the beauty we love

complete unknowing

2012-02-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday, Jane

Awareness and self-consciousness are delicate matters. Trying to examine more deeply what poems are and how they work has informed my life and brought me great joy. I don't think that attentiveness ever diminishes experience. There are times, however, when you don't want to be self-conscious. One is while writing the first draft of a new poem. At that stage too much consciousness is limiting and therefore damaging. It can wall off the permeable, the mysterious, everything you don't already know. When I write, I don't know what is going to emerge. I begin in a condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. A word appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery. Everything I am and know and have lived goes into a poem. I hope I'll never be governed by theoretical knowledge when I set out to write. Poems are born in part from the history and culture of other poems, but in writing I hope to learn a new thing, something fresh about what's going on in that moment, in my own life and in the world. Craft consciousness is essential to the finished poem, but comes later.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from a 1997 Atlantic Monthly interview

straw dogs

2012-02-24T07:27:00.001-07:00

Heaven and Earth are impartial;

they treat all of creation as straw dogs.

The Master doesn't take sides;

she treats everyone like a straw dog.

The space between Heaven and Earth is like a bellows;

it is empty, yet has not lost its power.

The more it is used, the more it produces;

the more you talk of it, the less you comprehend.

It is better not to speak of things you do not understand.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

art by van gogh

in the flow

2012-02-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

The man of earth abides in the flow.

The ground moves beneath him, and he knows

it moves. His house is his vessel, afloat

only for a while. He moves, willing,

through a thousand phases of the sun,

changing as the day changes, and the year.

His mind is like the dirt, lightened

by bloom, weighted by rain.

The fragment of the earth

that is now me is only on its way

through me. It is on its way

from having been a tree,

a school of fish, a terrapin,

a flock of birds. It will pass

through all those forms again.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

how surely gravity's law (II, 16)

2012-02-23T21:28:00.000-07:00

How surely gravity's law,

strong as an ocean current,

takes hold of even the strongest thing

and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing -

each stone, blossom, child -

is held in place.

Only we, in our arrogance,

push out beyond what we belong to

for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered

to earth's intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves

in knots of our own making

and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again

to learn from the things,

because they are in God's heart;

they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:

to fall,

patiently to trust our heaviness.

Even a bird has to do that

before he can fly.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

death and deepening

2012-02-23T15:19:00.000-07:00

When the body is in the grave, dead and buried, or when there is a death of ego and its perspectives during one's lifetime, then a deeper spirit or soul can come to be. A deepening of historical being occurs by way of an under-the-worldly point of view. The descent into the underworld of souls (psychai, animae) is a descent into a soul-perspective or depth-perspective concerning history. One might say that the descent into hell is actually the ascent of soul. It brings a sense of soul into ascendancy in life, and it gives the human ego a perspective from a soulful point of view. The descent is itself a resurrection.

In-fero means "to carry inward," "to gather in." Therefore... the descensus may be read as referring, not to some actual physical place, but rather to a "journey to the interior." The descensus is ad inferos. It is a "carrying inward." Hell is a descensus, and encountering it is a "deepening."

Tradition imagines the descent into hell as a descent into "darkness," or into a "hole," or into a "pit," or into "invisibility" (Hades' name means "invisible"), then no matter how a person may feel about such experiences of being in the "dark," in a "hole," in the "pits," or "invisible" to others, that person is encouraged to search such deep moments for their disclosures and expressions of profound "soul."

~ David Leroy Miller

from Hells and Holy Ghosts:

A Theopoetics of Christian Belief

words do not come

2012-02-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

words do not come

there is no need for profound utterances or

deep truths

here is an ordinary evening

why spoil it with dramatic overstatement

the silence amidst the noise

the gem at the core

of every experience

is polished by simple attention

into shining magnificence

~ Nirmala

from Gifts with no Giver: A Love affair with Truth

the tower of spirit

2012-02-23T08:24:00.000-07:00

The spirit has an impregnable tower

Which no danger can disturb

As long as the tower is guarded

By the invisible Protector

Who acts unconsciously, and whose actions

Go astray when they become deliberate,

Reflexive, and intentional.

The unconsciousness

And entire sincerity of Tao

Are disturbed by any effort

At self-conscious demonstration.

All such demonstrations

Are lies.

When one displays himself

In this ambiguous way

The world outside storms in

And imprisons him.

He is no longer protected

By the sincerity of Tao.

Each now act

Is a new failure.

If his acts are done in public,

In broad daylight,

He will be punished by men.

If they are done in private

And in secret,

They will be punished

By spirits.

Let each one understand

The meaning of sincerity

And guard against display!

He will be at peace

With men and spirits

And will act rightly, unseen,

In his own solitude,

In the tower of his spirit.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

sketch by Thomas Merton

the frontiers of language

2012-02-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

Where can I find a man who has forgotten words?

He is the one I would like to talk to.

~ Chuang Tzu

But before we come to that which is unspeakable and unthinkable,

the spirit hovers on the frontiers of language,

wondering whether or not to stay on its own side of the border,

in order to have something to bring back to other men.

This is the test of those who wish to cross the frontier.

If they are not ready to leave their own ideas and their own words behind them,

they cannot travel further.

~ Thomas Merton

from No Man is an Island

The unconsciousness

And entire sincerity of Tao

Are disturbed by any effort

At self-conscious demonstration.

~ Chuang Tzu

In The Way of Chuang Tzu, Merton is communicating his own joy from his spirit’s tower. He has found a new friend who has taught him the irony of words as well as the value of irony. Like the best of Merton’s words, The Way of Chuang Tzu points to an experience of contemplation, while it reverently and wisely backs away from providing or insisting upon such an experience. Just as Merton kicks away Chuang Tzu like a ladder after experiencing the unknowing Chuang Tzu describes, Merton invites us to climb his own words and to forget them as well.

~ commentary from slow reads

my own being is often hidden

2012-02-22T07:49:00.000-07:00

The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am.

My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do.

And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men.

We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness.

If I do not know who I am, it is because

I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be.

Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become

what everybody else seems to want to become.

Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire,

I would really begin to live after all.

I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think

and of acting in a way that betrays God’s truth and the integrity of my own soul.

~ Thomas Merton

from No Man is an Island

gods

2012-02-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

Gods are everywhere:

war between Koshi and Izumo

tribes still rages.

The all of All, the One

ends distinctions.

The three thousand worlds

are in that plum blossom.

The smell is God.

~ Shinkichi Takahashi

translation by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto

from Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter
art by Zheng Faxiang

destruction

2012-02-22T07:30:00.000-07:00

The universe is forever falling apart --

No need to push the button,

It collapses at a finger's touch:

Why, it barely hangs on the tail of a sparrow's eye.

