"Remembering Julian Beck"

Hanon Reznikov

We are thinking of Julian today, on the twentieth anniversary of his departure from our midst. We remember in living color his voice, his vision, his poetry and the theater he enlarged with them. Tom, Ilion , Malina and myself drove out to Cedar Park Cemetery this morning and gathered at his grave. Judith read Shelley's "The West Wind," which they used to read aloud together and I read the poem below, by Dacia Maraini.

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"Now Julian, You Walk Barefoot"

Dacia Maraini

To Julian Beck

Now Julian, you walk barefoot

Now Julian, you eat frozen roses

Now Julian, all the cats have fled

your lap, not even a flea

would take you for its father

In a hall in Cinecittà

you ate pasta and beans

on a plastic plate

Julian, your fingers dirty with green lacquer,

you spoke of liberty,

your mouth full, your eyes laughing

so white

and so full of air

Julian, what was the theatre

under your thin feet

divided in hot and bitter zones

between gushes of an imaginary reality

the geometry of your intelligence

your colorless ascetic's tongue

made you seem a ferocious monk

but you liked touching walls,

bodies, machines, the earth.

Julian, with your face of a predatory bird,

you smoked like an old Turk,

sliding in your black trousers

along the paths of thought

and Judith with her hair swelled

like a wild owl's wing

gold prospectors you and she bent

under the stage's boards

digging for treasure, so she was born

like a mouse between flying stagelights

and you behind

with an acrobat's grace

in winter's glittering evenings between glass panels

and Dutch linens, between taffeta flowers

and paper crowns, Julian when you will look at us

we will already be faraway

and you, great archer in your world

of ringing silences will look at us

through your reversed binoculars

and we will salute each other as from distant ships

raising our arms and a white rag

There is a wonderful tribute to Julian put together by Gary Brackett here
and another by our Italian comrades at here.