waiting for the barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything going on in the senate?

Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.

What's the point of senators making laws now?

Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,

and why is he sitting enthroned at the city's main gate,

in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and the emperor's waiting to receive their leader.

He's even got a scroll to give him,

loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today

wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?

Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,

rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?

Why are they carrying elegant canes

beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and things like that dazzle the barbarians

Why don't our distinguished orators turn up as usual

to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today

and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?

(How serious people's faces have become.)

Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,

everyone going home lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.

And some of our men just in from the border say

there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what's going to happen to us without barbarians?

Those people were a kind of solution.

~ Constantine Cavafy

translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Cavafy understood the word "barbarian" in its original Greek meaning, as applied to all those who are outside and have, instead of human speech, incoherent gibberish.  His intuition allowed him to capture a centuries-old opposition between the inside and the outside.

~ comment by Czeslaw Milosz

foundations

I built on the sand

And it tumbled down.

I built on a rock

And it tumbled down.

Now when I build, I shall begin

With the smoke from the chimney.

~ Leopold Staff

translated by Czeslaw Milosz

from A Book of Luminous Things

the day we die

The day we die

the wind comes down

to take away

our footprints.

The wind makes dust

to cover up

the marks we left

while walking.

For otherwise 

the thing would seem

as if we were

still living.

Therefore the wind

is he who comes

to blow away

our footprints.

~ Southern Bushmen

from A Book of Luminous Things

edited by Czeslaw Milosz

utterance

Sitting over words

very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing

not far

like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark

the echo of everything that has ever

been spoken 

still spinning its one syllable

between the earth and silence

~ W. S. Merwin

a colorful show

The world is but a show, glittering and empty. It is, and yet it is not.

 It is there as long as I want to see it and take part in it. 

When I cease caring, it dissolves. It has no cause and serves no purpose. 

It just happens when we are absent-minded. 

It appears exactly as it looks, but there is no depth in it, nor meaning. 

Only the onlooker is real, call him Self or Atma. 

To the Self, the world is but a colorful show, 

which he enjoys as long as it lasts and forgets when it is over. 

Whatever happens on the stage makes him shudder in terror or roll with laughter, 

yet all the time he is aware that it is but a show. 

Without desire or fear, he enjoys it, as it happens.

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

amen

~ Robert Bly and friends

another spring

White birds over the grey river.

Scarlet flowers on the green hills.

I watch the Spring go by and wonder

If I shall ever return home.

~ Tu Fu

(713 - 770)

translated by Kenneth Rexroth

in heaven it is always autumn

"In Heaven It Is Always Autumn"

John Donne

In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near

to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking

heaven's paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them.

Safe in heaven's calm, they take each other's arm,

the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone.

But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept

as Eden would be with the walls knocked down,

the paths littered

with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes

for children of the Fall. The light is gold, the sun pulling

the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome.

The last roses of the year nod their frail heads,

like listeners listening to all that's said, to ask,

What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light?

What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom?

What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare?

Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might,

if we were roses, too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves,

tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere.

It is the last of many last days. Is it enough?

To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun?

To watch the lineaments of a world passing?

To feel the metal of a black iron chair, cool and eternal,

press against our skin? To apprehend a chill as clouds

pass overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow?

And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun

shining brightly

as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure

leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth.

My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.

To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence

where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.

The light is gold. And while we're here, I think it must

be heaven.

~ Elizabeth Spires 

from Now the Green Blade Rises

with thanks to writers almanac

photo by eliot porter

paint

What we see is the paint.

Yet somehow the mind

knows the wall,

as the living know death.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

through the lyre's strings

A god can do it. But will you tell me how

a man can penetrate through the lyre's strings?

Our mind is split.  And at the shadowed crossing

of heart-roads, there is a temple for Apollo.

Song, as you have taught it, is not desire,

not wooing any grace that can be achieved;

song is reality.  Simple, for a god.

But when can we be real? When does he pour

the earth, the stars, into us? Young man,

it is not your loving, even if your mouth

was forced wide open by your own voice - learn

to forget that passionate music.  It will end.

True singing is a different breath, about

nothing.  A gust inside the god.  A wind.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Sonnets to Orpheus, I,3

translated by Stephen Mitchell

gift

A day so happy.

Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.

Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.

There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.

I knew no one worth envying him.

Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.

To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.

In my body I felt no pain.

When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails. 

~ Czeslaw Milosz 

with thanks to  the mark on the wall

.

accused of bad taste

A famous comedian once said, “Lenny Bruce’s legacy

 is freedom of speech and telling it as it is,

 getting your life and putting it out on the table,

 telling everyone about it.”

“I rode with him in a taxi once,only for a mile and a half.

