Reinventing the Ancient Across four Cultures, One Ocean

By and | 1 February 2013
Pages: 1 2 3 4

The Burning

(The artists integrate voice, sound, music and movement to create the ritual of burning.)

1.
In a blaze of perfume and song

Burn what is already dead

All that we give will be gone

The sapphire morning grows red

2.
gather … gather, gather … gather …

gather your twigs
to weave the nest
knit, sew, stitch, braid, crochet
bead, emboss the nest
                                 not boss the nest
                                 making, remaking in order to get
                                 a chance to be better at what we’ve got

Your twigs are your bones, are your ills are your wrongs

Don’t play with fire ‘cause it plays with you.
What do you want to be – yeah, when you grow up – what do you want to be?
A fire-fighter with a red engine and a big hose.
A star so I twinkle then shoot to the ground … Shoot to the ground …

3.
Ignite the flame to be the light

That never dies, day or night

Ignite the flame!

4.
(Greek words: a repetitive mantra which in essence means: you need to sacrifice and burn something of yourself in order to continue in life.)

Prepei na thysiasis yia na synehisis
thysiasis yia na synehisis, prepei na kaeis
yia na synehisis, na kaeis,
yia na synehisis
na kaies, na kaeis, yia na synehisis!
Na kaeis, into the blaze, na kaeis, into the Blaze!

5.
The Red Guard took my father.
Seven days and seven nights I could not take a shower.
He sits in his armchair and watches in silence

Jackets are sewn – Burning mouths swallow Red Coats… Red Coats

My left hand was clumsier than my right.
An infinite running up and down the scales.
Of control, of control… forced language.

Leonardo da Vinci visited our village.
Made a village grow into a factory.

Struggle is Life… Finish.

The circles spiral, threads disappear, design lost with dialect.

Solemn sepia, pixelised picture, silent struggle, melt as one.

6.
remnants, remains, bits an’ pieces, fragments, fractions.

meaning found in dying detail.

the weave no longer weeps.

suffer no more, suffer no more, suffer no more.

found anew, found anew, found anew.

Pages: 1 2 3 4
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Angela Costi is a poet and writer with a background in social justice and community arts. The author of five poetry collections/books. Her most recent is An Embroidery of Old Maps and New (Spinifex, 2021). She is known as Αγγελικη Κωστη among the Cypriot diaspora, which is her heritage. She lives with a rare genetic condition: schwannomatosis.

More by Angela Costi on Cordite Poetry Review →
Wang Zheng-Ting is a world-renowned Sheng player and an ethnomusicologist. Ting graduated from Shanghai Music Conservatory 1987 and completed a MA in Ethnomusicology at Monash University 1995 and a PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of Melbourne 2004. He lectures on Chinese music at the University of Melbourne. He has been involved with the Melbourne International Arts Festival in 1999, 2002 and 2007 as an artist. He has experimented extensively with the integration of Chinese and Western music, and has performed with senior musicians and major Symphony Orchestras in Australia, the USA and other parts of the world, where he is a regular lecturer and performer of the Sheng (including the University of New York, the Victoria University Wellington NZ, Hoch Schule Fur Music Koln, in Wuppertal, Germany.

More by Wang Zheng-Ting on Cordite Poetry Review →

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