birds nest

.

Birds nest in my arms,

on my shoulders, behind my knees,

between my breasts there are quails,

they must think I'm a tree.

The swans think I'm a fountain,

they all come down and drink when I talk.

When sheep pass, they pass over me,

and perched on my fingers, the sparrows eat,

the ants think I'm earth,

and men think I'm nothing.

~ Gloria Fuertes

translated by Philip Levine

sketch by van gogh

the holy longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,

because the massman will mock it right away.

I  praise what is truly alive,

what longs to flame to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights

where you were begotten,  where you have begotten,

a strange feeling comes over you

when you see the silent candle burning..

Now you are no longer caught

in the obsession with darkness,

and a desire for higher love-making

sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,

now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light

you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced

this: to die and so to grow,

you are only a troubled guest

on the dark earth.

~ Goethe
translation by Robert Bly
art by van gogh

.

names

.

You should try to hear the name the Holy One has for things.

There is something in the phrase: "The Holy One taught him names."

We name everything according to the number of legs it has;

The holy one names it according to what is inside.

Moses waved his stick; he thought it was a "rod."

But inside its name was "dragonish snake."

We thought the name of Umar meant: "agitator against priests;"

But in eternity his name is "the one who believes."

No one knows our name until our last breath goes out.

~ Rumi

version by Robert Bly

the teaching

Enlightenment absorbs this universe of qualities.

When that merging occurs, there is nothing

but God. This is the only doctrine. 

There is no word for it, no mind

to understand it with, no categories

of transcendence or non-transcendence,

no vow of silence, no mystical attitude. 

There is no Shiva and no Shakti

in enlightenment, and if there is something

that remains, that whatever-it-is

is the only teaching. 

~ Lalla

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