 Seemed like it took a couple of months” 

~ Bob Dylan

I've been accused of bad taste, 

and I’ll go down to my grave accused of it and always by the same people,

 the ones who eat in restaurants that reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.

 “I’m sorry I haven’t been funny. I am not a comedian.

 I am Lenny Bruce.

The reason I’m in this business, I assume all performers are – it’s “Look at me, Ma!”

 It is acceptance, you know – “Look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma, look at me, Ma.” 

And if your mother watches, you’ll show off till you’re exhausted;

 but if your mother goes, Ptshew!

~ Lenny Bruce

Happy Birthday Lenny

with thanks to writers almanac

someone who speaks ‘broken music.’

“I believe that we are all connected on this very basic emotional level by music — 

by rhythm and harmony. But how can we begin to communicate

 if we don’t use a wider vocabulary? 

 

If we don’t speak in someone else’s language,

 then how can they hear you? 

So, I’m someone who speaks ‘broken music.’”

~ Paul Simon

Paul Simon, born in Newark, New Jersey (1941). 

His father was a musician and his mother was a music teacher.

 When he was in sixth grade, he got a part in the school play 

as the White Rabbit in Alice In Wonderland. 

A boy named Art Garfunkel played the Mad Hatter.

 The two became friends after walking home from rehearsal every day. 

They started a singing duo, playing sock hops and high school dances,

 and they made a hit record when they were only 16 years old.

sabbaths 2001

I

He wakes in darkness. All around

are sounds of stones shifting, locks

unlocking. As if some one had lifted

away a great weight, light

falls on him. He has been asleep or simply

gone. He has known a long suffering

of himself, himself shaped by the pain

of his wound of separation he now

no longer minds, for the pain is only himself

now, grown small, become a little growing

longing joy. Something teaches him

to rise, to stand and move out through

the opening the light has made.

He stands on the green hilltop amid

the cedars, the skewed stones, the earth all

opened doors. Half blind with light, he

traces with a forefinger the moss-grown

furrows of his name, hearing among the others

one woman's cry. She is crying and laughing,

her voice a stream of silver he seems to see:

"Oh William, honey, is it you? Oh!"

II

Surely it will be for this: the redbud

pink, the wild plum white, yellow

trout lilies in the morning light,

the trees, the pastures turning green.

On the river, quiet at daybreak,

the reflections of the trees, as in

another world, lie across

from shore to shore. Yes, here

is where they will come, the dead,

when they rise from the grave.

III

White

dogwood flowers

afloat

in leafing woods

untrouble

my mind.

IV

Ask the world to reveal its quietude—

not the silence of machines when they are still,

but the true quiet by which birdsongs,

trees, bellows, snails, clouds, storms

become what they are, and are nothing else.

V

A mind that has confronted ruin for years

Is half or more a ruined mind. Nightmares

Inhabit it, and daily evidence

Of the clean country smeared for want of sense,

Of freedom slack and dull among the free,

Of faith subsumed in idiot luxury,

And beauty beggared in the marketplace

And clear-eyed wisdom bleary with dispraise.

VI

Sit and be still

until in the time

of no rain you hear

beneath the dry wind's

commotion in the trees

the sound of flowing

water among the rocks,

a stream unheard before,

and you are where

breathing is prayer.

VII

The wind of the fall is here.

It is everywhere. It moves

every leaf of every

tree. It is the only motion

of the river. Green leaves

grow weary of their color.

Now evening too is in the air.

The bright hawks of the day

subside. The owls waken.

Small creatures die because

larger creatures are hungry.

How superior to this

human confusion of greed

and creed, blood and fire.

VIII

The question before me, now that I

am old, is not how to be dead,

which I know from enough practice,

but how to be alive, as these worn

hills still tell, and some paintings

of Paul Cezanne, and this mere

singing wren, who thinks he's alive

forever, this instant, and may be.

~ Wendell Berry

from Given

photo by Christopher Burkett

the grammatist and the boatman

A grammatist once got into a boat.

That self-regarding man looked at the boatman

And said, 'Do you know grammar?'  'No,' he said.

'And half your life has gone!' he chided him.

The boatman's heart was broken by the pain,

but for the moment made his answer silence.

The wind then blew the boat into a whirlpool.

The boatman hollered to the grammatist,

'Do you know how to swim at all, please tell me?'

He said. 'Our boat is sinking in these whirlpools.'

Absorption's needed here, not grammar, see!'

If you're absorbed, jump in.  There is no danger.

The ocean wave will raise the dead aloft.

How can the living man escape the sea?

And if you've died to human qualities,

the sea of secrets sets you at its summit.

And you who've called the people asinine,

now you're the one who's like an ass on ice.

World's greatest scholar of your time you may be,

but note this world is passing - watch the time!

~ Rumi

from the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi

art by Theodore Clement Steele