The universe is so much eye secretion,

Hordes leap from the tips

Of your nostril hairs. Lift your right hand:

It's in your palm. There's room enough

On the sparrow's eyelash for the whole.

A paltry thing, the universe:

Here is all the strength, here the greatest strength.

You and the sparrow are one

And, should he wish, he can crush you.

The universe trembles before him.

~ Shinkichi Takahashi

translation by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto

with thanks to poetry chaikhana

Anouar Brahem

2012-02-22T07:13:00.003-07:00

أنــور ابـراهــيــم Anouar Brahem (oud) • Klaus Gesing (bass clarinet) • Björn Meyer (bass) • Khaled Yassine (darbouka, bendir)

with thanks to Chemin faisant

observe

2012-02-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

Your mind is an instrument, a tool.

It is there to be used for a specific task,

and when the task is completed, you lay it down.

As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent

of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless,

but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature,

much of it is also harmful.

Observe your mind and you will find this to be true.

It causes a serious leakage of vital energy.

~ Eckhart Tolle

art by van gogh

2012-02-21T07:08:00.000-07:00

When people see things as beautiful,

ugliness is created.

When people see things as good,

evil is created.

Being and non-being produce each other.

Difficult and easy complement each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low oppose each other.

Fore and aft follow each other.

Therefore the Master

can act without doing anything

and teach without saying a word.

Things come her way and she does not stop them;

things leave and she lets them go.

She has without possessing,

and acts without any expectations.

When her work is done, she take no credit.

That is why it will last forever.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

spanish guitar

2012-02-20T14:04:00.000-07:00

Vlatko Stefanovski & Miroslav Tadic - Jovano Jovanke

Live in Zagreb 2007

the greek ships

2012-02-19T10:17:00.003-07:00

When the water holes go, and the fish flop about

In the mud, they can moisten each other faintly,

But it's best if they lose themselves in the river.

You know how many Greek ships went down

With their cargoes of wine. If we can't get

To port, perhaps it's best to head for the bottom.

I've heard that the mourning dove never says

What she means. Those of us who make up poems

Have agreed not to say what the pain is.

Eliot wrote his poems for years standing under

A bare light-bulb. He knew he was a murderer,

And he accepted his punishment at birth.

The sitar player is searching: now in the back yard,

Now in the old dishes left behind on the table,

Now for the suffering on the underside of a leaf.

Go ahead, throw your good name into the water.

All those who have ruined their lives for love

Are calling to us from a hundred sunken ships.

~ Robert Bly

from My Sentence was a Thousand Years of Joy

the need to win

2012-02-18T14:43:00.001-07:00

When the archer is shooting for nothing

He has all his skill.

If he shoots for a brass buckle

He is already nervous.

If he shoots for a prize of gold

He goes blind

Or see two targets -

He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize

Divides him. He cares.

He thinks more of winning

Than of shooting -

And the need to win

Drains him of power.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

sculpture by Antoine Bourdelle

a voice of love

2012-02-18T14:22:00.000-07:00

Every second a voice of love

comes from every side.

Who needs to go sightseeing?

We came from a majesty,

and we go back there.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from Rumi - Bridge to the Soul

the dean of western writers

2012-02-18T09:27:00.002-07:00

Wallace Stegner was born on February 18, 1909 in Lake Mills, Iowa.

He was an American historian,novelist, short story writer, and environmentalist,

often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972.

"In fiction I think we should have no agenda but to tell the truth."

"'You don't go there to find something,' he once said about wilderness, 'you go there to disappear.'"

Wallace Stegner wrote about the need to preserve the West, and he also fought for it. He became involved with the conservation movement in the 1950's while fighting the construction of dam on the Green River at Dinosaur National Monument. In 1960 he wrote his famous Wilderness Letter on the importance of federal protection of wild places. This letter was used to introduce the bill that established the National Wilderness Preservation System in 1964.

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved--as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds--because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there--important, that is, simply as an idea."

In 1964 Stegner started the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University, where he served on the faculty until 1971. He also taught at University of Utah, University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University. His students include: Wendell Berry, Larry McMurtry, Thomas McGuane, Ernest Gaines, John Daniel, Raymond Carver, Edward Abbey, and Poet Laureate of the United States, Robert Haas.

He wrote in The Sound of Mountain Water, "We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be…a part of the geography of hope,"

Mr. Stegner died at 84, on April 13, 1993 following an auto accident in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He left a legacy as writer, professor, and environmentalist that once moved Edward Abbey to pronounce him "the only living American writer worthy of the Nobel." Indeed, Stegner was one of the American West's preeminent historians and arguably the most important of its novelists.

commentary by

James Hepworth and

wilderness.net

koku

2012-02-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

虚空(高画質版) koku (High Quality)
眞玉和司 matama kazushi, 尺八 shakuhachi
2008/02/11 四季の音50回 shikino-ne 50

snowed in again

2012-02-16T10:57:00.000-07:00

Snow has been falling for three days. The horses stay in the barn. At four I leave the house, sinking to my waist in snow, and push open the door of my writing shack. Snow falls in. At the desk there is a plant in blossom.

The plant faces the window where snow sweeps past at forty miles an hour. So the snow and the flowers are a little like each other. In both there is the same receiving, the longing to circle slowly upward or sink down toward roots. Perhaps the snow and the orangey blossoms are both the same flow, that starts out close to the soil, close to the floor, and needs no commandments, no civilizations, no drawing room lifted on the labor of the claw hammer, but is at home where one or two are present.

The two people sit quietly near each other. In the storm, millions of years come close behind us. Nothing is lost, nothing is rejected. The body is ready to sing all night, and be entered by whatever wishes to enter the human body singing.

~ Robert Bly

from Reaching out to the World

New and Selected Prose Poems

art by Daoji, c.1695, Qing dynasty

the woodcarver

2012-02-16T08:54:00.001-07:00

Kling, the master carver, made a bell stand

Of precious wood. When it was finished,

All who saw it were astounded. They said it must be

The work of spirits.

The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:

"What is your secret?"

Kling replied: " I am only a workman:

I have no secret. There is only this:

When I began to think about the work you commanded

I guarded my spirit, did not expend it

On trifles, that were not to the point.

I fasted in order to set

My heart at rest.

After three days fasting,

I had forgotten gain and success.

After five days

I had forgotten praise or criticism.

After seven days

I had forgotten my body

With all its limbs."

"By this time all thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

All that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell stand."

"Then I went to the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

All I had to do was to put forth my hand

And begin."

"If I had not met this particular tree

There would have been

No bell stand at all."

"What happened?

My own collected thought

Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;

From this live encounter came the work

Which you ascribe to the spirits."

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

brother

2012-02-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

I looked into my brother’s eye

and saw a tree there waving.

