Poem: Horn Threnody 3.11 (feat. Toshinori Kondo)

 

Here is the print text for an audio-poem I have made, which I'll be premiering today on The Words & Music Show from Montreal. It's a reflection, for me, on distant witness and a meditation on global responsibility. The recording uses some electric trumpet lines from Toshinori Kondo, offered by his family license-free through Bandcamp, over--or under--which I have layered some of my own muted pocket trumpet textures. My own recording is available free of charge on Bandcamp, although any payment I receive for downloads will be matched by me and donated to local food banks here in Vancouver. Toshinori Kondo passed away--transitioned--at the age of 71 on October 17, 2020, so this piece is also an elegy for him, offered with deep respect for his life and art. The audio from which I have borrowed is Mr. Kondo's posthumously-released recording called "Blow for 3.11." 

Horn Threnody 3.11 (feat. Toshinori Kondo)

 

Ce ton qui nous colle aux oreilles, la vision de la catastrophe collée sur la rétine, se superposent à d'autres que nous avons connus depuis l'enfance, et il faut vivre avec cette vision de notre futur possible, à jamais gravée sur la rétine, qui hélas surgit parfois distinctement devant nos yeux. 

—Ryoku Sekiguchi, Ce n’est pas un hasard. 

 

No form of lament seems massive enough:

tectonic peal, 

the supersaturated keen

of jacked electric brass wet with effects,                       

like denatured gull screech, like seismic shriek,

woebegone siren wail; a frazzled taps;

atrocious, injured blare—irradiant, cranked.

Lachrymal squelch beaches itself in slabs.

Come ten years back, one bad March afternoon

saw Tōhoku swallow 

its own live east coast whole,

tongue to pelagic tail, entire shorelines 

sucker-punched by a sudden obese surge,

the trench-deep pitch and heave made by a wall 

of blunt ocean murk walloping landfall;

crude, big seabed upchuck; catastrophic, 

 

headlong saltwater slap, pulverizing

harbours, houses, and power-plants 

in the hard churn

of its remorseless, whelming gut. Take out 

your mute. Retaliate with what small dose 

of spitty empathy your human mouth

can muster. The word tsunami blisters

your lip like leakage from unquenched fuel rods.