L'étendard sanglant est levé

Righty-ho, given that Sunday is Bastille Day, and given the recent national elections in France that drove Marine Le Pen to tears, I think today’s earworm has to be the “Marseillaise” sequence from Casablanca.

If you’re unfamiliar with the context, Major Strasser—a robotically efficient representative of Nazi force—and his posse have waved their collective fascist willies by singing “Die Wacht am Rhein”. It’s an in-your-face expression of who’s driving the car around here.

Charismatic Czech resistance leader Victor Lazlo directs the band in Rick Blaine’s nightclub to counterprogram with “La Marseillaise”, a national anthem literally rising from a revolution. (One of many in French history, but still.) As you can see, the French drown out and defeat the Germans.

It’s not really subtle, although if you recall that “Casablanca” was made in 1942, when the Nazis were still riding high, it was aspirational.

Which is a good message to us all.

(Fun fact: Conrad Veidt, who plays Strasser, was a well-known star of German films in the 20s and 30s. He was also a vehement anti-Nazi, whose refusal to divorce his Jewish wife rendered him unemployable, and the couple left Germany for Britain in 1933. He became a British subject in 1939 and donated both his estate and a portion of all salary received for this film work to the British war effort. He died of a heart attack literally on an L.A. golf course in 1943, age 50.)

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

I say, chaps--Independence Day?

Well, alrighty then—Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak—having at least lasted in office longer than the life span of a head of lettuce left on the kitchen counter—has set a date for the next General Election. Unironically, apparently, it’s going to be on 4 July.

Because nothing disastrous ever happened to the United Kingdom on that date, historically speaking.

In the main, I really admire the British tradition of a very limited campaign period for big elections. (A General Election is national, and it determines which party will control Parliament; thus it also determines, más o menos, who gets to move into No. 10 Downing Street.) By contrast, American presidential elections now seem to be continuous—the day after he was inaugurated in 2017, Cadet Bonespurs filed for candidacy in the 2020 election, using the next nearly four years to violate the Hatch Act in every conceivable way. This time around, Republican candidates came and went before we even got to the election year, and we still have nearly six months to go.

Which doesn’t even count the post-election whining, legal challenges and violent insurrections they have planned.

It's rather odd that Sunak has stuck a pin in this date; the only requirement was that the election be held no later than January 2025, and you'd have thought that (being 21 points behind in the polls) he'd have wanted to wait until the last minute to pull the trigger.

It’s possible, of course, that he just wants to put an end to his misery and turn the detritus of the political operation over to Labour to let them try to clean up the mess left by 14 years of Tory control. Then he can hare off to the Silicon Valley and resume his hedge fund activities. (At least: somewhere as far from Rwanda as he can get.)

Here he is, making the announcement. As a metaphor for Tory rule, it's hard to do better than this.

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Royal blood

Well, alrighty then—King Charles III’s first official monarchical portrait since his coronation (which cost the British public way too much money) has been unveiled and it’s quite the statement.

Although Camilla has told the artist, Jonathan Yeo, “Yes, you’ve got him right,” the folks on the Interwebz beg to differ. I mean—they get the statement part, but it’s unlikely to be one the House of Windsor likes. Mostly around whether the surfeit of red is indicative of Charles being in Hell, or symbolic of the blood of empire.

(¿Por qué no los dos?)

And then there's the butterfly.

Me—I’m thinking that Yeo might just have found a lot of red paint on sale down to the local Michael’s. And climate protestors will have to find something besides tomato soup to throw on it to make their statement.

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Ви виграв війну

Well, alrighty then—yesterday Sweden officially joined NATO, pissing off Vladimir Putin no end. (The walls of the Kremlin are no doubt covered in the Russian equivalent of ketchup. Which is probably blood.) To honor this, the 31^st member of the alliance, we’re going to cruise to the Arctic Circle. It’s ABBA, singing “Waterloo”.

(And this brings me a disco nightmare.)

 

 

Petals

As a liberal arts major and new military historian, I cannot tell you how much I love the story about a Canadian of Ukrainian descent who is painting flowers around the bullet holes left in Bucha. Ivanka Siolkowsky began doing that after talking with a man who had lost his son and his home and pointed to the scores of holes in the fence around his garden. In her efforts, she’s been aided by a four-year-old, painting daffodils, poppies daisies and other flowers in a kind of pivot on the swords-into-ploughshares thing.

