Song

by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Brigit Pegeen Kelly is a poet and Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. Her second published collection, Song, won the Lamont Poetry Prize of the Academy of American Poets in 1994. I’ve read a bit of academic analysis of its title work, all of it no more than otiose poking at Song’s fearsome umbra.

Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song
Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

Listen: there was a goat’s head hanging by ropes in a tree.
All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it
Felt a hurt in their hearts and thought they were hearing
The song of a night bird. They sat up in their beds, and then
They lay back down again. In the night wind, the goat’s head
Swayed back and forth, and from far off it shone faintly
The way the moonlight shone on the train track miles away
Beside which the goat’s headless body lay. Some boys
Had hacked its head off. It was harder work than they had imagined.
The goat cried like a man and struggled hard. But they
Finished the job. They hung the bleeding head by the school
And then ran off into the darkness that seems to hide everything.
The head hung in the tree. The body lay by the tracks.
The head called to the body. The body to the head.
They missed each other. The missing grew large between them,
Until it pulled the heart right out of the body, until
The drawn heart flew toward the head, flew as a bird flies
Back to its cage and the familiar perch from which it trills.
Then the heart sang in the head, softly at first and then louder,
Sang long and low until the morning light came up over
The school and over the tree, and then the singing stopped….
The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named
The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after
The night’s bush of stars, because the goat’s silky hair
Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit.
The girl lived near a high railroad track. At night
She heard the trains passing, the sweet sound of the train’s horn
Pouring softly over her bed, and each morning she woke
To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang
Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats.
She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily
That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming
Made it so. But one night the girl didn’t hear the train’s horn,
And the next morning she woke to an empty yard. The goat
Was gone. Everything looked strange. It was as if a storm
Had passed through while she slept, wind and stones, rain
Stripping the branches of fruit. She knew that someone
Had stolen the goat and that he had come to harm. She called
To him. All morning and into the afternoon, she called
And called. She walked and walked. In her chest a bad feeling
Like the feeling of the stones gouging the soft undersides
Of her bare feet. Then somebody found the goat’s body
By the high tracks, the flies already filling their soft bottles
At the goat’s torn neck. Then somebody found the head
Hanging in a tree by the school. They hurried to take
These things away so that the girl would not see them.
They hurried to raise money to buy the girl another goat.
They hurried to find the boys who had done this, to hear
Them say it was a joke, a joke, it was nothing but a joke….
But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have
Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they
Had imagined, this silly sacrifice, but they finished the job,
Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark.
What they didn’t know was that the goat’s head was already
Singing behind them in the tree. What they didn’t know
Was that the goat’s head would go on singing, just for them,
Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen,
Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would
Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees
Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There
Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song,
The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother’s call.
Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song
Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone

Taibbi’s been writing as cogently about the economic crisis and bailout as anyone I’ve encountered:

What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

How could Obama let this happen? Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?

Well, obviously, the latter. I guess after eight years of the Bush gang, many of us desperately wanted to believe there was something more to this man and his campaign than is abysmally typical of American politicians and politics. We were easily duped by vague and ultimately empty promises. But the War Party and its bankers never lose Congress* or the White House. What is to be done?

*Sen. Dick Durbin, on a local Chicago radio station this week, blurted out an obvious truth about Congress that, despite being blindingly obvious, is rarely spoken: “And the banks — hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.” The blunt acknowledgment that the same banks that caused the financial crisis “own” the U.S. Congress — according to one of that institution’s most powerful members — demonstrates just how extreme this institutional corruption is. (Glenn Greenwald, April 30, 2009)

It is the object of Zen, therefore, to save us from going crazy or being crippled. This is what I mean by freedom, giving free play to all the creative and benevolent impulses inherently lying in our hearts. Generally, we are blind to this fact, that we are in possession of all the necessary faculties that will make us happy and loving towards one another. All the struggles that we see around us come from this ignorance. Zen, therefore, wants us to open a ‘third eye’, as Buddhists call it, to the hitherto un-dreamed-of region shut away from us through our own ignorance. When the cloud of ignorance disappears, the infinity of the heavens is manifested, where we see for the first time into the nature of our own being. We now know the signification of life, we know that it is not blind striving nor is it a mere display of brutal forces, but that while we know not definitely what the ultimate purport of life is, there is something in it that makes us feel infinitely blessed in the living of it and remain quite contented with it in all its evolution, without raising questions or entertaining pessimistic doubts.

from D.T. Suzuki, Essays In Zen Buddhism, Vol. 1, 1927

Kiddieland was an amusement park in Melrose Park that opened in 1929. I fondly remember going to it as a child, and took Zoe there once (she’s never much cared for amusement parks). Unlike the modern variety, it was a park that catered in particular to young children, with a miniature train running along its periphery. It closed on September 26th, the victim of a feud between family members who owned the park and their kin who owned the land.

I went there on September 19th, just to take a few photos and say good bye. The park was a bit shabby, maintenance no doubt the victim of imminent closure. The Little Dipper roller coaster was badly in need of repainting.

The rides and other equipment will be auctioned off next month. Will someone bid for everything and attempt a resurrection? More photos here.

CEO’s of the Big Three automakers are escorted to Capitol Hill upon their arrival in Washington. The trio made the trip from Detroit via freight train.

Iris, in her thousand hues enrobed traced through the sky her arching bow.

– Ovid, Metamorphoses 11. 585 ff, (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.)

On the afternoon of Sunday, June 22nd, a passing shower produced this stunning double rainbow in Chicago’s eastern sky. You can see a larger version of this picture here.

