a voice of love

Every second a voice of love 

comes from every side. 

Who needs to go sightseeing? 

We came from a majesty, 

and we go back there.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from Rumi - Bridge to the Soul

koku

虚空(高画質版) koku (High Quality)
眞玉 和司 matama kazushi, 尺八 shakuhachi
2008/02/11 四季の音50回 shikino-ne 50

snowed in again

Snow has been falling for three days.  The horses stay in the barn.   At four I leave the house, sinking to my waist in snow, and push open the door of my writing shack.  Snow falls in.  At the desk there is a plant in blossom.

The plant faces the window where snow sweeps past at forty miles an hour.  So the snow and the flowers are a little like each other.  In both there is the same receiving, the longing to circle slowly upward or sink down toward roots.  Perhaps the snow and the orangey blossoms are both the same flow, that starts out close to the soil, close to the floor, and needs no commandments, no civilizations, no drawing room lifted on the labor of the claw hammer, but is at home where one or two are present.

The two people sit quietly near each other.  In the storm, millions of years come close behind us.  Nothing is lost, nothing is rejected.  The body is ready to sing all night, and be entered by whatever wishes to enter the human body singing.

~ Robert Bly

from Reaching out to the World

New and Selected Prose Poems

art by Daoji, c.1695, Qing dynasty

brother

I looked into my brother’s eye

and saw a tree there waving. 

I passed beyond a garden gate 

and heard a mountain calling. 

I walked a long a stony path 

and tasted waves a–spraying. 

I looked into my brother’s eye 

and felt a fire – burning. 

Deep beyond the black, black sky, 

I looked into my brother’s eyes 

and saw myself there waving.

~ John Lavan

more at Real Poems

Elizabeth Peratrovich Day

Civil Rights Leader

Elizabeth Peratrovich

1911-1958

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered as the great civil rights movement leader during the 1960s. Elizabeth Jean Wanamaker Peratrovich is remembered as Alaska's great equal rights campaign leader for Alaska Natives in the 1940s. Elizabeth's moving and dramatic presentation before the Alaska Territorial Legislature on February 8, 1945, was responsible for changing the views of biased senators on the "Equal Rights" bill. The bill passed and immediately became law, thus beginning a new era in Alaska's racial relations.

Forty-seven years ago, Elizabeth Peratrovich championed the cause of civil rights in Alaska and silenced the voices of prejudice and discrimination.

It was February, 1945. The Territorial Senate met as a Committee of the Whole to discuss the equal rights issue and a bill prohibiting racial discrimination in Alaska.

The bill was assailed as a "lawyer's dream" which would create hard feelings between Natives and whites. Many senators stood in turn to speak against equal rights. Their arguments are, by now, familiar ones in this country.

-- They said the bill would aggravate the already hard feelings between Natives and whites.

-- They said the bill was unnecessary -- that Natives had made great progress in the 10 centuries since contact with white civilization.

-- They said the real answer was in the separation of the races.

Those are the ideas we have come to recognize in the last 20 years as the public face of private injustice. The opponents of racial equality have always refused to recognize the problem. Refused to recognize the injury done. Refused to recognize the jobs lost, the poverty incurred, the blows to self-esteem sustained every day by those who have done nothing to merit such injury.

Those voices of prejudice were reduced to a whisper, 47 years ago, by a woman who spoke from the heart.

According to the legislative custom of the time, an opportunity was offered to anyone present who wished to speak on the bill. Elizabeth Peratrovich was the final speaker on that day in 1945. After the long speeches and logical arguments were over, Elizabeth rose to tell the truth about prejudice.

"I would not have expected," she said "that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with five thousand years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights."

She talked about herself, her friends, her children, and the cruel treatment that consigned Alaska Natives to a second class existence.

She described to the Senate what it means to be unable to buy a house in a decent neighborhood because Natives aren't allowed to live there.

She described how children feel when they are refused entrance into movie theaters, or see signs in shop windows that read "No dogs or Natives allowed."

She closed her testimony with a biting condemnation of the "Super race" attitude responsible for such cruelty. Following her speech, there was a wild burst of applause from the Gallery, and the Senate proceeded to pass the Alaska Civil Rights Act by a vote of 11–5.

On that day in 1945, Elizabeth Peratrovich represented her people as the Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood. She was a champion of Alaska Natives and of all people who suffered from discrimination.

In the years since Alaska statehood, we have had too few women and minorities elected to office. But their presence has been felt, just as Elizabeth Peratrovich's presence was felt that day in 1945. In naming Gallery B for Elizabeth, we honor her today for her vision, her wisdom, and her courage in speaking out for what she believed to be right. She symbolizes the role the gallery plays in the legislature and the importance of public opinion in the legislative process. She reminds us that a single person, speaking from the heart, can affect the future of all.

with thanks to university of alaska anchorage

floating

The one close to me now,

even my own body -

these too

will soon become clouds,

floating in different directions.

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

translations by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

perhaps

Placido Domingo and John Denver

A land not mine

A land not mine, still

forever memorable,

the waters of its ocean

chill and fresh.

Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,

and the air drunk, like wine,

late sun lays bare

the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.

Sunset in the ethereal waves:

I cannot tell if the day

is ending, or the world, or if

the secret of secrets is inside me again.

~ Anna Akhmatova, 
(1889-1966), 

born in Odessa, grew up in Tsarkoye Selo, 
the imperial retreat outside St. Petersburg.  
Unhappily married to Nikolai Gumilev, the well known poet.

scattering

A string of jewels

from a broken necklace,

scattering -

more difficult to keep hold of

even than these in one's life.

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

sleep

I love to lie down weary

under the stalk of sleep

growing slowly out of my head,

the dark leaves meshing.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

art Rembrandt

the waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

~ Theodore Roethke

~ Kurt Elling

overly bold

When people become overly bold,

then disaster will soon arrive.

Do not meddle with people's livelihoods;

if you respect them, they will in turn respect you.

Therefore, the Master knows herself but is 

not arrogant.

She loves herself but also loves others.

This is how she is able to make appropriate choices.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translation by j.h.mcdonald

a one-man revolution

I bid you to a one-man revolution -

The only revolution that is coming.

...

We're too unseparate.  And going home

From company means coming to our senses.

~ Robert Frost

from Building Soil

art by Frida Kahlo

should I

Should I leave this burning house

of ceaseless thought

and taste the pure rain's

single truth

falling upon my skin?

~ Izumi Shikibu

from The Ink Dark Moon

translations by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani

art by kristine wyler

quiet and secret

Keep quiet and secret with your soul-work.

Don’t worry so much about your body.

God sewed that robe. Leave it as it is.

Be more deeply courageous.

Change your soul.

~ Attar of Nishapur (1145-1221)

translated by Coleman Barks

photo by eliot porter

Attar's Tomb - photo by Nik Pendaar