Sunday, September 23, 2012

I Am a Pretender to Dog Music




John Coltrane was born eighty-six years ago today. The ear is an organ made for love. anne (gave me - I think - an enormously Kind compliment) in comments asked me (a second time, I apologize, I missed the first time) if I knew of Agnes Martin, and no, I didn't, but thanks to anne I do now.






 











DOG MUSIC
     
Paul Zimmer
 
Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.
My big dog sang with me so purely,
puckering her ruffled lips into an O,
beginning with small, swallowing sounds
like Coltrane musing, then rising to power
and resonance, gulping air to continue—
her passion and sense of flawless form—
singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.
We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"
"Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido."
She was a great master and died young,
leaving me with unrelieved grief,
her talents known to only a few.


Now I have a small dog who does not sing,
but listens with discernment, requiring
skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.
I sing her name and words of love
andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.
Sometimes she is so moved she turns
to place a paw across her snout,
closes her eyes, sighing like a girl
I held and danced with years ago.


But I am a pretender to dog music.
The true strains rise only from
the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,
these melodies best when the moon is up,
listeners and singers together or
apart, beyond friendship and anger,
far from any human imposter—
ballads of long nights lifting
to starlight, songs of bones, turds,
conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,
things settled long before our birth.




4 comments:

  1. of one of my comments on stop me .. , on the wht male privilege post .., of something else of migrating , and more " .. still reading ,/ steven , of your next comment , 1,20, ..has something to do with my own awk ward shading , i'm as fair, pale as they come , of an ancient migrating , but of nothing of the orient , an oval , ,my facing , i am norwegian, scot., ger. ,again nothing that suggests of the orient of my oval face, and a little of something of fr. ,as far back as the book keeping goes ,and of another more native to ont. here ,of my family connect being here for a long time , and my only connect to the states being of coming in in part as huguenot , in the 1700c on the east coast there , but moved north not long after / .. . more to come ,of my mention of dance , and of that lovely man of colour with tears in his eyes as he cried out she is not white on seeing me dance in the middling midst of a gathering gather .. .thousands , .. . " / of note , i am now dancing about in here to the coltrane that you have on (said the daughter of an architectural draftsman .. . and jazz man ) ,of that mention of a gathering .. i was dancing at something to do with all of the ways that we are made home less , with the dj with their eyes on me in the gathering putting something of a very.. . extended re mixing of gimme shelter .. .

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  2. of cascading , in my looking over here a little over the last year , from io z ,.. of the no flow of whatever this is of pages loading , why do you not care .. . on this over flow of reading suggests that causes the no flow or whatever it is of setting this up that makes for .. , why do you not care .. that this flow makes reading here too difficult for others ( like myself ?) or for all .. ?

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  3. anne, as for page loading, I agree, the bleg is loading slower lately after all the recent skeevy windows/flash/java updates so I just halved the number of posts on first page - hope that helps. As for overflow, it's how I process.

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  4. but the cascading has always been difficult here ? of .. "as for over flow ", of process, of take in ..and put out ...is that a suggest of some hyper of mind ? not able to focus in some way ..in that a rapid sequence of .. . , said the girl with a very different odd flow .. . \ i'// go look for some cat and other four legged comments i've made .. to slow you down for pats .. .

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