for Japan

.

to the present visitors

Now we come to the famous classroom 

where every year a fortunate few

in the days of their youth study

autumn forgetting the numbers beforehand

as they have been doing since the words 

were all in Latin no cameras

allowed in here notice the slight breeze 

from the windows here among the trees

and the fragrance at the end of spring

notice the leaves outside the window frames

the new grass in the light of morning

notice the charts of colors on the walls

set in order and the moons in the calendars

the constellations the dark dials

the portraits of flowers still as the tables

here they study what is too far away

ever to grasp and too near to recognize

notice the leaves changing as we watch

then it will be summer and these studies

will be over and then it will be autumn

and most of them will be forgotten

notice the bell in place outside the door

and the dog lying near the foot of the stairs

waiting for a time that she remembers

~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

art by van gogh

stranger (excerpt)

.

Closer and clearer

Than any wordy master

Thou inward Stranger

Whom I have never seen,

Deeper and cleaner

Than the clamorous ocean,

Seize up my silence

Hold me in Thy Hand!

Now act is waste

And suffering undone

Laws become prodigals

Limits are torn down

For envy has no property

And passion is none.

Look, the vast Light stands still

Our cleanest Light is One!

.

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

art by picasso

get your living by loving

.

The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body - 

so that life be not a failure... 

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, 

as most appear to do, 

I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.  

I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.  

I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well.  

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.  

All great enterprises are self-supporting.  

The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, 

as a steam planing mill feeds its boiler with the shavings it makes.  

You must get your living by loving.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal, March 13, 1853

art by roderick maclver

the active life -

.

to the present tense

.

By the time you are

by the time you come to be

by the time you read this

by the time you are written

by the time you forget

by the time you are water through fingers

by the time you are taken for granted

by the time it hurts 

by the time it goes on hurting

by the time there are no words for you

by the time you remember

but without names

by the time you are in the papers

and on the telephone

passing unnoticed there too

who is it

to whom you come 

before whose very eyes

you are disappearing

without making yourself known

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from Present Company

respite

Day after quiet day passes.

I speak to no one besides the dog.

To her,

I murmur much I would not otherwise say.

We make plans

then break them on a moment's whim.

She agrees;

though sometimes bringing

to my attention a small blue ball.

Passing the fig tree

I see it is

 suddenly huge with green fruit,

which may ripen or not.

Near the gate,

I stop to watch

the sugar ants climb the top bar

and cross at the latch,

as they have now in summer for years.

In this way I study my life.

It is,

I think today,

like a dusty glass vase.

A little water, 

a few flowers would be good,

I think;

but do nothing. Love is far away.

Incomprehensible sunlight falls on my hand.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

where does the dance begin, where does it end?

.

.

Don't call the world adorable, or useful, that's not it.

It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.

The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.

The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white feet of the trees

whose mouths open.

Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?

Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe, until at last, now, the shine

in your own yard?

Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking

outward, to the mountains so solidly there

in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea

that was also there,

beautiful as a thumb

curved and touching the finger, tenderly,

little love-ring,

as he whirled,

oh jug of breath,

in the garden of dust?

.

~ Mary Oliver

from Why I wake Early

each separate fragment

.

Love all that has been created by God,

 both the whole and every grain of sand. 

Love every leaf and every ray of light. 

Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, 

love every separate fragment. 

If you love each separate fragment, 

you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God. 

~ Dostoyevsky

dog and bear

The air this morning,

blowing between fog and drizzle,

is like a white dog in the snow

who scents a white bear in the snow

who is not there.

Deeper than seeing,

deeper than hearing,

they stand and glare, one at the other.

So many listen lost, in every weather.

The mind has mountains,

Hopkins wrote, against his sadness.

The dog held the bear at bay, that day.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

photo by  Kathleen Connally

to be admired

.

They are to be admired those survivors

of solitude who have gone with no maps

into the room without feature,

where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,

no path of dance to a cold summit

to look back on and feel exuberant,

no clarity of territories yet untouched

that tremble near the human breath,

no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores

to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,

no friendship of other explorers

drawn into the dawn of the unknown.

No. They do not belong to the outside worship

of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior

space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,

where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human

and a poultice of silence pulls every sound

out of a circulation down into the ground,

where in the panic of being each breath unravels

an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,

shawls of though fall off, empty and lost,

where the only red scream of blood continues unheard

within anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring

is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere. 

~ John O'Donohue

from Echoes of Memory

clam

.

Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its

place in the universe is not found out. Like us, they

have a heart and a stomach; they know hunger, and

probably a little satisfaction too. Do not mock them

for their gentleness, they have a muscle that loves

being alive. They pull away from the light. They pull

down. They hold themselves together. They refuse to

open.

But sometimes they lose their place and are tumbled

shoreward in a storm. Then they pant, they fill

with sand, they have no choice but must open the

smallest crack. Then the fire of the world touches

them. Perhaps, on such days, they too begin the

terrible effort of thinking, of wondering who, and 

what, and why. If they can bury themselves again in 

the sand they will. If not, they are sure to perish,

though not quickly. They also have resources beyond 

the flesh; they also try very hard not to die.

~ Mary Oliver

from What Do We Know

with thanks to whiskeyriver

happy 70th bob, and thanks

.

born: May 24 1941

Duluth, Minnesota 

named Robert Allen Zimmerman

(Hebrew name Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham)

The truth was obscure, 

Too profound and too pure, 

To live it you had to explode

~ Bob Dylan

only one search

.

Lovers think they are looking for each other,

but there is only one search.

Wandering this world is wandering that,

both inside one transparent sky.

In here there is no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself,

not what he said or did about the future.

Forget the future. I would worship someone

who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not,

but if you can say, "There is nothing ahead,"

there will be nothing there.

Stretch your arms and take hold

the cloth of your clothes with both hands.

The cure for pain is in the pain.

Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,

you do not belong with us.

When someone gets lost, is not here,

he must be inside us. There is no place like that

anywhere in the world.

.

~ Rumi

 translated by Coleman Barks

art: self portrait by picasso

floor

.

The nails, once inset, rise to the surface—

or, more truly perhaps, over years

the boards sink down to meet what holds them.

Worn, yes, but not worn through:

the visible work reveals itself in iron,

to be pounded down again, for what we've declared

the beautiful to be.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield