"La Tierra Giró Para Acercarnos"

-by Eugenio Montejo

La tierra giró para acercarnos,
giró sobre sí misma y en nosotros,
hasta juntarnos por fin en este sueño,
como fue escrito en el Simposio.
Pasaron noches, nieves y solsticios;
pasó el tiempo en minutos y milenios.
Una carreta que iba para Nínive
llegó a Nebraska.
Un gallo cantó lejos del mundo,
en la previda a menos mil de nuestros padres.
La tierra giró musicalmente
llevándonos a bordo;
no cesó de girar un solo instante,
como si tanto amor, tanto milagro
sólo fuera un adagio hace mucho ya escrito
entre las partituras del Simposio.

I can't speak Spanish, I can recognise a few words, that's all. Though if I read this through, sounding it in my head, I can appreciate the shapes of it, the rhythm, the flow.
But the person it's posted for, she can read it, understand it.
We've discussed this, translations, the fractures, the shifts in meaning, the changes in nuance. I usually say I don't like reading translations. But. Here we have an example. I can't know what a spanish person would hear, feel, on reading this, I can never reach those associations, those unspoken understandings, but luckily for me, there's a translation, by Australian poet, Peter Boyle, which becomes, in translated form, a poem, by Peter Boyle, based upon a poem by Eugenio Montejo.

"The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer"

The earth turned to bring us closer, 
it spun on itself and within us, 
and finally joined us together in this dream 
as written in the Symposium. 
Nights passed by, 
snowfalls and solstices; 
time passed in minutes and millennia. 
An ox cart that was on its way to Nineveh 
arrived in Nebraska. 
A rooster was singing,
some distance from the world, 
in one of the thousand pre-lives of our fathers. 
The earth was spinning with its music 
carrying us on board; 
it didn't stop turning a single moment 
as if so much love, 
so much that's miraculous,
was only an adagio 
written long ago 
in the Symposium's score.



When I found this poem, I was rummaging in the internet for something else, a poem by Norwegian forester Hans Borli. I've posted it before, but couldn't remember the title,
-it was, in english,

"There is No Sky These Nights"

There is no sky these nights
in early July, just an emptiness,
a pale absence
over the woods and bogs and
the haze-blue fields
where the flowers blossom forlorn
in the shadow of the scythe's approaching time.
Tired of arching over
the mortals' paths in the dust,
the sky has in fact gone on holiday
and travelled far away,
to the azure coasts of eternity
where life is a ship on it's journey.
But it has committed the stars
to the moss's protection,
the moss in the woods
 -- the mildest and softest on earth.
I walk among star images,
walk like a little Lord
through galaxies
of shining whiteness. Somewhere
I stop with one foot lifted,
so I won't trample on the Pleiades.


Today I was on a roof,fascinated by a clump of moss, with its little star flowers holding aloft perfect bright spheres of bright dew. Like transparent planets, magnifying the intricacy below.  "To see a world in a grain of sand. And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand. And eternity in an hour."
And I thought of Hans Borli's poem. And of how she'd understand .
Then I found Montejo and it just seemed so apt. 
On sunday, I'll be flying in a great sweeping arc above the turning earth, some 5000 miles toward Texas, where she'll be waiting.
And she'll understand the imagery, the connections,  
the still point 
of the turning world.


XXXXXXX

News International

The big story these days is the major unravelling of News International following the triggering news that came out in the trial of Levi Belfield, the man convicted of murdering 13 year-old schoolgirl Millie Dowler. It was revealed that a person or persons working for the News of the World had accessed and in fact deleted messages on the girl's phone after she went missing. The repeated activity led police to believe she was accessing her voice mail, and thus, it's implied, thinking of her as a runaway rather than an abductee in the first few days of her disappearance.
Then we learn her family's phones were also hacked.
And the whole scandal picks up momentum.
We knew they'd been doing it to movie stars, royalty, cheating sports personalities, and we knew there had been investigations. But celebrities don't tug at the heartstrings like a bereaved family of ordinary people, people like us.
And so it rolls on, this crumbling of a once-mighty empire. It thought itself untouchable. It thought politicians were in its pocket, it thought it owned the police.
But now it seems the politicians fear the people more than the Murdoch empire, and that empire is crashing around his ears. The first step of damage limitation was to announce that News of the World would print its last edition, 168 years from its inception. The staff mostly heard about it from the BBC, before their employers told them.
People were resigning too, an inch before they were pushed. Police chiefs. bent detectives.
Then we hear that just prior to announcing the death of news of the world, they've registered web domains for "The Sun on Sunday". Ha! so they think they'll just fill the void with another, indistinguishable paper with a different name? Business as usual?
Oh no.
The prime minister's erstwhile aide, a man with links to the phone tapping is arrested, but hey. they're non-denominational, they've cultivated pals of whatever stripe, dined with the scions of labour as well as the conservatives, oh yes, they'd all thought inviting the tiger to dinner was a good idea, appeasement on a grand scale.
Well. It looks as though it's all over in Britain for Murdoch's business empire. He owns the Wall Street journal too, and Fox News, a network not  famed for journalistic integrity. Now it seems there are allegations that News International played the same hacking tricks with the phones of 9/11 victims and their families, of fire crews, police, medical personnel. The FBI is investigating.

I can't see the company surviving in the U.S. if these stories prove to be true.

Few tears will be shed for Murdoch's losses. I don't imagine this ushers in a new wave of honest press, but I'm glad that some of the scummiest journalists around have reaped their just rewards, and will find no other paper dare employ them.

I never read the News of the World, it's always been an offensive rag. Good riddance.