mirrors of perfection

The master bonesetter will pay his call

where there is someone with a broken leg.

When there's no sickly patient, how then can

the beauty of the healing arts be known?

And how can alchemy be seen if copper's

low-grade, inferior nature is not known?

Deficiencies are mirrors of perfection;

the vilest things are mirrors of His glory.

For opposites make known their opposites

as honey's taste is known is vinegar.

Whoever understands his own defects

has galloped to perfection with ten horses.

And why is he not flying to his Lord

is that he thinks himself already perfect.

There is no sickness of the soul that's worse

than being convinced of your perfection, sir!

Much blood must flow out of your heart and eyes

until this smugness takes its leave of you.

~ Rumi

from the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi

excerpt from Joseph and his guest
translation by alan williams

art by gustav klimt

confusion

The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the questions,

nor is it bought with going to amazing places.

Until you've kept your eyes

and your wanting still for years,

you don't begin to cross over from confusion.

~ Rumi

from The Essential Rumi

translations by Coleman Barks and John Moyne

News of the Universe

The first film to explore Bly’s long and prolific life - 

as poet, translator, mythologist, guiding light of men's work, 

antiwar activist and cultural gadfly.

~ Robert Bly

a shared language through metaphor

~ Jane Hirshfield

religion means

I think the word religion means gathering together
all energy at all levels, physical, moral, spiritual,
at all levels, gathering all this energy which will bring
about a great attention. And from there move.
To me that is the meaning of that word.

The gathering of total energy to understand
what thought cannot possibly capture.

Thought is never new, never free, and therefore
it's always conditioned, fragmentary, and so on.

So religion is not a thing put together by Thought,
or by fear, or by the pursuit of satisfaction and pleasure.
But something totally beyond all this, which isn't romanticism,
speculative belief, or sentimentality. And I think if we
could keep to the meaning of that word, putting aside
all the superstitious nonsense that is going on in the world
in the name of religion.

 

~ J. Krishnamurti

nocturne

You are woken in the night

by something that cannot speak

in daylight, that has no purchase

in the hard currency of your life.

Outside is the shallow well

of a sleeping town; electric lights

peek faintly into black space,

and the lithe ghost of the dark

slips into the only house that

bids it welcome. Your husband

lies snoring, dreams of another

world, offers you rough the gift

of aloneness. Know this:

what arrives here cannot

be other than itself, and

has no care for you. It

has no words, and no respect

for yours, so finds your body,

colonizes your spine, feeds

you up into the sea of stars. You

may think you are changing,

or hope; but you are simply

failing to forget, allowing

stillness to be recognized.

You are momentarily disappearing,

to enter your own voice, see

with your own eyes, become

the body you gave birth to;

you have returned to

your own faithfulness,

your own unimaginable

emptiness.

~ Andrew Colliver

from the unpublished manuscript A Day of Light

september

it rained in my sleep

and in the morning the fields were wet

I dreamed of artillery

of the thunder of horses

in the morning the fields were strewn

with twigs and leaves

as if after a battle

or a sudden journey

I went to sleep in the summer

I dreamed of rain

in the morning the fields were wet

and it was autumn

~ Linda Pastan

from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems

with thanks to the mark on the wall

new rooms

The mind must

set itself up

wherever it goes

and it would be

most convenient

to impose its

old rooms — just

tack them up

like an interior

tent. Oh but

the new holes

aren't where

the windows

went.

