many-roofed building in moonlight

I found myself

suddenly voluminous,

three-dimensioned, 

a many-roofed building in moonlight.

Thought traversed 

me as simply as moths might. 

Feelings traversed me as fish.

I heard myself thinking,

It isn't the piano, it isn't the ears.

Then heard, too soon, the ordinary furnace, 

the usual footsteps above me.

Washed my face again with hot water,

as I did when I was a child.

~ Jane Hirshfield

poetry, mythology and fairy stories

the task

It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.

We wake into it daily -- open eyes, braid hair --

a robe unfurled

in rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.

And yes, it is a simple enough task

we've taken on,

though also vast:

from dusk to dawn,

from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not

be blinded by the praising.

To lie like a cat in hot

sun, fur fully blazing,

and dream the mouse;

and to keep too the mouse's patient, waking watch

within the deep rooms of the house,

where the leaf-flocked

sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The October Palace

thanks to Ivan at poetry chaikhana

the box of chocolates

He always knew where he had been, and he remembered

The box elder in the fence post, looked down on men

Who couldn't see the storm coming.  He's learned

To live with the way his bait went deeper.

My mother kept her spirits high with little jobs.

He bought her a heart-shaped box of chocolates

Once a year. One life, one woman,

That was God's rule, and he didn't like it much.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the ear of a Donkey

photo by Shreve Stockton

no resistance

That which offers no resistance,

overcomes the hardest substances.

That which offers no resistance

can enter where there is no space.

Few in the world can comprehend

the teaching without words,

or understand the value of non-action.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h. mcdonald

the end and the beginning

After every war

someone has to clean up.

Things won’t

straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble

to the side of the road,

so the corpse-filled wagons

can pass.

Someone has to get mired

in scum and ashes,

sofa springs,

splintered glass,

and bloody rags.

Someone has to drag in a girder

to prop up a wall.

Someone has to glaze a window,

rehang a door.

Photogenic it’s not,

and takes years.

All the cameras have left

for another war.

We’ll need the bridges back,

and new railway stations.

Sleeves will go ragged

from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand, 

still recalls the way it was.

Someone else listens

and nods with unsevered head.

But already there are those nearby

starting to mill about

who will find it dull.

From out of the bushes

sometimes someone still unearths

rusted-out arguments

and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew

what was going on here

must make way for

those who know little.

And less than little.

And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass that has overgrown

causes and effects,

someone must be stretched out

blade of grass in his mouth

gazing at the clouds.

~ Wisława Szymborska

Translated By Joanna Trzeciak

the eel in the cave

Our veins are open to shadow, and our fingertips

Porous to murder. It's only the inattention

Of the prosecutors that lets us go to lunch.

Reading my old letters I notice a secret will.

It's as if another person had planned my life.

Even in the dark, someone is hitching the horses.

That doesn't mean I have done things well.

I have found so many ways to disgrace

Myself, and throw a dark cloth over my head.

Why is it our fault if we fall into desire?

The eel poking his head from his undersea cave

Entices the tiny soul falling out of Heaven.

So many invisible angels work to keep

Us from drowning; so many hands reach

Down to pull the swimmer from the water.

Even though the District Attorney keeps me

Well in mind, grace allows me sometimes

To slip into the Alhambra by night.

~ Robert Bly

from The Night Abraham Called to the Stars: Poems

a dream

Once there was a poor and generous old man from Ballaghaderreen who has a dream.  In it he is told to make a journey at the end of which he will find a pot of gold.  In this case the old man has to leave Balla and travel a good way to Dublin and there, when he crosses one of the bridges over the River Liffy, he will find a pub, and there he will find his treasure.  The old man follows the dream map and when he sees the pub that was in his dream he looks around but there's no place he can dig for a hidden treasure,

so he stands beside the door and waits.  He waits all day and at nightfall the publican comes out and asks,

What are you standing here for all day long?

I had a dream that told me to come here.

A dream?  I think you must be a daft old man to follow dreams.  I, myself, had a dream a month ago and it told me to go to some poor old sod's cottage on the crossroads from French Park to Ballaghaderreen and if I did, I would find a pot of gold in his front yard.  Do you think I would go traipsing all over the countryside because of a dream?  It's cold.  You should go home.

Indeed I should and will, said the old man.

And when he got home he dug in his front yard and found the treasure and wasn't he himself and all the others the better for it.  And if he hasn't given it all away we might share a bit with them.

~ Irish Folk Tale
summarized here by Gioia Timpanelli
photo above by erin at photographs from a white space

Gioia Timpanelli

water lily

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so

will deprive me, for it is infinite.

The ripple of water, the shade of the sky

are mine; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,

I never close myself with refusal-

in the rhythm of my daily soul

I do not desire-I am moved;

by being moved I exert my empire,

making the dreams of night real:

into my body at the bottom of the water

I attract the beyonds of mirrors... 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translated by A. Poulin, Jr. 

from The Complete French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke

art by monet

in a time of losses

We don't want to alarm the heron who's

Guarding the cranberry bog from frost.

But so many hares have been eaten by weasels;

The losses go on night after night.

Foxes slip through the bushes at dusk.

So much we care for has been carried off.

The airs and ars we hear in this poem

Belong to the hare who cries out in the night.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the ear of a Donkey

be still and still moving into another intensity

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living. Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only

But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,

A time for the evening under lamplight

(The evening with the photograph album).

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

~ T.S. Eliot

from The Four Quartets, No. 2, East Coker

art by van gogh

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, 

Asleep on the black trunk,

Blowing like a leaf in green shadow. 

Down the ravine behind the empty house, 

The cowbells follow one another 

Into the distances of the afternoon. 

To my right,

In a field of sunlight between two pines, 

The droppings of last year’s horses 

Blaze up into golden stones.

I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. 

A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.

I have wasted my life.

~  James Wright

from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose

a blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness 

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs. 

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness. 

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me 

And nuzzled my left hand. 

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

~ James Wright

 from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose

the bridegroom

The bridegroom wanted to reach the Norwegian Church.

But the roads were made impassable by huge snows.

We are each the bridegroom longing for existence.

Marriage brings the moth close to the candle flame.

With their frail wings, men and women

Are constantly flying into the fire of existence.

Some say that each drop of ground water in Kansas

Knows about the ocean. How can this be?

Every drop of water longs like us for existence.

Abu Said fasted in the desert for twenty years.

Later when he came back, his dragon friend

Wept. "Your suffering gave me a hint of existence."

When the pianist's fingers strike all the notes

In the Tenth Prelude, it's clear Bach's soul has been

Leaping about like a hare in the field of existence.

Robert, you're close to joy but not quite there.

You are a hunchback standing in an Italian

Square, looking in at the festival of existence.

~ Robert Bly

from My Sentence Was A Thousand Years of Joy

april and silence

.

Spring lies abandoned

A ditch the color of dark violet

moves alongside me

giving no images back.

The only thing that shines

are some yellow flowers.

I am carried inside

my own shadow like a violin

in its black case.

The only thing I want to say

hovers just out of reach

like the family silver

at the pawnbroker's.

.

~ Tomas Transtromer

translation by Robert Bly

from The Half-Finished Heaven