Arc kicks, karate chops, and thirty cops

Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith do the bonding and the kung fu fighting this summer in The Karate Kid, from Columbia Pictures.

Last week Dwayne Betts was filling in for my fave author/blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates over at The Atlantic, and shared this poem for Father's Day:

ENTER THE DRAGON
by John Murillo
Los Angeles, California, 1976

For me, the movie starts with a black man
Leaping into an orbit of badges, tiny moons

Catching the sheen of his perfect black afro.
Arc kicks, karate chops, and thirty cops

On their backs. It starts with the swagger,
The cool lean into the leather front seat

Of the black and white he takes off in.
Deep hallelujahs of moviegoers drown

Out the wah wah guitar. Salt & butter
High-fives, Right on, brother! and Daddy

Glowing so bright he can light the screen
All by himself. This is how it goes down.

Friday night and my father drives us
Home from the late show, two heroes

Cadillacking across King Boulevard.
In the cars dark cab, we jab and clutch,

Jim Kelly and Bruce Lee with popcorn
Breath, and almost miss the lights flashing

In the cracked side mirror. I know whats
Under the seat, but when the uniforms

Approach from the rear quarter panel,
When the fat one leans so far into my father's

Window I can smell his long day's work,
When my father this John Henry of a man,

Hides his hammer, doesn't buck, tucks away
His baritone, license and registration shaking as if

Showing a bathroom pass to a grade school
Principal, I learn the difference between cinema

And city, between the moviehouse cheers
Of old men and the silence that gets us home.

Commenter Michael offers a link to the scene.

And the most excellent Nag posts a rather impressive screen test. Yowza. Just... wow.

Veterans Day

From the poem At a Calvary Near The Ancre by Wilfred Owen, who was "killed in action at the Battle of the Sambre just a week before the war ended, causing news of his death to reach home as the town's church bells declared peace."

The scribes on all the people shove
And bawl allegiance to the state,
But they who love the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate.

[Hat tip: The Edge of the American West.]

And from Andrew, though I know you've all seen it:

Walt Whitman's Mockingbird

Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite. Photo by Back.Pack, on Flickr.

The child in us is still alive. This post is for my sister: do you remember Dr. Sharsmith reciting poetry on the way up Mount Dana? Good times, good times. Happy Pugoween to Princess Lily!

I'm embarrassed to say that I wasn't familiar with Whitman's poem Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking before reading Jonathan Rosen's terrific book Life of the Skies. It's now one of my most favorite poems ever, and my challenge for this winter is to give my brain a workout and memorize the whole thing. [In the old days, grasshopper, memorizing poetry was thought to be good for both the mind and the spirit.]

From the chapter Whitman's Mockingbird:

The title he later chose, "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," gives the news of poetry in just a few words. It is a phrase of such haunting beauty that you can chant it to yourself in times of trouble or confusion and take comfort from it, because it says the child in us is still alive, and we are still alive, and maybe we are still children rocked by an invisible hand. It says that our adulthood is also a kind of childhood, and the whole world is really a cradle, and perhaps we will grow up someday into something more, and in any event the mysteries of childhood are still close at hand and still unanswerable, so why pretend otherwise?

Here's the first part of Whitman's poem.

OUT OF THE CRADLE ENDLESSLY ROCKING.

OUT of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if
they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fall-
ings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with
tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.

You can read the complete poem here. It's awesome.

A poem by Antonio Machado

The poetry gods will smite me for this: 1) for having the damn-fool nerve to translate as best I can [which is to say, badly] something by one of the greatest poets that ever lived, and 2) for the suggestion, however unintended, that a dog's death is in any way comparable to the death of a person; but what the heck - this is a great, great poem and I like translating things. Plus, you know, death.

The Spanish poet Antonio Machado wrote this poem in the spring of 1912. His wife Leonor had been diagnosed with advanced tuberculosis — she died in August of that year.