~ Kay Ryan 

from Poetry July/August 2012

with thanks to whiskey river

exercise

First, forget what time it is

for an hour

do it regularly every day

then forget what day of the week it is

and do this regularly for a week

then forget what country you are in

and practice doing it in company

for a week

and then do them together

for a week

with as few breaks as possible 

follow these by forgetting to add

or to subtract

it makes no difference

you can change them

around after a week

both will help you later

to forget how to count 

forget how to count

starting with your own age

starting with how to count backwards

starting with even numbers

with Roman numerals

starting with fractions of Roman numerals

with the old calendar

going on to the old alphabet

going on to the alphabet

forgetting it all until everything

is continuous again 

go on to forgetting elements

starting with water

proceeding to earth

rising in fire 

forget fire 

~ W.S. Merwin

from Migration: New and Selected Poems

 with thanks to love is a place

photo by Ellis Nadler

the last watch

At the high-tide of night, when the first breath of dawn came upon the wind, the Forerunner, he who calls himself echo to a voice yet unheard, left his bed-chamber and ascended to the roof of his house.  Long he stood and looked down upon the slumbering city.  Then he raised his head, and even as if the sleepless spirits of all those asleep had gathered around him, he opened his lips and spoke, and he said:

“My friends and my neighbors and you who daily pass my gate, I would speak to you in your sleep, and in the valley of your dreams I would walk naked and unrestrained;  far heedless are your waking hours and deaf are your sound-burdened ears.

“Long did I love you and overmuch.

“I love the one among you as though he were all, and all as if you were one.  And in the spring of my heart I sang in your gardens, and in the summer of my heart I watched at your threshing-floors.

“Yea, I loved you all, the giant and the pygmy, the leper and the anointed, and him who gropes in the dark even as him who dances his days upon the mountains.

“You, the strong, have I loved, though the marks of your iron hoofs are yet upon my flesh; and you the weak, though you have drained my faith and wasted my patience.

“You, the rich have I loved, while bitter was your honey to my mouth; and you the poor, though you knew my empty-handed shame.

“You the poet with the borrowed lute and blind fingers, you have I loved in self indulgence; and you the scholar, ever gathering rotted shrouds in potters’ fields.

“You the priest I have loved, who sit in the silences of yesterday questioning the fate of my tomorrow; and you the worshipers of gods the images of your own desires.

“You the thirsting woman whose cup is ever full, I have loved you in understanding; and you the woman of restless nights, you too I have loved in pity.

“You the talkative have I loved, saying, ‘Life hath much to say’; and you the dumb have I loved, whispering to myself, ‘Says he not in silence that which I fain would hear in words?’

“And you the judge and the critic, I have loved also; yet when you have seen me crucified, you said, ‘He bleeds rhythmically, and the pattern his blood makes upon his white skin is beautiful to behold.’

“Yea, I have loved you all, the young and the old, the trembling reed and the oak.

“But alas! It was the over-abundance of my heart that turned you from me.  You would drink love from a cup, but not from a surging river.  You would hear love’s faint murmur, but when love shouts you would muffle your ears.

“And because I have loved you all you have said, ‘Too soft and yielding is his heart, and too undiscerning is his path.  It is the love of a needy one, who picks crumbs even as he sits at kingly feasts.  And it is the love of a weakling, for the strong loves only the strong.’

“And because I have loved you overmuch you have said, ‘It is but the love of a blind man who knows not the beauty of one nor the ugliness of another.  And it is the love of the tasteless who drinks vinegar even as wine. And it is the love of the impertinent and the overweening, for what stranger could be our mother and father and sister and brother?

“This you have said, and more.  For often in the marketplace you pointed your fingers at me and said mockingly, ‘There goes the ageless one, the man without season, who at the moon hour plays games with our children and at eventide sits with our elders and assumes wisdom and understanding.’

“And I said ‘I will love them more.  Aye, even more.  I will hide my love with seeming to hate, and disguise my tenderness as bitterness. I will wear an iron mask, and only when armed and mailed shall I seek them.’

“Then I laid a heavy hand upon your bruises, and like a tempest in the night I thundered in your ears.

“From the housetop I proclaimed you hypocrites, Pharisees, tricksters, false and empty earth-bubbles.

“The short-sighted among you I cursed for blind bats, and those too near the earth I likened to soulless moles.

“The eloquent I pronounced fork-tongued, the silent, stone-lipped, and the simple and artless I called the dead never weary of death.

“The seekers after world knowledge I condemned as offenders of the holy spirit and those who would naught but the spirit I branded as hunters of shadows who cast their nets in flat waters and catch but their own images.

