the legend of time kevin heredia
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past
The island you left, Camaron, jumped out into the water.
Tarara yes, Tarara no, we saw you fly.
No-one can grow seed in the land of dreams.
We have swallowed whole the hook of your legend.
Words deteriorate, music deteriorates
only through the passing of time; but only that which lives can die.
Only through form, through the model
Can words, music possibly
reach permanence, like Chinese boats
perpetually in movement, permanently.
This is a lone side street, and the other
Is the same, no movement,
It has abstained from movement, just as the world only moves
In appearance, time passed and future time
From metallic streets.
Right away, here, now, always --
Wasted sad time is ridiculous,
That reaches from the past to the future.
It’s been 29 years since the release of Camaron’s "La leyenda del tiempo (The legend of time) and to celebrate this, the gipsy writer Kevin Heredia decided to do something with the texts by Lorca used on that record. He remembered Gabriel Aresti and specifically a translation Aresti did of one of TS Eliot’s poems. The poem was called "Burnt Norton", and because Aresti was more than peeved with Euskaltzaindia at the time (because of their unwillingness to agree on a unified written form of the Basque language) he used classic Basque for that modern translation: "Dembora presentea eta dembora passatua / acaso daude biac contenituric dembora futuroan". So, Kevin’s text is basically a salad. The ingredients: Camaron, Lorca, Eliot, Aresti and aligned and dressed with a dash of inventiveness.
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past
The island you left, Camaron, jumped out into the water.
Tarara yes, Tarara no, we saw you fly.
No-one can grow seed in the land of dreams.
We have swallowed whole the hook of your legend.
Words deteriorate, music deteriorates
only through the passing of time; but only that which lives can die.
Only through form, through the model
Can words, music possibly
reach permanence, like Chinese boats
perpetually in movement, permanently.
This is a lone side street, and the other
Is the same, no movement,
It has abstained from movement, just as the world only moves
In appearance, time passed and future time
From metallic streets.
Right away, here, now, always --
Wasted sad time is ridiculous,
That reaches from the past to the future.
It’s been 29 years since the release of Camaron’s "La leyenda del tiempo (The legend of time) and to celebrate this, the gipsy writer Kevin Heredia decided to do something with the texts by Lorca used on that record. He remembered Gabriel Aresti and specifically a translation Aresti did of one of TS Eliot’s poems. The poem was called "Burnt Norton", and because Aresti was more than peeved with Euskaltzaindia at the time (because of their unwillingness to agree on a unified written form of the Basque language) he used classic Basque for that modern translation: "Dembora presentea eta dembora passatua / acaso daude biac contenituric dembora futuroan". So, Kevin’s text is basically a salad. The ingredients: Camaron, Lorca, Eliot, Aresti and aligned and dressed with a dash of inventiveness.
- Lorca-Camaron http://club.idecnet.com/~jtomasdo/fglorca.htm
- T.S. Eliot http://www.artofeurope.com/eliot/eli5.htm
- Gabriel Aresti http://www.armiarma.com/cgi-bin/urkiza/EBMODBER.pl?Bertso=44484
