Cashmere
Watching the pigeons making gentle love
on the windowsill.
It is Sunday.
Beaks and feathers warmed by the sun,
touching each other.
Sweet noise
from their gizzards is
touching my fingertips.
Time slips by…
It’s still Sunday.
And they make love…
I light a cigarette and let the smoke
do the same with the emptiness of
this room.
Cashmere -- John Singer Sargent
Cashmere -- John Singer Sargent
"Cashmere" is an old spelling of the Kashmir region in northern India and Pakistan. The fabric comes from the fine (dehaired) undercoat fibers from the goat wool obtained from the neck region. It has been manufactured in Mongolia, Nepal, and Kashmir for thousands of years, with written references in texts from the 3rd century BCE. Ultra-fine pašmina (from Persian for "made from wool" but literally "Soft Gold" in Kashmiri) is still produced by communities in Indian Kashmir, but it is scarce and high-priced, so China has become the largest producer of raw cashmere, followed by Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, and other places in Central Asia.
ReplyDeleteSargent painted his niece in seven different poses, wearing an exotic cashmere shawl, creating an effect of unending continuation, though the tone is not as dire as Peycho's poem. The poem is more thematically similar to Robert Plant's lyrics to the Led Zeppelin song "Kashmir," written in 1973 when he was in what he called "the waste lands" of Southern Morocco, while driving from Goulimine to Tantan in the Sahara Desert. "The whole inspiration came from the fact that the road went on and on and on. It was a single-track road which neatly cut through the desert. Two miles to the East and West were ridges of sandrock. It basically looked like you were driving down a channel, this dilapidated road, and there was seemingly no end to it."
Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed
Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear
Oh, oh.
Oh, I been flying... mama, there ain't no denyin'
I've been flying, ain't no denyin', no denyin'
All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where I've been.
Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My Shangri-La beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high in June, when movin' through Kashmir.
Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear
Ohh.
When I'm on, when I'm on my way, yeah
When I see, when I see the way, you stay-yeah
Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, when I'm down...
Ooh, yeah-yeah, ooh, yeah-yeah, well I'm down, so down
Ooh, my baby, oooh, my baby, let me take you there
Let me take you there. Let me take you there
3rd Century cashmere to John Singer Sargent to Led Zeppelin. Wow. Now that's cool. And I love the JSS painting. So beautiful. You can feel the weight of the fabric and the pensive mood of the young girls. Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteKevinpat, I thought you might appreciate this!
Delete