KBYD June 29, 2010

Playlist:

Auto-Destruct - Jaguar Jones
I Got The Devil - The Lucid Dream
Who You Know - Zero:State
7/11 - The Christophers
Solid Ground - Maps & Atlases
L.A. Hayfever - The Black Knights
Everything's On You - Sebastian Dangerfield
Spagetta - Mammal Airlines
Promised a Good Time - Myth & Tropics
Shyness - Thieves Like Us
Balthamos - Suzuki/Method
Nine Tree Hill - Pete Roe
Foreign Thoughts -There Will Be Fireworks
Sun Coming Up - Gaoler's Daughter



Poems:

Sailing to Byzantium
William Butler Yeats

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.


Certain Phenomena of Sound

I
The cricket in the telephone is still.
A geranium withers on the window-sill.

Cat’s milk is dry in the saucer. Sunday song
Comes from the beating of the locust’s wings,

That do no beat by pain, but calendar,
Nor meditate the world as it goes round.

Someone has left for a ride in a balloon
Or in a bubble examines the bubble of air.

The room is emptier than nothingness.
Yet a spider spins in the left shoe under the bed--

And old John Rocket dozes on his pillow.
It is safe to sleep to a sound that time brings back.

II
So you’re home again, Redwood Roamer, and ready
To feast…Slice the mango, Naaman, and dress it

With white wine, sugar and lime juice. Then bring it,
After we’ve drunk the Moselle, to the thickest shade

Of the garden. We must prepare to hear the Roamer’s
Story…The sound of that slick sonata,

Finding its way from the house, makes music seem
To be a nature, a place in which itself

Is that which produces everything else, in which
The Roamer is a voice taller than the redwoods,

Engaged in the most prolific narrative,
A sound producing the things that are spoken.

III
Eulalia, I lounged on the hospital porch,
On the east, sister and nun, and opened wide
A parasol, which I had found, against
The sun. The interior of a parasol,
It is a kind of blank in which one sees.
So seeing, I beheld you walking, white,
Gold-shined by sun, perceiving as I saw
That of that light Eulalia was the name.
The I, Semiramide, dark-syllabled,
Contrasting our two names, considered speech.
You were created of your name, the word
Is that of which you were the personage.
There is no life except in the word of it.
I write Semiramide and in the script
I am and have a being and play a part.
You are that white Eulalia of the name.


Ah! Sunflower
William Blake
Ah! sunflower, weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller’s journey is done;

Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire;
Where my sunflower wishes to go.