Rainbows are produced by a combination of refraction and reflection as sunlight encounters raindrops. Some of the sunlight passing through the upper part of a drop is refracted into its constituent spectral colors, then reflected off the back of the drop, and refracted again as it passes back through the front of the drop and toward the observer.

A secondary rainbow is occasionally visible, caused by light striking the lower parts of drops and reflecting twice inside each drop before exiting. That second reflection is what makes the secondary rainbow appear with its colors reversed: red at the bottom and blue at the top.

René Descartes, the French polymath, derived the geometric relationships among sun, observer, and the droplets responsible for primary and secondary rainbows in his treatise of 1637, “Discourse on Method.” Here’s his sketch of it:

At 8 p.m. last night, Chicago was one of 26 major cities and more than 300 other cities and towns around the world turning off its lights in observance of the World Wildlife Fund’s Earth Hour. Begun last year in Sydney, Australia, this year’s consciousness-raising event was observed in Atlanta, Copenhagen, Melbourne, San Francisco, Dublin, Dubai, Cebu City, Tel Aviv and most of Australia and Canada, among other places.

In Chicago, many downtown buildings turned off all non-essential lighting. Why not do it all the time? A Commonwealth Edison spokesperson announced that power consumption in the region was five percent less than the same hour period the previous Saturday.

I did the dinner dishes by candlelight while Zoe played the piano.

By various estimates, 2,200 to 4,000 people braved yesterday’s blustery March evening to attended a rally in Chicago’s Federal Plaza, and march a meandering route north to Bughouse Square in observance of the fifth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq. Smaller groups gathered for vigils in parks across the city.

The crowd was spirited and upbeat, but with an undercurrent of frustration and deep resentment at the unwillingness of the Democrats of the House and Senate to confront the issue of the war and its funding.

Vice President Cheney missed the observances nationwide of this unfortunate anniversary, having been called back to the home office in Riyadh. Before his return to the U.S., he took time out from his grueling diplomatic schedule to give Martha Raddatz of ABC News an interview at the Shangri-La’s Barr Al Jissah Resort & Spa in Muscat, Oman. Here is a brief excerpt:

MR: Let me go back to the Americans. Two-thirds of Americans say it’s not worth fighting, and they’re looking at the value gain versus the cost in American lives, certainly, and Iraqi lives.

DC: So?

MR: So — you don’t care what the American people think?

DC: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Cheney’s linguistic economy is well known, and this terse pronouncement effectively encapsulates the source of the frustrations that anti-war activists feel. If the choice is between the party of ruinous, endless war, and the somewhat-less-war-eventually party, the parameters of the debate have been set by people who don’t care too much about the opinions of two-thirds of the populace. I heard someone point out recently that if you can frame the debate, you usually win it.

Despite this, I plan to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate this year, whether it’s Obama, Clinton, or a Democratic rhesus monkey nominated on the 1,034th ballot of a brokered convention. Consider the alternative. Equating Democrats ideologically with Republicans is a dangerous oversimplification right now. As just one small example, I don’t believe that under a Democratic President the EPA would be arguing in court to allow greater levels of emissions of mercury by coal-fired power plants, as it is currently. I wish I could claim that neither Clinton nor Obama would launch an unprovoked, preemptive strike against Iran, but I don’t think either has categorically ruled it out.

The march broke up at Washington Square Park, though a few participants stayed to dance and revel in the middle of Dearborn Street. This gave the police a chance to don riot gear, trot out the horses and ride around on their four-wheeled buggies and segways (?!). The confrontation, however, was short-lived and peacefully concluded. Then everyone went home.
A few more photos here.

Last night’s eclipse was spectacular. The reddening moon hung below Regulus (the brightest star in Leo) and next to Saturn.

It was the twenty-sixth eclipse of Saros Cycle 133, which began with the lunar eclipse of May 13th, 1557, and will end with the eclipse of June 29th, 2918. Each Saros Cycle comprises eclipses with very similar geometries and approximate periodicity of 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours. There are currently forty-one different active lunar Saros Cycles.

Babylonian astronomy had become quite sophisticated by the time of the reign of Nabonassar (747-733 BCE), and the Saros Cycle was well understood by Babylonian astronomer-priests by the sixth century BCE. Lacking knowledge of the true geometry of the solar system (or so we presume), the Babylonians kept records of the observable circumstances of lunar and solar eclipses beginning perhaps as far back as the eighteenth century BCE and eventually gleaned their hidden patterns of recurrence. Ancient Babylon is present day Iraq.

This picture is a composite of three bracketed shots, layered together in Photoshop. I took it with a Nikon D80. It was attached by a t-connector to a TeleVue Pronto telescope - effectively a 480mm (equivalent to 720mm on a 35mm camera), f6.8 telephoto lens.

As I reluctantly left the house on this 4° F morning, the first sound I heard was the distinctive song of the Northern Cardinal shown here, perched on a bare branch of my neighbor’s maple tree. Why do they stay here in winter? Not only here; cardinals are year-round residents as far north as upper Michigan and southern Ontario.

Birds have a varied arsenal of defenses for coping with the cold, honed by the benevolent hand of adaptive evolution via the mechanism of natural selection. Feathers can be fluffed, creating pockets of air that protect a bird’s skin from heat loss. Many species of birds have circulatory systems that can greatly reduce the loss of heat through their unprotected feet and legs in cold weather by strategic narrowing and expansion of their arteries and veins. Some birds have the extraordinary ability to let their body temperature fall precipitously — lethal hypothermia in human talk — and bring it back up when conditions permit.

But cardinals don’t do the hypothermia trick, so the question persists. Why do they stay here in winter?