I passed beyond a garden gate

and heard a mountain calling.

I walked a long a stony path

and tasted waves a–spraying.

I looked into my brother’s eye

and felt a fire – burning.

Deep beyond the black, black sky,

I looked into my brother’s eyes

and saw myself there waving.

~ John Lavan

more at Real Poems

Elizabeth Peratrovich Day

2012-02-16T05:00:00.012-07:00

Civil Rights Leader

Elizabeth Peratrovich

1911-1958

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered as the great civil rights movement leader during the 1960s. Elizabeth Jean Wanamaker Peratrovich is remembered as Alaska's great equal rights campaign leader for Alaska Natives in the 1940s. Elizabeth's moving and dramatic presentation before the Alaska Territorial Legislature on February 8, 1945, was responsible for changing the views of biased senators on the "Equal Rights" bill. The bill passed and immediately became law, thus beginning a new era in Alaska's racial relations.

Forty-seven years ago, Elizabeth Peratrovich championed the cause of civil rights in Alaska and silenced the voices of prejudice and discrimination.

It was February, 1945. The Territorial Senate met as a Committee of the Whole to discuss the equal rights issue and a bill prohibiting racial discrimination in Alaska.

The bill was assailed as a "lawyer's dream" which would create hard feelings between Natives and whites. Many senators stood in turn to speak against equal rights. Their arguments are, by now, familiar ones in this country.

-- They said the bill would aggravate the already hard feelings between Natives and whites.

-- They said the bill was unnecessary -- that Natives had made great progress in the 10 centuries since contact with white civilization.

-- They said the real answer was in the separation of the races.

Those are the ideas we have come to recognize in the last 20 years as the public face of private injustice. The opponents of racial equality have always refused to recognize the problem. Refused to recognize the injury done. Refused to recognize the jobs lost, the poverty incurred, the blows to self-esteem sustained every day by those who have done nothing to merit such injury.

Those voices of prejudice were reduced to a whisper, 47 years ago, by a woman who spoke from the heart.

According to the legislative custom of the time, an opportunity was offered to anyone present who wished to speak on the bill. Elizabeth Peratrovich was the final speaker on that day in 1945. After the long speeches and logical arguments were over, Elizabeth rose to tell the truth about prejudice.

"I would not have expected," she said "that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with five thousand years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights."

She talked about herself, her friends, her children, and the cruel treatment that consigned Alaska Natives to a second class existence.

She described to the Senate what it means to be unable to buy a house in a decent neighborhood because Natives aren't allowed to live there.

She described how children feel when they are refused entrance into movie theaters, or see signs in shop windows that read "No dogs or Natives allowed."

She closed her testimony with a biting condemnation of the "Super race" attitude responsible for such cruelty. Following her speech, there was a wild burst of applause from the Gallery, and the Senate proceeded to pass the Alaska Civil Rights Act by a vote of 11–5.

On that day in 1945, Elizabeth Peratrovich represented her people as the Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. She was a champion of Alaska Natives and of all people who suffered from discrimination.

In the years since Alaska statehood, we have had too few women and minorities elected to office. But their presence has been felt, just as Elizabeth Peratrovich's presence was felt that day in 1945. In naming Gallery B for Elizabeth, we honor her today for her vision, her wisdom, and her courage in speaking out for what she believed to be right. She symbolizes the role the gallery plays in the legislature and the importance of public opinion in the legislative process. She reminds us that a single person, speaking from the heart, can affect the future of all.

with thanks to university of alaska anchorage

floating

2012-02-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

The one close to me now,

even my own body -

these too

will soon become clouds,

floating in different directions.

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

translations by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

sowing

2012-02-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

In the stilled place that once was a road going down

from the town to the river, and where the lives of marriages grew

a house, cistern and barn, flowers, the tilted stone of borders,

and the deeds of their lives ran to neglect, and honeysuckle

and then the fire overgrew it all, I walk heavy

with seed, spreading on the cleared hill the beginnings

of green, clover and grass to be pasture, Between

history's death upon the place and the trees that would have come

I claim, and act, and am mingled in the fate of the world.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

woodcut by Harlan Hubbard

the inner law

2012-02-14T11:14:00.002-07:00

He whose law is within himself

Walks in hiddenness.

His acts are not influenced

By approval or disapproval.

He whose law is outside himself

Directs his will to what is

Beyond his control

And seeks

To extend his power

Over objects.

He who walks in hiddenness

Has light to guide him

In all his acts.

He who seeks to extend his control

Is nothing but an operator.

While he thinks he is

Surpassing others,

Others see him merely

Straining, stretching,

To stand on tiptoe.

When he tries to extend his power

Over objects,

Those objects gain control

Of him.

He who is controlled by objects

Loses possession of his inner self:

If he no longer values himself,

How can he value others?

If he no longer values others,

He is abandoned.

He has nothing left!

There is no deadlier weapon than the will!

The sharpest sword

Is not equal to it!

There is no robber so dangerous

As Nature (Yang and Yin).

Yet it is not nature

That does the damage:

It is man's own will!

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

perhaps

2012-02-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

Placido Domingo and John Denver

for the Lobaria, Usnea, Witches Hair, Map Lichen, Beard Lichen, Ground Lichen, Shield Lichen

2012-02-14T08:06:00.001-07:00

Back then, what did I know?

The names of subway lines, buses.

How long it took to walk twenty blocks.

Uptown and downtown.

Not north, not south, not you.

When I saw you, later, seaweed reefed in the air,

you were gray-green, incomprehensible, old.

What you clung to, hung from: old.

Trees looking half-dead, stones.

Marriage of fungi and algae,

chemists of air,

changers of nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.

Like those nameless ones

who kept painting, shaping, engraving

unseen, unread, unremembered.

Not caring if they were no good, if they were past it.

Rock wools, water fans, earth scale, mouse ears, dust,

ash-of-the-woods.

Transformers unvalued, uncounted.

Cell by cell, word by word, making a world they could live in

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

as the rain

2012-02-14T07:50:00.000-07:00

As the rain on the mountain peak runs off

The slopes on all sides, so those who see

Only the seeming multiplicity in life

Run after things on every side.

As pure water poured into pure water

Becomes the very same, so does the Self

Of the illumined man or woman, Nachiketa,

Verily become one with the Godhead.

...

The adorable one who is seated

In the heart rules the breath of life.

Unto him all the senses pay their homage.

When the dweller in the body breaks out

In freedom from the bonds of flesh,

What remains? For this Self is supreme!

We live not by the breath that flows in

And flows out, but by him who causes the breath

To flow in and flow out.

