Dreaming Argentina

Dreaming Argentina

Ah, Buenos Aires,
You are the woman I once loved.
Too beautiful to turn away,
Too wounded to ask to stay.
Of course I'll take you back-
How could I not
as Piazzola starts to play that tango,
the bandaneon wraps Binelli's sad shoulders,
horse tails grandly brush the polo fields,
at Boca, on Sunday, the earth gently trembling,
and, famously late, Teatro Colon opens again
   its golden doors.
The richest poor country on the earth.
Many long rivers have made you, but
year after year, laconic, in plain sight,
your own rob your sky blue birthright.
I beg of you, my beauty-
Repair your sidewalks, grow greater hymns,
throw the fat rascals into River Platte.
And if you don't... next Tuesday,
we'll walk along Parque Las Heras, verdant still,
have a paper and a coffee, and, like old lovers,
dream that you one day will.

Poem That Won't Stay Put

Poem That Won't Stay Put

Some people know words
that can rise up off the page
and visit places, like
a garden, a pool,
another country, the moon-
forswearing earthly realities-
a streaming nimbus
moving through the air,
stopping for afternoon tea,
anywhere, remembering, singing
a canticle at night,
and then at their pleasure,
reassembling in the book
and giving off light.

A Short History of Life

            There was no love,

            no race of Gods,

            no music of any kind, faint or ephemeral.

            Till molybdenum

            riding on an asteroid

            collided with a petri dish of cosmic drizzle–

            a flask of gurgling gases–

            on earth, life stirred.

            Time wound its clocks, marked its calendars.

           

            Beetles and seed spores

            filled the floor of forests,

            killer whales and fiddler crabs occupied the seas.

            In far pastures ibex and catamount,

            chrysanthemum, mossy marigolds,        

            the skies flecked with falcons and whippoorwills.

            Then reasoning creatures–

            bushmen striding out of Africa–

            gathered at the rivers of the earth, its valleys, plains.

           

            Nightfire tales were told,

            paintings on cave walls and vases,        

            fear and wonder, singing their incomprehension.

            Predators, disease, ghastly wars,

            there was compassion, hunger,

            mothers bringing babies to their bare breasts.

            There was joy, brilliance,

            increasing mastery of earth.

            And under a single bulb in many dim rooms–

            longing

The Golden Man---Kazakhstan

The land mass of Kazakhstan is the 9th largest nation in the world,
> bigger than western europe. Population 16 million of whom 1.6 live in
> Almaty. After the fall of the ussr the capital was moved to a new
> city, Astana, because almaty is entirely too close to the chinese
> border. It is a muslim nation since the invasion of the Arab Caliphate
> in the 8th century. Almaty was totally destroyed by the Mongol
> invasion in the 13th century, which empire lasted till the late 14th
> century when it imploded of its own weight. The uzbek Tamerlane ruled
> for a period then Kazak was free except for several invasions by the
> chinese and Russians. It has been a democracy since 1991.
> Here I had one of those priceless, unexpected experiences for which a
> traveler lives.Upon learning of my interest in archaeology, I was
> taken some 50 km out of Almaty to where a small museum had been
> recently constructed at the site of an ancient city and a number of
> tumuli-raised burial mounds, where the important people of the city
> had been buried. The city was one of the 18 Saka tribes spread across
> Kazakhstan who were kazaks ancestors, 8th century b.c.e. Herodutus
> wrote about them calling them Scythians. It was at this site than an
> archaeologist found the "Golden Man" who is now the post-communist
> country's symbol (on the flag astride a snow leopard, and everywhere).
> The discovered body was that of a young prince buried resplendently in
> 400 pieces of gold, head to foot. I was introduced to the now 76 year
> old archaeologist for whom the word spry must have been coined. After
> a Kazak bear hug and a loud greeting he stared at me for a full
> minute, then said, "back then," meaning the long ago past- "you are
> Kazak, follow me." Of course I've been told the same thing by
> Tibetans, Greeks, Turks, Welsh and Irish, so I'm proud to be a citizen
> of the world or a melting pot in and of myself. We walked a mile into
> the fields and sat on top of one of the tumuli, he said, to show
> respect for our ancestors. Through a translator he began to describe
> the Saka city which had been located in the foothills of the vast
> steppes in the distance. The Saka were ruled by a tribal council and
> there was no inter tribal war. There were extensive trade relations as
> goods of many far away countries have been found. He pointed to the
> location of the king's palace, where the nobles lived, and where the
> common people lived. We then discussed our theories of the origins and
> causes of war, and the origins in early humans of artstic and
> religious impulses. As we walked back after an hour or so, he said he
> now had two Ronalds--Reagan and myself--"no more Ronalds, enough."
> Another Kazak hug, he slipped thru the fence to the museum and was
> gone. Just another tuesday afternoon in Kazakhstan, right?
> As further evidence of my cliched theory that all peoples in all times
> are more or less the same, as we drove back into the city we passed a
> Bentley dealership and behind a gated enclave were spread a mile in
> each direction: McMansions- 10,000 sq ft closely bunched. Not without
> some corruption, the vast oil reserves, which may be as much as 1/4 of
> the reserves remaining on the planet, have been good to Kazakstan.
> And yes, I did meet Borat--he was selling trinkets in the bazaar,
> wearing a belt as old as he was, of which any cowboy would be proud,
> telling Kazak jokes.

