The war and the Annex

In Canada, I frequently had the unsettling experience of discovering that people who were supposedly anti racism and spoke strongly against it in public, would suddenly, under the influence of drink, in a private situation, turn on someone who was non white and declare to him, in a more or less hypocritical fashiuon, that Canada is a white country and that he was there only because Canadians are such nice people.
Similarly, it is typical to find anti conservative, liberal Canadians speaking out against American foreign policy, only to immediately perceive that they actually, in a hidden way, admire the power wielded by that neighbouring nation which they, mistakenly, consider almost their own, being English speaking white brothers.
The insidiousness of this Canadian attitude is noticed by other countries, and it is found repellent.
I was told once by a Scot in Marbella, Spain, that Canada was a place were no one said what they actually felt unless they were drunk and in a group of like minded people.
But Canada has had good leaders who have shown a moral fibre perhaps superior to that of most of the people they actually rule. Thus, Chretiene kept Canada from entering a coalition which, under American leadership, went into an illegal, and stupid , war.
One may well ask why, if the push against Sadam in Irak was illegal, as it is universally claimed now, the offensive against Ghadafi in Lybia, is not. Is the backing by Nato so holy that it makes one invasion legal where the other, carried out without its permission, is not? Why?
Yet we do not see millions of people everywhere taking to the streests in protest. No one seems to think this is as important as the attack on Irak. Maybe because since oil is not so much the issue here, at least visibly, there is no reason to complain. Since the american oil lords are not obviously the ones to critizice here, perhaps a general protest is just too boring and it does not provide protesters with the proper sense of righteousness.
Yet people are sureley going to die just as they did then, and I am refering to civilians.
The CNN reporters are covering this war with a revolting attitude of self agrandisment, and with a suspicious kind of glee. Pure entertainment. Yet I keep thinking that this is a much more dangerous situation than the Irak war.
One of the reasons why is, that Sadam, in spite of all the American propaganda trying to connect him somehow to Bin laden, was actually an enemy to the teocratic terrorist movement, and he wasn´t particularly appreciated by anyone, as he was in fact a kind of communist, Arab style, while Ghadafi has been relatively friendly to Western interests up until now and therefore treated as a sort of excentric but, in the end, rather amusing little dictator.
Yet the truth is that this agression against Lybia is a show of military might at a time when the economic shape of the planet is quickly changing. the united States, although some Bloor Street dreamers still would like to think so, are no longer the powerful nation they were. They have grave troubles at home and abroad, they are economically hurt and the dollar is lower than the euro. Europe, too, is going through a stressful time, while the prediction of economists for the last twenty years are coming true: that the Eastewrn powers, China, India, and so forth, are the new world hegemonies.
And they are, even militarily. Which is why this show of force by the West is a dangerous farce.
Putin has expressed his dislike of the actions taken by the West. China has followed. Suddenly the West has some very powerful antagonists to their gang -ho meddling in the internal affairs of what are, after all. sovereign nations.
Germany stays clear of any commitement to the West in this case : Smart Germans. What happened to the notion of all for one and one for all which was the basic axiom behind the formation of the huge political entity that is modern Europe?
Japan is out of commission, dealing with its own terrible tragedy, and cannot play key ally to the West now. Not that it would, since it would probaly follow the German model.
But Canada, with a leader who does not wish to show any anti American feelings, even if he has to put Canadians at peril in the process, commits to a war which is welcome, I am sure, by those who, as they critizice the States for its political excesses and its outdated swaggering, feel an interior pride in being part of what they consider an empire.
Yet that empire can be crashed now if only China, Russia, Iran and other powers eager to see the end of Western superiority decide that they had had enough of the bull shit.
I think Armaggeddon may be around the corner.
And some clever folks around Bloor and Spadina will wish they had stuck to talking about art and love, and left politics alone.

The mountain boy and the master visionary II

So, up in the hills, utterly apart, eclosed only by the snow, Rabrindanath knew that in order to understand what was said to him by the life about him, he himself should not talk.
It is the folly of humans that they will talk when a river speaks, that even if they are alone they will say things to themselves, in their minds.
But no human being had ever said any truth, since no one had had the patience to fully hear it from the silence. You only know a human knows some of the truth when he or she says nothing. Those who do are indistinguisable from the rain or the snow. They affect you silently.
If some one can tell you a truth, he will hurt you unwittingly. Who can open the eyes of a proud ignorant without causing him collapse? And the bearer of the truth is put to death.
It was the time of war and of great natural disasters. Had there ever been any other time on this earth of turbulent streams of water, fire and blood? Rabrindanath wondered one thing alone: what was the logic behind those who had just been born dying suddenly, in an earthquake, in the burning waves of a volcano?
He was alone in a valley high up in the mountains: It was snowing heavily, yet he could hear streams of swift water running under the snow, the wind far in the summits, and invisible wild horses galloping in the mist. The pain of knowing was within him exclusively. Why?
He was told then that he should not contemplate death as being real. It was the pain of dying, and the losing of their existence, that humans feared. But the sooner one died, the quicker one would return, for the body is nothing, and the soul finds bodies to reenter as soon as it flees the plane of the material.
Being born also caused pain. Pain is the result of any process and of any transformation, and of all journeys from spirit to matter and back to spirit.
Rabrindanath heard that from all the things that moved about him, the snow, the wind.
He walked a long time , until night came. Then he fell on the snow, exhausted.
He could die, or not, it didn´t matter.
Horses of cold ice, blue, white and purple, were flying across a huge pale moon. The sea was roaring far away in his dream. And the world was at peace, although drowning in tears.

