For Ruth

There's a graceful way of doing things. Birch branches

Curve slightly upward; or the wind brings a few

snowflakes down, and then joins the night;

Or you leave me a sprig of chervil and no more.

Each morning we have this new chance.  We can walk

A few steps behind the others down the mountain;

We can enter a conversation as if we were blessed,

Not insisting on our old way of gaining pity.

There's a way you have of knowing what another

May need ahead of time, before the party

Begins, as smoke sometimes disappears

Downward among branches.  And I've learned

From you this new way of letting a poem be.

Robert Bly

from Morning Poems

detachment from the world

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Confusion arises because certain spiritual teachings say that detachment from the world is necessary for enlightenment.  The concept of detachment can be confused with release from pain, a way of numbing so that you don't have to experience the pains of life.  If you are not willing to fully experience the pains of love, the pains of the heart breaking open, then you close your heart in the name of comfort and control, even in the name of enlightenment.

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Give up every idea of detachment, and experience your detachment fully.  Experience the pain and the beauty of attachment, and the grief as what you are attached to is ripped away.  Then you will recognize what can never be detached, what is not some stoic, unfeeling, unemotional, inhuman existence, but what is freely and consciously all of it.

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~ Gangaji

from: the Diamond in your Pocket

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One of the Butterflies

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The trouble with pleasure is the timing

it can overtake me without warning

and be gone before I know it is here

it can stand facing me unrecognized

while I am remembering somewhere else

in another age or someone not seen

for years and never to be seen again

in this world and it seems that I cherish

only now a joy I was not aware of

when it was here although it remains

out of reach and will not be caught or named

or called back and if I could make it stay

as I want to it would turn into pain

.

W.S. Merwin

from: The Shadow of Sirius

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Falling

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Long before daybreak

none of the birds awake

rain comes down with the sound

of a huge wind rushing

through the valley trees

it comes down around us

all at the same time

and beyond it there is nothing

it falls without hearing itself

without knowing

there is anyone here

without seeing where it is

or where it is going

like a moment of great 

happiness of our own

that we cannot remember

coasting with the lights off

.

W.S. Merwin

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a momentary creed

I believe in the ordinary day

that is here at this moment and is me

I do not see it going its own way

but I never saw how it came to me

It extends beyond whatever I may

think I know and all that is real to me

it is the present that it bears away

where has it gone when it has gone from me

there is no place I know outside today

except for the unknown all around me

the only presence that appears to stay 

everything that I call mine it lent me

even the way that I believe the day

for as long as it is here and is me

~ W.S. Merwin

from:  The Shadow of Sirius

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That sounds wonderful

.

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Good poetry

Makes a beautiful naked woman

Materialize from

Words,

.

Who then says,

With a sword precariously waving

In her hands,

.

"If you look at my loins

I will cut off your head,

.

And reach down and grab your spirit

By its private parts,

.

And carry you off to heaven

Squealing in joy."

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Hafiz says,

"That sounds wonderful, just

Wonderful.

.

Someone please - start writing

Some great

Lines."

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- Hafiz

from: The subject tonight is love

- versions by Daniel Ladinsky

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what the bird with the human head knew

I went to the bird

with the human head,

and asked,

Please Sir,

where is God?

God is too busy

to be here on earth,

His angels are like one thousand geese assembled

and always flapping.

But I can tell you where the well of God is.

Is it on earth?

I asked.

He replied,

Yes. It was dragged down

from paradise by one of the geese.

I walked many days,

past witches that eat grandmothers knitting booties

as if they were collecting a debt.

Then, in the middle of the desert

I found the well,

it bubbled up and down like a litter of cats

and there was water,

and I drank,

and there was water,

and I drank.

Then the well spoke to me.

It said: Abundance is scooped from abundance,

yet abundance remains.

Then I knew.

~ Anne Sexton

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(Few established poets nowadays have a background as non-spectacular as that of Anne Sexton (1928-1974), a mediocre student who neither went to college nor formally studied literature. For a time she worked as a fashion model. Emotional, impetuous, she even eloped at the age of 19.