“Thus with my lips have I denounced you, while my heart, bleeding within me, called you tender names.

“It was love lashed by its own self that spoke.  It was pride half slain that fluttered in the dust.  It was my hunger for your love that raged from the housetop, while my own love, kneeling in silence, prayed your forgiveness.

“But behold a miracle!

“It was my disguise that opened your eyes, and my seeming to hate that woke your hearts.

“And now you love me.

“You love the swords that stride you and the arrows that crave your breast.  For it comforts you to be wounded and only when you drink of your own blood can you be intoxicated.

“Like moths that seek destruction in the flame you gather daily in my garden: and with faces uplifted and eyes enchanted you watch me tear the fabric of your days.  And in whispers you say the one to the other, ‘He sees with the light of God.  He speaks like the prophets of old.  He unveils our souls and unlocks our hearts, and like the eagle that knows the way of foxes he knows our ways.’

“Aye, in truth, I know your ways, but only as an eagle knows the ways of his fledglings.  And I fain would disclose my secret.  Yet in my need for your nearness I feign remoteness, and in fear of the ebb-tide of your love I guard the floodgates of my love.”

After saying these things the Forerunner covered his face with his hands and wept bitterly.  For he know in his heart that love humiliated in its nakedness is greater that love that seeks triumph in disguise; and he was ashamed.

But suddenly he raised his head, and like one waking from sleep he outstretched his arms and said, “Night is over, and we children of the night must die when dawn comes leaping upon the hills; and out of our ashes a mightier love shall rise.  And it shall laugh in the sun, and it shall be deathless.”

~ Kahlil Gibran

from Poems, Parables and Drawings

like two negative numbers multiplied by rain

Lie down, you are horizontal.

Stand up, you are not.

I wanted my fate to be human.

Like a perfume

that does not choose the direction it travels,

that cannot be straight or crooked, kept out or kept.

Yes, No, Or

—a day, a life, slips through them,

taking off the third skin,

taking off the fourth.

And the logic of shoes becomes at last simple,

an animal question, scuffing.

Old shoes, old roads—

the questions keep being new ones.

Like two negative numbers multiplied by rain

into oranges and olives.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Poetry Magazine

unlabeled

Like the small hole by the path-side something lives in,

in me are lives I do not know the names of,

nor the fates of,

nor the hungers of or what they eat.

They eat of me.

Of small and blemished apples in low fields of me

whose rocky streams and droughts I do not drink.

And in my streets—the narrow ones,

unlabeled on the self-map—

they follow stairs down music ears can’t follow,

and in my tongue borrowed by darkness,

in hours uncounted by the self-clock,

they speak in restless syllables of other losses, other loves.

There too have been the hard extinctions,

missing birds once feasted on and feasting.

There too must be machines

like loud ideas with tungsten bits that grind the day.

A few escape. A mercy.

They leave behind

small holes that something unweighed by the self-scale lives in.

~ Jane Hirshfield

found at poetry foundation

illness or invitation

~ Jeff Foster

meditation on death

Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old.

Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly

contrives. In all creation, be assured,

there is no death—no death, but only change

and innovation; what we people call birth

is but a different new beginning; death

is but to cease to be the same. Perhaps

this may have moved to that and that to this,

yet still the sum of things remains the same.

~Pythagoras

Ovid, Metamorphoses

translation by A.D. Melville

interval

Instantaneous architectures

hanging over a pause,

apparitions neither named

nor thought, wind-forms,

insubstantial as time

and, like time, dissolved.

Made of time, they are not time;

they are the cleft, the interstice,

the brief vertigo of between

where the diaphanous flower opens:

high on its stalk of a reflection

it vanishes as it turns.

Never touched, the clarities

seen with the eyes closed:

transparent birth

and the crystalline fall

in the instant of this instant

that forever is still here.

Outside the window, the desolate

rooftops and the hurrying clouds.

The day goes out, the city

lights up, remote and near.

Weightless hour. I breathe

the moment, empty and eternal.

~ Octavio Paz

translation by Eliot Weinberger

with thanks again to growing-orbits