POETS OF MONGOLIA

PETER KRÜGEL- SAKTHYA BYAMBA -PETER BROSENS

Poets of Mongolia evokes the meaning of poetry in the daily life of ordinary people who are trying to cope with harsh reality in a rapidly changing world. Through poetry a miner praises nature, a heating technician evokes man's destiny, a blind singer expresses her wish to see, and an expatriate finds the strength to survive in a foreign country.

Inti Films' Mongolia Trilogy (City of the Steppes, 1994, State of Dogs, 1998 -third part-Inti Films -)Mongolian State Award Best Documentary 1999

PROLOGUE TO AFRICAN CONSCIENCE

Belatengeta-Poet Laureate-Tsegaye Gebre-Medhin, Ethiopia’s premier versatile and prolific man of letters. For half a century now he has been continuously productive as poet, playwright, essayist, social critic, philologist, historiographer, dramatist, synthesis, peace-activist, artistic a director... on matters national, continental and global.

... Born in the highland village of Boda, near Ambo , west of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa 17 August 1936 died in Manhattan on 26 February 2006.

Prologue to African Conscience

Tamed to bend

Into the model chairs

Carpentered for it

By the friendly pharos of its time

The black conscience flutters

Yet is taken in.

it looks right

It looks left

It forgets to look into its own self:

The broken yoke threatens to return

Only, this time

In the luring shape

Of luxury and golden chains

That frees the body

And enslaves the mind.

Into its head

The old dragon sun

Now breathes hot civilization

And the wise brains

Of the strong sons of the tribes

Pant

With an even more strange suffocation.

Its new self awareness

(In spite of its tribal ills)

Wishes to patchits torn spirits together:

Its past and present masters

(With their army of ghosts

That remained to haunt the earth)

Hook its innermost soul

And tear it apart:

And the african conscience

Still moans molested

Still remains drifting uprooted.

Dreamer

A lover love-rejected

With a spirit dejected,

A monk God-forsaken

hose total Faith is shaken,

Are less lost than dreamer

Into whose peace a “ question “

Plunged like a knife

And woke him to life,

To search, to find his way

To dodge, to fight his way

NOT dream it away !

Guilty?

On the grave of my friend, I stood.

For blood and flesh, I stayed . . .

And with faith I prayed, and prayed;

For blood and flesh, he was robed

. . .And with doubt, I hoped, and I hoped.

On the grave of my friend, as I stayed;

… On my future, I brood .

I stood on the grave of a man.

A tomb-stone of a man, I burdened.

The grave of a man, I murdered:

And with hope, my future, I sketched,

When with prayer, my killer hand, I stretched.

On the tomb-stone, of the man, I murdered:

. . Urrahh!!! I won!

On my victim’s carcass, I climb.

While on his tomb, I tread …

My bloody fingers, I spread:

Thus to repent, to justify, I have tried …

While I hoped, and prayed, I have cried.

And I won, my daily wine, and bread!

… Is it a crime?

Who Is On Whose Way

I did not know, oh sir, that I stood on your way,

It all happened in chance; argument is unfit,

If we fight, others will benefit,

And as this road is also where my future lay,

Destiny forces me to answer you with “ Nay “

Pray lose no temper: lest you commit

A risk to result in a regrettable wit,

For, if there be crime, guilty is just the day:

I am also in yours as you are in my shoes

So do let us shift sir, to either side

However painful it becomes, we should, though

We realize that it isn’t much to lose

That in spite of us the way is wide

And that after all, someday, both of us go.

Tears Inevitable

Showers of anguish

Rain, do not exhaust

Ocean of revenge

Of the innermost

Voice of the betrayed

Comfort of the lost,

Tears torn of self

Blood of the heart.<

ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford

[Who taught thee first to sigh?]

Who taught thee first to sigh, alas, my heart?
Who taught thy tongue the woeful words of plaint?
Who filled your eyes with tears of bitter smart?
Who gave thee grief, and made thy joys to faint?

Who first did paint with colors pale thy face?
Who first did break thy sleeps of quiet rest?
Above the rest in court who gave thee grace?
Who made thee strive, in honor to be best?

In constant truth to bide so firm and sure?
To scorn the world, regarding but thy friends?
With patient mind each passion to endure?
In one desire to settle to the end?

Love then thy choice, wherein such choice thou bind
As nought but death may ever change thy mind.

Were I a king

Were I a king I could command content ;
Were I obscure, unknown should be my cares;
And were I dead, no thoughts should me torment,
Nor words, nor wrongs, nor loves, nor hopes, nor fears.
A doubtful choice, of three things one to crave,
A kingdom, or a cottage, or a grave.






