest;

And the right-hand one seemed 'twixt white and yellow;
The left was such to look upon as those
Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.

Underneath each came forth two mighty wings,
Such as befitting were so great a bird;
Sails of the sea I never saw so large.

No feathers had they, but as of a bat
Their fashion was; and he was waving them,
So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.

Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed.
With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins
Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.

At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching
A sinner, in the manner of a brake,
So that he three of them tormented thus.

To him in front the biting was as naught
Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine
Utterly stripped of all the skin remained.

"That soul up there which has the greatest pain,"
The Master said, "is Judas Iscariot;
With head inside, he plies his legs without.

Of the two others, who head downward are,
The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus;
See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.

And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius.
But night is reascending, and 'tis time
That we depart, for we have seen the whole."

As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck,
And he the vantage seized of time and place,
And when the wings were opened wide apart,

He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides;
From fell to fell descended downward then
Between the thick hair and the frozen crust.

When we were come to where the thigh revolves
Exactly on the thickness of the haunch,
The Guide, with labour and with hard-drawn breath,

Turned round his head where he had had his legs,
And grappled to the hair, as one who mounts,
So that to Hell I thought we were returning.

"Keep fast thy hold, for by such stairs as these,"
The Master said, panting as one fatigued,
"Must we perforce depart from so much evil."

Then through the opening of a rock he issued,
And down upon the margin seated me;
Then tow'rds me he outstretched his wary step.

I lifted up mine eyes and thought to see
Lucifer in the same way I had left him;
And I beheld him upward hold his legs.

And if I then became disquieted,
Let stolid people think who do not see
What the point is beyond which I had passed.

"Rise up," the Master said, "upon thy feet;
The way is long, and difficult the road,
And now the sun to middle-tierce returns."

It was not any palace corridor
There where we were, but dungeon natural,
With floor uneven and unease of light.

"Ere from the abyss I tear myself away,
My Master," said I when I had arisen,
"To draw me from an error speak a little;

Where is the ice? and how is this one fixed
Thus upside down? and how in such short time
From eve to morn has the sun made his transit?"

And he to me: "Thou still imaginest
Thou art beyond the centre, where I grasped
The hair of the fell worm, who mines the world.

That side thou wast, so long as I descended;
When round I turned me, thou didst pass the point
To which things heavy draw from every side,

And now beneath the hemisphere art come
Opposite that which overhangs the vast
Dry-land, and 'neath whose cope was put to death

The Man who without sin was born and lived.
Thou hast thy feet upon the little sphere
Which makes the other face of the Judecca.

Here it is morn when it is evening there;
And he who with his hair a stairway made us
Still fixed remaineth as he was before.

Upon this side he fell down out of heaven;
And all the land, that whilom here emerged,
For fear of him made of the sea a veil,

And came to our hemisphere; and peradventure
To flee from him, what on this side appears
Left the place vacant here, and back recoiled."

A place there is below, from Beelzebub
As far receding as the tomb extends,
Which not by sight is known, but by the sound

Of a small rivulet, that there descendeth
Through chasm within the stone, which it has gnawed
With course that winds about and slightly falls.

The Guide and I into that hidden road
Now entered, to return to the bright world;
And without care of having any rest

We mounted up, he first and I the second,
Till I beheld through a round aperture
Some of the beauteous things that Heaven doth bear;

Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.


THE APPARITION.
by John Donne (1572 - 1631)

WHEN by thy scorn, O murd'ress, I am dead,
And that thou thinkst thee free
From all solicitation from me,
Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,
And thee, feign'd vestal, in worse arms shall see :
Then thy sick taper will begin to wink,
And he, whose thou art then, being tired before,
Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think
Thou call'st for more,
And, in false sleep, will from thee shrink :
And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou
Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat wilt lie,
A verier ghost than I.
What I will say, I will not tell thee now,
Lest that preserve thee ; and since my love is spent,
I'd rather thou shouldst painfully repent,
Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.