not moving even one step

The rain falling too lightly to shape

an audible house, and audible tree,

blind, soaking, the old horse waits in his pasture.

He knows the field for exactly what it is:

his limitless mare, his beloved.

Even the mallards sleep in her red body maned

in thistles, hooved in the new green shallows of spring.

Slow rain streams from fetlocks, hips, the lowered head,

while she stands in the place beside him that no one sees.

The muzzles almost touch.

How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

Listening

.

.

What is the deep listening?  Sama is

a greeting from the secret ones inside

.

the heart, a letter.  The branches of 

your intelligence grow new leaves in

.

the wind of this listening.  The body

reaches a peace.  Rooster sound comes,

.

reminding you of your love for dawn.

The reed flute and the singer's lips:

.

the knack of how spirit breathes into

us becomes as simple and ordinary as

.

eating and drinking.  The dead rise with 

the pleasure of listening.  If someone

.

can't hear a trumpet melody, sprinkle

dirt on his head and declare him dead.

.

Listen, and feel the beauty of your

separation, the unsayable absence.

.

There's a moon inside every human being.

Learn to be companions with it.  Give

.

more of your life to this listening.  As

brightness is to time, so you are to

.

the one who talks to the deep ear in

your chest.  I should sell my tongue

.

and buy a thousand ears when that

one steps near and begins to speak.

.

~ Rumi

from The Glance

translated by Coleman Barks

.

When the Cat Stole the Milk

.

.

Well there it is.  There's nothing to do.

The cat steals the milk and it's gone.

Then the cat steals you, and you're found

Days later, with milk on your face.

.

That implies that you become whoever

Steals you.  The trees steal a man,

And an old birch becomes his wife

And they live together in the woods.

.

Some of us have always wanted

God to steal us.  Then our friends

Would call each other, and print

Posters, and we would never be found.

.

~ Robert Bly

.

People Like Us

.

.

There are more like us. All over the world

There are confused people, who can't remember

The name of their dog when they wake up, and people

Who love God but can't remember where

.

He was when they went to sleep.  It's

All right.  The world cleanses itself this way.

A wrong number occurs to you in the middle

Of the night, you dial it, it rings just in time

.

To save the house.  And the second-story man

Gets the wrong address, where the insomniac lives,

And he's lonely, and they talk, and the thief

Goes back to college.  Even in graduate school,

.

You can wander into the wrong classroom,

And hear great poems lovingly spoken

By the wrong professor.  And you find your soul,

And greatness has a defender, and even in death

you're safe.

.

Robert Bly

for James Wright

.

Words the Dreamer Spoke to my Father in Maine

.

.

Ocean light as we wake reminds us how dark

Our old house is.  That's home.  Like Hamlet,

One visit to Wittenberg is enough, and we'll soon be

Back in crazy Denmark.  I dreamt I stood

.

In a machine shop; my dead father stands beside me.

We talk, but his eyes remain on my chest.

I say to him for the first him:"Oh look at me

When we talk." I could see cubbyholes

.

With dark tools, and a rough floor stained with oil.

Clotted windows, cobwebs, a black vise.

But sunlight outside our windows speaks of ocean

Light, bone light, Labrador light, prairie light.

.

It's the same light that glints off swords, and shines

From Idaho rivers some days, and from the thin

Face just before death. I say to my father,

"We could be there if we could lift our eyes."

.

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

photo by Kathleen Connally

.

But the silence in the mind

But the silence in the mind

is when we live best, within

listening distance of the silence

we call God.  This is the deep 

calling to deep of the psalm-

writer, the bottomless ocean

We launch the armada of

our thoughts on, never arriving.

It is a presence, then,

whose margins are our margins;

that calls us out over our 

own fathoms.  What to do

but draw a little nearer to

such ubiquity by remaining still?

~ R. S. Thomas

calmly and smoothly

.

 

 

The soul, then, being thus inwardly recollected in God or before God,

 now and then becomes so sweetly attentive to the goodness of her well-beloved,

that her attention seems not to her to be attention, so purely and delicately is it exercised;

 as it happens to certain rivers, which glide so calmly and smoothly 

that beholders and such as float upon them, seem neither to see nor feel any motion,

 because the waters are not seen to ripple or flow at all.

