What the Heart Wants

See then

what the heart wants,

that pliable iron

sprung to the poppy's redness,

the honey's gold, winged

as the heron-lit water is:

by reflecting.

As an aged elephant answers

the slightest, first gesture of hand,

it puts itself at the mercy --

utterly docile, the forces

that brought it there vanished,

fold into fold.

And the old-ice ivory, the unstartlable

black of the eye that has traveled so far

with the fringed, peripheral howdah

swaying behind, look mildly back

as it swings the whole bulk of the body

close to the ground. Over and over

it does this, bends to what asks.

Whatever asks, heart kneels and offers to bear.

~ Jane Hirshfield

(The October Palace)

The birds don't alter space

.

.

The birds don't alter space.

They reveal it. The sky

never fills with any

leftover flying. They leave

nothing to trace. It is our own

astonishment collects

in chill air. Be glad.

They equal their due

moment never begging,

and enter ours

without parting day. See

how three birds in a winter tree

make the tree barer.

Two fly away, and new rooms

open in December.

Give up what you guessed

about a whirring heart, the little

beaks and claws, their constant hunger.

We're the nervous ones.

If even one of our violent number

could be gentle

long enough that one of them

found it safe inside

our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,

who wouldn't hear

what singing completes us?

.

~ Li-Young Lee

(from:  Book of My Nights)

The Book of Time (excerpt)

.

.

I rose this morning early as usual, and went to my desk.

But it's spring,

and the thrush is in the woods,

somewhere in the twirled branches, and he is singing.

And so, now, I am standing by the open door.

And now I am stepping down into the grass.

I am touching a few leaves.

I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies

move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field.

And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening

is the real work.

Maybe the world, without us,

is the real poem.

.

~ Mary Oliver

(from: The Leaf and the Cloud)

.

The Wish to Be Generous

.

.

All that I serve will die, all my delights,

the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,

the silent lilies standing in the woods,

the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all

will burn in man's evil, or dwindle

in its own age. Let the world bring on me

the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know

my little light taken from me into the seed

of the beginning and the end, so I may bow

to mystery, and take my stand on the earth

like a tree in a field, passing without haste

or regret toward what will be, my life

a patient willing descent into the grass.

.

~ Wendell Berry

.

(The Collected Poems, 1957-1982)

.

for the shop

He wrapped them up carefully, neatly,
in expensive green silk.
Roses of rubies, lilies of pearl,
violets of amethyst: according to his taste, his will,
his vision of their beauty - not as he saw them in nature
or studied them. He'll heave them in the safe,
examples of his bold, his skillful work.
Whenever a customer comes into the shop,
he brings out other things to sell - first class ornaments:
bracelets, chains, necklaces, rings.





~ Constantine Cavafy
(translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

hIdden things

.

From all I did and all I said
let no one try to find out who I was.
An obstacle was there distorting
the actions and the manner of my life.
An obstacle was often there
to stop me when I'd begin to speak.
From my most unnoticed actions,
my most veiled writing -
from these alone will I be understood.
But maybe it isn't worth so much concern,
so much effort to discover who I really am.
Later, in a more perfect society,
someone else made just like me
is certain to appear and act freely.






~ Constantine Cavafy
(translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
Cavafy's Painting by Karavia

.

Anyone who has probed the inner life

.

Anyone who has probed the inner life, 

who has sat in silence long enough to experience 

the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise,

is faced with a mystery. 

Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, 

there exists at the center of human consciousness 

something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself,

a beauty without features. 

The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist - 

an outer world and the mystery of the inner world -

but that we are suspended between them, 

as a space in which both worlds meet . . . 

as if the human being is the meeting point, 

the threshold between two worlds.

~ Kabir Helmisnski, 

The Knowing Heart

Love the earth

.

Love the earth and sun and the animals,

despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,

stand up for the stupid and crazy,

devote your income and labor to others,

hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,

have patience and indulgence toward the people,

take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,

or to any man or number of men,

go freely with powerful uneducated persons,

and with the young, and with the mothers or families,

re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,

and dismiss whatever insults your own soul;

and your very flesh shall be a great poem....

.

~ Walt Whitman

(from the Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition)

.

Pocket of Fog

In the yard next door,

a pocket of fog like a small heard of bison

swallows azaleas, koi pond, the red-and-gold koi.

To be undivided must mean not knowing you are.

The fog grazes here, then there,

all morning browsing the shallows,

leaving no footprint between my fate and the mountain's.

~ Jane Hirshfield, 

(After)

photo by Kathleen Connally

only foam trails on the sea

.

.

Walker, your footsteps

are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

Walking you make the road,

and turning to look behind

you see the path you never

again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road,

only foam trails on the sea.

.

~ Antonio Machado

(Border of a Dream: Selected Poems, translated by Willis Barnstone)

.

climbs out of fate

.

You are the future, the immense morning sky

turning red over the prairies of eternity.

You are the rooster-crow after the night of time,

the dew, the early devotions, and the Daughter,

the Guest, the Ancient Mother, and Death.

.

You are the shape that changes its own shape,

that climbs out of fate, towering,

that which is never shouted for, and never mourned for,

and no more explored than a savage wood.

.

You are the meaning deepest inside things,

that never reveals the secret of its owner.

And how you look depends on where we are:

from a boat you are shore, from the shore a boat.

.

~  Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy
translation by Robert Bly

.

in cloudy speech

God speaks to each of us before we are,

Before he's formed us — then, in cloudy speech,

But only then, he speaks these words to each

And silently walks with us from the dark:

Driven by your senses, dare

To the edge of longing. Grow

Like a fire's shadowcasting glare

Behind assembled things, so you can spread

Their shapes on me as clothes.

Don't leave me bare.

Let it all happen to you: beauty and dread.

Simply go — no feeling is too much —

And only this way can we stay in touch.

Near here is the land

That they call Life.

You'll know when you arrive

By how real it is.

Give me your hand.

~  Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translation by Leonard Cottrell)

Evening

.

.

Slowly the evening puts on the garments

held for it by a rim of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands divide from you,

one going heavenward, one that falls;

.

and leave you, to neither quite belonging, 

not quite so dark as the house sunk in silence,

not quite so surely pledging the eternal

as that which grows star each night and climbs-

.

and leave you (inexpressibly to untangle)

your life afraid and huge and ripening,

so that it, now bound in and now embracing, 

grows alternately stone in you and star.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

(The Book of Images, translated by Edward Snow)

.

BECOMING HUMAN

.

Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about

“His great visions of God” he felt he was having.

.

He asked me for confirmation, saying,

“Are these wondrous dreams true?”

.

I replied, “How many goats do you have?”

.

He looked surprised and said,

“I am speaking of sublime visions

And you ask 

About goats!”

.

And I spoke again saying,

“Yes, brother – how many do you have?”

.

“Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.”

.

“And how many wives?”

Again he looked surprised, then said,

“Four.”

.

“How many rose bushes in your garden,

How many children,

Are your parents still alive,

Do you feed the birds in winter?”

.

And to all he answered.

.

Then I said,

“You asked me if I thought your visions were true,

I would say that they were if they make you become

More human,

.

More kind to every creature and plant

That you know."

.

~ Hafiz

(“The Gift” – translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

This is now

.

.

This is now. Now is,

all there is. Don't wait for Then;

strike the spark, light the fire.

.

Sit at the Beloved's table,

feast with gusto, drink your fill

.

then dance

the way branches

of jasmine and cypress

dance in a spring wind.

.

The green earth

is your cloth;

tailor your robe

with dignity and grace.

.

~ Rumi

.