Aranya and the Universal Orchestra

by Quincy Saul, September 23, 2017

Outside the window the world was bleak and in her mind it felt even bleaker, on the afternoon Aranya took out her horn, slowly and without enthusiasm, from its drab fake leather case. She went through the motions of practicing, while in her mind going through other motions; disgust at the human world for not living up to the beauty of nature, neatly congruent with resentment of herself for going through the motions of her art – for doing exactly what most disgusted her, even in her most exalted pursuits. This pattern was everywhere and seemed almost impossible to break.

Whether reading or playing something memorized or improvising, she was in a different place than her notes. She barely heard herself; her thoughts were on fascism and extinction, or on friends and family, on frivolities or on fate, while the music she created was in another dimension entirely – independent, autonomous. This was the discipline, this was the routine. This was the only way she knew, but today more than ever it felt excruciating – to practice like a machine and a militant, while in pursuit of that opposite thing; that sublime peace, that inspired bliss. The more she forced herself to keep playing, even while uninspired, the more she felt like a fraud and a failure. Whatever she executed well enough, was eclipsed completely by that horizon of genius which laughed at her meager discipline and scowled at her overbearing mediocrity. Nonetheless! Arpeggios, long tones, patterns, more long tones, and she wanted to cry but she kept going, because despite the pitiful cosmic drama in her head she had only been practicing for fifteen or twenty minutes...

… and the world was burning and the empire was falling, and she wondered as she looked out her bleak window at a bleak world what made her any different from Nero, or the other decadents she detested, whose art for art's sake was so horribly out of tune with Mother Earth's song and dropped every beat on Father Time's calendar? Aranya had no answers so she kept practicing. Like music was a mountain she plodded upwards, and the summit could never be seen, only dreamed about; and you might climb for years only to stay in the same place; and although the peak pointed to unity and fellowship, the path up was walked in a vast interior anonymity.

But as the bleak day continued outside, all of a sudden, something brilliant came about, somewhere between Aranya and her instrument. She had been improvising soullessly – but then there was a change – something came over her or into her or out of her – something beautiful and unexpected – and yet which seemed to emerge seamlessly from her previous phrases, redeeming them; making previous mistakes into majestic parts of a commencing whole... Without sense of time or place she continued to play, in a kind of elevated and distant awe of herself – not letting her consciousness get too close for fear of disrupting the flow – as a melody emerged which sounded like it had passed through a membrane from another world... She took a breath and repeated it, and then embellished upon it; something from beyond her own imagination. And –

BANG! There was a silver flash and roaring thunderclap and the bleak world stood still. And then a tiny blue winged man with a flute was standing on her windowsill, saying “Take my hand, now!” Aranya took his hand, and with her horn in the other, they disappeared from the bleak world with another silver flash BANG!

“Welcome Aranya!” said the little blue man. Suddenly they were soaring through what seemed to be a wormhole of sound; a fractal tunnel of vibrations which telescoped forwards and backwards, yet seeming to surge with motion, impossibly, in all directions simultaneously. She was having a difficult time distinguishing between sight and sound.

“And congratulations,” he continued, “Very few of your species are recruited. But we heard your sound, and I was sent immediately.”

Aranya was totally discomposed, struggling for her senses, and holding onto her horn like her life depended on it; for it was the only part of her life that hadn't suddenly disappeared... After a pause Aranya spoke. “You heard me practicing and you came from outer space to get me?”

“We heard your sound,” the creature repeated. “All sound is simultaneous, you see! You can hear all of it from anywhere, anytime, if you know how to tune in. We call it 'your sound,' because it can't be reduced to components of time, pitch, timbre, or anything. But you can think of it like a password, or a signal. If you play it just right, we notice. And when it's especially right, then we recruit you.” He smiled.

“What are you? Where are we? Where are we going?” Aranya asked, looking as if for the first time at this azure humanoid who held her hand and held his flute in the other like a sail in the winds of sound which swept over them.

