Men ask the way through the clouds

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Men ask the way through the clouds,
The cloud way’s dark, without a sign.
High summits are of naked rock.
In deep valleys sun never shines.
Behind you green peaks, and in front,
To east the white clouds, and to west –
Want to know where the cloud way lies?
It’s there, in the centre of the Void!
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~ Han-Shan


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the closing passage from 'Beyond Good and Evil'

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Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! 
Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, 
so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze
 and laugh--and now? You have already doffed your novelty,
 and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, 
so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, 
so tedious! And was it ever otherwise?

What then do we write and paint, 
we mandarins with Chinese brush,
 we immortalisers of things 
which lend themselves to writing, 
what are we alone capable of painting? 

Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour!
 Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments!
 Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves
 be captured with the hand--with our hand! 

We immortalise what cannot live and fly much longer,
 things only which are exhausted and mellow!
 And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and painted thoughts,
 for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, 
many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;
-- but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning,
 you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, 
you, my old, beloved-- evil thoughts!




~ Friedrich Nietzsche

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Clambering up the Cold Mountain path

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Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?

~ Han Shan

The Country of Marriage

 I.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

II.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

III.

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

IV.

How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.

V.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen time and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

VI.

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

VII.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.

~ Wendell Berry

The Wheel - for Robert Penn Warren

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At the first strokes of the fiddle bow

the dancers rise from their seats.

The dance begins to shape itself

in the crowd, as couples join,

and couples join couples, their movement

together lightening thier feet.

They move in the ancient circle

of the dance.  The dance and the song

call each other into being.  Soon

they are one-rapt in single

rapture, so that even the night

has its clarity, and time

is the wheel that brings it round.

In this rapture the dead return.

Sorrow is gone from them.

They are light. They step

into the steps of the living

and turn with them in the dance

in the sweet enclosure

of the song, and timeless

is the wheel that brings it round.

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~ Wendell Berry

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enough. these few words are enough.

Enough. These few words are enough.

If not these words, this breath.

If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

Until now


~ David Whyte

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The whole world is you

yet you keep thinking there is something else.

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~ Hsueh-Feng

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from The Wind among the Reeds

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Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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~ WB Yeats

inspired by Maud Gonne 

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you can read their address by the moon ...

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The Sisters Of Mercy were actually two young women that I met during a snow storm in Edmonton, Alberta. And they came to my hotel room and there was something oh, very agreeable about their company. And they had no place to stay and they fell asleep on my bed, and I stayed up and I remember there was a full moon. And I felt like having something to say to them when they woke up, and that was one of those rare and graceful occasions when I was able to write a song from beginning to end in the space of a few hours. And while they slept I worked on this song. And when they woke up I sang it to them. It was completely full and finished, and they liked it. Barbara and Lorraine were their names.
.
~ Leonard Cohen, from Diamonds in the Lines


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even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments

.

And even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments and its little flowers of happiness between sand and stone. So it was then with the Steppenwolf too. It cannot be denied that he was generally very unhappy; and he could make others unhappy also, that is, when he loved them or they him. For all who got to love him saw always only the one side of him. Many loved him as a refined and clever and interesting man, and were horrified and disappointed when they had come upon the wolf in him. And they had to because Harry wished, as every sentient being does, to be loved as a whole and therefore it was just with those whose love he most valued that he could least of all conceal and belie the wolf. There were those, however, who loved precisely the wolf in him, the free, the savage, the untamable, the dangerous and strong, and these found it peculiarly disappointing and deplorable when suddenly the wild and wicked wolf was also a man, and had hankerings after goodness and refinement, and wanted to hear Mozart, to read poetry and to cherish human ideals. Usually these were the most disappointed and angry of all; and so it was that the Steppenwolf brought his own dual and divided nature into the destinies of others besides himself whenever he came into contact with them.
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~ Hermann Hesse 

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Nevermore

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Memory, memory, what do you want of me? Autumn
makes the thrush fly through colourless air,
and the sun casts a monotonous glare
on the yellowing woods where the north winds hum.
.
We were alone, and walking in dream,
she and I, hair and thoughts wind-blown.
Suddenly, turning her troubling gaze on me,
‘Your loveliest day?’ her voice of living gold,
.
her voice, with its fresh angelic tone, vibrant and sweet.
I gave her my answer, a smile so discreet,
and kissed her white hand with devotion.
.
- Ah! The first flowers, what a fragrance they have!
And how charming the murmured emotion
of that first ‘yes’ from lips that we love!
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~ Paul Verlaine


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That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that can still ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.

~ Leonard Cohen

On the Theory of the Big Bang as the Origin of the Universe

I.

What banged?

II.

Before banging

how did it get there?

III.

When it got there

where was it?

~ Wendel Berry

from 'The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci'

.

I cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various inventions. And this is, when you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well drawn forms. And these appear on such walls confusedly, like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine.
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~ translated by Jean Paul Richter

"oh please, oh please come out and play."

We have not come here to take prisoners

But to surrender ever more deeply
to freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
to hold ourselves hostage from love. Run, my dear,
from anything that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings,

Run like hell, my dear,
from anyone likely to put a sharp knife
into the sacred, tender vision
of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
those aspects of obedience
that stand outside of our house
and shout to our reason
"oh please, oh please
come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners,
or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply
our divine courage, freedom,
and Light!

~ Hafiz