Our next meeting: Sunday, April 1, 1 PM till the cows come home

This very special extended session will feature only (mostly) acoustic instruments. Cause these poets are old. One is Shelley, and the other is medieval. Also, the recordings from this session are definitely going into the film. Please come, eat the free pizza, make fun of Shelley’s middle name (Bysshe?? Really?) and help us make this awesome.

Date: Sunday, April 1
Time: Starting at 1 pm as usual, but going until we have really good recordings of both poems.
Location: Danny Schwartz’s house in Charles Village (email paralleloctaveATgmail if this is your first session)

Poems (pasted below):
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias”
Opening verses from Yehuda Ha-Levi’s “Ayin Nedivah”

OZYMANDIAS
– P.B. Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

(opening verses only)
AYIN NEDIVAH (“GENEROUS EYE”):
QASIDA FOR SOLOMON IBN GHIYYAT
– Yehuda Ha-Levi

I can’t stop crying.
My eyes are like peddler women.
What they buy is: you are gone.
What they sell is: tears,
And business is good:
Enough tears for a jeweled necklace.

I am weeping here in the ruins
Where lovers used to live.
I can’t hear a thing.
I can’t say a word.
Wasn’t it enough for you
To break our home when you left?
Why did you break my heart?

The place doesn’t even look the same.
I don’t even recognize it.
Only my heart tells me if I am in the right place;
My eyes deny it.

Good luck on your journey.
You take with you the tears that I gave you
And my sleep that you stole.

I could forget my lover
Were it not for the stars
Which remind me.