Saturday, November 21, 2015

are animals thinking and feeling?










~ Carl Safina

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

the green cookstove







A lonely man once sat on a large flat stone.
When he lifted it, he saw a kitchen: a green
Enamel range with big claw feet, familiar.
Someone lives in that room, cooking and cackling.

"I saw her once," Virgil said. "She was Helen's
Younger sister."  Helen's betrayed husband
Sits by the window, peeling garlic cloves,
And throwing crusts to Plymouth Rocks.

We'll never understand this, Somewhere below
The flat stone of the skull, a carnivorous couple
Lives and plans future wars.  Are we innocent?
These wars don't happen by accident - they occur

Too regularly. How often do we lift the plate
At the bottom of our brain and throw some garlic
And grain down to the kitchen?  "Keep cooking,
My dears," "Something good will come of this."



~ Robert Bly
from Morning Poems


who one is






One never knows who one is. 
The others tell you who you are, 
don't they? 

And as you're told so a million times 
if you live a long life, in the end you don't know at all 
who you are. Everyone says something different. 
You yourself also say something 
different each new moment.




~  Thomas Bernhard




Sunday, November 8, 2015

first step







The first step in love
is losing your head.

After the petty ego
you then give up your life
and bear the calamity.

With this behind you, proceed:
Polish the ego's rust
from the mirror
of your self



~ Fakhr al-Din Iraqi
from Love's Alchemy
translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler




Tuesday, November 3, 2015

glow






Not a single soul lacks
a pathway to you.

There's no stone,
no flower-
not a single piece of straw-
lacking your existence.

In every particle of the world,
the moon of your love
causes the heart
of each atom to glow.



~ Muhammad Shirin Maghribi  
from Love's Alchemy
Poems from the Sufi Tradition
translations by David and Sabrineh Fideler



Monday, November 2, 2015

a thousand years of joy - the film trailer