“An earthling friend once called me Salazar, one of those few who we recruited. Your people called him Bird, and they were right. Far more birds than humans are recruited from your planet. I'm from a planet in the same spiral arm of the galaxy as your solar system, and right now we're traveling in a tunnel through soundspace. It allows us to travel through space and time simultaneously. It's way faster than light, but it goes back in time just as fast as it moves forward through space, so there are no causality violations and nobody gets hurt. We're on our way to headquarters. Think of it like a cosmic concert hall in soundspace where we get together and jam to save the universe.”

“Save the universe from what?” asked Aranya.

“From bad music, of course! Welcome to the orchestra. The Cosmic Congress of Composers, the Improvising Intergalactic, the Universal Orchestra, the Guardians of Galactic Harmony, the Big Bang Big Band! We've got lots of names, but they all miss the point because it's beyond representation, you know. When the cosmos falls on hard times, they call us in to sanctify. Mostly the universe takes care of itself, but when the whole galaxy gets the blues, then we call in the best... There's a lot of bad music out there, sister – bad vibrations. If we don't balance the score, if we don't keep the harmony, then it's all over. Without the music, the spheres stop! We keep the worlds turning. And we keep them swinging!

“You see the balance between entropy and negentropy is a battle of the bands. Musicians are on the front lines all the time! Everything makes music; rocks and trees and hydrogen atoms, and they tend to balance out. But more complex organisms come along with their complex sounds, and whole solar systems start skipping beats. Mostly they're saved by the less complex organisms – I once heard a chickadee from your planet single-wingedly resolve the dissonances of a supernova. But when creatures like you and me evolve infinite capacities for dreadful vibes and catastrophic music, then it becomes necessary to call in complex counterparts from other parts of the cosmos to set the record straight. If we didn't play our hearts out, the galaxy would have spun off its rocker long ago from the sounds which have come out of your planet alone! And it's not even the worst one, arguably.”

“Back up for a minute,” Aranya laughed, still not believing any of this. “So you're telling me that because I accidentally played some secret melody I've been kidnapped across the cosmos to join a band?”

“Not a melody,” he corrected, "your sound is a state of being, a dynamic state of being, which has technical, emotional, social, physical and metaphysical dimensions, expressed as an absolutely unique matrix of vibrations. It's not just about the notes, and it's not about complexity. Remember, more birds than humans are recruited. But whatever it is, you got it! Your sound was beautiful by the way. It's good to meet you and I'm glad you're here. There aren't many like us in the orchestra. Your species and mine seem to be in a weird evolutionary limbo on the musical continuum; a middle zone between creatures like your birds, with the simplest and purest sounds, and life forms so evolved and ancient that they are one with music on a molecular level... They're the bandleaders. Creatures like them built these tunnels, and taught us to travel them. They communicate with music, their diet is music... their sound is a music of such complexity that it'll drive you mad with love and joy and sadness to hear it. They're the ones who call these sessions. They're always tuned into the cosmos, and when they hear the right sound for the band, they send someone like me to recruit the musician from whatever woodshed in the galaxy they're hiding out in.”

“But I suck.” Aranya wasn't being modest, she was insisting. It was becoming increasingly difficult to disbelieve all the evidence of her senses, and she felt a sudden sense of dread that they had picked the wrong person and that she would let the cosmos down.

“I felt the same way when I was first called,” Salazar comforted her. “But remember, birds are in the band! Insects too. It's not about your technique, it's about how your technique is devoted to the cosmic source. It's about a particularly beautiful fight that you have in your heart. The universe needs it to balance out some other particularly ugly music which the birds and the bees alone can't handle. You were chosen because you've got what it takes to negate. It's not about drowning out the ugliness; it's about making the world sound beautiful all over again. You've got the antidote to entropy sister!”

“But...” Aranya struggled, “who decides what music is bad?”

