I
Where are they now,
Where are they now
And what I’ll have to get
How could I not have it
There were years, my love
With tired lives in the night
But they've gone away
And who kept me here
To live like the rest of us
“And we'd be no more, if it wasn't for this”
But it's enough to ask for help
The worlds coming tonight, the worlds coming
Heart, take them within, they’d like to be here
“There may be no chance of getting it at all,
No place for this, if nothing will help us to see”
And where the blessing comes
I know that I need the staff of song
The nights, when they were endless
How was it that I left them
How was it that I ever left them
Come, with garden streets
And the last nights of September in your hand
“But why can't I come back to this world?”
I heard someone ask, I heard someone ask
And I know what I have been
“Without this,
Without this I’d be gone already”
And what I want to sing
What I'd like to hear...
II
And the words fell, and the words fell
For those who quit the living tired night
How it hurt too much,
Even smoking hurt so much
“Now all of us, at the time,
We were having something
But I can’t name any of you
And I don’t even want to,
We never had it together
Like we should have had”
How we couldn't have it
How we couldn't have it
Now we're here, with a beautiful city
And the last nights of September in your hand
III
Come, leaves in the park wither
And the street is quiet
And if someone comes to ask
“Why can’t it be left behind”
We'll have to say something,
That there's faith to be kept
And an angel guiding, for all of us
How sometimes the need is so great
That only a higher being can help
And I now speak for more than one poet
"Friend, take the hand of an angel
Who guards with endless love"
When we were too weak, even then
All of this hope stayed with us
No, I don't want to see the fall
In a young man’s apology
For not knowing why it hurts
“And we can’t go on without help,
And I really can’t tell
Who is it that lets all of this happen”
IV
Everything is here with me
'Cause there's truth in this, my love
And beside me in your hand
The rain and the nights of late September
"And who belongs to my world,
And who belongs to my world
I know the path is right for me
With a black cross and seven red roses,
For I have felt that there's love"
And I think it's enough, I think it's enough
And I think of all that is good
“And the rain fell when I went there,
But if you caught me now
In something else than this,
Would you take care of everything”
'Cause I've seen what could happen
I speak less now
With words falling
Under tonight’s lightened grey sky
How would you like me tonight
What would be the right approach for me
(Autumn 2010. Once again I walked the streets of Töölö, one of my all time favourite districts in Helsinki. The series of pictures by Antti Filppu.)
Lies hurt more than truths
And for whom I’m trying,
For whom I'm trying
As we watch them
There, under the same rain again
Laughing at themselves
All of our old faults and failures
As friends or as lovers
And we know what this is
We know what this is
Last Nights Of September At Hand was written between 2002 and 2008. Many of the words and nights were lost for YIW (2004), see especially The Fall Went Right Through Here and More Withering. Of course, a few quotes found their way into this much later.
A Song Of Love And Friendship
Written in October 2012, for my brother(s)
So much lying and regret
Brother(s), I know that I've hurt you
And you have hurt me, too
Our souls were broken like the Wor(l)d
Near the abyss, black and terrible
Why friends hurt each other
Why friends hurt each other
"No October sunshine will
Ever lighten the skies"
There would be no verses,
Neither a hard rain to fall
Yes, there'll be autumn streets
For the ones who lost,
And then fell in love
The same autumn streets for all
Who were lost and fell in love
Notes For The Lyrics
V. Andrei Rublev's Троица.
Cf. Genesis (chapters 17-18).
V. Lesser and Greater Guardian
in the works of Rudolf Steiner.
V. Siste Riddaren (The Last Knight),
a historical drama written by August Strindberg.
Cf. Sten Sture the Elder's lay at Brunkeberg in 1471.
Strindberg has also written of a path
leading from Satanism to Christianity.
V. En Blå Bok, Röda Rummet, Svarta Fanor,
Ett Drömspel, Till Damaskus etc.
I.II is dedicated to Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843)
and to all my brothers and friends, we live near.
V. Hölderlin's Christ hymn fragment Patmos.
V. Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Creation),
and Leonard Cohen's Dance me to the end of love.
V. Paul Celan's Todtnauberg and Tübingen, Jänner.
Celan asked a question (die Judenfrage),
but Martin Heidegger didn't answer.
Cf. the house of being in Heidegger's works.
V. Friedrich Hölderlin's Brot und Wein.
V. Kalevala (poems 14-15).
Tryst is a meeting (place) of lovers.
Cf. Agustin Barrios Mangoré's La Catedral
and Una Limosna Por el Amor de Dios.
Rose garden means rosarium in Latin.
"Light on light" is a kind of painting technique.
Vincent van Gogh lived in the Yellow House, in Arles,
and at the St Paul's asylum, in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
V. Le Café de nuit (The Night Café), Les Iris (Irises)
and the unsigned Café Terrace on the Place du Forum.
V. Anástasis in Kariye Camii (St. Saviour in Chora), Istanbul.
V. Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching, LXXVI,
and Andrei Tarkovsky's Сталкер (Stalker).
Letters in May are dedicated to M.T.
V. the Prayer of the Heart.
(Bark = [to] bark, or a barque)
V. the Egyptian Book of the Dead.
Amber is the resin of extinct pine trees.
V. stories of the great flood and the ice-age.
Cf. shadows and the search for clarity
in the works of Guntars Godins.
