Wednesday, January 19, 2011

bees








.

In every instant, two gates. One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.
Mostly we go through neither.
.
Mostly we nod to our neighbor,
lean down to pick up the paper,
go back into the house.
.
But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror?
Or did you think it the sound
of distant bees,
making only the thick honey of this good life?
.
~ Jane Hirshfield
.

Monday, January 17, 2011

to prose


.

.
Whatever you may say
whatever you pretend
you do not begin or end
when the stories do
the ones that you repeat
later starting again
or when the days that you tell
all those that never
themselves said a word
have long been utterly still
and yet you were there 
when they were 
you were heard
commenting in the unmetered
service of understanding
your description
remains current for some time
after the face has gone
even if not written down
but you are different
from what you recount
and although we know 
only scattered fragments of you
glimpses of birds in bushes
gestures in car windows 
of which we forget
at once almost everything 
you define us
we are the ones who need you
we can no longer tell
whether we believe
anything without you
or whether we can hear
all that you are not
O web of answer
sea of forgetting is it true
that you remember

.
~ W.S. Merwin
from Present Company

.




 
 
Whatever we say
we know there is another
language under this one
 
a word of it is always there on the tip of you
unsayable and early
O you for whom 
all languages have been named
who have none of your own
 
naked sleeper in the cave 
where you were born
dreamer without words
who first tasted 
a verb of the world
you who speak as though
you could see
 
you have not forgotten
the serpent your ancestor
its fluttering inarticulate flame
or expectation
on the way to you

 
 
 
~ W. S. Merwin
from Present Company





The Woodpecker Keeps Returning



.


.


The woodpecker keeps returning
to drill the house wall.
Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.

There is nothing good to eat there:
he has found in the house
a resonant billboard to post his intentions,
his voluble strength as provider.

But where is the female he drums for? Where?

I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,
the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.

.
~ Jane Hirshfield
from after
.


The world rests






.

The world rests in the night. Trees, mountains, fields, and faces are released from the prison of shape and the burden of exposure. Each thing creeps back into its own nature within the shelter of the dark. Darkness is the ancient womb. Nighttime is womb-time. Our souls come out to play. The darkness absolves everything; the struggle for identity and impression falls away. We rest in the night.

.

~ John O'Donohue
from Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

.


Friday, January 14, 2011

for a new home


.

.
May this house shelter your life.
When you come in home here,
May all the weight of the world
Fall from your shoulders.
.
May your heart be tranquil here,
Blessed by peace the world can not give.
.
May this home be a lucky place,
Where the graces your life desires
Always find the pathway to your door.
.
May nothing destructive
Ever cross your threshold.
.
May this be a safe place
Full of understanding and acceptance,
Where you can be as you are,
Without the need of any mask
Of pretense or image.
.
May this home be a place of discovery,
Where the possibilities that sleep
In the clay of your soul can emerge
To deepen and refine your vision
For all that is yet to come to birth.
.

~ John O'Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us

.

hidden but always present






.

The Tao is like an empty container:
it can never be emptied and can never be filled.
Infinitely deep, it is the source of all things.
It dulls the sharp, unties the knotted,
shades the lighted, and unites all of creation with dust.
.
It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than the concept of God.
.

~ Tao Te Ching
translation by j. h. mcdonald

.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Who has been lived all these years


.



This which seeks is That which is sought; 
That which is sought is This which seeks.

There is no seeker, and no thing sought.
The functioning of "seeking" in whole-mind 
is conceptualized by split-mind as Seeker and Sought.


From the beginning not a thing is. 

~ Hui Neng


This which I am is That (which I am not),
That which I am not is This (which I am).
There is neither This or That.
I neither am nor am not 
(there is neither an I which is nor an I which is not)
There is neither whole-mind nor split-mind.
There is nothing to function, and no functioning.
There is no absence and no presence.

There still remains spontaneous immediacy?

It, also, neither is nor is not.
.
Now do you understand that there is not a thing to be understood?
Who has understood,  What has not understood?
Who has been lived all these years,  What has suffered?




~ Wei Wu Wei
from All Else is Bondage


As you once found me





.