A un olmo seco

  Al olmo viejo, hendido por el rayo
y en su mitad podrido,
con las lluvias de abril y el sol de mayo,
algunas hojas verdes le han salido.
  ¡El olmo centenario en la colina
que lame el Duero! Un musgo amarillento
le mancha la corteza blanquecina
al tronco carcomido y polvoriento.
  No será, cual los álamos cantores
que guardan el camino y la ribera,
habitado de pardos ruiseñores.
  Ejército de hormigas en hilera
va trepando por él, y en sus entrañas
urden sus telas grises las arañas.
  Antes que te derribe, olmo del Duero,
con su hacha el leñador, y el carpintero
te convierta en melena de campana,
lanza de carro o yugo de carreta;
antes que rojo en el hogar, mañana,
ardas en alguna mísera caseta,
al borde de un camino;
antes que te descuaje un torbellino
y tronche el soplo de las sierras blancas;
antes que el río hasta la mar te empuje
por valles y barrancas,
olmo, quiero anotar en mi cartera
la gracia de tu rama verdecida.
Mi corazón espera
también, hacia la luz y hacia la vida,
otro milagro de la primavera.

  The old elm, split by lightning
and rotted inside,
with the rains in April and the sun in May
has sprouted a few green leaves.
  The hundred-year-old elm on the hill
lapped by the Duero! Yellow moss
mottles the pale bark
of its trunk, worm-eaten and dusty.
  It won't be like the singing cottonwoods
along the road and the riverbank,
the home of brown nightingales.
  An army of ants in single file
goes climbing through it, and in its hollows
spiders weave their grey webs.
  Before he chops you down, Duero elm,
with his woodcutter's axe,
and the carpenter makes a bell's beam of you,
or a cart tongue or a wagon yoke;
before you redden the hearth of some poor shelter, tomorrow,
at the road's edge;
before a dust storm uproots you
and winds from the white mountains tear you apart;
before the river carries you to the sea
through valleys and canyons,
elm, I long to put into words
the grace of your green bough.
And my heart also
yearns, towards light and towards life,
for another miracle of spring.

The Duero. Photo by Denis Doyle for the New York Times.

"Taking the Lambs to Market"

Butcher shop in Pinole, California. "Clarence Faria's Uncle Manuel, owner, on the right."

Fragments of Maxine Kumin's Taking the Lambs to Market have appeared in a number of links recently: here, for instance, in a fine essay on sheep, local slaughterhouses, USDA inspections and small-farm economics by Bill Fosher.

So I thought I'd post the whole thing. From the collection Looking for Luck:

Taking the Lambs to Market

All due respect to the blood on his bandsaw,
table, hands and smock, Amos is an artist.

We bring him something living, breathed, furred
and meet it next in a bloodless sagittal section.

No matter how we may deplore his profession
all of us are eating, even Keats

who said, If a Sparrow come before my Window
I take part in its existence and pick
about the Gravel, but dined on mutton.

Amos, who custom cuts and double wraps
in white butcher paper whatever we named,
fed, scratched behind the ear, deserves our praise:

a decent man who blurs the line of sight
between our conscience and our appetite.

And one I've posted before and will no doubt post again: Meat, by Thom Gunn.

My brother saw a pig root in a field,
And saw too its whole lovely body yield
To this desire which deepened out of need
So that in wriggling through the mud and weed
To eat and dig were one athletic joy.
When we who are the overlords destroy
Our ranging vassals, we can therefore taste
The muscle of delighted interest
We make into ourselves, as formerly
Hurons digested human bravery.

Not much like this degraded meat — this meal
Of something, was it chicken, pork, or veal?
It tasted of the half-life that we raise
In high bright tombs which, days, and nights like days,
Murmur with nervous sound from cubicles
Where fed on treated slop the living cells
Expand within each creature forced to sit
Cramped with its boredom and its pile of shit
Till it is standard weight for roast or bacon
And terminated, and its place is taken.

To make this worth a meal you have to add
The succulent liberties it never had
Of leek, and pepper fruiting in its climb,
The redolent adventures dried in thyme
Whose branches creep and stiffen where they please,
Or rosemary that shakes in the world's breeze.