~ The Katha Upanishad

(Death as Teacher)

translated by Eknath Easwaran

inside the fog that encloses trees

2012-02-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

Inside the fog that encloses trees, they undergo the robbing of their leaves... Thrown into confusion by a slow oxidation, and humiliated by the sap's withdrawal for the sake of the flowers and fruits, the leaves, following the hot spells of August, cling less anyway.

The up-and-down tunnels inside the bark deepen, and guide the moisture down to earth so as to break off with the animated parts of the tree.

The flowers are scattered, the fruits taken away. This giving up of their more animated parts, and even of parts of their body, has become, since their earliest days, a familiar practice for trees.

~ Francis Ponge.

translation by Robert Bly
from New of the Universe
- poems of the twofold world

why we don't die

2012-02-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

In late September many voices

Tell you you will die.

That leaf says it. That coolness.

All of them are right.

Our many souls - what

Can they do about it?

Nothing. They're already

Part of the invisible.

Our souls have been

Longing to go home

Anyway. "It's late," they say.

"Lock the door, let's go."

The body doesn't agree. It says,

"We buried a little iron

Ball under that tree.

Let's go get it."

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

A land not mine

2012-02-13T15:57:00.000-07:00

A land not mine, still

forever memorable,

the waters of its ocean

chill and fresh.

Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,

and the air drunk, like wine,

late sun lays bare

the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.

Sunset in the ethereal waves:

I cannot tell if the day

is ending, or the world, or if

the secret of secrets is inside me again.

~ Anna Akhmatova,
(1889-1966),

born in Odessa, grew up in Tsarkoye Selo,
the imperial retreat outside St. Petersburg.
Unhappily married to Nikolai Gumilev, the well known poet.

scattering

2012-02-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

A string of jewels

from a broken necklace,

scattering -

more difficult to keep hold of

even than these in one's life.

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

standing up

2012-02-12T08:29:00.001-07:00

In a split second of hard thought, I managed to catch her. I stopped, holding the hen in my hands. Strange, she didn't really feel living: rigid, dry, and old white plume-ridden lady's hat that shrieked out the truths of 1912. Thunder in the air. An odor rose from the fence-boards, as when you open a photo album that has got so old that no one can identify the people any longer.

I carried her back inside the chicken netting and let her go. All of a sudden she came back to life, she knew who she was, and ran off according to the rules. Hen-yards are thick with taboos. But the earth all around is full of affection and tenacity. A low stone wall half-overgrown with leaves. When dusk begins to fall the stones are faintly luminous with the hundred-year-old warmth from the hands that built it.

It's been a hard winter, but summer is here and the fields want us to walk upright. Every man unimpeded, but careful, as when you stand up in a small boat. I remember a day in Africa: on the banks of the Chari, there were many boats, an atmosphere positively friendly, the men almost blue-black in color with three parallel scars on each cheek (meaning the Sara tribe). I am welcomed on a boat - it's a canoe hollowed from a dark tree. The canoe is incredibly wobbly, even when you sit on your heels. A balancing act. If you have the heart on the left side you have to lean a bit to the right, nothing in the pockets, no big arm movements, please, all rhetoric has to be left behind. Precisely: rhetoric is impossible here. The canoe glides out over the water.

~ Tomas Transtromer

from The Half-Finished Heaven

translation by Robert Bly

photo by christopher martin

sleep

2012-02-11T13:45:00.001-07:00

I love to lie down weary

under the stalk of sleep

growing slowly out of my head,

the dark leaves meshing.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

art Rembrandt

the five enemies

2012-02-11T13:30:00.001-07:00

With the wood from a hundred-year-old tree

They make sacrificial vessels,

Covered with green and yellow designs.

The wood that was cut away

Lies unused in the ditch.

If we compare the sacrificial vessels with the wood in the ditch

We find them to differ in appearance:

One is more beautiful than the other

Yet they are equal in this: both have lost their original nature.

So if you compare the robber and the respectable citizen

You find that one is, indeed, more respectable than the other:

Yet they agree in this: they have both lost

The original simplicity of man.

How did they lose it? Here are the five ways:

Love of colors bewilders the eye

And it fails to see right.

Love of harmonies bewitches the ear

And it loses its true hearing.

Love of perfumes

Fills the head with dizziness.

Love of flavors

Ruins the taste.

Desires unsettle the heart

Until the original nature runs amok.

These five are enemies of true life.

Yet these are what "men of discernment" claim to live for.

They are not what I live for:

If this is life, then pigeons in a cage

Have found happiness!

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

the waking

2012-02-11T09:21:00.000-07:00

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

~ Theodore Roethke

~ Kurt Elling

overly bold

2012-02-10T07:02:00.001-07:00

When people become overly bold,

then disaster will soon arrive.

Do not meddle with people's livelihoods;

if you respect them, they will in turn respect you.

Therefore, the Master knows herself but is

not arrogant.

She loves herself but also loves others.

This is how she is able to make appropriate choices.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

sweater

2012-02-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

What is asked of one is not what is asked of another.

A sweater takes on the shape of its wearer,

a coffee cup sits to the left or the right of the workspace,

making its pale Saturn rings of now and before.

Lucky the one who rises to sit at a table,

day after day spilling coffee sweet with sugar, whitened with milk.

Lucky the one who writes in a book of spiral-bound mornings

a future in ink, who writes hand unshaking, warmed by thick wool.

Lucky still, the one who writes later, shaking. Acrobatic at last, the

sweater,

elastic as breath that enters what shape it is asked to.

Patient the table; unjudging, the ample, refillable cup.

Irrefusable, the shape the sweater is given,

stretched in the shoulders, sleeves lengthened by unmetaphysical

pullings on.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

a standing ground

2012-02-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

Flee fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse;

Suffyce unto thy thyng, though hit be smal...

~ Geoffrey Chaucer

from Good Counsel of Chaucer

However just and anxious I have been,

I will stop and step back

from the crowd of those who may agree

with what I say, and be apart.

There is no earthly promise of life or peace

but where the roots branch and weave

their patient silent passages in the dark;

uprooted, I have been furious without an aim.

I am not bound for any public place,

but for ground of my own

where I have planted vines and orchard trees,

and in the heat of the day climbed up

into the healing shadow of the woods.

Better than any argument is to rise at dawn

and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

a one-man revolution

2012-02-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

I bid you to a one-man revolution -

The only revolution that is coming.

...

We're too unseparate. And going home

From company means coming to our senses.

~ Robert Frost

from Building Soil

art by Frida Kahlo

should I

2012-02-09T08:37:00.001-07:00

Should I leave this burning house

of ceaseless thought

and taste the pure rain's

single truth

falling upon my skin?

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

translations by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

art by kristine wyler

the empty boat

2012-02-08T14:30:00.003-07:00

He who rules men lives in confusion;

He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow.