 

 

~ Saint Francis de Sales

from An Introduction to the Devout Life

 

 

The spring woods hastening now

.

.

The spring woods hastening now

To overshadow him,

He's passing in to where

He can't see out.  It charms

Mere eyesight to believe

The nearest thing not trees

Is the sky, into which 

The trees reach, opening

Their luminous new leaves.

Burdened only by 

A weightless shawl of shade

The lighted leaves let fall,

He seems to move within

A form unpatterned to 

His eye or mind, design

Betokened to his thought

By leafshapes tossed about.

Ways untranslatable

To human tongue or hand

Seem tangled here, and yet

Are brought to light, are brought

To life, and thought finds rest

Beneath a brightened tree

In which, unseen, a warbler

Feeds and sins.  His song's

Small shapely melody

Comes down irregularly,

As all light's givings come.

.

~ Wendell Berry
photo by Kathleen Connally

.

the light changes

.

.

Can I see the buds that are swelling 

in the woods on the slopes

on the far side of the valley? I can't,

of course, nor can I see 

the twinleafs and anemones

that are blooming over there

bright-scattered above the dead

leaves.  But the swelling buds

and little blossoms make

a new softness in the light

that is visible all the way here.

The trees, the hills that were stark

in the old cold become now

tender, and the light changes.

.

~ Wendell Berry

Given

.

Song of the Barren Orange Tree

.

Woodcutter.

Cut my shadow from me.

Free me from the torment 

of seeing myself without fruit.

Why was I born among mirrors?

The day walks in circles around me,

and the night copies me

in all its stars.

I want to live without seeing myself.

And I will dream that ants

and thistleburrs are my

leaves and my birds.

Woodcutter.

Cut my shadow from me.

Free me from the torment

of seeing myself without fruit.

~ Federico Garcia Lorca

from The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca

translated by W.S. Merwin

Things to Think

.

.

Think in ways you've never thought before.

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message

Larger than anything you've ever heard,

Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,

Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose

Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers

A child of your own whom you've never seen.

.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he's about

To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,

Or that it's not necessary to work all the time, or that it's

Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

.

~ Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

.

the essence of beauty

You know when you see something like a marvelous mountain against the blue sky, the vivid, bright, clear, unpolluted snow, the majesty of it drives all your thoughts, your concerns, your problems away.  Have you noticed that?  You say, 'How beautiful it is', and for two seconds perhaps, or for even a minute, you are absolutely silent.  The grandeur of it drives away for that second, the pettiness of ourselves.  So that immensity has taken us over.  Like a child occupied with an intricate toy for an hour; he won't talk, he won't make any noise, he is completely absorbed in that.  The toy has absorbed him.  So the mountain absorbs you and therefore for the second, or the minute, you are absolutely quiet, which means there is no self.  Now, without being absorbed by something - either a toy, a mountain, a face, or an idea - to be completely without the me in oneself, is the essence of beauty.

J. Krishnamurti

from a talk in Saanen, July 18th 1978

My Doubts on Going to Visit a New Friend

I'm glad that a white horse grazes in that meadow

Outside your kitchen window; even when it rains

There's still someone there.  And it rains often

In the mountains.

I have to ask myself what kind of friend I can be.

You'll want to know whether I do dishes,

Or know my share of stories, or any Wallace

Stevens poems be heart.

I know that I won't talk all the time, or steal

Money, or complain about my room,

Or undermine you, or speak disparagingly

Of your family.

I am afraid there'll be a moment when 

I fail you, friend; I will turn slightly

Away, our eyes will not meet, and out in the field

There will be no one.

Robert Bly

.

talkers

There's something dangerous

In being with good talkers.

The fly's stories of his ancestors

Don't mean much to the frog.

I can't be the noisy person I am

If you don't stop talking.

Some people talk so brilliantly

That we get small and vanish.

The shadows near that Dutch woman

Tell you that Rembrandt is a good listener.

Robert Bly

Visiting Sand Island

.

Somebody showed off and tried to tell the truth

And drank wine and went to bed.  Someone 

Woke in the night and wanted his children

To walk in the grass on this island under the stars.