“You do, sister, or you wouldn't be here. You took sides long ago; you took sides with nature. Music is nature, and nature has laws. Nobody has to decide about bad music any more than they have to decide about bad genes. Music is democratic, but has hierarchies. Just like nature. Bad music is like a disease or a parasite; it's all part of the ecosystem and even keeps good music healthy. But if you let it go unchecked, it'll kill you! Another horn player from your planet called Coltrane said it: “there are bad forces, forces that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the force which is truly for good.” And he knew how to get there, he knew how to take sides. “The musician's calling,” he said, “is to get close to the sources of nature.” It's about communion with natural laws. It's about evolution – biological and cosmological! In the beginning was the sound! And the sound was good, still is good. But we have to keep the good music alive, sister.”

“My name means wilderness,” murmured Aranya to herself, trailing one hand in the rippling waves of sound that were the moving walls of the tunnel, the other hand raising her horn above her head, where it caught and carried her until she was eye to eye with the little blue man.

“And mine means an old house,” Salazar replied: “A place to practice, to hone my art to perfection, so I will be ready when the cosmos calls. We are different species from different planets and we have different names, Aranya, but as they say, music is the universal language.”

***

And soon they arrived at the cosmic crossroads, and they joined the big bang band of birds and music gods and untold other creatures seen and unseen. And they played their symphony and saved the universe. Salazar showed Aranya the way home through the wormhole, and suddenly she as back in her room and the little blue man was perched on her window exactly as he had arrived.

“Pleasure to meet you young lady, you sounded great,” he said. “Remember, keep practicing! The universe is counting on you.”

And then Aranya was alone in her room. Nobody would ever believe her. But the world was burning and the empire was falling and she looked out her bleak window at a bleak world, and she kept practicing. She had to hone her art because the cosmos was counting on her. And in the meantime there was the battle of the bands for planet earth.

Synchronicities in Chiapas and Rojava

10 theses. 
quincy saul, july 2017

1. There is a cosmic current which connects the tectonic makeup of the new world which is struggling to be born. Today Rojava (Kurdistan) and Chiapas (Mexico) are the northern and southern magnetic poles orienting a new compass of revolution; they are new centers of gravity for a new physics of struggle; they are new quiblahs for a new prophecy of liberation.

2. The Zapatista uprising in 1994 established indigenous autonomy in Latin America for the first time in 500 years. The women of Kurdistan have upped the ante on the politics of the impossible, by establishing their autonomy in the Middle East for the first time since the emergence of patriarchy in the Fertile Crescent 5-6,000 years ago.

3. Like the indigenous people of Chiapas, “Kurdistan was thrown out of the world system and also out of history.” (Muzafar Ayata, Network for an Alternative Quest conference, 2015). This is what the Rojava communes have in common with the Zapatista caracoles: Their exclusion from capitalist modernity is the basis of a universal struggle against it. In the words of Huey Newton they have “turned pain into power.” Or as Steve Biko proposed, "being an historically, politically, socially and economically disinherited and dispossessed group, they have the strongest foundation from which to operate." (White Racism and Black Consciousness, 1972) World-historic jiu jitsu; world-systemic alchemy.

4. The people of Rojava and Chiapas are in a fight for indigeneity – to rescue the communal and egalitarian origins of humanity; to revindicate the ancestry of free life, before herstory gave way to history. In this way they are fighting for all of us: their fight is for the meaning of human life and for life itself.

5. The recent chronologies of both revolutionary processes run parallel: from the traumas of the 1960s to the guerrilla formations of the 1970s and 1980s to the respective “revolutions within the revolutions” led by women in the 1980s and 1990s. In Kurdistan and Chiapas, women took positions of military, economic and political authority, more or less quietly, away from the cameras and in the mountains.


6. The intellectual leadership of both regions is chaired by radically anti-patriarchal men. Abdullah Ocalan says “my life's work has been the creation of a free woman.” Subcomandante Galeano (formerly known as Marcos) writes “if you asked me how to define the goals of our struggle, I would say it is so that one day a girl could grow up without fear.” Male leadership is still there but it is always being turned on its head.

7. The discovery and elaboration of the connections between the Zapatistas and the Kurds is not a theoretical exercise but an exercised theory. They study each other. Their respective solidarity networks share many nodes. Representatives of each movement visit each other.