There is so much unbearable pain, horror and ugliness in this war; tbh, in the whole world. And it's going to take so much and so long to repair all the loss. I am encouraged that anyone with a heart and a brush (no major artistic talent necessary, as Siolkowsky admits) can help to replace them with blooms, love and beauty. What would it be like if everyone metaphorically picked up a brush and did this? 

You know: cultivate a space for beauty.

 

 

 

Don't be frightened

As we’re rounding the corner on four million refugees from the war in Ukraine—with another seven million people displaced (including nearly 100,000 forcibly transported to Russia by the invading forces), I’m thinking about the childhood experience. Damn, but we’ll be paying for Putin’s little adventure for generations.

Ukrainian mothers are escaping the war with nothing but their children—frightened, bewildered, uprooted. Mothers in the receiving countries are leaving strollers, baby buggies, toys, clothing and supplies for the refugees at entry points and train stations. The cost of war is not measured in blood and treasure alone; plush toys and prams left on a station platform mark a different price.

Today’s music is therefore a lullaby. I don’t know any Ukrainian ones; this is from Wales, “Suo Gân”, which features prominently in Stephen Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun. The 1987 film tells the story of an English boy caught in the devastation of the Japanese invasion of China; separated from his parents, he spends four years in a POW camp. I wish a much shorter sentence for the millions of displaced Ukrainian children and their families.

Translated, the song goes:

Sleep my darling, on my bosom,
Harm will never come to you;
Mother's arms enfold you safely,
Mother's heart is ever true.
As you sleep there's naught to scare you,
Naught to wake you from your rest;
Close those eyelids, little angel,
Sleep upon your mother's breast.

Sleep, my darling, night is falling
Rest in slumber sound and deep;
I would know why you are smiling,
Smiling sweetly as you sleep!
Do you see the angels smiling
As they see your rosy rest,
So that you must smile an answer
As you slumber on my breast?

Don't be frightened, it's a leaflet
Tapping, tapping on the door;
Don't be frightened, 'twas a wavelet
Sighing, sighing on the shore.
Slumber, slumber, naught can hurt you,
Nothing bring you harm or fright;
Slumber, darling, smiling sweetly
At those angels robed in white

Here’s a Welsh boy soprano singing it:

You know what? This is for more than the Ukrainian children and mothers. It's for the Russian children who've lost their fathers (in their thousands over the course of a single month), and for the Russian children who are lost in Ukraine and wondering if they'll ever see their mothers again, and for the Russian mothers who will never hold their children to their breasts. 

All because of Putin's dream of being crowned Tsar Vladimir III.

Gratitude Monday: strength, resilience and sunflowers

Speaking as someone who grew up with the daily body count from the Vietnam War on the six o’clock news, I have to say that “seeing” the Russian invasion of Ukraine is slightly surreal.

I think it’s mostly the juxtaposition between Ukrainians carrying on with their lives in some cases alongside Russian tanks. Because the artillery bombardments and missile and air strikes—well, we’ve been seeing those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and other places for a decade. But in Ukraine—it’s like you do your grocery shopping and then tell the Russkies to piss up a rope as you walk out the door.

And, of course, it’s all captured on your mobile phone and posted to SoMe.

There’s a level of fearlessness and naked courage that informs these videos, running the gamut from soldiers to your ordinary civilians.

Here a few examples of what I mean.

Border guards stationed on Ziiminyi Island in the Black Sea were ordered by the captain of a Russian warship to surrender or be killed. The reply was right in line with that of Anthony McAuliffe at Bastogne in the previous world war (look it up, children):

Early reports indicated that in the ensuing air and shipboard attacks, all the border guards had been killed. As of this writing, however, there are some hopes that they’ve been taken prisoner.

Then we have a kind of Tiananmen Square moment:

And then there was this guy driving down some road and finding a broken-down convoy. (Russians are literally running out of fuel; people—wars are won on logistics. Lack of fuel for the tanks was one of the things that doomed the Battle of the Bulge; see above about McAuliffe.)

