Songs

...
I sat there singing her
Songs in the dark.

She said;
"I do not understand
The words".

I said;
"There are
No words". 

~ Langston Hughes 


.

Behind matter

Behind matter there is some kind of heat, around
and behind things,
so that what we experience is not the turtle nor the
night only,
not the rising whirlwind, not the certainty, nor the steady gaze.





~ Robert Bly

.

Essence is what is born in you

Essence is what is born in you, personality is what you acquire. 

Essence is your own, personality is not your own. 

Personality is too heavy, too strong;

 it surrounds Essence like a shell, 

so nothing can reach it directly,

 everything has to pass through personality. 

Essence cannot grow in these conditions, 

but if personality becomes more transparent,

 impressions and external influences will 

penetrate through it and reach Essence, 

and Essence will begin to grow.

~ PD Ouspensky

.

I seem to have loved you…In life after life, in age after age, forever.

.
I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,
It's ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours – 

And the songs of every poet past and forever. 

~ Rabindranath Tagore


. 

painting by e.e.cummings

i like my body when it is with your body

...

i like my body when it is with your

body,  It is so quite new a thing.

Muscles better and nerves more.

i like your body.  i like what it does,

i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine

of your body and its bones,and the trembling

-firm-smooth ness and which i will

again and again and again

kiss,  i like kissing this and that of you,

i like,slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz

of your electric fur,and what-is-it comes

over parting flesh.....And eyes big love-crumbs,

...

and possibly like the thrill

...

of under me you so quite new

...

~ e.e.cummings

.

The Uses of Sorrow

...

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

...

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

...

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

...

~ Mary Oliver

.

Thirst

...
Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have.  I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons.  Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell;  grant me, in your mercy, a little more time.  Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart.  Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
...
~ Mary Oliver


.

These roses under my window

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower, there is no more; in the leafless root, there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. 

...

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

.

i love you much(most beautiful darling)

i love you much(most beautiful darling)


more than anyone on the earth and i
like you better than everything in the sky


-sunlight and singing welcome your coming
although winter may be everywhere
with such a silence and such a darkness
noone can quite begin to guess

(except my life)the true time of year-

and if what calls itself a world should have
the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such
sunlight as will leap higher than high
through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each

nearness)everyone certainly would(my
most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love

~ e.e.cummings

A Moment of Happiness

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.

We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.

The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.

You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.

The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.

In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.

~ Rumi

The Dalliance of the Eagles

...
Skirting the river road, (my forenoon walk, my rest,)
Skyward in air a sudden muffled sound, the dalliance of the eagles,
The rushing amorous contact high in space together,
The clinching interlocking claws, a living, fierce, gyrating wheel,
Four beating wings, two beaks, a swirling mass tight grappling,
In tumbling turning clustering loops, straight downward falling,
Till o'er the river pois'd, the twain yet one, a moment's lull,
A motionless still balance in the air, then parting, talons loosing,
Upward again on slow-firm pinions slanting, their separate divorce flight,
She hers, he his, pursuing.
...
~ Walt Whitman


.

Archaic torso of Apollo

...
We have no idea what his fantastic head
was like, where the eyeballs were slowly swelling. But
his body now is glowing like a lamp
whose inner eyes, only turned down a little,
...
hold their flame, shine. If there weren't light, the curve
of the breast wouldn't blind you, and in the swerve
of the thighs a smile wouldn't keep on going
toward the place where the seeds are.
...
If there weren't light, this stone would look cut off
where it drops so clearly from the shoulders,
its skin wouldn't gleam like the fur of a wild animal,
...
and the body wouldn't send out light from every edge
as a star does...for there is no place at all
that isn't looking at you.  You must change your life.
...
~ Rainer Maria Rilke


.

Let the beauty we love be what we do

...
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.  Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument.
...
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
...
~ Rumi 


.

from Anam Cara

...

In your clay body, things are coming to expression and to light that were never known before, presences that never came to light or shape in any other individual.  To paraphrase Heidegger, who said, "Man is a shepherd of being,"   we could say, "Man is a shepherd of clay."  You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.  Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography but to the clay our of which you are formed.  At other times, you will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over a landscape.   This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.  It is a mistake to interfere with this movement of feeling.  It is more appropriate to recognize that this emotion belongs more to your clay than to your mind.  It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass; it is on its way elsewhere. Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient, sisters and brothers of the one clay.  In each of us a different part of the mystery becomes luminous.  To truly be and become yourself,  you need the ancient radiance of others.

...

~ John O'Donohue

.