losing a language

.

A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back

yet the old still remember something that they could say

.

but they know now that such things are no longer believed

and the young have fewer words

.

many of the things the words were about

no longer exist

.

the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree

the verb for I

.

the children will not repeat

the phrases their parents speak

.

somebody has persuaded them

that it is better to say everything differently

.

so that they can be admired somewhere

farther and farther away

.

where nothing that is here is known

we have little to say to each other

.

we are wrong and dark

in the eyes of the new owners

.

the radio is incomprehensible

the day is glass

.

when there is a voice at the door it is foreign

everywhere instead of a name there is a lie

.

nobody has seen it happening

nobody remembers

.

this is what the words were made

to prophesy

.

here are the extinct feathers

here is the rain we saw

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from Migration

.

all their actions have vanished

.

.

In an age when the Tao is followed,

no one rewards the talented

or pays special attention

to the lovely, the virtuous, or the wise.

Those who govern

are simply the highest branches

on the tree, and the people wander

in freedom, like deer in the woods.

They are honest but think nothing of it,

they naturally do what is right,

they are kind without any conception

of kindness, and are trustworthy

though they wouldn't know what that means.

They keep no records of their good deeds,

because good deeds are so common.

That is why all their actions

have vanished, without a trace.

.

~ Stephen Mitchell

from The Second Book of the Tao

photo by  Kathleen Connally

.

metempsychosis

Some stories last many centuries,

others only a moment.

All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,

grow distant and more beautiful with salt.

Yet even today, to look at a tree

and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.

There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.

Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,

ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.

Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket

gives off --

the immeasurable's continuous singing,

before it goes back into story and feeling.

In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.

Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.

I would like to join that stilted transmigration,

to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:

an ant-road, a highway for beetles.

I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.

To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,

and then keep walking, unimaginably further.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems


photo of the Socratea exorrhiza or walking palm
which can move itself up to about a meter per year

beauty and love

.

.

Look at something which you have seen which is actually marvelously beautiful: a statue, a poem, a lily in the pond, or a well-kept lawn. And when you see such a piece of beauty - no, no, when you see such, not piece - when you see such beauty what takes place? 

.

At that moment, the very majesty of a mountain makes you forget yourself. Right? Have you ever been in that position? When you have seen that you don't exist, only that grandeur exists. But a few seconds later or a minute later the whole cycle begins, the confusion, the chatter. 

.

So beauty is where you are not. Have you understood this? Do you understand, sir? Oh, what a crowd! The tragedy of it. Truth is where you are not. Beauty, love is where you are not. Because we are not capable to look at this extraordinary thing called truth.

.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from a talk in Bombay, January 31st 1982

thanks to J. Krishnamurti Online

.

the call away

.

A cold wind flows over the cornfields;

Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.

I want to be in that wild, be

Outdoors, live anywhere in the wind.

I settle down, with my back against

A shed wall where no one can find me.

I stare out at the box elder leaves

Moving in this mysterious water.

What is it that I want? Not money,

Not a large desk, a house with ten rooms.

This is what I want to do: To sit here,

Take no part, be called away by wind.

~ Robert Bly

from Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems

to a writer of reputation

... the man must remain obscure.

                                   ~ Cezanne

.

Having begun in public anonymity,

you did not count on this

literary sublimation by which

some body becomes a "name" -

as if you have died and have become

a part of mere geography.  Greet,

therefore, the roadsigns on the road.

.

Or perhaps you have become deaf and blind,

or merely inanimate, and may 

be studied without embarrassment

by the disinterested, the dispassionate,

and the merely curious,

not fearing to be overheard.

Hello to the grass, then, and to the trees.

.

Or perhaps you are secretly

still alert and moving, no longer the one

they have named, but another,

named by yourself,

carrying away this morning's showers

for your private delectation.

Hello, river.

.

~ Wendell Berry

from Given

.

to bring ourselves to birth

.

One of the lovely things about being a human is that we are called in each moment to bring ourselves to birth.

.

Part of the difficulty of our times is that we have reduced the magnificent adventure of being a human being to endless, wearisome projects of self-improvement and self-analysis according to the flattest and most boring maps that could be made

.

~ John O'Donohue

from Beauty the Invisible Embrace

.

under the day

.