8. Intersubjectivity: This is a term elaborated by Carlos Lenkersdorf in his book about the Tzeltal language (“Los hombres verdaderos”) – one of the five indigenous languages spoken by Zapatistas – whose grammar has no subject-object distinction. Kurdish doesn't have a subject-object distinction in its grammar either. Is it a coincidence? Intersubjectivity involves all kinds of political and philosophical implications which stretch backward and forward in time. Abdullah Ocalan writes that “the subject-object dichotomy is nothing but the legitimization of slavery.” (Manifesto for a Democratic Civilization, volume 2, 2017)

9. Rojava and Chiapas each have imaginary counterparts which exist in the minds of friends and enemies all over the world. The imaginary Zapatismo is lovely, full of enchanting poetry, indigenous mythology and philosophical paradoxes, but it has very little to do with daily life in an autonomous municipality in Chiapas. The imaginary Kurdish struggle is enchanting, full of beautiful and fearless women, and infused with biblical significance, but it has not much to do with daily life in the confederated autonomous cantons of northern Syria. There's nothing wrong with the imagination – both struggles have been so successful precisely at igniting the imaginations of people all over the world. These theses, for instance are in the imaginary category. But it remains essential to always recognize that there is a big difference which must be honored between words like these, and the reality out there, implacable. The wild truth, which I whisper near the end like a secret, is that the real revolution of every day life in Chiapas and Kurdistan is even more enchanting and beautiful than we imagine.

10. These theses run the risk of romanticism. Following WEB Dubois who said that “the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression,” so we must formulate today that the cost of romanticism is less than the price of disenchantment.

Porque esto ya comenzó

Y nadie lo va a parar!
El talante cósmica rebosa
desde el fleco hasta el picacho –
la yema espesa acurruca los oquedades y astillas
y el predio deleznable y adocenado lanza su cogollo.

Los eriales están amolando, y los desquites se enlazan.
En las guaridas dables, los conatos despeñan,
y el estirpe ducho y gacho, ateridos en su ayuno,
despiertan a guarnecerse los sienes con alhucema,
los pescuezos con espadañas, los codos con carrizos,
y de los hendiduras en las ciénagas, salen cabales y airosos,
hacia los prados endilgados de inmundicia.

El estero adolecido, sosiego y díscola, husmea el barranco,
a punto de desmoronarse en su propio desfiladero llagado.
El parloteo de sandios, agrio y filoso, esta desleído;
el reciedumbre esmerada del antaño ya no encuentra ni paraje ni solar.

La ventisca de los atabales despierta la algazara de cotejos,
y las hebras trigueños del destino congregan, iracundos y altivos,
a hendir los armazones y destazar las vigas de los enjambres nocivos.
Quebrantos y enterezas vendrán, a cebar los desmanes,
a mascar las chozas atónitas, a cumplir la profecía tieso
de los jícaras y los jarros.
La maleza heredará los solares aturdidos.
La cachaza ponzoñoso encuentra ocaso.
Se acaban los trastos traspuestos.
La inquina de las ollas, enfadados con nuestro engorrosa y estorboso cotorra,
cumplirá las amenazas azoradas, las palabras forzosas
que esperan los secuaces de los hombres de arcilla.

Y los descendientes de maíz – amenguadas, cercenadas,
esperando su castigo aciago por haber olvidado su incumbencia,
esquivos y en cueros, por haber divagado de su prenda ante los dioses,
quienes lo van a reclamar, porque ya no comen de lo que son,
que ya no elogian sus creadores, y así es y sera su perdición.

Ladinos y osados, reptamos
ante la gloria cósmica del conocimiento de los abuelos,
cuyos derroteros desaparecen en el recodo de nuestros desmanes.
Cercioramos la postema de los mismos tupidos,
sajamos las escamas de la canícula.

Las lajas de nuestro reconcomio traman sus escondrijos entenebrecidos,
entre los abrojos, ahuyentados, y las mozas con sus mazas y mañas,
crispan ante la atalaya del búho blanco.
Y la pezuñas recatos de nuestro ahincó aderezan la acequia del estorbo
donde fluye el puño de la verdad y la vida.

viejo y nuevo, viene (el) hurakan. tan tan. desde los nubes del sureste mexicano.
(derivado y tejido respetuosamente al azar del Popol Vuh, por quincy saul, 2 junio, 2017)

Long Tones

Ichion Jobutsu!