Someone was lucky.  Someone had eyes and found

Stars.  Someone had feet and found grass.

Someone loved thought, and knew things to learn.

Someone could turn in the river and go up or down.

Someone thought he was unlucky, thought he didn't try

To tell the truth.  Someone thought his head was dark.

Someone tried to feel as bad as others did; someone

Flapped along the ground to draw the fox to him.

Tell him, friends, that the nest is now gone;

Tell him the little twigs are all dispersed.

Tell him all he has to do is walk under stars.

Tell him the fox has long since eaten his dinner.

Robert Bly

.

For Ruth

There's a graceful way of doing things. Birch branches

Curve slightly upward; or the wind brings a few

snowflakes down, and then joins the night;

Or you leave me a sprig of chervil and no more.

Each morning we have this new chance.  We can walk

A few steps behind the others down the mountain;

We can enter a conversation as if we were blessed,

Not insisting on our old way of gaining pity.

There's a way you have of knowing what another

May need ahead of time, before the party

Begins, as smoke sometimes disappears

Downward among branches.  And I've learned

From you this new way of letting a poem be.

Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

detachment from the world

.

Confusion arises because certain spiritual teachings say that detachment from the world is necessary for enlightenment.  The concept of detachment can be confused with release from pain, a way of numbing so that you don't have to experience the pains of life.  If you are not willing to fully experience the pains of love, the pains of the heart breaking open, then you close your heart in the name of comfort and control, even in the name of enlightenment.

.

Give up every idea of detachment, and experience your detachment fully.  Experience the pain and the beauty of attachment, and the grief as what you are attached to is ripped away.  Then you will recognize what can never be detached, what is not some stoic, unfeeling, unemotional, inhuman existence, but what is freely and consciously all of it.

.

~ Gangaji

from: the Diamond in your Pocket

.

One of the Butterflies

.

.

The trouble with pleasure is the timing

it can overtake me without warning

and be gone before I know it is here

it can stand facing me unrecognized

while I am remembering somewhere else

in another age or someone not seen

for years and never to be seen again

in this world and it seems that I cherish

only now a joy I was not aware of

when it was here although it remains

out of reach and will not be caught or named

or called back and if I could make it stay

as I want to it would turn into pain

.

W.S. Merwin

from: The Shadow of Sirius

.

Falling

.

.

Long before daybreak

none of the birds awake

rain comes down with the sound

of a huge wind rushing

through the valley trees

it comes down around us

all at the same time

and beyond it there is nothing

it falls without hearing itself

without knowing

there is anyone here

without seeing where it is

or where it is going

like a moment of great 

happiness of our own

that we cannot remember

coasting with the lights off

.

W.S. Merwin

.

a momentary creed

I believe in the ordinary day

that is here at this moment and is me

I do not see it going its own way

but I never saw how it came to me

It extends beyond whatever I may

think I know and all that is real to me

it is the present that it bears away

where has it gone when it has gone from me

there is no place I know outside today

except for the unknown all around me

the only presence that appears to stay 

everything that I call mine it lent me

even the way that I believe the day

for as long as it is here and is me

~ W.S. Merwin

from:  The Shadow of Sirius

.

That sounds wonderful

.

.

Good poetry

Makes a beautiful naked woman

Materialize from

Words,

.

Who then says,

With a sword precariously waving

In her hands,

.

"If you look at my loins

I will cut off your head,

.

And reach down and grab your spirit

By its private parts,

.

And carry you off to heaven

Squealing in joy."

.

Hafiz says,

"That sounds wonderful, just

Wonderful.

.

Someone please - start writing

Some great

Lines."

.

- Hafiz

from: The subject tonight is love

- versions by Daniel Ladinsky

.

what the bird with the human head knew

I went to the bird

with the human head,

and asked,

Please Sir,

where is God?

God is too busy

to be here on earth,

His angels are like one thousand geese assembled

and always flapping.

But I can tell you where the well of God is.

Is it on earth?

I asked.

He replied,

Yes. It was dragged down

from paradise by one of the geese.

I walked many days,

past witches that eat grandmothers knitting booties

as if they were collecting a debt.