And I’ll end the video portion of today’s post with this one of a woman lambasting Russian would-be occupiers. What gets me is the absolute poetry of her encounter—telling them to take the sunflower seeds (sunflowers are the Ukrainian national flower) and put them in their pockets, so that flowers will bloom from their dead bodies in Ukrainian soil.

It reminds me of Seamus Heaney’s “Requiem for the Croppies”. In the case of the Croppy Boys of 1798, the barley in their pockets was their ration, not a curse from a defiant enemy. But—given the supply issues the Russians seem to be experiencing—these soldiers might be grateful for any nutrients.

This invasion is an international crime, cooked up by an autocrat who appears to be unstable and entirely capable of ratcheting up the conflict to the nuke stage. Additionally, he has a cyber arsenal that carries considerable bang for the buck, and it can damage the entire world. We are all in danger.

So, on this Gratitude Monday as we all face the consequences of Putin’s glory-hounding at the expense of his neighbors, I’m choosing to be grateful for the strength and resilience of the Ukrainian people, the badassery of Ukraine’s leadership and the general attitude of everyone there that Russians can fuck all the way the hell off.

Oddly, I’m also grateful for the non-combat use of economic sanctions by most of the rest of the world (seize the yachts, properties, aircraft, limos and financial assets of Putin and all his oligarchs; see how they like having their kids home from Swiss and English boarding schools and all their mistresses’ credit cards shut down) that will make life very difficult for the rogue nation.

I am also in complete awe of the thousands of Russians who have taken to the streets throughout the country to protest the war. Ditto the people of Putin's puppet state, Belarus. They are literally risking their lives to tell Putin to get stuffed. These people have brass ones.

And I’m grateful for the efforts of people around the world to support Ukraine however they can. (Looking at those hundreds of Romanians at the Ukraine border with bags of food, cartons of water and boxes of supplies to keep their neighbors fed, hydrated and able to diaper their babies. I’ve also donated to World Central Kitchen, which is on the Polish border, feeding Ukrainian refugees.)

In the midst of an event highlighting the greatest evil people can do, we are suffused with examples of the best, as well. For that, I give thanks.

 

Dualities

Sorry, folks. I got caught up yesterday in several Twitter threads by a dual-citizenship (Scots-French) writer living in Dordogne on his various encounters with Brexit loons who do not grasp the irony (and hypocrisy) of being racist xenophobes believing that Brexit keeps Britain for the British while at the same time being outraged that their privileges as EU citizens owning property in France for holidays/retirement will end on 31 December, with or without a “deal”. By the time I extracted myself from the last three months, I was a couple of hours in the hole.

Then I had to make up the time on work-related activities, so I’m at a loss for what to give you today.

Well, there’s always vanity plates. How about this one: a Virginia license plate declaring one’s Scottishness in French?

Seems apropos.

Unwanted

With nothing but the cachet of her daddy’s position, the unelected “special advisor” to the Chaos Monkey tagged along on the series of photo-ops that was the G20 meeting last week. The First Airhead, dressed like a refugee from Laura Ashley, inserted herself into meetings and photographs as though she was an actual contributor. Basically, she was at a battle of wits only partially armed.

The expressions of gobsmacked disbelief on the faces of people who are actual statesmen and diplomats told the whole story. The quintessential moment may have been the conversation among Justin Trudeau, Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron and Christine Lagarde, into which Her Vapidness tried desperately to insert herself, with eyes on the camera all the time.

This pretty much defines cringeworthy.

Then there was this actual photo, that pretty much looks like a nightmare version of Take Your Idiot Daughter to Work. The side-eyes are cherce:

Well, the call went out over Twitter under the hashtag #UnwantedIvanka to find us more instances where she might have showed up to flog her brand, and the Twitterati responded like troupers. Just as they did four years ago with Nicolas Sarkozy. Viz:

  

In many cases, given Il Douche’s utter disregard for standards of government and his core purpose to amass wealth for the kleptocracy, it was hard to know whether the pictures were real or photoshopped.

This one, for example, is an actual shot from the op at the top, with individual facial expressions called out:

You’ll note that Bonespurs is looking at the airhead’s butt. That’s the level of our leadership.

I confess that when I saw coverage of G20, this is what I thought was going on:

Also, given the performance at Osan Air Base in Korea, the actuality of this may not be far off.

There are probably many, many more #UnwantedIvanka memes by now. Take a look for yourself.