The pure note is a pure flame:

Weak lips cannot sustain it

Impure souls cannot survive it

It burns and bursts and breaks through

The musician the Atlas that must sustain a world

As the pure note unlocks a meaning

Which connects and condenses and cradles all time and space:

You must purify yourself to attain and sustain

the pure note, the pure flame.

The Masque of Democracy

written on the occasion of the presidential inauguration,

with inspiration from and gratitude and/or apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley

by Quincy Saul, January 2017

1.

I heard a voice on the Southern wind

It came o'er desert soils and poisoned waves,

It demanded of me that I begin

A poem to foil the prose that makes us slaves.

I heard a cry on the Northern wind

It rose o'er the roar of war and grief,

It demanded of me that I begin

A poem to soar o'er doubt into belief.

I heard a scream on the Western wind

It came o'er peaks of hunger and pits of thirst,

It demanded of me that I begin

To cast a counter-spell to our terrible curse.

I heard a song on the Eastern wind

It swept o'er melting ice and rising tides

It demanded of me that I begin

A poem of beauty and battle lines.

      By the word is the world disfigured,

      With the word is the world disgraced!

      With the word is the soul transfigured,

      And illusions are sewn into place!

      Yet the word cannot be replaced!

      For the word is the act prefigured,

      And the word is the spirit's embrace,

      And the word is the will encased,

      When rhyme helps the word find its place

      As the heart keeps the blood configured,

      May poetry pump for salvation and grace.

2.

The modern world had reached an age

Of culminated love and rage,

Confounding every pen and page

Which sought to make it dance upon a stage.

And the poets were lost who could not face frost,

Forsaking the cost of the spring.

Of seasons and reasons we ceased to sing,

And doubt and dread took flight on winter's wing.

And yet a vision came to me

Of culminated loves and rages

So destiny appeared to me

To demand his wages.

He brought the world upon parade,

In calamitous cavalcade,

Where every soul must play its part,

Surrendering their mind and heart

To their place in the procession,

Hear my vision, my confession!

3.

I found myself at the parade

Observing from a promenade

Built from the hopes and fears of all the world.

This nation was the center of this world,

For around this world its war machines curled.

The glory of the empire shone

On towers and trumpets bright as bone,

The lights were brighter than the sky,

And the food and the fuel and the fire and the flags did fly!

It was a land of freedom and damnation,

Of puritans and their temptations,

Of slavery and emancipation,

Of law and re-enslavement,

Of debt and entertainment,

Of genocide and patience.

4.

The sun and moon were in eclipse

But this eerie sight all eyes did miss –

Their eyes on the parade were fixed:

Here was a banker, fat and bold,

With mouth like a wallet and a heart of gold,

Proud of the price that he got for his soul.

Here was a child, strange and shy,

With a mouth that was mute and clouds in her eyes,

Poisoned by lead in the water, that's why.

5.

Here came the soldier, headed to war,

Trained in gore and the empire's chores,

Upon his heart a mighty dream:

“Be all you can be.”

Here came the soldier, back from the war,

Homeless and poor,

He killed for his country,

What for?

6.

Here comes the White man, in his mind supreme,

He can't see why the world won't share his dream,

He's filthy and thinks he is clean.

Here comes the Red man, sacred pipe in hand,

He survived all the White man's plans,

He knows he belongs to the land.

Here comes the Yellow man, patient and strong,

He too has survived all the White man's wrong,

He may be master before long.

Here comes the Black man, who survived the worst,

Who reverses the curse,

Here is the last who shall be first.

7.

Here come the lost youth

Who never heard of truth,

Empowered and let loose.

Here come the adults, proud and secure,

The forgot their dreams but they are insured,

Can they be cured?

Here come the elders, cast aside,

In sterilized centers they wait to die,

Their children do not hear them cry.

8.

