Poetry
Google Earth Poetry in the Sand
A poet wrote a 3 kilometer-wide message - visible from space - in the desert of northwest Chile. The message says "ni pena ni miedo" which translates in English to "neither shame nor fear". The poet's name is Raúl Zurita, and he used a bull dozer to write the message in the desert sand.http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2009/01/giant_3_km_poem_in_the_desert_in_go.html
The Poetry of Andalucia
Behind the charms of Andalucia, its landscapes and towns, its monuments, mesquites and water gardens lies - only dimly perceived - its Poetry, the soul of an exceptional symbiosis of three cultures, Arabic, Jewish and Christian.
Very few of us are able to read Arabic. A slightly greater number read Sephardic Hebrew. The ordinary reader has to depend on translations - and most of these are flat-footed and uninspiring. One reason is that formal Arabic poetry, from which derives all Andalusian and Mozarabic lyrics of the 9th to 14th century, uses highly stereo-typed images that are alien to our Western sensibilities: gazelles, the rosy cheeks amd pearly teeth of the beloved, and other metaphors which are repeated again and again. The Andalusian poets and especially the Sephardic ones are, as Raimond Scheindlin writes, in love with Beauty, some of them with God in the Sufic sense, very few with a real person, may it be a woman or a man.
In this situation the slim volume of "Andalusian Poetry" tranlated into English by Christopher Middleton and Leticia Garza-Falcón must be considered a felicitous miracle. Well-remembered Arabic poems suddenly spring into an unimagined, vibrant life by the choice of their words. This is not the place to critically analyse their renditions. Neither of them reads Arabic or Hebrew; they translate from already existing Spanish versions. Middleton describes this adventure in love in some detail.
My collection of their poems is dedicated to these two people in gratitude for opening an unimagined treasure to the general reader. The Poetry of Andalucia.kmz
From: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1197033
Earth Day Poem - "You Don't Miss Your Water" by Darryl Jackson
You don’t miss your water
at least not yet...
You don’t miss your water,
hard is it. However, we must ascertain
You don’t miss your water; it’s not hard with calcium,
it’s poisoned with acid rain.
You won’t miss your water
until the unthinkable
You won’t miss your water
until it’s no longer drinkable
You don’t miss your water
The spring water we drink is overrated
You don’t miss your water
The tap that we drink from has become dilapidated
You won’t miss your water
The well is not dry ~ it’s contaminated
Contaminated with poisons that invade
and cause not only our waters to wade
but causes our trees,plants,flowers, and wild life to fade
You won’t miss your water
until our entire supply has become antiquated
No, you won’t miss your water
until it’s time to drink.
What is evident is that on these premises
we have an obligation to act, remaining conscious
lest we forget.