The flower of our youth

There’s a lot of coverage—rightly so—of the 75^th anniversary of the D-Day landings, that spectacular operation that drove a stake through the wall of Hitler’s Festung Europa and began the 11-month slog to Germany. The ranks of the veterans of Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha and Utah are thinning and growing frail; they are, after all, in their 90s.

There was a ceremony yesterday at Portsmouth, one of the embarkation points in England, to mark that side of the operation, and there’s another one today at Juno Beach, near Courseulles-sur-Mer, one of the two British landing sites. Most of the heads of state understand the solemnity and importance of remembering these long-ago events; sadly, the one representing the United States does not.

I don’t know what’s on the agenda, but it would be a good thing if the pols visited one of the three military cemeteries within a few kilometers of one another near Omaha Beach: Colleville-sur-mer, American; Bayeux, British; and La Cambe, German. I’ve walked them all, several times.

The American cemetery is situated on the bluff above Omaha Beach. You can stand at the edge and look down on the scene of the slaughter. And wonder how the hell they ever made it up to where you are. The graves are marked with white marble crosses, with the occasional Star of David interspersed. It’s quiet, usually, except for the wind. More than 9300 men lie there—not all fallen at Normandy, but congregated there in the fellowship of death.

The British cemetery, run by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, is in the heart of Bayeux, the town they took on 7 June. The headstones are like those at all CWGC graveyards—identically-sized slabs of white marble engraved with the soldier’s name, regiment and date of death (if known; otherwise a cross and “known but to God” inscribed); a centrally-located Cross of Sacrifice (tall marble cross with a sword inset), and a Stone of Remembrance, inscribed “Their Name Liveth Forevermore”. More than 4000 Brits, Commonwealth, Poles, French and others lie there.

La Cambe is outside Bayeux; you get to it down a quiet road that seems to have no other purpose but to lead you to the dead. The cemetery is maintained by the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, the German counterpart to the CWGC. It’s not as large space-wise as the two Allied graveyards. That’s because when you look at the inscriptions on the black metal markers set into the earth, you see there are often two to five men buried in a single spot. Plus, there are the nearly 300 known and unknown under the central mound. More than 21,000 men lie there.

The thing that struck me almost from the first in these three cemeteries was the ages on the markers—you almost never see anyone who’d reached 24. Most were in the 19-22-year age range. When you’d expect them to be in college, or working their first jobs.

I’ve often wondered what the world lost through those early deaths. What music never was composed? What scientific breakthroughs never made? What civic gains, feats of sportsmanship, family enrichment just disappeared from the future in June 1944?

That, of course, is in addition to the anguish and sorrow that engulfed their families. Parents, siblings, wives, children—bereft and left alone to sort out a world gone mad. No one to repair the gutter or fix the bike; to guide a grandchild’s hands tying a bow knot; to comfort a friend; to surprise a lover with flowers.

It had to be done—it always seems to need doing. Especially since we see the resurgence of fascism and totalitarianism all around us. But take a few moments this week to think on those 30,000 lives cut short in Normandy 75 years ago. The boys of D-Day who put their lives on the line for their generation and those that followed.

Puttin' on the Ritz

I’ve been knee-deep in spreadsheets for the last while, and yesterday I could only check in a couple of times on the shitshow that is the state visit to the UK. But one of the pieces was this column in The Guardian on the presser (ish) held by Bonespurs and May. And it basically says all I could do, and more.

I’m almost afraid to read—much less listen to—the Piers Morgan interview. But I hope May is removed from the presidential intestine before Morgan starts up. Otherwise, what with the Kleptocrat’s head being permanently installed there, could get a little crowded. And I’m not sure the NHS is equipped to remove blockage of that magnitude.

However, when I saw how Tosser Toddler was tricked out for the state banquet on Monday night, I snorted my coffee through my nose. Apparently no one told him what was expected by way of dress for the occasion and someone had to run out to Moe’s Glam-Spot Prom Rentals™ and mistakenly said, “It’s for a healthy guy weighing 239 lbs with exceptionally long arms. Yeah, that one will do. Doesn’t matter that the waistcoat is cut for an NBA forward, we got a situation here. White tie? No, no—gimme the clip-on. He can’t tie a bow tie and his wife won’t do it for him. And Hope Hicks isn’t available.”

