Tuesday, May 23, 2006

On a quiet day

Here, so close to the roar of the big machine it is sometimes difficult to hear.

But you might have sensed it in Piazza san Maggiore on May Day, there by the inscription for communists who resisted. Especially on this May Day past, when media monopolists are not quite so invincible after all.

Echoes sometimes travel across water. Stand on the shore today. Cup your hand to your ear like a seashell. Beyond the gull-cry, perhaps you will hear rumour of people done with shadows.

It was there in 1975, every step of that long road from Te Hapua to Wellington.

It is in France. Certainly Pierre Labeyrie would recognise that sound.

And albeit flawed and incomplete in its expression (let alone the execution), it is here too.

Another world is possible
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

6 Comments:

Blogger dove said...

So, where have you seen it lately?

5/23/2006 9:49 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I saw it in a hallway of a high school. The walls of the hallway were lined with students artwork. Most were of sunsets, or rock bands, soldiers, American flags, fashion models, and beach scenes.
But in one work of art I saw a sunrise. An awakening of a young mind...the future I hoped. It was a picture of Bush, superimposed on a picture of Hitler. It was a brave statement of truth, standing alone in a sea of American ignorance, intellectual laziness, and complacency. That this art was permitted to hang in a school, in a conservative town, is a small sunrise in itself. But what blinded me with light was the name attached to the work. It was Justin. The name we gave to our first child on the occasion of his first sunrise.

:o)

5/24/2006 3:42 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The above comment is mine Dove. Sorry not to sign my name to it.

5/24/2006 3:43 am  
Blogger dove said...

No problem supersoling -- it's the spirit not the letter.

Your son sounds like someone to be hugely proud of.

5/25/2006 12:06 am  
Blogger dove said...

Thanks Nanette,

I think you put me in mind of Arundhati Roy. Also, I just wanted to say that I loved your most recent post

5/25/2006 11:50 pm  
Blogger dove said...

A friend gave me a collection of her essays called "Power Politics" -- they are just amazing.

5/26/2006 4:30 pm  

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