Here comes the policeman, from his belt hang weapons

To help the people learn power's lessons,

And on his breast are power's words:

“Protect and serve.”

Here comes the spy,

On his lips lies, hiding

Death in his eyes,

Who's surprised?

Here come the workers, through millions of veins,

The heart of capital holds their reins,

What do they have to lose but their chains?

9.

Here come the suburbanites

Like termites, busy all night,

A swarm and a blight.

Here comes the celebrity who lives for fame,

Everyone knows their name.

The sparkling flame is tame –

Who's to blame?

Here comes the adman, charming and slick,

He lives on tricks which keep people sick.

10.

Here comes the prophet to conquer pain,

To make the world believe again,

Diagnosed as criminally insane.

Here comes the prisoner and the guard,

They both hold freedom in high regard –

To look them in the eye is hard.

Here are the radicals, crazy or brave:

Wherever they can they rant and rave,

How many souls can they save?

11.

Then came the students and their teachers,

All the pilgrims and their preachers;

They corralled their mighty herds

With an electric flow of words.

Shameless of their uncalloused hands

They spoke for the balance of life and land

As if redemption and salvation

Hinged upon their calculation,

As if the fate of land or nation

Could be measured, kept or rationed.

The clever and the educated –

Upon whose words much action waited –

Counseled calm and moderation,

Disgracing all their education,

For their degree and their distinction

Presided over mass extinction!

The shadow that their knowledge cast

Was ignorance, vast.

On their lips was every reason

And a catalog of every treason,

Yet in their minds weighed every cause to pause,

And in their thoughts was every fact and no act.

12.

And then at last, rising over the herd,

The leadership that it deserves!

The first, with handsome eyes and golden skin,

Held the hopes of all with him,

Shaking hands, forgiving sins,

Birds of metal circled him.

With the gold of peace around his neck

And at his feet, six nations wrecked,

In one hand glory, and the other gory,

He seemed chosen by history

To make of it a mockery.

By the oppressor blessed, he stood for the oppressed.

A symbol of peace, he dropped bombs without cease.

He stood up for the poor, and gave the rich more,

He stood up for the sick, and made parasites rich,

He led invasions and shattered nations,

Preaching peace and reconciliation.

His name was repeated the world around,

And in his name they heard freedom's sound,

Heard sweet chariots swinging low

In the engines of predator drones.

With the hope he stole

He gave empire soul!

He was so bold.

He blessed the people as he said goodbye,

And tears fell to them from his eyes

And made them blind.

He ruled with love and not with fear

And so they held him dear.

They wept and wondered at his farewell

As if under a spell.

13.

A different leader now arrived

To represent the empire's pride.

He ruled with fear and not with love,

So they raised him above.

With sneering lips and orange skin

He held the eyes of all on him.

He promised greatness, also power

To everyone that he devoured.

He made deals between villains and cowards

And put his name on many towers.

Chosen to lead the empire's fall,

He promised it a giant wall.

Ugly and ruthless, smug and grim,

He held the eyes of all on him.

An expert in the art of the deal,

He knows how to steal!

Thus the empire did elect

A president with no respect,

To let the lecherous billionaire

Show the world how much they cared.

He pledged to unite all sisters and brothers

In the buying and selling of the Earth, their Mother.

Beautiful women surrounded him

While he made war on the feminine.

A true believer that might makes right,

Whose favorite color was White!

He promised to leave no one behind, and to rob them blind.

He promised peace and promised war, whatever they asked for.

He promised rebirth, and to rape Mother Earth,

And the people loved and hated, and he was elated.

And they filled the streets to announce his blame,

And they chanted his name.

14.

Last came Democracy; he lived

In a white house, built by blacks;

He was bloody like his creation,

Like Death in Revelation.

And he wore a business suit

And in one hand a button held

To condemn the world to to hell.

In the other hand was currency

Proclaiming “Life and Liberty,”

And these words were branded on his flesh:

“The pursuit of happiness.”

15.

He stood upon a massive throne

Made of living skin and bone,

It was dragged through the streets by millions of ropes

Braided from living dreams and hopes.