This was the result:

One of the more apt comments on Twitter was, “He looks like he’s trying to smuggle an entire roast pig out of the banquet to snack on back on Air Force One.”

It’s extra delicious that those ridiculously long sleeves really do make his hands look tiny.

At least there’s no room in that getup for him to try to steal any of the silverware.

But I do worry that he’ll return from this junket decreeing that the USMC be kitted out in bearskin hats like the Grenadiers. And he’ll declare a national emergency to get money to buy himself a tiara.

Talking politics

Since the Tosser-in-Chief, accompanied by his adult family of grifters, is strutting around London and enjoying all the attention of the state visit Brexit Babe Theresa May scuttled over here to offer him in January 2017, it seems like an appropriate time to post about the conversations I had with various people while I was in Dublin and Belfast last month.

I’ll preface this by stating that I know for a fact that there are greedy, racist, misogynistic right-wing nut jobs in Ireland, but I did not run into any of them.

Thank God.

Stevie, my sectarian guide in Belfast, was justifiably proud of the progress made in terms of the civic comity and economic growth since the Good Friday Agreement. I told him that I was really heartened to see the changes since my last visit, but I was concerned about the cataclysm that is Brexit. He was, too. It’s not just the danger that a hard border between Ulster and the Republic could reignite the civil war, especially with all the Faragian hate rhetoric. It’s that pulling out of the Euro Zone and deporting all the European workers who fuel the economy could cripple the economy.

From my own observation, most of the people in service jobs—hotel staff, restaurant servers, retail clerks—were, from their accents, Eastern European, both north and south. In addition, a lot of construction, plumbing, electrical and the like is being done by people from Poland, Rumania, Czechia, Serbia, Estonia and the Slovak Republic. Come Brexit, the ones in Eireann will be fine—they’ll still be working and contributing to the nation. The ones in Ulster—not so much. What do you do when your hospitality industry collapses?

I’m not even going to talk about the National Health Service in Ulster, but they’re screwed royally.

Walking down Dublin’s O’Connell Street, I got to chatting with a Nigerian guy named Favour (yes), who asked if I’d sign a petition Oxfam was putting together on the catastrophe in Yemen. After inquiring where I’d been while in Ireland (“You must go to the country, it is beautiful.”) and how long he’s been there (18 months), we got back to the logistics of the petition. It was going to the Tánaiste (the deputy to the Taoiseach, and hearing Favor use the Irish terms was a treat), “Who’s like your Mike Pence.”

“Well, I hope he’s much better than Mike Pence.”

That brought a wry face.

“But he’s also our Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, so he’s like Rex Tillerson.”

I busted out laughing. “Oh, Tillerson is so last year, hon. At least this week it’s the very robust Mike Pompeo, but who knows for how long?”

Favour was also concerned about the lunacy of Brexit, and the rise of the RWNJs around the world (although he was more tactful in his terminology) who have been emboldened by the slug in the White House.

Then I spent two hours talking with a Twitter acquaintance about the dangers we see ahead. She has two children under the age of 10, whom she’s been able to give a good life partly because of the social support system Ireland has put in place. That would be the kind of social support system that Republicans in the US and Tories in the UK want to dismantle.

As with all my conversations, I prefaced every pronouncement with the disclaimer, “Considering what we in America have let loose on the world, I have no right to claim the moral high ground…” But Theresa May is a self-aggrandizing twit, Nigel Farage is a fascist lunatic and Boris Johnson is the Kleptocrat with a posh accent and apparently undiseased grey matter. Ireland has come so far in the past 30 years, shaking off its religious shackles (the special position of the Catholic Church was written into the Irish constitution in the 1920s; thanks, Dev) and cultivating an educated, innovative, humanistic populace. Reinstituting a hard border with Ulster is part and parcel of the long history of Britain crapping on its neighbors.

And the taxi driver who drove me to Dublin airport flat out said of the stable genius, “If he gets re-elected, I got no sympat’y for yez.” To which I replied, “And you’d be entirely correct.” He wondered how any woman or any person of color could have voted for him. To which I added any serving military or veteran. Or, indeed, any sentient human. He, too, felt that burgeoning racism in Britain is encouraged by the hatemongering emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and amplified by the likes of Farage.

