Here is the text of
Pink Ashes. This is a mash up of
Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot, with commentary by Pink Floyd. This was orginally a collaboration of
Janus the Two Headed Dog, namely myself and Esteban Colon. The original idea was to mash up two seemingly antithetical pieces in order to create what we assumed would be irreconcileable dissonance. T.S. Eliot and Pink Floyd go together surprisingly well, so that's not exactly what we got. I'm looking forward to mashing up something really challenging, so if anyone wants to collaborate let me know.
I
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
Remember when you were young,
You shone like the sun.
Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power.
Now there's a look in your eyes,
Like black holes in the sky.
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again.
You reached for the secret too soon,
You cried for the moon.
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place.
Threatened by shadows at night,
And exposed in the light.
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain.
You wore out your welcome with random precision,
Rode on the steel breeze.
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us.
Nobody knows where you are,
How near or how far.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
And I'll be joining you there.
And we'll bask in the shadow
Of yesterday's triumph, And sail on the steel breeze.
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
II
Through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes
I can barely define the shape of this moment in time
And far from flying high in clear blue skies
I'm spiraling down to the hole in the ground where I hide.
If you negotiate the minefield in the drive
And beat the dogs and cheat the cold electronic eyes
And if you make it past the shotgun in the hall,
Dial the combination, open the priesthole
And if I'm in I'll tell you what's behind the wall.
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to satiety
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been contained
In the hollow round of my skull.
There's a kid who had a big hallucination
Making love to girls in magazines.
He wonders if you're sleeping with your new found faith.
Could anybody love him
Or is it just a crazy dream?
We shine with brightness.
And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
And if I show you my dark side will you still hold me tonight?
It is this which recovers.
And if I open my heart to you and show you my weak side
What would you do?
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject.
Would you sell your story to Rolling Stone?
Would you take the children away and leave me alone?
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
And smile in reassurance as you whisper down the phone?
As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget.
And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.
Or would you take me home?
And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper.
Thought I oughta tear the curtain down.
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory. Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful.
I held the blade in trembling hands.
The single Rose is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment of love unsatisfied
The greater torment of love satisfied.
I never had the nerve to make the final cut.
End of the endless journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden where all love ends.
III
At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.
Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run.
At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below.
You better make your face up in
Your favorite disguise.
With your button down lips and your
Roller blind eyes.
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man's mouth drivelling, beyond repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.
With your empty smile
And your hungry heart.
Feel the bile rising from your guilty past.
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs's fruit.
With your nerves in tatters
When the cockleshell shatters and the hammers batter down
The door.
You'd better run.
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.
Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run, Run.
Lord, I am not worthy.
Cause if they catch you in the back seat
Trying to pick her locks,
They're gonna send you back to mother
In a cardboard box.
You better run.
IV
Breathe, breathe in the air.
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,
Talking of trivial things.
Don't be afraid to care.
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs.
Long you live and high you fly.
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry.
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary's colour,
Sovegna vos.
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.
Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing.
Run, rabbit run. Dig that hole, forget the sun.
White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
And when at last the work is done
Don't sit down it's time to dig another one.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme.
Redeem.
For long you live and high you fly
But only if you ride the tide.
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
And balanced on the biggest wave
You race towards an early grave.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Goodbye cruel world, I'm leaving you today.
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke no word.
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye.
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream.
Goodbye, all you people.
The token of the word unheard, unspoken
Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew.
And after this our exile.
V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within the world and for the world.
So, you think you can tell heaven from hell,
Blue skies from pain?
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
Can you tell a green field From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
Do you think you can tell?
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice.
And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness?
We’re just two lost souls, swimming in a fish bowl.
For years and years.
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fear.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Blown on the steel breeze.
VI
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell.
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks.
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.
And let my cry come unto Thee.
I worry about your Harvey Keitel face
