across the swamp

.

It is the roots from all the trees that have died

out here, that's how you can walk

safely over the soft places.

Roots like these keep their firmness, it's possible

they've lain here centuries.

And there is still some dark remains

of them under the moss.

They are still in the world and hold

you up so you can make it over.

And when you push out into the mountain lake, high

up, you feel how the memory

of that cold person

who drowned himself here once

helps hold up your frail boat.

He, really crazy, trusted his life

to water and eternity.

~ Olav H. Hauge

translated by Robert Bly

photo by Jay Sturdevant

knowing nothing

.

Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates;

the new love opens them.

The sound of the gates opening wakes the beautiful woman asleep.

Kabir says:   Fantastic!  Don't let a chance like this go by!

~ Kabir

version by Robert Bly

the threshers

.

There's no use whining over lost worlds.

The old chicken never picks up the last grains,

And the threshers usually go home when night comes.

Have we thanked the sun for shining so well?

Have we blessed the clouds for their thoughtfulness?

Have we thanked the rain that falls on the fields?

It would be good to go back a hundred years,

And recite some of Wordsworth's sonnets to him.

But it's probable best to let him go on walking.

Let's just agree we're on our own now,

And that we have to wash our own pajamas,

And figure out some way to get home.

We can still tell stories about the Dillinger boys,

And we can still buy balloons for our children,

But it will be hard to make up The Book of Hours.

We know that most lost fathers never return,

And the clocks run only one way,

And the threshers always go home when night comes.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

art by van gogh

these also once under moonlight

.

A snake

with two small hind-limbs

and pelvic girdle.

Large-headed dinosaurs

hunting in packs like dogs.

Others whose scaly plates

thistle to feathers.

Mammals sleekening, ottering,

simplified

back toward the waters.

Ours, too, a transitional species,

chimerical, passing,

what is later, always, called monstrous -

no longer one thing, not yet another.

Fossils greeting fossils,

fearful, hopeful.

Walking, sleeping, waking, wanting to live.

Nuzzling our young wildly, as they did.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

vinegar and oil

.

Wrong solitude vinegars the soul,

right solitude oils it.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.

Coming and going unfinished,

puzzled by fate,

like the half-carved relief

of a fallen donkey, above a church door in Finland.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

the grownup

.

All this stood upon her and was the world

and stood upon her with all its fear and grace

as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless

yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,

and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

And she endured it all: bore up under

the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,

the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,

serenely as a woman carrying water

moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play,

transfiguring and preparing for the future,

the first white veil descended, gliding softly

over her opened face, almost opaque there,

never to be lifted off again, and somehow

giving to all her questions just one answer:

In you, who were a child once — in you.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

lying in the grass

.

Is this everything now, the quick delusions of flowers,

And the down colors of the bright summer meadow,

The soft blue spread of heaven, the bees’ song,

Is this everything only a god’s

Groaning dream,

The cry of unconscious powers for deliverance?

The distant line of the mountain,

That beautifully and courageously rests in the blue,

Is this too only a convulsion,

Only the wild strain of fermenting nature,

Only grief, only agony, only meaningless fumbling,

Never resting, never a blessed movement?

No! Leave me alone, you impure dream

Of the world in suffering!

The dance of tiny insects cradles you in an evening radiance,

The bird’s cry cradles you,

A breath of wind cools my forehead

With consolation.

Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!

Let it all be pain.

Let it all be suffering, let it be wretched-

But not this one sweet hour in the summer,

And not the fragrance of the red clover,

And not the deep tender pleasure

In my soul.

~ Hermann Hesse

art by camille pissarro

this side

.

There is light. We neither see or touch it.

In its empty clarities rests

what we touch and see.

I see with my fingertips

what my eyes touch:

shadows, the world.

With shadows I draw worlds,

I scatter worlds with shadows.

I hear the light beat on the other side.

~  Octavio Paz

from  Selected Poems

translated by Eliot Weinberger

art by van gogh

attaining harmony

.

The best warriors

do not use violence.

The best generals

do not destroy indiscriminately.

The best tacticians

try to avoid confrontation.

The best leaders

become servants of their people.

This is called the virtue of non-competition.

This is called the power to manage others.

This is called attaining harmony with the heavens.

~ Tao Teh Ching

translation by j.h. mcdonald

far company

.

At times now from some margin of the day 

I can hear birds of another country

not the whole song but a brief phrase of it

out of a music that I may have heard

once in a moment I appear to have 

forgotten for the most part that full day

no sight of which I can remember now

though it must have been where my eyes were then

that knew it as the present while I thought

of somewhere else without noticing that 

singing when it was there and still went on 

whether or not I noticed now it falls

silent when I listen and leaves the day

and flies before it to be heard again

somewhere ahead when I have forgotten

~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

art by van gogh

always traveling

.

In one sense we are always traveling, 

and traveling as if we did not know where we were going. 

 In another sense we have already arrived. 

 We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, 

and that is why we are traveling and in darkness. 

 But we already possess Him by grace, 

and therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and 

are dwelling in the light. 

 But oh! How far have I to go to find You

 in Whom I have already arrived!

~ Thomas Merton

from The Seven Storey Mountain

art by van gogh

the door I made

.

Outside the door I made but don't close

I glimpse the movements of unfamiliar birds

a handful of jade is worth a whole mountain

but gold can't buy a lifetime of freedom

the sound of icy falls on a dawnlit snowy ridge

the sight of distant peaks through leafless autumn woods

mist lifts from ancient cedars and days last forever

right and wrong don't get past the clouds

~ Stonehouse

from The Zen Works of Stonehouse

translated by Red Pine

kneeling

.

Moments of great calm, 

Kneeling before an altar 

Of wood in a stone church 

In summer, waiting for the God 

To speak; the air a staircase 

For silence; the sun's light 

Ringing me, as though I acted 

A great role. And the audiences 

Still; all that close throng 

Of spirits waiting, as I, 

For the message. 

Prompt me, God; 

But not yet. When I speak, 

Though it be you who speaks 

Through me, something is lost. 

The meaning is in the waiting. 

~ R. S. Thomas

with thanks to whiskey river

the beauty

If any part of nature excites our pity, it is for ourselves we grieve, 
for there is eternal health and beauty.  
We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world.  
Standing at the right angle, we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice.  
From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow.  
Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions.  
They are the rule and character.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal, 1856

art by Roderick Maclver

paths which the mind travels

.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.  

Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, 

and could not spare any more time for that one.  

It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, 

and make a beaten track for ourselves.  I had not lived there a week

 before my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside; 

and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct... 

 

The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; 

and so with the paths which the mind travels.  How worn and dusty, 

then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts 

of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage,

 but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, 

for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. 

 I do not wish to go below now.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from the last chapter of Walden

art by van gogh