Well I have and in fact more than one and I'll tell you this too

I wrote one against Algeria that nightmare and another against

Korea and another against the one I was in

and I don't remember how many against the three

when I was a boy Abyssinia Spain and Harlan County

and not one breath was restored to one

shattered throat mans womans or childs not one not

one but death went on and on never looking aside

except now and then with a furtive half-smile to make sure I was noticing.

... Notes:

Wendell Berry in his book of essays, "What Are People For?" calls this poem, "a poem of difficult hope". In an essay with the same title, Berry, after noting that while this poem appears to give a negative reply to the question, "Why do something that you suspect, with reason, will do no good?", writes

"In the first place, the distinguishing characteristic of absolute despair is silence. There is a world of difference between the person, who believing that there is no use, says so to himself or to no one, and the person who says it aloud to someone else. A person who marks his trail into despair remembers hope - and thus hopes, even if only little".

Berry goes on to discuss the structure, the syntax, and other mechanics of Carruth's language that make this seemingly unobtrusive poem masterful, and then circles backs to the question he posed at the beginning of the essay, "Why has this poet expended so much skill and care to tell us there is no use doing what he has already done a number of time and is no, in fact, doing again?" To this question, Berry posits that, while history has little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use, protest endures because it is animated by a hope far more modest than public success: the hope of preserving the qualities of one's own heart and spirit from the destruction that can come from silent acquiescence. Berry, concludes the essay, by saying:

"But something more is involved that is even harder to talk about because it is only slightly understandable, and that is the part that suffering plays in the economy of the spirit. It seems plain that the voice of our despair defines our hope exactly; it seems, indeed, that we cannot know of hope without knowing of despair, just as we know joy precisely to the extent that we know of sorrow."

...

I reached for this poem and Wendell Berry's essay on it when I saw the photos of the latest destruction – those of thirty or so incinerated dead children - earlier today. Perhaps it will be of some use in giving hope to the equally distant others as well.

Indian trains have their complement of traveling buskers, who make their money by singing songs wandering from compartment to compartment. One of my enduring memories of these bauls of the rails was from a train journey some fifteen years ago. This was on a school trip to a science camp at Tarapur, a town along the Maharashtra Gujarat border, on the Arabian sea. This was also to be my first encounter with Bombay.

It was in between Pune and Bombay, where the train barrels in and out of the darkness and rainy light of the Western Ghat tunnels, a young boy and a older girl, who still was not much older than I was then, i.e., 12 years old, suddenly appeared in the compartment, with two pieces of hard slate that they used like cymbals, like clappers, singing old Hindi movie songs. I now don't remember the songs they sang or their faces but I remember being struck with some kind of a dumb pain after they got off at the next station to get into the next compartment. One of our teachers told us, in English, not to acknowledge their presence in the compartment, for otherwise we would have to give them money.

So you pretend that they are not there in the aisle, you pretend that the hill scenery outside the window is more compelling than their bird like throats bobbing up and down, their eyes bright with half-hunger, and their singing - musically not smooth but a still grenade of pain tunneling down your ear, and primed to explode anytime you recall that journey. If in the West kids lose their innocence to the flame of desire then in the East, this flame that burns away the pretense of innocence is that of a naked and helpless witnessing.

I wouldn't have remembered all this tonight, except I got to YouTubing for songs of a Indian folk-rock band "Euphoria", and ran into this music video for "Maaeri", primarily made on a train in India. If you see this, imagine those small two birds (who still exist), as they clap pieces of rock to produce a beat, and sign old Hindi film songs up and down on that Western Railway line, a funeral pyre for innocence.

Even though I don't "get" much Bengali, by the virtue of having spent some happy formative years in Bangla-land, I have been infected with a certain kind of Bangla-ness. The foremost symptom of this syndrome is an instant attraction for any music that has Bangla in it. In fact, one major reason why I particularly dig Nitin Sawhney's music is the way he integrates a certain Bangla soundscape into him music: street conversations, women in a market bargaining, boatman songs etc.

Within Bangla music, one particular strain that I find particularly attractive is that of the bauls, the wandering ministrels of Bengal. Osho, who spouted much nonsense, had this to say about bauls:

"The Bauls are called Bauls because they are mad people. The word 'Baul' comes from the Sanskrit root vatul. It means: mad, affected by wind. The Baul belongs to no religion. He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian nor Buddhist. He is a simple human being. His rebellion is total. He does not belong to anybody; he only belongs to himself. He lives in a no man's land: no country is his, no religion is his, no scripture is his. His rebellion goes even deeper than the rebellion of the Zen Masters--because at least formally, they belong to Buddhism; at least formally, they worship Buddha. Formally they have scriptures--scriptures denouncing scriptures, of course--but still they have. At least they have a few scriptures to burn.

Dance is his religion; singing is his worship. He does not even use the word 'God'. The Baul word for God is Adhar Manush, the essential man. He worships man. He says, inside you and me, inside everybody, there is an essential being. That essential being is all. To find that Adhar Manush, that essential man, is the whole search."

...

Among the bauls, Lalon Shah (or Lalon Fakir) songs in the recent years have become particularly popular in Bagla music. This New Age BD article also indicates that Lalon was given to investigations into male-female identities, and social power structures in his songs:

"Lalon is brilliant in raising very fundamental issues relating to woman-man relationships playing on the margin between biological and the social construction of this relation. The famous song ‘mayere bhajile hoy tar baper thikana’ is based on a story known in rural Bengal. Parvati, one of the great Hindu Mother-Goddesses, the wife of Mohadeva or Shiva, was once asked by her husband about the origin of the world. ‘Is it from the masculine or the feminine principle?’ Mohadeva asked Parvati. Parvati thought for a while, but decided consciously not to reply, she went into ‘silence’. Why? Because if she said the world originated from women, implying her, she will be a sinner for being a bad wife, since patriarchal rules were dominant. On the other hand, if she said it is from the masculine principle, implying Shiva, she will become a liar. So her ‘silence’ became her words, or her words are constructed by her silence. Silence is the the feminine punctuation in the masculine discourse and it must be rewritten as a methodology known in Lalon’s philosophy as the ‘nigam bichar’. It is the task of the sadhus or the saints to read the ‘silence’ and break the dominant structure of the existing discourse."

...

But since this post is supposed to be about music, check out the Bangladeshi band "Bangla"'s folk rock take on Lalon's songs in Kingkortobbobimur and Prottutponnomotitto. Their female lead singer, Anusheh's husky voice rocks! Also here is a review on these albums.