After the flood

Photos and related article at the NY Times.

SAFE

by Linda Bierds

Safe, we thought.
The floodwaters nestled
the arc of their udders, but no higher --
dewlaps, flanks, even the tips of the briskets,
dry. All day they stood
in the seascape meadow,
their square heads turned from the wind.
By evening they were dead.
Chill, we learned, not drowning,
killed them -- the milk vein
thick on the floor of the chest
filling with cold, stunning the heart.
We had entered the house, where silt water
sketched on the walls and doorways
a single age ring. When we looked back,
they had fallen, only the crests of their bodies
breaking the waterline. I remember
the wind and a passive light.
Then the jabber of black grackles
riding each shoulder's upturned blade.

[H/T Andrew Sullivan.]

Tea and Entropy

[pause] OK. From Buenos Aires, photo by Luis Alejandro Sanchez for Proyecto Cartele.

And speaking of odd signs: over on the Pit Bull Forum a Northern California writer [and old hand at pit bull rescue] posted a sign she saw on a street in her neighborhood: "Pitt Bull Pups." "Blue Nose" Pitt Bull pups, whoa! Names of two famous commercial, high-volume breeders kennels were on the sign, too. Oy. It isn't just a West Coast thing, either — you can find bad breeders from coast to coast.

"I don’t understand why, if you’re going to spend the money, you don’t do your homework and hook up with a breeder who does it right."

Over on Save the pit bull, save the world, Katie has written a terrific post on the spring crop of puppies in Central Pennsylvania, among other places:

and it’s not just the Amish who are cashing in. I can’t tell you how many clients we see with their new puppies who assure us that, even though the pup came off a farm, raised in a barn and completely unsocialized, sold the moment they reach seven weeks if at all possible, it’s okay because the breeders weren’t Amish. And, see, he’s got papers! Papers mean quality!

Right, and I'm Britney Spears. Check out the entire essay at Katie's Underdogged blog.

********

The best April Fool's Day headlines belonged to The Ethicurean. From Wendy's new starling burger to Autistic livestock expert accidentally slaughtered, The Ethicurean owned April Fool's. And check out the new BBC vid:



Hat tip to Living the Scientific Life, currently at the top of the Nature Blog Network.

In other bird news [and I'm delighted this is no April Fool] the endangered red knot got a helping hand from the New Jersey governor. Read about it [and much more] on David Sibley's blog.

********

Two depressing items from the NY Times. In this article, people who want a dog, sort of, but just "can’t make that kind of emotional commitment" [shudder] can rent a pet. Far from ideal from the standpoint of animal care, but doG knows being a rental item has to be better than life as a Romanian street dog. Stray dogs are being rounded up prior to a meeting of NATO leaders:

Officials will not venture a guess at the number of strays, and estimates of the semi-feral population in the local news media range from 30,000 to 200,000 dogs.

********

It's National Poetry Month! Here's Meat:

My brother saw a pig root in a field,
And saw too its whole lovely body yield
To this desire which deepened out of need
So that in wriggling through the mud and weed
To eat and dig were one athletic joy.
When we who are the overlords destroy
Our ranging vassals, we can therefore taste
The muscle of delighted interest
We make into ourselves, as formerly
Hurons digested human bravery.

Not much like this degraded meat — this meal
Of something, was it chicken, pork, or veal?
It tasted of the half-life that we raise
In high bright tombs which, days, and nights like days,
Murmur with nervous sound from cubicles
Where fed on treated slop the living cells
Expand within each creature forced to sit
Cramped with its boredom and its pile of shit
Till it is standard weight for roast or bacon
And terminated, and its place is taken.

To make this worth a meal you have to add
The succulent liberties it never had
Of leek, and pepper fruiting in its climb,
The redolent adventures dried in thyme
Whose branches creep and stiffen where they please,
Or rosemary that shakes in the world's breeze.

By Thom Gunn, from his Collected Poems. Check them out.