Yao therefore desired

Neither to influence others

Nor be influenced by them.

The way to get clear of confusion

And free of sorrow

Is to live with Tao

In the land of the great Void.

If a man is crossing a river

And an empty boat collides with his own skiff,

Even though he be a bad-tempered man

He will not become very angry.

But if he sees a man in the boat,

He will shout at him to steer clear.

If the shout is not heard, he will shout again,

And yet again, and begin cursing.

And all because there is somebody in the boat.

Yet if the boat were empty,

He would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat

Crossing the river of the world,

No one will oppose you,

No one will seek to harm you.

The straight tree is the first to be cut down,

The spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry.

If you wish to improve your wisdom

And shame the ignorant,

To cultivate your character

And outshine others;

A light will shine around you

As if you had swallowed the sun and the moon:

You will not avoid calamity.

A wise man has said:

"He who is content with himself

Has done a worthless work.

Achievement is the beginning of failure.

Fame is the beginning of disgrace."

Who can free himself from achievement

And from fame, descend and be lost

Amid the masses of men?

He will flow like Tao, unseen,

He will go about like Life itself

With no name and no home.

Simple is he, without distinction.

To all appearances he is a fool.

His steps leave no trace. He has no power.

He achieves nothing, has no reputation.

Since he judges no one

No one judges him.

Such is the perfect man:

His boat is empty.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

art by Nancy Poucher

quiet and secret

2012-02-08T07:53:00.000-07:00

Keep quiet and secret with your soul-work.

Don’t worry so much about your body.

God sewed that robe. Leave it as it is.

Be more deeply courageous.

Change your soul.

~ Attar of Nishapur (1145-1221)

translated by Coleman Barks

photo by eliot porter

Attar's Tomb - photo by Nik Pendaar

what things want

2012-02-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

You have to let things

Occupy their own space.

This room is small,

But the green settee

Likes to be here.

The big marsh reeds,

Crowding out the slough,

Find the world good.

You have to let things

Be as they are.

Who knows which of us

Deserves the world more?

~ Robert Bly
photo by Shreve Stockton

not the flower

2012-02-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

As I dig for wild orchids

in the autumn fields,

it is the deeply-bedded root

that I desire,

not the flower.

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

man born in tao

2012-02-07T08:13:00.002-07:00

Fishes are born in water

Man is born in Tao.

If fishes, born in water,

Seek the deep shadow

Of pond and pool,

All their needs

Are satisfied.

If man, born in Tao,

Sinks into the deep shadow

Of non-action

To forget aggression and concern,

He lacks nothing

His life is secure.

Moral: "All the fish needs

Is to get lost in water.

All man needs is to get lost

In Tao."

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

art by Bada Shanren
who lived during the beginning of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911)

the sorrel filly

2012-02-07T07:39:00.000-07:00

The songs of small birds fade away

into the bushes after sundown,

the air dry, sweet with goldenrod.

Beside the path, suddenly, bright asters

flare in the dusk. The aged voices

of a few crickets thread the silence.

It is a quiet I love, though my life

too often drives me through it deaf,

Busy with cost and losses, I waste

the time I have to be here - a time

blessed beyond my deserts, as I know,

if only I would keep aware. The leaves

rest in the air, perfectly still,

I would like them to rest in my mind

as still, as simply spaced. As I approach,

the sorrel filly looks up from her grazing,

poised there, light on the slope

as a young apple tree. A week ago

I took her away to sell, and failed

to get my price, and brought her home

again. Now in the quiet I stand

and look at her a long time, glad

to have recovered what is lost

in the exchange of something for money.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

photo from hopes creek ranch

some like poetry

2012-02-07T07:23:00.000-07:00

Some--

that means not all.

Not even the majority of all but the minority.

Not counting the schools, where one must,

and the poets themselves, there will be perhaps two in a thousand.

Like--

but one also likes chicken noodle soup,

one likes compliments and the color blue, one likes an old scarf,

one likes to prove one's point,

one likes to pet a dog.

Poetry--

but what sort of thing is poetry?

song in the year of catastrophe

2012-02-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

I began to be followed by a voice saying:

"It can't last. It can't last.

Harden yourself. Harden yourself.

Be ready. Be ready."

"Go look under the leaves,"

it said, "for what is living there

is dead in your tongue."

And it said, "Put your hands

into the earth. Live close

to the ground. Learn the darkness.

Gather round you all

the things that you love, name

their names, prepare

to lose them, It will be

as if all you know were turned

around within your body."

And I went and put my hands

into the ground, and they took root

and grew into a season's harvest.

I looked behind the veil

of the leaves, and heard voices

that I knew had been dead

in my tongue years before my birth.

I learned the dark.

And still the voice stayed with me.

Waking in the early mornings,

I could hear it, like a bird

bemused among the leaves,

a mockingbird idly singing

in the autumn of catastrophe:

"Be ready. Be ready.

Harden yourself. Harden yourself."

And I heard the sound

of a great engine pounding

in the air, and a voice asking:

"Change or slavery?

Hardship or slavery?"

and the voices answering:

"Slavery! Slavery!"

And I was afraid, loving

what I know would be lost.

Then the voice following me said:

"you have not yet come close enough.

Come nearer the ground. Learn

from the woodcock in the woods

whose feathering is a ritual

of the fallen leaves,

and from the nesting quail

whose speckling makes her hard to see

in the long grass.

Study the coat of the mole.

For the farmer shall wear

the greenery and the furrows

of his fields, and bear

the long standing of the woods."

And I asked: "you mean a death, then?"

"yes," the voice said. "Die

into what the earth requires of you."

Then let go all holds, and sank

like a hopeless swimmer into the earth,

and at last came fully into the ease

and the joy of that place,

all my lost ones returning.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

art by Roderick Maclver

a flowing event

2012-02-06T12:41:00.000-07:00

A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event,

like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable,

for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other.

We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream

that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer,

beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras.

It goes out as gas and excrement -

and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce,

war, poetry, and music. And philosophy.

~ Alan Watts

with thanks to whiskey river

the yellow dot

2012-02-06T07:45:00.001-07:00

God does what she wants. She has very large

Tractors. She lives at night in the sewing room

Doing stitchery. Then chunks of land at mid-

Sea disappear. The husband knows that his wife

Is still breathing. God has arranged the open

Grave. The grave is not what we want,

But to God it's a tiny hole, and he has

The needle, draws thread through it, and soon

A nice pattern appears. The husband cries,

"Don't let her die!" But God says, "I

Need a yellow dot here, near the mailbox."

The husband is angry. But the turbulent ocean

Is like a chicken scratching for seeds. It doesn't

Mean anything, and the chicken's claws will tear

A Rembrandt drawing if you put it down.

