Always
a story there if you stop and look:
hers begins
in mountains and meadows
and
will not end until, on some distant planet
or in
the emptiness between stars,
the
fragile messengers we've sent
meet whatever
their fate might be.
We will
not, cannot know –
but might
take some hope in thinking
that these
traces of ours will be found
and
that the song of a хайдук rebel,
music
drawn from the grass and earth,
will be
heard beneath unfamiliar constellations
will
sound beneath an otherworldly sky.
Valia Balkanska’s recording of the Bulgarian folk song ‘Излел
е Делю хайдутин’ features on the Golden Record, a selection of the
sounds and music of the Earth sent into space on board the two Voyager probes. The song's on YouTube here.
Image: Marina Shiderova; text: Tom Phillips