Edward de Vere, 17th earl of Oxford, born April 12, 1550, Castle Hedingham, Essex, Eng.died June 24, 1604, Newington, Middlesex
English lyric poet and patron of an acting company, Oxford's Men, who became, in the 20th century, the strongest candidate proposed (next to William Shakespeare himself) for the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.
Succeeding to the earldom as a minor in 1562, Oxford lived for eight years as a royal ward under the care of William Cecil (later Lord Burghley) and in December 1571 married Burghley's daughter, Anne Cecil. Along the way he studied at Queens' College and St. John's College, Cambridge. By the early 1580s his financial position had become very straitened, perhaps chiefly through his lack of financial sense. His younger children were provided for by Burghley, with whom he remained friendly even after Anne's death (June 1588) and his own remarriage in 1591 or 1592. In 1586 Queen Elizabeth granted him an annuity of £1,000.
He was never appointed to any important office or command, though he was named on the commissions of some noted trials of peers and was said to have been made a privy councilor by James I. It has therefore been suggested that the annuity may have been granted for his services in maintaining a company of actors (from 1580) and that the obscurity of his later life is to be explained by his immersion in literary pursuits. He was indeed a notable patron of writers. He employed John Lyly, the author of the novel Euphues, as his secretary for many years.
That Oxford might be the author of Shakespeare's plays was first advanced in a major way in “Shakespeare” Identified in Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford (1920), a study by J. Thomas Looney. Looney argued that there was a biographical similarity between Oxford and both Bertram (in All's Well That Ends Well) and Hamlet and that Oxford's poems resembled Shakespeare's early work. Oxford's interest in the drama extended beyond noble patronage, for he himself wrote some plays, though there are no known examples extant. His 23 acknowledged poems were written in youth, and, because he was born in 1550, Looney proposed that they were the prelude to his mature work and that this began in 1593 with Venus and Adonis. This theory is supported by the coincidence that Oxford's poems apparently ceased just before Shakespeare's work began to appear. A further claim is that Oxford assumed a pseudonym in order to protect his family from the social stigma attached to the stage and also because extravagance had brought him into disrepute at court. A major difficulty in the Oxfordian theory, however, is his death date (1604), because, according to standard chronology, 14 of Shakespeare's plays, including many of the most important ones, were apparently written after that time. The debate, however, remained lively in the late 20th century.

THE MANHATTAN PROJECT

Nagasaki (August 9, 1945)Events: Dawn of the Atomic Era, 1945
The next break in the weather over Japan was due to appear just three days after the attack on Hiroshima, to be followed by at least five more days of prohibitive weather. The plutonium bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," was rushed into readiness to take advantage of this window. No further orders were required for the attack. Truman's order of July 25th had authorized the dropping of additional bombs as soon as they were ready. At 3:47 a.m. on August 9, 1945, a B-29 named Bock's Car lifted off from Tinian and headed toward the primary target: Kokura Arsenal, a massive collection of war industries adjacent to the city of Kokura.
The aircraft commander, Major Charles W. Sweeney, ordered the arming of the bomb only ten minutes after take-off so that the aircraft could be pressurized and climb above the lightning and squalls that menaced the flight all the way to Japan.

Nagasaki was an industrial center and major port on the western coast of Kyushu. As had happened at Hiroshima, the "all-clear" from an early morning air raid alert had long been given by the time the B-29 had begun its bombing run. A small conventional raid on Nagasaki on August 1st had resulted in a partial evacuation of the city, especially of school children. There were still almost 200,000 people in the city below the bomb when it exploded. The hurriedly-targeted weapon ended up detonating almost exactly between two of the principal targets in the city, the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works to the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Torpedo Works (right) to the north. Had the bomb exploded farther south the residential and commercial heart of the city would have suffered much greater damage.

The explosion affected a total area of approximately 43 square miles. About 8.5 of those square miles were water, and 33 more square miles were only partially settled. Although the destruction at Nagasaki has generally received less worldwide attention than that at Hiroshima, it was extensive nonetheless. Almost everything up to half a mile from ground zero was completely destroyed, including even the earthquake-hardened concrete structures that had sometimes survived at comparable distances at Hiroshima. According to a Nagasaki Prefectural report "men and animals died almost instantly" within 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) of the point of detonation. Almost all homes within a mile and a half were destroyed, and dry, combustible materials such as paper instantly burst in

to flames as far away as 10,000 feet from ground zero. Of the 52,000 homes in Nagasaki, 14,000 were destroyed and 5,400 more seriously damaged. Only 12 percent of the homes escaped unscathed. . A U.S. Navy officer who visited the city in mid-September reported that, even over a month after the attack, "a smell of death and corruption pervades the place." As at Hiroshima, the psychological effects of the attack were undoubtedly considerable.
As with the estimates of deaths at Hiroshima, it will never be known for certain how many people died as a result of the atomic attack on Nagasaki. The best estimate is 40,000 people died initially, with 60,000 more injured.

By January 1946, the number of deaths probablyapproached 70,000, with perhaps ultimately twice

that number dead total within five years.For those areas of Nagasaki affected by theexplosion, the death rate was comparable to that at Hiroshima.

http://www.mbe.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/nagasaki.htm