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Anne Sexton began falling to pieces in her early 20’s after the births of her two daughters. Her psychiatrist recommended writing poetry as a form of therapy; she took to the typewriter at the age of 26 and never looked back.)

(Biography from: http://katebenedict.com/lectio/sexton.html)

what's that

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Before it came inside

I had watched it from my kitchen window,

watched it swell like a new balloon,

watched it slump and then divide,

like something I know I know —

a broken pear or two halves of the moon,

or round white plates floating nowhere

or fat hands waving in the summer air

until they fold together like a fist or a knee.

After that it came to my door. Now it lives here.

And of course: it is a soft sound, soft as a seal’s ear,

that was caught between a shape and a shape and then returned to me.

 

 

You know how parents call

from sweet beaches anywhere, come in come in

and how you sank under water to put out

the sound, or how one of them touched in the hall

at night: the rustle and the skin

you couldn’t know, but heard, the stout

slap of tides and the dog snoring. It’s here

now, caught back from time in my adult year —

the image we did forget: the crackling shells on our feet

or the swing of the spoon in soup. It is as real

as splinters stuck in your ear. The noise we steal

is half a bell. And outside cars whisk by on the suburban street

 

 

and are there and are true.

What else is this, this intricate shape of air?

calling me, calling you.

 

 

 

 

~ Anne Sexton

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The divine will

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The divine will

is a deep abyss

of which the present 

moment is the entrance.

If you plunge

into this abyss

you will find it

infinitely more vast

than your

desires.

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~ Jean Pierre de Caussade

(French Jesuit who in the 18th century coined the phrase

"the sacrament of the present moment."  

He said,

"It is necessary to disengage from all we feel and do

in order to walk with God in the duty of the present moment...")

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The Pentecost Castle (excerpt)

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I shall go down

to the lovers' well

and wash this wound

that will not heal

beloved soul

what shall you see

nothing at all

yet eye to eye

depths of non-being

perhaps too clear

my desire dying

as I desire

~ Geoffrey Hill

You who want

.

.

You who want

knowledge,

seek the Oneness

within

.

There you

will find

the clear mirror

already waiting

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~ Hadewijch II
art by Picasso

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Tighten

.

 

 

Tighten

to nothing

the circle

that is

the world's things.

 

Then the Naked

circle

can grow wide,

enlarging,

embracing all

 

 

 

 

~ Hadewijch II

 

 

 

stretching out toward God

When you go apart to be alone for prayer, put from your mind 
everything you have been doing or plan to do.  
Reject all thoughts, be they good or be they evil.  
Do not pray with words unless you are really drawn to this; 
or if you do pray with words, pay no attention to whether they are many or few.  
Do not weigh them or their meaning. 
 Do not be concerned about what kind of prayers you use, 
for it is unimportant whether or not they are official liturgical prayers, 
psalms, hymns, or anthems; whether they are for particular or general intentions; 
or  whether you formulate them interiorly, by thoughts, 
or express them aloud, in words.  
See that nothing remains in your conscious mind 
save a naked intent stretching out toward God.

from chapter 1 of The Book of Privy Counseling

by an anonymous fourteenth-century English author

The Fall

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There is no where in you a paradise that is no place and there

You do not enter except without a story.

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To enter there is to become unnameable.

...

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist

except unborn:

No disguise will avail him anything

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Such a one is neither lost nor found.

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But he who has an address is lost.

...

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?

Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

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They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn

flower of nothing:

This is the paradise tree.  It must remain unseen until words

end and arguments are silent.

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~ Thomas Merton

(excerpt from The Fall)

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Are you looking for me?

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Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. 

My shoulder is against yours.

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You will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, 

nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:

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not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding

around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.

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When you really look for me, you will see me.

instantly -- you will find me in the tiniest house of time.

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Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?

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He is the breath inside the breath.

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~ Kabir

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