love poem

My soul is wild, thats calls you to it-

Wild as a river or a wood.

And it is useless to seek in it

a gentle mood.


I am like turbid waters running

they may not turn around

and never give to the same root

nor the same ground,


You heard a whisper but it wasn´t

the call of love.

And now the hungry sea before us

shall have us both.

angels

an image hides the soul within
so that the blind alone can see

one clear word alone can unveil
the unperceived beauty of a face

a bow before the darkeness may
reveal the worlds hidden there

one whisper of love will let you pass
into the loveliness of their heart

Without

i went outside of myself,
away, where i wasn´t myself,
like one who turns on a road´s bend
and sees the mountains right there,
the snowy mountains, just there.

i took my pain somewhere else
where no one could pay it heed,
my tears to some other place
where nor you nor i could heed them
and alone in the silence there
they flowed, a river.

i woul never take you with me
to where I alone should go
though you may want to follow me there
just to know...

nena

Si has visto a cualquier hombre desnudo
me has visto a mi.
Te estoy mirando desde todos los sitios sin que me lloren los ojos
pero toda mi carne apabullada llora sin hacer ruido.
Y todo el dolor de los excluidos, de los vagabundos, de los borrachos,
de los tristes, te está amando, te está pidiendo el próximo baile
desde mis heridas, heridas de puñetazos, navajas y jeringuillas.
En el rincón del olvido crujen los postigos de aquella vieja puerta
por donde la muerte aparece para arrebatarnos lo último
que nos queda, la última pieza de amor pegada al hueso,
el último trozo de beso partido.
Si has visto a cualquier hombre desnudo y sanguinoliento
en una esquina del invierno atroz,
como a cualquier pobre cristo inútil,
me has visto a mi, al luchador caído,
la sombra de Roy Orbison con ojos sin pupílas,
espectral al fondo umbroso de los enormes autobúses que cruzan
la asesina noche de Texas. Si has visto a cualquier hombre desnudo,
carne de cárcel, ahíto de terror y de alcohol,
enamorado como una niña,
pidiendote, Oh dama, Oh dama inexistente, sombra apenas
de aquella con quien realmente soñaba, pobre mujer cuya sangre se ha ido
evaporando del mundo con la lluvia, Oh dama eterna, dama mortal,
que bailes conmigo el último baile, sobre la nieve dura, en el círculo
de luz rota del Boulevard Palmerston, donde los pielesrrojas
asqueados de la realidad vomitan la vida y se alzan como águilas
hacia la luna de los antaños, ,la luna de estaño intemporal...
Oh, dama sin alma de mis amores inmensos,
paloma del miedo, patatita rugosa:
si has visto a un hombre cualquiera de verdad desnudo
partido y terrible, ven a bailar conmigo,
me has visto a mi. Ven a bailar
el último triste baile sobre las hojas de las navajas.

The Prophet

Who whisper in the ears of the vagabond
make him speak in voices not his own,
languages he himself would never comprehend,
words come out from the dead, after so long?

Fool, who from hamlet to hamlet sways along,
for the animal mirth and mockery of the lot,
a stranger always, and despised by all,
yet the words he speaks, though not his own,
make us fear the wrath of our displeased god.

The hot desert sun has burnt spots
of skin on his half bald skull
and he has wrapped his wounded feet
in wetted linen cloth.
He´s come to tell us how we will die
and how the fire will devour our bones,
our houses tumble, and the wind erase
the last trace of our presence from the land-

Laughing children and little barking dogs
folow him down the road across the fields
of late spring, the red poppies among
the golden wheat like sudden drops of blood,
and by late afternoon they reach the sea
which is serene, blue- turquoise tinged with mauve.

And a child puts forh a skin of wine
stolen from his father´s store,
hands it to the old fool, who drinks it up
gleefully as the dry earth swallous up a rain storm.
He dances now, madly, before the waves.
"Your Lord God might consider to spare you now"
he says "Tell this to your parents, but be sure to point out
utter destruction will befall you all
should there be no wine next time I come round"

And the children laugh loud,
and the dogs bark more,
and the sun begins to set
behind the watery horizon
as it always has done.