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KUBLA KHAN

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-
dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were
girdled round:
And there were gardens bright
with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an
incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient
as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic
chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick
pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted
like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:

And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long

I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

i offer you something more entertaining than sensible. just curious, though-- am i the only one around here that has a passion for print and pattern? not that i'd stop those posts, but y'all can be so quiet for so long!

Change is Gonna Come

it is your final quarter, and you begin to realize that you will never in this lifetime learn the answers to every burning question you carry and net even counting The Big Ones, i mean the daily important (to you) ones, like Who is the Artist(s) for the Issues of St. Nicholas and Munsey Magazines Below?

a season begins and there are too many changes to process. two doctors disappear and another moves 20 miles further away. one replacement doctor is nice, but the other is six feet tall (i'm 4'11". having shrunk) then sits me in a normal chair while she settles astride the largest balance ball i have ever seen. she's peers down at me from an ungodly height, then emails, accusing me of "trying to get away with something" with regards to my meds which i don't understand at all.

i need to crawl under the covers. i need to pray for rain. i need the saturation of primary colors. i need a new crossword puzzle. i need a bath.

i know it's easy to say 'i'm having a senior moment,' when in fact you've always been this forgetful, this addled, this easily roused.

Two other things happen in this moment, increasing its feel of import. have i ever told you about mary ellen robertson? yes, i see that i have. best friend from high school, though i haven't exactly been able to explain why, and why, after hearing of her death, the only thing i could do to find relief was to shave my head, and it is shaven still.

last month on pbs, there was a full show from broadway of Memphis. see it. in it a character sings of a moment that changed his life in The Music of My Soul. he was a white southern christian boy, but that was the moment that black music started being heard by white ears.

the character, Huey, sings: When I was a young boy/ My daddy sat me down/ He said “son, don’t you never go / To the dark side of town/ I’m talking downtown Memphis/ See, that’s where the black folk play”/ And I said “Yes sir daddy”/ And then I snuck down anyway/ See never was taught to read none/ Oh no never taught to write/ The only thing my daddy taught/ Was white should stay with white/ But I heard it through the alleys/ It floated on the breeze/ It burst out through the doorways/ And it knocked me to my knees/ It broke down all of my senses/ And make me feel so good/ See I was lost but now I found/ The music of my soul /The music of my soul.

this was me and mary, see. she knew the music. i taught her how to dance. this song, this musical, at last allowed me to specifically name mary's and my bond by its true name: mary & me found soul. this touched me more deeply than anything other than hearing of her death has touched me in a long while. there is something so integral about this moment it is like watching my birth through a window. the moment of recognition.

TRYING TO NAME WHAT DOESN'T CHANGE

Roselva says the only thing
that doesn’t change
is train tracks. She’s sure of it.
The train changes,
or the weeds that grow up spidery
by the side, but not the tracks.
I’ve watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn’t curve, doesn’t break,
doesn’t grow.

Peter isn’t sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
is a changed track. The metal wasn’t shiny anymore.
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn’t change.

Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire
in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried
under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its
ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it
every time.

Naomi Shihab Nye
from Words Under the Words:
Selected Poems
(Portland, Oregon:
Far Corner Books, 1995).
Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye.

as my mind kept cataloguing the changes i couldn't keep up with, the flock of Cedar Waxwings came to the cotoneaster, covered in red berries. it felt like it had been forever since i had seen them. wasn't this the wrong time of year?

when i moved into this house -- it'll be 20 years in august -- i began a bird record-book. that way i could learn who was who, and when they came. this has led to some amazing 'coincidences' -- ie. things that often occur simultaneously, year after year, without announcing themselves. simple to not note. yet because of the book i noticed that a baby hawk sat at the top of the tallest tree being dive-bombed by all sorts of other birds on july 25 and 26 in 1995 and 1996, and that the hooded oriole showed up in the same week in '94, '96, and '98.

it feels like everything changes, until you look more closely. the waxwings have landed the first week in march in 1997, 1998, 2003, and 2008. and again this year. they were right on time.

have a good one tonight, folks

THE LADY IN THE TUTTI-FRUTTI HAT
(Sheet music version)

CHORUS 1:

I wonder why does ev'rybody look at me
And then begin to talk about a Christmas tree?
I hope that means that ev'ryone is glad to see
The lady in the tutti-frutti hat.
The gentlemen, they want to make me say, "Si, si,"
But I don't tell them that, I tell them, "Yes, sir-ee!"
And maybe that is why they come for dates to me,
The lady in the tutti-frutti hat.
Some people say I dress too gay,
But ev'ry day, I feel so gay;
And when I'm gay, I dress that way,
Is something wrong with that?
Americanos tell me that my hat is high,
Because I will not take it off to kiss a guy;
But if I ever start to take it off, ay, ay!
I do that once for Johnny Smith
And he is very happy with
The lady in the tutti-frutti hat.

CHORUS 2:

You hear a lot of people shouting, "There she goes!"
You see a seсorita dressed in flashy clothes,
In Rio de Janeiro, ev'rybody knows
The lady in the tutti-frutti hat.
When she begins to sing a song in Portuguese,
The temp'rature goes up a hundred more degrees;
Although they're freezing prices, they would never freeze
The lady in the tutti-frutti hat.
It isn't any wonder that
She likes her native habitat,
'Cause when she has to pick a hat,
She picks it off the trees.
She always has a half a dozen Romeos,
And when they come to sing a serenade, she throws
A lemon or banana like you throw a rose,
But Casanovas still prefer
That hep and happy character,
The lady in the tutti-frutti hat.

Lyric by Leo Robin
Music by Harry Warren

(one thing i found most interesting is that the only real equivilent to western hats i could find in the japanese prints were on the men playing women in kabuki, and not on women themselves.)