All of this made me sad. As I told Stevie, I’d actually thought we’d made progress here in the States since the days of Sheriff Clark with his cattle prod, Watergate, the Vietnam War—but here we are, like Groundhog Day, living it all over again. Maybe it’s good that the veneer of advancing has been stripped away and we can look at how little we’ve moved forward in reality. And seeing it, we can change it. I hope so.

But it’s going to take a long time and a whole lot of work.

Upsoaring wings: Motionless and speechless

Haitian-American poet Hébert Logerie wrote “Violence on the Steps of Notre Dame of Paris” in response to an incident in June 2017, when police shot an attacker armed with knives and a hammer at the cathedral.

I’m sharing it today after being transfixed by appalling images of Nôtre Dame engulfed in flames. As of Monday afternoon, EDT, the roof and spire had collapsed and the wooden interior was gutted, although apparently the structure and artwork have been saved.

This is all I can say, because this is violence of another kind, and my heart is broken.

“Violence on the Steps of Notre Dame of Paris”

These days, even in the Holy Cathedral,

We are not safe. What a sad world!

At the shrine of the immaculate virgin of our soul,

We are not at peace. What a scandal!

The fools are everywhere, the criminals are everywhere.

Sometimes, we're motionless and speechless out there.

We can haphazardly measure our actions, our moves, and our steps.

Sadly, we're living where the villains know the ropes and the assets.

Violence is savageous, brutal, inhuman, and even bestial.

We are waiting for the Mighty God to perform many miracles.

The undesirables respect neither the altar nor the tabernacle.

Nevertheless, the pitiful morons will lose the final battle.

Upsoaring wings: Wings grow tired

First of all, you have to understand that some of the most boring moments of my life were spent at baseball games: one major league, one AAA minor league. Baseball decidedly not been berry berry good to me.

However, when I brought up WaPo yesterday afternoon and saw the red BREAKING NEWS banner that the arse in the White House has canceled the deal for Major League Baseball (MLB) to sign Cuban players, I flipped out. I didn’t even have to read the story (although I did) to know that this is just a mean-spirited, bloody-minded, petty, vindictive willie-waving exercise and bogus stunt to show everyone in the country who’s the boss.

This little, little putz is still pissed off that he wasn’t allowed to buy a NFL team and that his only listing in the sports history books is going to be as the fool who tanked the WFL. And he’s taking it out on Cuban ball players. Because. He. Can.

If you want to laugh, consider that an administration mouthpiece apparently said with a straight face that MLB payments to the Cuban baseball federation amount to “human trafficking”. Like 1)that’s remotely the case or 2)this crowd gives a flying fuck for human trafficking (except where the Kleptocrat gets a cut of the fees).

So today we’re having a couple of poems from the 20^th-Century Cuban Dulce María Loynaz. Loynaz actually trained as a lawyer, but I don’t hold that against her. Her husband went into exile for some time after the Revolution, but Loynaz remained, and went into seclusion.

Someone asked her why she didn’t also leave. She replied, “I was here first.” Batista, Castro—no importa. She followed her own path.

I’m sharing two of her poems, in Spanish and in English.

“Viajero”

Yo soy como el viajero

que llega a un Puerto y no lo espera nadie;

Soy el viajero tímido que pasa

entre abrazos ajenos y sonrisa

que no son para él…

Como el viajero solo

que se alza el cuello del abrigo

en el gran muelle frío.

“The Traveler”

I am like the traveler

Who arrives at a port where no one waits for him;

I am the shy traveler who walks

Among other people’s embraces and smiles

Which are not for him…

Like the lone traveler

Who turns up the collar of his overcoat

In the chill of the great wharf.

tr: Judith Kerman

From her Poemas sin Nombre (Untitled Poems):

Poema CII

Pajarillos de jaula me van pareciendo a mí misma mis sueños.

Si los suelto, perecen o regresan. Y es que el grano y el cielo

hay que ganarlos; pero el grano es demasiado pequeño y el

cielo es demasiado grande..., y las alas, como los pies, también

se cansan.

“My Dreams”

My dreams are starting to look like birds in a cage.

If I let them go, they either die or return.

I know that the great sky and the tiniest grain

are things we must earn, but the grain is too small

and the sky is too big, and wings, like feet, grow tired.

tr: Paul Weinfield