Then, in the middle of the desert

I found the well,

it bubbled up and down like a litter of cats

and there was water,

and I drank,

and there was water,

and I drank.

Then the well spoke to me.

It said: Abundance is scooped from abundance,

yet abundance remains.

Then I knew.

~ Anne Sexton

.

(Few established poets nowadays have a background as non-spectacular as that of Anne Sexton (1928-1974), a mediocre student who neither went to college nor formally studied literature. For a time she worked as a fashion model. Emotional, impetuous, she even eloped at the age of 19.

.

Anne Sexton began falling to pieces in her early 20’s after the births of her two daughters. Her psychiatrist recommended writing poetry as a form of therapy; she took to the typewriter at the age of 26 and never looked back.)

(Biography from: http://katebenedict.com/lectio/sexton.html)

what's that

.

 

 

Before it came inside

I had watched it from my kitchen window,

watched it swell like a new balloon,

watched it slump and then divide,

like something I know I know —

a broken pear or two halves of the moon,

or round white plates floating nowhere

or fat hands waving in the summer air

until they fold together like a fist or a knee.

After that it came to my door. Now it lives here.

And of course: it is a soft sound, soft as a seal’s ear,

that was caught between a shape and a shape and then returned to me.

 

 

You know how parents call

from sweet beaches anywhere, come in come in

and how you sank under water to put out

the sound, or how one of them touched in the hall

at night: the rustle and the skin

you couldn’t know, but heard, the stout

slap of tides and the dog snoring. It’s here

now, caught back from time in my adult year —

the image we did forget: the crackling shells on our feet

or the swing of the spoon in soup. It is as real

as splinters stuck in your ear. The noise we steal

is half a bell. And outside cars whisk by on the suburban street

 

 

and are there and are true.

What else is this, this intricate shape of air?

calling me, calling you.

 

 

 

 

~ Anne Sexton

.

The divine will

.

The divine will

is a deep abyss

of which the present 

moment is the entrance.

If you plunge

into this abyss

you will find it

infinitely more vast

than your

desires.

.

~ Jean Pierre de Caussade

(French Jesuit who in the 18th century coined the phrase

"the sacrament of the present moment."  

He said,

"It is necessary to disengage from all we feel and do

in order to walk with God in the duty of the present moment...")

.

.

The Pentecost Castle (excerpt)

.

I shall go down

to the lovers' well

and wash this wound

that will not heal

beloved soul

what shall you see

nothing at all

yet eye to eye

depths of non-being

perhaps too clear

my desire dying

as I desire

~ Geoffrey Hill

You who want

.

.

You who want

knowledge,

seek the Oneness

within

.

There you

will find

the clear mirror

already waiting

.

~ Hadewijch II
art by Picasso

.

Tighten

.

 

 

Tighten

to nothing

the circle

that is

the world's things.

 

Then the Naked

circle

can grow wide,

enlarging,

embracing all

 

 

 

 

~ Hadewijch II

 

 

 

stretching out toward God

When you go apart to be alone for prayer, put from your mind 
everything you have been doing or plan to do.  
Reject all thoughts, be they good or be they evil.  
Do not pray with words unless you are really drawn to this; 
or if you do pray with words, pay no attention to whether they are many or few.  
Do not weigh them or their meaning. 
 Do not be concerned about what kind of prayers you use, 
for it is unimportant whether or not they are official liturgical prayers, 
psalms, hymns, or anthems; whether they are for particular or general intentions; 
or  whether you formulate them interiorly, by thoughts, 
or express them aloud, in words.  
See that nothing remains in your conscious mind 
save a naked intent stretching out toward God.

from chapter 1 of The Book of Privy Counseling

by an anonymous fourteenth-century English author

The Fall

.

.

There is no where in you a paradise that is no place and there

You do not enter except without a story.

.

To enter there is to become unnameable.

...

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist

except unborn:

No disguise will avail him anything

.

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

.

But he who has an address is lost.

...

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?

Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn

flower of nothing:

This is the paradise tree.  It must remain unseen until words

end and arguments are silent.

.

~ Thomas Merton

(excerpt from The Fall)

.