To come back like autumn

to the moss on the stones 

after many seasons 

to recur as a face

backlit on the surface

of a dark pool one day

after the year has turned

from the summer it saw

while the first yellow leaves

stare from their forgetting

and the branches grow spare

.

is to waken backward

down through the still water

knowing without touching

all that was ever there

and has been forgotten 

and recognize without

name or understanding

without believing or

holding or direction

in the way that we see

at each moment the air.

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

.

the comet museum

.

.

So the feeling comes afterward

some of it may reach us only

long afterward when the moment 

itself is beyond reckoning

.

beyond time beyond memory 

as though it were not moving in 

heaven neither burning farther

through any past nor ever to 

arrive again in time to be 

when it has gone the senses wake

.

all through the day they wait for it

here are pictures that someone took

of what escaped us at the time

only now can we remember

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

.

the beauty of the heart

.

The beauty of the heart

is the lasting beauty:

its lips give to drink

of the water of life.

Truly it is the water,

that which pours,

and the one who drinks.

All three become one when

your talisman is shattered.

That oneness you can't know

by reasoning. 

.

~ Rumi

.

blending

.

Ryokan's Hut 

located at the present day Gogo-an temple in Niigate prefecture Japan

.

Blending with the wind, 

Snow falls; 

Blending with the snow, 

The wind blows. 

By the hearth 

I stretch out my legs, 

Idling my time away 

Confined in this hut. 

Counting the days, 

I find that February, too, 

Has come and gone 

Like a dream.

.

~ Ryokan

from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan

 translated by John Stevens




.

transparent

.

.

Like the little stream 

Making its way 

Through the mossy crevices 

I, too, quietly 

Turn clear and transparent.

.

~ Daigu Ryokan (1758-1831)

from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan

 translated by John Stevens

.

elsewhere

.

Elsewhere shows pictures as language

where no words exist.

Elsewhere describes vague places;

undefined and only to be discovered intuitively.

Visual moments elude clear descriptions.

Elsewhere touches edges of perception

and gives the suppressed attention.

.

Elsewhere is fleeing

away from here.

From finding without searching.

It needs the here

to be elsewhere.

At the place studying the unknown

far away, understanding home.

Longing as a companion.

.

Elsewhere unifies contradictions.

It overcomes inside and outside.

In the distance it is narrow.

.

Elsewhere is noise in the silence.

Shocks are dull and quiet.

Elsewhere raises questions

merely for the sake of the questions.

And causes contented comfort to be questionable.

.

Sometimes it is cold from the inside.

.

~   Mareile Mack

with thanks to Crashingly Beautiful

.

I

.

The shallow “I” of individualism can be possessed,

 developed, cultivated, pandered to, 

satisfied: it is the center of all our strivings for gain and satisfaction, 

whether material or spiritual.

.

But the deep “I” of the spirit, of solitude and of love, 

cannot be had, possessed, developed, perfected.

 It can only be, and act, 

according to the inner laws that are not of man’s contriving,

 but which come from God. . . .

.

It is beyond limitation. It is beyond selfish affirmation.

.

~ Thomas Merton

cease clinging and hankering

Many students come to see me from all over the place. 

Many of them are not free from their entanglement with objective things. 

I treat them right on the spot. 

If their trouble is due to grasping hands, I strike there.

 If their trouble is a loose mouth, I strike them there.

 If their trouble is hidden behind their eyes, it is there I strike. 

So far I have not found anyone who can set himself free.

 This is because they have all been caught up in the useless ways of the old masters. 

As for me, I do not have one only method which I give to everyone,

 but I relieve whatever the trouble is and set men free.

Friends, I tell you this: there is no Buddha, 

no spiritual path to follow,

 no training and no realization. 

What are you so feverishly running after? 

Putting a head on top of your own head, you blind idiots? 

Your head is right where it should be. 

The trouble lies in your not believing in yourselves enough. 

Because you don't believe in yourselves 

you are knocked here and there by all the conditions in which you find yourselves. 

Being enslaved and turned around by objective situations,

 you have no freedom whatever, you are not masters of yourselves. 

Stop turning to the outside and don't be attached to my words either. 

Just cease clinging to the past and hankering after the future. 

This will be better than ten years' pilgrimage..

~ Master Lin Chi Yi-Sen