My name is Luka – an ultrashort poem

My name is Luka

Now playing

Note For those not familiar, here's the song by Suzanne Vega from 1987 this alludes to:

Other than that:

Just don't ask me what it was.

– Leonard Blumfeld (© 2023)

Kate and Anna McGarrigle: Mother Mother (1990)

I've had this song in my head for days without knowing why. Usually there's some association that triggers the memory of a song. Nothing like it in this case. Didn't even wake up with it playing in my head as it sometimes happens.

I've been listening to Kate and Anna McGarrigle since 1977, when I picked up Dancer with Bruised Knees at the record store at the University of Regensburg in Germany on a whim because I loved the cover.

This song will make u feel sad even if you have nothing to be sad about ...

Angus & Julia Stone - I'm Not Yours

Came across this song when watching the crime thriller Above Suspicion (2019), based on a true story (murder of Susan Smith by FBI agent Mark Putnam in 1989) - it is the song playing at the end of the movie.

Labordeta - Aragón

José Antonio Labordeta

Aragón

   

Polvo, niebla, viento y sol,

Donde hay agua una huerta.

Al Norte los Pirineos:

Esta tierra es Aragón.

Al Norte los Pirineos

Al Sur la tierra callada.

Pasa el Ebro por el centro

Con su soledad a la espalda.

Dicen que hay tierras al Este

Donde se trabaja y pagan.

Hacia el Oeste el Moncayo

Como un Dios que ya no ampara.

Desde tiempos a esta parte

Vamos camino de nada.

Vamos a ver cómo el Ebro

Con su soledad se marcha.

Y con él van en compaña

Las gentes de estas vaguadas,

De estos valles, de esta sierra,

De estas huertas arruinadas.

Polvo, niebla, viento y sol,

Donde hay agua una huerta.

Al Norte los Pirineos:

Esta tierra es Aragón.

**********

Aragon

   

Dust, fog, wind and sun,

Where there is water an orchard.

To the North the Pyrenees:

This land is Aragon.

To the North the Pyrenees

To the South the quiet land.

The Ebro flows through the center

With its solitude at its back.

They say there are lands to the East

Where there’s work and they pay.

To the West the Moncayo

Like a God that no longer protects.

Since time immemorial

We are on our way to nothing.

Watching the Ebro

Carry away its loneliness.

And with it go in company

The people of these meadows,

Of these valleys, these mountains,

These ruined orchards.

Dust, fog, wind and sun,

Where there is water an orchard.

To the North the Pyrenees:

This land is Aragon.

English translation by Johannes Beilharz.