V. Les Parapluies de Cherbourg
(The Umbrellas of Cherbourg),
and the miracle-working icon
of the Mother of God of Konevitsa.
The Crusader is an old song title (from 1998).
Cf. Bob Dylan's version of Lone Pilgrim.
Rumours tell Constantinople will be returned
when Ekatontapiliani's 100th door is found.
V. the crusades, the sack of Constantinople in 1453
and the sieges of Rhodes (in 1444, 1480 and 1522).
Demon of the Sun is called Sorat in Hebrew.
V. Apokálypsis (The Revelation of John).
Cf. Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser.
What lives in the child's drawings and plays?
One of the etymologies for the Grail knight
Parzival's name is "right through the middle".
Tears of the lost one is an old song title.
Its chorus (from March, 1995) is used in III.II.
I could count the same numerical value
for the words Pathvvays and Parzival,
and the number mentioned refers to these.
V. Umberto Eco's Il pendolo di Foucault.
Cf. Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung.
V. Aleister Crowley's 777 and other qabalistic writings.
The black goat of the woods with a thousand young
is from Howard Phillips Lovecraft's novel.
I was reading about the String theory, too
when I realized III.III may be a tone poem.
V. the classical tragedy, catharsis.
Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of Amor Fati,
but it's also an old song title (from 1997).
There are many quotes from earlier lyrics in III.IV.
I heard the overture of Richard Wagner's Parsifal
for the first time on a cold November evening.
The Hebrew letter Shin has three tongues like flames.
In a post-modern tragedy there could be
no language left, only hate and despise.
I've been told my grandfather used to say
the words in the end of III.VII;
every line would have fallen to pieces
without a helping hand from beyond.
Under autumnal rain is an old song title.
(Distinct. = distinct or distinctions)
Salvat is an abbreviation of Montsalvat,
but the word itself means healing and salvation.
Cf. the use of honey and spells in Kalevala.
Everything is taken from its right place
in post-modern horror, there is no one
to tell what human suffering and pain are like.
V. Akasha (or the spirit) chronicle.
I was nineteen when I wrote IV.II.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the river.
V. Claude Monet's Nymphéas (Water lilies).
Beaurepaire is the city where Blancheflor lives
in the roman Perceval ou le Conte du Graal,
written in the 12th century by Chrétien de Troyes.
V. La fille sur le pont (The Girl on the Bridge).
Cf. Karfreitagszauber (Good Friday Spell)
in Richard Wagner's Parsifal, 3rd act.
V. the Mystery of Golgotha.
(Somnolence = unnatural sleepiness)
There are no trees in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg.
Poetaster is someone who writes inferior poetry;
I chose the title because I thought it meant "infernal".
V. Claude Monet's Chrysanthèmes (Chrysanthemums).
Friedrich Hölderlin wrote of heavenly fire
as the fate of the archaic Greek world.
The crippled man could be anyone who has
a wound like that of Amfortas.
Astor Piazzolla's Tango Nuevo:
tango+tragedy+comedy+kilombo (brothel).
V. Ultimo tango a Parigi (Last Tango in Paris).
For the nature of the eye
V. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's
Zur Farbenlehren.
Cf. Leonard Cohen's The Traitor.
V. the seventh key or call of Enoch
by John Dee and Edward Kelley
who claimed to have scried
"the language Adam spoke before the Fall".
Cf. the three Books of Enoch.
Also, in Parzival Trevrizent speaks
about the angels who didn't choose sides.
Cf. Martin Heidegger's Der Ursprung des Kunstwkes,
and Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall.
Amphigory is a poem which at first appears to be meaningful,
but upon closer examination is found to be nonsense.
Goethe recalled: "I was a shipwrecked sailor,
more ill in my soul than in my body!"
(Sleep drunkenness = somnolentia)
Cf. Richard Wagner's Das Rheingold.
V. Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia.
The night café is a place of hope for me.
"Where are you?" was a text message
I received in late October evening (2001).
And I drank my coffee black that night,
one of the most beautiful in my life.
There's not much in the poem V.VI,
but it reminds me of something
that I felt was beyond any words.
Anchorage is an old song title (from 1999),
and besides the usual imagery it means
the dwelling place of a hermit, an anchor(ite).
On the tombstone of William Butler Yeats
there is the inscription: "Cast a cold eye
on life, on death. Horseman, pass by!"
(Pitié = compassion, pity)
Nick Drake was "the thin young man".
The song title VI.II/VI is from September 2000;
dedicated to the lonely, depressed TYM in this world
as well as to the nymph and dancer, A.R.
Cf. Nick Cave's (Are you) the one that I've been waiting for?
V. William Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Chain is an old song title (from early 1994).
Arthur Rimbaud sold "black wine" in Harer, Ethiopia.
Cf. writers and priests in the works of Novalis.
V. the history of coffee, from Arabian slave caravans
and Sufi mystics, to the siege of Vienna in 1683.
V. Johannes de silentio's Frygt og bæven.
Erich Fromm wrote of the City of Being.
V. Federico García Lorca's Dos valses hacia la civilización,
and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust (I & II).
Cf. the scene in the olive garden of Gethsemane
in Matthew (26:39), Mark (14:36) and Luke (22:42).
V. the Rose-Cross meditation.
VII is dedicated to L.V. & cetera.
Sandro Botticelli: Madonna of the Pomegranate (c. 1487)