Leading from the Middle

Caption: Latvian harvest landscape.

“I grew up,
To song I lived through my
life,
With songs I shall be lain
In a mound of white sand.”

The lyrics speak to me about the fate of any small country and its unique traditions towered over by Leviathan neighbors, eager to absorb and obliterate – it’s the Brobdingnagian's manifest destiny, of course! - a native culture.

“A wolf drove me to Riga
For father’s tobacco.
Pull, wolf, though it makes
you weep,
Why did you eat my horse?”

Related comically to my first comment: The burden and shame of the "conqueror".

“Smoke is rising, bread is
being baked
In this little farmstead,
I like warm bread,
I like the baker herself.”

What is charm? See above! There’s much to be said for brevity – music and poetry aplenty in these bucolic words.

*From: Latvju Dainas: Latvian Folksongs “favorites” in English, Russian, German & Latvian. Compiled by Krišjānis Barons (1835-1923) Riga, Latvia, Writers Union of Soviet Latvia. 1984.

 

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