Golden glasses cover his eyes,

The windows to his soul disguised,

While the fancy shoes in which he stands

Protect his feet from stolen lands.

Machinery was in his ears

Deafening himself to thousands of years.

His nostrils too were closed with gold,

Sealed to the stench of the betrayal of his soul.

His shadow cast in every direction,

(He believes it will protect him)

And before him stands a mirror grand,

So he sees only his own reflection.

In his heart a whirlwind slept

It was his very soul repressed.

For in his soul was something he feared:

Ancestors who held his name dear!

Lingering spirits he couldn't erase

That raged to see their name disgraced,

And promised that they would awaken

To reclaim the word he had forsaken!

16.

Then! Like a dream within a dream

The procession was pierced by a brilliant beam –

The sun emerged from its eclipse

And captured the crowd like a cosmic kiss...

And in that moment every eye

Turned from the empire to the sky

And in that moment every dream

Turned from the empire to that beam –

It fell upon a little girl who had her arms raised high,

And in that moment every ear was filled with an eagle's cry.

Majestic and mysterious, wonderful and wild,

An eagle descended on the beam, to alight on the hand of the child.

And then to the tune of prophecy,

The little girl began to sing:

17.

Remember twelve score years ago!

When what we reap today was sown:

When a nation was conceived

In the love of liberty!

When a continent was dedicated

To the conviction that all are equally created!

Remember when this treasure

Required devotion's full measure,

So that freedom's rebirth

Would not perish from the earth!

18.

Behold the Tree of Liberty,

Withered and weak with drought and disease,
Radioactive with industry,
Strangled by supremacy,
Behold strange fruit and Misery!

Rally to the Tree of Liberty,

Refresh it with the blood of tyrannies!

That's its natural manure, the founders assured.

If a government works against our life,

To alter or abolish it is our right!

19.

Remember twelve score years of wrongs, and sing their songs!

Remember twelve score years of hopes, and weave their ropes!

Remember the imagination:

The equality of creation

As the foundation of a nation.

To fight for the fruits of self-evident truths,

And to live like life has inalienable rights!

To make the dreams of the distant past, real at last!”

20.

And in her small but certain voice,

She gave them a choice:

“Call a continental congress,

To rewrite the constitution,

Or let the winds of change bring war

And civil dissolution.

A constituent assembly

To re-found democracy

So it includes us all –

Or it will fall!

A covenant of all the land's peoples

To overcome their nation's evils,

To forge forgiveness and find new worth

In an empire's end and a nation's rebirth!”

When the child finished, she lowered her hands

And the eagle took flight for other lands.

And here my vision ends,

Where the path of the future bends.

Soñar Zapatista en Nueva York

por el Congreso Nacional Indigena y su candidata

de Quincy Saul

Aquí en el capitolio del capitalismo

Hemos escuchado al silencio.

Aquí en el medio de la maquina,

Soñamos con la milpa.

Aquí en el meollo de lo mediático

Aquí donde se dirige el desencantamiento,

En el totalitarismo del tonal,

Soñamos del nagual.

Aquí donde no se puede ver las estrellas

Soñamos de la cosmovision vislumbrada

en la dignidad Zapatista.

Aquí abajo el torre del imperio,

Que marca el ápice de todos los pirámides,

Soñamos de bajar y no subir.

Aquí en el mundo plano como papel y moneda,

Soñamos en el mundo llena como luna y semilla.
 

Rodeados por objetos acumulados

Soñamos con la intersubjetividad sublevada.

Soñamos con la lucha entre Tío Sam y Votan Zapata

En el terreno brillante del arco de justicia

¡Y soñamos con la victoria!

Ya se mira el horizonte --

Abandonaremos los pirámides

Y sembraremos milpa en Central Park.

Aquí en el agujero blanco del malgobierno

Abajo el reino de un demonio como presidente

Soñamos con el liderazgo de una mujer indígena,

Que sea candidata por México y por el mundo donde quepan todos,

Por ella nos convocamos y nos comprometemos,

Salta la quien salta.