.
As you once found me,
I was small, so small
yet blooms appeared
Just be quiet within yourself.
.
I was a nameless and small
and longed  so deeply
until you said that I am too big
for any name:
.
For, it seems,  I am one
with myth, with May, and with the sea,
and like the living fragrance of the wine
that strengthens the soul ...
.

Rainer Maria Rilke 
from The Early Poems

.


Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Have you


.

.
Have you ever sat, not day-dreaming, but very
quietly, completely aware? 


In that awareness there is no
verbalization, no choice, no restraint or direction. 


When the body is completely relaxed, 
have you noticed the silence that comes into being? 

That requires a great deal of investigation, because our
minds are never still but endlessly chattering and therefore divided.
We divide living into fragments.

Can all this fragmentation come to an end? 


Knowing that thought is responsible for this fragmentation, we ask:
 `Can thought be completely silent yet respond when it is necessary, 
without violence, objectively, sanely, rationally -
 still let this silence pervade?' 


That is the only way: 
to find for oneself this quality of the mind that has no fragments, 
that is not broken up as the `you' and the `me'.
.

~ J. Krishnamurti
from a public talk in Saanen on July 28th 1970
.


why






.

Why does the soul not fly
when it hears the call?
.
Why does the fish, gasping on land,
but near the water,
not move back into the sea?
.
What keeps us from joining the dance
the dust particles do?
.
Look at their subtle motions
in sunlight.
.
We are out of our cages
with our wings spread,
yet we do not lift off.
We keep collecting rocks and broken bits
of pottery like children
pretending they are merchants.
.
We should split the sack
Of this culture
And stick our heads out.
.
Look around.
Leave your childhood.
.
Reach your right hand up
and take this book from the air.
You do know right from left, don’t you?
.
A voice speaks to your clarity.
Move into the moment of your death.
Consider what you truly want.
.
Now call out commands yourself.
You are the king. Phrase your question,
and expect the grace of an answer.
.

~ Rumi
from Rumi: Bridge to the Soul
translated by Coleman Barks
photo by albert koetsier
.



Sunday, January 9, 2011

a man walks through his life





A man walks through his life
as he did when he was a boy,
taking a pear here, an apple there,
three peaches.

It is easy.  They are there, by the roadside.

I want to say to him, stop.
I want to say to him, where is the plum tree you planted?

But how can I say this?
I suck on the pit of my question,
I who also eat daily the labor of others.


~ Jane Hirshfield
from After



Friday, January 7, 2011

Elegy on Toy Piano





.


You don't need a pony 
to connect you to the unseeable 
or an airplane to connect you to the sky. 

Necessary it is to love to live 
and there are many manuals 
but in all important ways 
one is on one's own. 

You need not cut off your hand. 
No need to eat a bouquet. 
Your head becomes a peach pit. 
Your tongue a honeycomb. 

Necessary it is to live to love, 
to charge into the burning tower 
then charge back out 
and necessary it is to die. 
Even for the trees, even for the pony 
connecting you to what can't be grasped. 

The injured gazelle falls behind the 
herd. One last wild enjambment. 

Because of the sores in his mouth, 
the great poet struggles with a dumpling. 
His work has enlarged the world 
but the world is about to stop including him. 
He is the tower the world runs out of. 

When something becomes ash, 
there's nothing you can do to turn it back. 
About this, even diamonds do not lie.





~ Dean Young



Thursday, January 6, 2011

of beauty











And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
And he answered:

Where shall you seek beauty, and how 
shall you find her unless she herself be your
way and your guide?

And how shall you speak of her except 
she be the weaver of your speech?

The aggrieved and injured say, 
"Beauty is kind and gentle."

The tired and weary say,
"Beauty is of soft whisperings
She speaks in our spirit."

In winter say the snow-bound,
"She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills."

All these things have you said of beauty,
Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
But rather an image you see though you
close your eyes and a song you hear though
you shut your ears.

People of Orphalese, 
beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.







~ Kahlil Gibran
from The Prophet


Wednesday, January 5, 2011

eternity is not infinity







Eternity is not infinity.
It is not a long time.
It does not begin at the end of time.
It does not run parallel to time.
In its entirety it always was.
In its entirety it will always be.
It is entirely present always.




~ Wendell Berry