~ Robert Bly

in memory of Jane Kenyon-

from Morning Poems

art by georgia o'keeffe

in my end is my beginning

2012-02-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

In the Beginning of Beginnings was Void of Void, the

Nameless.

And in the Nameless was the One, without body, without

form.

This One - this Being in whom all find power to exist -

Is the Living.

From the Living, comes the Formless, the Undivided.

From the act of this Formless, come the Existents, each

according

To its inner principle. This is Form. Here body embraces and

cherishes spirit.

The two work together as one, blending and manifesting their

Characters. And this is Nature.

But he who obeys Nature returns through Form and Formless

to the Living,

And in the Living

Joins the unbegun Beginning.

The joining is Sameness. The sameness is Void. The Void is

infinite.

The bird opens its beak and sings its note

And then the beak comes together again in Silence.

So Nature and the Living meet together in Void.

Like the closing of the bird's beak

After its song.

Heaven and earth come together in the Unbegun,

And all is foolishness, all is unknown, all is like

The lights of an idiot, all is without mind!

To obey is to close the beak and fall into Unbeginning.

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

art by picasso

the roof nail

2012-02-05T13:57:00.002-07:00

A hundred boats are still looking for shore.

There is more in my hopes than I imagined.

The tiny roof nail lies on the ground, aching for the roof.

Some little bone in our foot is longing for heaven.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

art by picasso

to know the dark

2012-02-05T08:18:00.000-07:00

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming - A Handbook

earth and fire

2012-02-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

In this woman the earth speaks

Her words open in me, cells of light

flashing in my body, and make a song

that I follow toward her out of my need.

The pain I have given her I wear

like another skin, tender, the air

around me flashing with thorns.

And yet such joy as I have given her

sings in me and is part of her song.

The winds of her knees shake me

like a flame. I have risen up from her,

time and again, a new man.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming

great and small

2012-02-04T16:34:00.001-07:00

When we look at things in the light of Tao,

Nothing is best, nothing is worst.

Each thing, seen in its own light,

Stands out in its own way.

It can seem to be "better"

Than what is compared with it

On its own terms.

But seen in terms of the whole,

No one thing stands out as "better."

If you measure differences,

What is greater than something else is "great,"

Therefore there is nothing that is not "great";

What is smaller than something else is "small,"

Therefore there is nothing that is not "small,"

So the whole cosmos is a grain of rice,

And the tip of a hair

Is as big as a mountain -

Such is the relative view.

You can break down walls with battering rams,

But you cannot stop holes with them.

All things have different uses.

Fine horses can travel a hundred miles a day,

But they cannot catch mice

Like terriers or weasels:

All creatures have gifts of their own.

The white horned owl can catch fleas at midnight

And distinguish the tip of a hair,

But in bright day it stares, helpless,

And cannot even see a mountain.

All things have varying capacities.

Consequently: he who wants to have right without wrong,

Order without disorder,

Does not understand the principles

Of heaven and earth.

He does not know how

Things hang together.

Can a man cling only to heaven

And know nothing of earth?

They are correlative: to know one

Is to know the other.

To refuse one

Is to refuse both.

Can a man cling to the positive

Without any negative

In contrast to which it is seen

To be positive?

If he claims to do so

He is a rogue or a madman.

Thrones pass

From dynasty to dynasty,

Now in this way, now in that.

He who forces his way to power

Against the grain

I called tyrant and usurper.

He who moves with the stream of events

Is called a wise statesman.

Kui, the one-legged dragon,

Is jealous of the centipede.

The centipede is jealous of the snake.

The snake is jealous of the wind.

The wind is jealous of the eye.

The eye is jealous of the mind.

Kui said to the centipede:

"I manage my one leg with difficulty:

How can you manage a hundred?"

The centipede replied:

"I do not manage them.

They land all over the place

Like drops of spit."

The centipede said to the snake:

"With all my feet, I cannot move as fast

As you do with no feet at all.

How is this done?"

The snake replied:

"I have a natural glide

That can't be changed. What do I need

With feet?"

The snake spoke to the wind:

"I ripple my backbone and move along

In a bodily way. You, without bones,

Without muscles, without method,

Blow from the North Sea to the Southern Ocean.

How do you get there

With nothing?'

The wind replied:

"True, I rise up in the North Sea

And take myself without obstacle to the Southern Ocean.

But every eye that remarks me,

Every wing that uses me,

Is superior to me, even though

I can uproot the biggest trees, or overturn

Big buildings.

The true conqueror is he

Who is not conquered

By the multitude of the small.

The mind is this conqueror -

But only the mind

Of a wise man."

~ Chuang Tzu

translation by Thomas Merton

photo by Kathleen Connally

possibilities

2012-02-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

I prefer zeroes on the loose

to those lined up behind a cipher.

I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.

I prefer to knock on wood.

I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.

I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility

that existence has its own reason for being.

~ Wislawa Szymborska
photo by eliot porter

with thanks to couleurs

the inner landscape of beauty

2012-02-03T14:37:00.000-07:00

~ John O'Donohue

feasts of wisdom

2012-02-03T12:21:00.001-07:00

I was seeking a cure for my trouble;

My trouble became my cure.

I was seeking a proof of my origin;

My origin became my proof.

I was looking to the right and the left

So that I could see the face of the Beloved.

I was searching outside,

But the Soul was within that very soul.

~ Niyazi Misri (1616 - 1694)

translation by Walter Feldman

with thanks to poetry chaikhana

The heart takes on the attributes and colors of that toward which it is inclined. It even becomes the same as that toward which it has turned. If you understand this, you will also have understood the meaning of the saying: zhikr(chanting), zakir(the chanter), and mezkur (that which is chanted) are one thing. This is because the spoken zhikr is a form of the actual zhikr. During the actual zhikr, the heart takes on the form of that zhikr. And so, the heart is also called the zhikr. The heart is Haqq (Truth, Reality).

There is an example for each of these. Water takes the name “wave” due to the waving of the wind; in reality, though, the wave is nothing but water. The heart’s situation with the zhikr is the same. If the zhikr pervades the whole heart, it will completely become the zhikr. The zhikr expressed in words is the form of the zhikr that is within the heart. Yet, though the heart takes on the form of this zhikr, essentially the heart is pure from any zhikr. It only takes on a form according to the thought that comes to it. It is for this reason that two ideas cannot exist within the heart simultaneously, for the heart takes on completely the form of whatever idea comes to it. The heart becomes that thought itself. Then another thought can no longer be contained within it. It is like the water of the sea: when water forms a wave, that that wave could also take the form of another wave is inconceivable. In the same moment there cannot be two waves in the same place. Understand this.