Regret that you never saw Samarkand--Uzbekistan

Written in one of my poems, that line didn't anticipate that I would
> one day be in Tashkent wishing I had planned to go to samarkand. It
> recently celebrated its 2,752 birthday, was a major stop on the silk
> road and contains many of the ancient treasures, at least those not
> destroyed by the Arabs, mongols, Persians, Chinese Russians, whomever.
> The Uzbecks are a warm, friendly open people, there are over 150
> nationalities or tribes in the country, which fact is reflected in the
> faces on the street. It was part of the Assyrian Empire, then
> conquered by Alexander the Great. He fell in love with and married
> Roxanne, a woman from Samarkand. Could I have been so fortunate had I
> gone there? He also suffered one of his few defeats in the area of
> Xorazm. He had laid seibe to the fortress for almost six months but
> could not break thru the walls or gate. When the besieged realized
> they could not hold out much longer they slipped in the night thru a
> tunnel previously built into the hills beyond. When Alexander attacked
> the next morning he breached the open gate and found only goats. The
> country was invaded by the Arab Caliphate in the 8th century and has
> since been muslim. They have always refused (twice recently even
> though offered millions of dollars) to adopt the Iranian model of
> statehood--religious power over the state. After the dissolution of
> the ussr in 1991 they formed a democracy. Their form of Islam has some
> elements of Zoroastrianism. I saw a beautiful mosque from the 10th
> century, one of the few of that age not destroyed by Mongols. And it
> was a privilege to see the oldest copy of the Koran extant, written in
> 646. It was lost to the Persians but recovered by the great Emperor
> Tamerlane. The Russians took it to the Hermitage but they did return
> it after making 50 copies. An interesting aside. Stalin was so
> impressed by Tamerlane's military prowess-28 successful campaigns
> without a losing one- that he had Tamerlane's body disinterred and
> brought to Russia for his scientists to study. He was warned that he
> would have no military victories during this base act. He finally
> relented and the body was returned and reburied. Soon after that the
> Russians were victorius in lifting the seige at Leningrad.
> Pithancropus were here 1.5 million years ago and the Neanderthal.
> Fully human man was here 50,000 years ago, earlier than previously
> thought. Cities began around 3,000 b.c.e. A great quote of Tamerlane "
> the power is in justice." FYI It was a fifth generation descendant of
> Tamerlane who built the Taj Mahal. Tamerlane's empire had extended
> into northern India. Russia, in the person of Alexyev, Peter the
> Great's grandson, conquered Uzbekistan in 1865 and it was Russian
> until 1991.Important to point out that in Azerbijan, Kazakhstan and
> Uzbekistan, it is a type of Muslim country where religion is totally
> separate from religion, where all religions and ethnicity are
> accepted. f.y.i. The taliban came from Iran.

They are no longer here-armenia

> Armenia has a population less than 3 million of which 1.3 live in
> Yerevan. Yerevan was earlier than Rome, built as Erubuni in 782 b.c.e.
> The people are fiercely loyal to their country and most of them to
> their Armenian Orthodox faith. Indeed the first christian church in
> that part of the world was built in 301 a.c.e. when the King was
> converted to Christianity by Gregory the Illuminator. All but one of
> the previously existing pagan temples were destroyed and rebuilt as
> churches except one, because the King's wife wanted it as a summer
> home. When the King had gone to Rome to get his crown, he brought back
> a slave who had been a greek architect, so the temple could easily be
> sitting near the Agora. Of course, after all the churches of Georgia
> and Armenia, I had to tell my guide  we had finally found "my church."
> Armenia has had a difficult history. A once large and successful
> nation which stretched from the Caspian (largest sea in the world) to
> the Black Sea. Aseries of invasions wars and international politics
> has reduced it to the present status. Not having oil or much in the
> way of natural resources the country is relatively poor and life is
> difficult.There was a recent war between Azerbijian and Armenia over
> an area in eastern armenia. The conflict was finally resolved by
> granting the area its own statehood. But, by far, the most tragic
> episode in Armenia's history is the Turkish genocide which occurred
> from the late 19th century until 1923. During this time 1.5 million
> Armenians were killed by the Turks. Similar to the Chines invasion of
> Tibet in the middle of the 20th century in which 1.2 million Tibetans
> were killed and their country conquered, no one, no country did
> anything to stop the slaughter. (because there ws no oil in either
> place.) The first stage included conscripting all the men between
> 18-45 into to the Turkish army only then to force them into slave
> labor. The second stage included the deportation of many thousands of
> armenians. The third stage involved releasing convicts from Turkish
> prisons to brutally slaughter the remaing mean women and children of
> wester armenia under a policy entitled Armenia without Armenians. The
> Genocide Museum displays incontrovertible and heartbreaking evidence
> of this 40 year campaign which continued till a new president was
> elected in Turkey in 1923 who stopped it.Because of the importance of
> US air bases in Turkey, Congress has once again this year refused to
> acknowledge the period as one of genocide, one of the few countries
> which has not belatedly done so.The three persons primarily
> responsible for the genocide were tried and convicted in Turkish
> courts for crimes against humanity, but never suffered any punishment.
> Because of these calamities it is estimated that 8 million armenians
> are part of a world wide diaspora-more than three times the country's
> population. To lighten the tone a little, Todd tells me there is a
> significant population called Little armenia in Glendale, Los Angeles,
> some of whom no doubt went there to watch TCU win the Rose Bowl. On my
> last day the clouds did part and I saw Mt. Ararat (but not the ark),
> which unfortunately is now in Turkey but beautifully visible on a
> clear day. And it is the name of finest brandy I have had outside
> France.