Interior Portrait

You don't survive in me

because of memories;

nor are you mine because

of a lovely longing's strength.

What does make you present

is the ardent detour

that a slow tenderness

traces in my blood.

I do not need

to see you appear;

being born sufficed for me

to lose you a little less.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Losing too is still ours

Losing too is still ours; and even forgetting

still has a shape in the kingdom of transformation.

When something's let go of, it circles; and though we are

rarely the center

of the circle, it draws around us its unbroken, marvelous

curve.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

(For Hans Carossa)

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart

Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Look, how tiny down there,
look: the last village of words and, higher,
(but how tiny) still one last
farmhouse of feeling. Can you see it?

.
Exposed on the cliffs of the heart. Stoneground
under your hands. Even here, though,
something can bloom; on a silent cliff-edge
an unknowing plant blooms, singing, into the air.

.
But the one who knows? Ah, he began to know
and is quiet now, exposed on the cliffs of the heart.

While, with their full awareness,
many sure-footed mountain animals pass
or linger. And the great sheltered birds flies, slowly
circling, around the peak's pure denial. - But
without a shelter, here on the cliffs of the heart... 

.


~ Rainer Maria Rilke 

the lovers

See how in their veins all becomes spirit:

into each other they mature and grow.

Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,

round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow.

Thirsters, and they receive drink,

watchers, and see:they receive sight.

Let them into one another sink

so as to endure each other outright.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

But as all severall soules containe

Mixtures of things, they know not what,

Love, these mixt soules, doth mixe again,

And makes both one, each this and that.

 

~ John Donne from The Extasie
    painting by Oliver Hunter

  

though love be a day

 ...

.

(though love be a day

and life be nothing,

it shall not stop kissing)

~ e.e.cummings

...

show me your face

.

show me your face 
i crave
flowers and gardens
open your lips
i crave
the taste of honey
come out from
behind the clouds
i desire a sunny face
your voice echoed
saying "leave me alone"
i wish to hear your voice
again saying "leave me alone"
i swear this city without you
is a prison
i am dying to get out
to roam in deserts and mountains
i am tired of
flimsy friends and
submissive companions
i die to walk with the brave
am blue hearing
nagging voices and meek cries
i desire loud music
drunken parties and
wild dance
one hand holding
a cup of wine
one hand caressing your hair
then dancing in orbital circle
that is what i yearn for
i can sing better than any nightingale
but because of
this city's freaks
i seal my lips
while my heart weeps
yesterday the wisest man
holding a lit lantern
in daylight
was searching around town saying
i am tired of
all these beasts and brutes
i seek
a true human
we have all looked
for one but
no one could be found
they said
yes he replied
but my search is
for the one
who cannot be found

.

 ~ Rumi

Translated by Nader Khalili

)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is

)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is

more silent than more than much more is or
total sun oceaning than any this
tear jumping from each most least eye of star
.
and without was if minus and shall be
immeasurable happenless unnow
shuts more than open could that every tree
or than all life more death begins to grow
.
end's ending then these dolls of joy and grief
these recent memories of future dream
these perhaps who have lost their shadows if
which did not do the losing spectres mime
.
until out of merely not nothing comes
only one snowflake(and we speak our names

~ e.e.cummings

Larry Darrells' Awakening from 'The Razor's Edge"

"How grand the sight was that was displayed before me as the day broke in its splendour...I was ravished with the beauty of the world. I'd never known such exaltation and such a transcendent joy. I had a strange sensation, a tingling that arose in my feet and traveled up to my head, and I felt as though I were suddenly released from my body and as pure spirit partook of a loveliness I had never conceived. I had a sense that a knowledge more than human possessed me, so that everything that had been confused was clear and everything that had perplexed me was explained. I was so happy that it was pain and I struggled to release myself from it, for I felt that if it lasted a moment longer I should die; and yet it was such rapture that I was ready to die rather than forego it. How can I tell you what I felt? No words can tell the ecstasy of my bliss. When I came to myself I was exhausted and trembling"

~ Somerset Maugham

click the title for background information

face to face

The human face is the icon of creation.

Each person also has an inner face, which is always sensed but never seen. 

The heart is the inner face of your life. 

The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. 

It is here that love gathers within you. 

Love is absolutely vital for a human life. 

For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. 

In love, you grow and come home to your self. 

When you learn to love and to let yourself be loved, 

you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. 

A world lies hidden behind each human face. When you look at some faces, you can see the turbulence of the infinite beginning to gather to the surface. Suddenly...their gaze becomes the vehicle of some primal inner presence. The human face carries mystery and is the exposure point of the mystery of the individual life. It is where the private inner world of a person protrudes into the anonymous world. Your face is the icon of your life. In the human face, a life looks out at the world and also looks in on itself. When a persons life has been bleak, much of its negativity can remain unhealed...the bleakness lodges in the face ... instead of being a warm presence, has hardened into a mask. Yet one also encounters the opposite, namely, the beautiful presence of an old face deeply lined ...that has retained a lovely innocence.

.

~ John O'Donohue

a sadness fell upon me

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me,

and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet

trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.

That vague sweetness made my heart ache with

longing and it seemed to me that it was the eager 

breath of the summer seeking for its completion.

I knew not then that it was so near, that it was 

mine, and that this perfect sweetness had 

blossomed in the depth of my own heart.

~ Gitanjali

translated from original Bengali by Tagore

from the Tao Te Ching

Nothing in the world,
Is as yielding and receptive as water;
Yet in attacking the firm and inflexible,
Nothing triumphs so well.
Because of what it is not, 
This becomes easy.
The receptive triumphs over the inflexible;
The yielding triumphs over the rigid.
.
-Lao Tzu

On the Road Home

It was when I said,

"There is no such thing as the truth,"

That the grapes seemed fatter.

The fox ran out of his hole.

You...You said,

"There are many truths,

But they are not parts of a truth."

Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.

We were two figures in a wood.

We said we stood alone.

It was when I said.

"Words are not forms of a single word.

In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.

The world must be measured by the eye";

It was when you said,

"The idols have seen lots of poverty,

Snakes and gold and lice,

But not the truth";

It was at that time, that the silence was largest

And longest, the night was roundest,

The fragrance of the autumn warmest,

Closest and strongest.

~ Wallace Stevens

The Snow Man

.

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

.

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

.

Of the January sun ; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

.

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

.

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

.

~ Wallace Stevens

Animals

.

At dawn a knot of sea-lions lies off the shore
In the slow swell between the rock and the cliff,
Sharp flippers lifted, or great-eyed heads, as they roll in the sea,
Bigger than draft-horses, and barking like dogs
Their all-night song. It makes me wonder a little
That life near kin to human, intelligent, hot-blooded, idle and 
     singing, can float at ease
In the ice-cold midwinter water. Then, yellow dawn
Colors the south, I think about the rapid and furious lives
     in the sun :
They have little to do with ours; they have nothing to do with
     oxygen and salted water ; they would look monstrous
If we could see them : the beautiful passionate bodies of living
    flame, batlike flapping and screaming,
Tortured with burning lust and acute awareness, that ride the
     storm-tides
Of the great fire-globe. They are animals, as we are. There are
     many other chemistries of animal life
Besides the slow oxidation of carbohydrates and amino-acids.
.
~ Robinson Jeffers