Sometimes one may see the heart as a sea. The fact that there are many waves does not cause a strain on the heart; but this state doesn't always occur. It only happens at moments when the absolute body overcomes the particular body. It is like the seed which when sleeping sees itself as a tree.

Within the chest of each human being there is one single heart. Whether this heart inclines to one Self or to many attributes, it takes on the form of whatever it is that it inclines towards.

~ Niyazi Misri

from feast #51

Translated by Camille Helminski and Refik Algan

temporal affections

2012-02-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Time is what keeps the light from reaching us.

There is no greater obstacle to God than time:

and not only time but temporalities,

not only temporal things but temporal affections,

not only temporal affections

but the very taint and smell of time.

~ Meister Eckhart

with thanks to blue mountain center of meditation

art by dali

grandsons, unborn

2012-02-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

Georg Trakl

3 February 1887 - 3 November 1914

Birth

These mountains: blackness, silence, and snow.

The red hunter climbs down from the forest;

Oh the mossy gaze of the wild thing.

The peace of the mother: under black ﬁrs

The sleeping hands open by themselves

When the cold moon seems ready to fall.

The birth of man. Each night

Blue water washes over the rockbase of the cliff;

The fallen angel stares at his reﬂection with sighs,

Something pale wakes up in a suffocating room.

The eyes

Of the stony old woman shine, two moons.

The cry of the woman in labor. The night troubles

The boy’s sleep with black wings,

With snow, which falls with ease out of the purple

clouds

His language was simple and clear, even in translation, resembling the work of Hoelderlin, with strong and precise imagery, darkly brooding sensitivity, and an adept feeling for color. He wrote about death, decay, and doom, hiding himself in lyrical metaphor and the ambiguity of his images. Trakl saw the world collapsing around him and taking him with it; and while his poetry is overwhelmingly negative, critics find in it a gesture of affirmation.

Otto Dix - Sunrise (1913)

The Ravens (1913)

Over the black crevice

at noon the ravens rush with rusty cries.

Their shadows touch the deer’s back

and at times they loom in gnarled rest.

O how they derange the brown stillness,

in the one acre itself entranced,

like a woman married to grave premonitions,

and at times you can hear them bicker

about a corpse they sniffed-out somewhere,

and sharply they bend their flight towards north

and dwindle away like a funeral

march in the air, shivering with bliss.

One year after Georg Trakl's poem and Otto Dix' painting, visions of the impeding disaster, both men were called to the military. World War I had begun. In July 1914, shortly before being drafted by the Austro-Hungarian Army, Georg Trakl received a large monetary gift from the then unknown philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who was distributing his enormous inheritance to artists. Unfortunately, Trakl never was able to use the money. His emotional instability became worse under the strains of war and he was hospitalized numerous times as a result of depression and suicide attempts. After several bloody defeats at the hands of the Russians, Trakl was left to single handedly care for 90 wounded men in a barn near Grodek where he wrote the following poem:

Albin Egger-Lienz

Den Namenlosen (Those Who Have Lost Their Names)

1914

Grodek (1914)

At evening the autumn woodlands ring

With deadly weapons. Over the golden plains

And lakes of blue, the sun

More darkly rolls. The night surrounds

Warriors dying and the wild lament

Of their fragmented mouths.

Yet silently there gather in the willow combe

Red clouds inhabited by an angry god,

Shed blood, and the chill of the moon.

All roads lead to black decay.

Under golden branching of the night and stars

A sister's shadow sways through the still grove

To greet the heroes' spirits, the bloodied heads.

And softly in the reeds Autumn's dark flutes resound.

O prouder mourning! - You brazen altars,

The spirit's hot flame is fed now by a tremendous pain:

The grandsons, unborn.

Trakl could not adequately relieve the pain of his patients on his own, and he witnessed the splattered brains of one soldier who shot himself. Trakl then went outside, and after seeing some of the local Ruthenians hanging from trees, suffered a mental breakdown and threatened to shoot himself. In October, Trakl was hospitalized in Cracow, Poland, and received a visit from a friend who encouraged Trakl to send for his benefactor Wittgenstein. Unfortunately, Trakl injected himself with a fatal dose of cocaine, a probable suicide attempt, on November 3, 1914, three days before Wittgenstein arrived.

~ history and commentary from poetry foundation

you are this ... you want to become that

2012-02-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

The mind has an idea, perhaps pleasurable, and it wants to be like that idea,

which is a projection of your desire. You are this, which you do not like,

and you want to become that, which you like. The ideal is a self-projection;

the opposite is an extension of what is; it is not the opposite at all,

but a continuity of what is, perhaps somewhat modified.

The projection is self-willed, and conflict is the struggle towards the projection.

You are struggling to become something, and that something is part of yourself.

The ideal is your own projection. See how the mind has played a trick upon itself.

You are struggling after words, pursuing your own projection, your own shadow.

You are violent, and you are struggling to become nonviolent,

the ideal;

but the ideal is a projection of what is,

only under a different name.

When you are aware of this trick that you have played upon yourself,

then the false as the false is seen.

The struggle towards an illusion is the disintegrating factor.

All conflict, all becoming is disintegration.

When there is an awareness of this trick that the mind has played upon itself,

then there is only what is.

When the mind is stripped of all becoming,

of all ideals, of all comparison and condemnation,

when its own structure has collapsed,

then the what is has undergone complete transformation.

As long as there is the naming of what is,

there is relationship between the mind and what is;

but when this naming process - which is memory, the very structure of the mind

-is not, then what is is not.

In this transformation alone is there integration.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from The Book of Life

are we really so identified with a rotten and crumbling edifice

2012-02-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

..Are we really so identified with a rotten and crumbling edifice that we are bound to collapse with it?

This is where I stop. I think that if the thing collapses, and it must, a great deal of what we have called “Christianity” will go with it, and if we’re around to rub the dust out of our eyes we will finally see that it wasn't Christianity at all. Who will deliver us from this body of death?...

I have to go along with policies that are often so inert, so blind, so stupid that they utterly stifle the true life of the Church and make it impossible for the most clear-sighted and courageous of her members to do anything that will further the real manifestation of the truth and [love] of Christ in the world … behind all this spurious Pentecostal wind one can hear, if [one] listens a little carefully, the hideous merriment of demons…

~ Thomas Merton

taken from correspondence between Merton and philosopher Leslie Dewart

in Witness to Freedom: Letters in Times of Crisis

with thanks to prodigal kiwi(s) blog

under a certain little star

2012-02-02T10:24:00.001-07:00

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.

My apologies to necessity in case I'm mistaken.

Don't be angry, happiness, that I take you for my own.

May the dead forgive me that their memory's but a flicker.

My apologies to time for the quantity of world overlooked per second.

My apologies to an old love for treating a new one as the first.

Forgive me, far-off wars, for carrying my flowers home.

Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.

My apologies for the minuet record, to those calling out from the abyss.

My apologies to those in train stations for sleeping soundly at five in the morning.

Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing sometimes.

Pardon me, deserts, for not rushing in with a spoonful of water.

And you, O hawk, the same bird for years in the same cage,
staring, motionless, always at the same spot,
absolve me even if you happen to be stuffed.

My apologies to the tree felled for four table legs.

My apologies to large questions for small answers.

Truth, do not pay me too much attention.

Solemnity, be magnanimous toward me.

Bear with me, O mystery of being, for pulling threads from your veil.

Soul, don't blame me that I've got you so seldom.

My apologies to everything that I can't be everywhere.

My apologies to all for not knowing how to be every man and woman.

I know that as long as I live nothing can excuse me, since I am my own obstacle.

Do not hold it against me, O speech, that I borrow weighty words, and then labor to make them light.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

translated by Joanna Trzeciak

with thanks to poets.org

photo by agencja gazeta

a hat salesman and a capable ruler

2012-02-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

A man of Sung did business

In silk ceremonial hats.

He traveled with a load of hats

To the wild men of the South.

The wild men had shaved heads,

Tattooed bodies.

What did they want

With silk

Ceremonial hats?

Yao had wisely governed

All China.

He had brought the entire world

To a state of rest.

After that, he went to visit

The four Perfect Ones

In the distant mountains

Of Ku Shih

When he came back

Across the border

Into his own city

His lost gaze

Saw no throne.

~ Chuang Tzu

translated by Thomas Merton

winter dreams and butterflys

2012-02-01T11:40:00.001-07:00

Winter

Evening. A fire

in the grate and a fire

outside, where a robin

is burning. How they both

sing, offering a friendship

unacceptable to the hand

that is as vulnerable to the one

as it is treacherous to the other.

Ah, time, enemy of their music,

reducing fuel to feathers, feathers

to ash, it was, but a moment ago,

spring in this tinder: flames

in flower that are now embers

on song's hearth.

The leaves fall

from a dark tree, brimming

with shadow, fall on one who,

as Borges suggested,

is no more perhaps than the dream God

in his loneliness is dreaming.

~ R. S. Thomas

from Mass for Hard Times

You have wakened not out of sleep,

but into a prior dream,

and that dream lies within another, and so on,

to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand.

The path that you are to take is endless,

and you will die before you have truly awakened.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

Once Chuang Tzu dreamt he was a butterfly,

a butterfly flitting and fluttering around,

happy with himself and doing as he pleased.

He didn't know he was Chuang Tzu.

Suddenly he woke up and there he was,

solid and unmistakable Chuang Tzu.

But he didn't know if he was Chuang Tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly,

or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tzu.

~ Chuang Tzu

from The Complete Chuang Tzu

translated by Burton Watson

they bless me

2012-02-01T08:22:00.002-07:00

I spend all my morning with the muses;
- and they bless me also in my walks.

Compelled to contemplate a lasting malady, born with an ardent and lively temperament, susceptible to the diversions of society, I was obliged at an early date to isolate myself and live a life of solitude....For me there can be no recreation in human society, refined conversation, mutual exchange of thoughts and feelings; only so far as necessity compels may I give myself to society,—I must live like an exile.

~ from the Ludwig van Beethoven journals

with thanks to Roderick Maclver

at heron dance

portrait by

Joseph Karl Stieler

horses

2012-02-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

In truth I am puzzled most in life

by nine horses.

I've been watching them for eleven weeks

in a pasture near Melrose.

Two are on one side of the fence and seven

on the other side.

They stare at one another from the same places

hours and hours each day.

This is another unanswerable question

to haunt us with the ordinary.

They have to be talking to one another

in a language without a voice.

Maybe they are speaking the wordless talk of lovers,

sullen, melancholy, jubilant.

Linguists say that language comes after music

and we sang nonsense syllables

before we invented a rational speech

to order our days.

We live far out in the country where I hear

creature voices night and day.

Like us they are talking about their lives

on this brief visit to earth.

In truth each day is a universe in which

we are tangled in the light of stars.

Stop a moment. Think about these horses

in their sweet-smelling silence.

~ Jim Harrison

from Songs of Unreason

with thanks to being poetry

blessing bow

2012-02-01T07:11:00.001-07:00

Here at seventy-four, I am having an idea

what I do pretty-well, what not-so-well.

I dream. I keep a journal of my dreams,

and I put images from them in trance-poems.

I do not write or think about poetry

with a very clear intelligence. I love

certain lines and passages without getting

the whole picture, like rocks thrown against

my door without knowing who’s there.

I found this piece of paper on my bookshelf

dated Sept. 2, 1976. It records a three-part

dream from that night. I recall best

what it felt like there at the end, here

thirty-five years later. I am invited to

a dinner table with Gary Snyder, his family

and friends. We sit in the blessing-bow.

He begins, but I raise my head instead,

and open my eyes, feeling a great love

coming. The air is electrical, full of spirit.

He opens his eyes and sees me reaching

my hand toward him. He takes my hand,

still saying the blessing, which is about

filling with love for the ONE, as we are,

and amen to that. Now the dream

feels like an approach into this flawed

and difficult, hilarious, opening-out time

left before death encloses me in its whatever

it-will-be, a full prostration blessing-bow.

~ Coleman Barks

from the Georgia Review

photo by Robert Foah

to deliver oneself up

2012-01-31T20:20:00.000-07:00

To deliver oneself up,

to hand oneself over,

entrust oneself completely to the silence

of a wide landscape of woods and hills,

or sea and desert; to sit still while

the sun comes up over the land

and fills its silences with light.

...few are willing to belong completely

to such silence, to let it soak into their bones,

to breathe nothing but silence, to feed

on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life

into a living and vigilant silence.

~ Thomas Merton

from Thoughts in Solitude

paying attention to the melody

2012-01-31T10:53:00.000-07:00

All right. I know that each of us will die alone.

It doesn't matter how loud or soft the sitar plays.

Sooner or later the melody will say it all.

The prologue is so long! At last the theme comes.

It says the soul will rise above all these notes.

It says the dust will be swept up from the floor.

It doesn't matter if we say our prayers or not.

We know the canoe is heading straight for the falls,

And no one will pick us up from the water this time.

One day the mice will carry our ragged impulses

All the way to Egypt, and at home the cows

Will graze on a thousand acres of thought.

Everyone goes on hoping for a good death.

The old rope hangs down from the hangman's nail.

The forty-nine robbers are climbing into their boots.

Robert, don't expect too much. You've put yourself

Ahead of others for years, a hundred years.

It will take a long time for you to hear the melody.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey