the present

I wanted to give you something —

no stone, clay, bracelet,

no edible leaf could pass through.

Even a molecule's fragrance by then too large.

Giving had been taken, as you soon would be.

Still, I offered the puffs of air shaped to meaning.

They remained air.

I offered memory on memory,

but what is memory that dies with the fallible inks?

I offered apology, sorrow, longing. I offered anger.

How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.

I stood on one side of the present, you stood on the other.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

the light that’s blazing

A story is like water

that you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire

and your skin. It lets them meet,

and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down

in the middle of the fire itself

like a salamander or Abraham.

We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes,

but it usually takes some bread

to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us,

but usually we need to be walking

in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen

to shield and partially reveal

the light that’s blazing

inside your presence.

Water, stories, the body,

all the things we do, are mediums

that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them,

and enjoy being washed

with a secret we sometimes know,

and then not.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from The Essential Rumi

once, I

Once, I

was seven Spanish bullocks in a high meadow,

sleepy and nameless.

As-ifness strange to myself, but complete.

Light on the neck-nape

of time

as two wings of one starling,

or lovers so happy

neither needs think of the other.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Poetry (April 2013)

a new loveliness

You cannot live without dying. 

You cannot live if you do not die psychologically every minute. 

This is not an intellectual paradox. To live completely, 

wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness,

 there must be dying to everything of yesterday, 

otherwise you live mechanically, 

and a mechanical mind can never know what 

love is or what freedom is.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Freedom from the Known

art by van gogh

an hour is not a house

An hour is not a house,

a life is not a house,

you do not go through them as if

they were doors to another.

Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,

four walls, a ceiling.

An hour can be dropped like a glass.

Some want quiet as others want bread.

Some want sleep.

My eyes went

to the window, as a cat or dog left alone does.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Poetry, April 2013

Hildegard von Bingen

Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. 

Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns 

ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. 

Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, 

and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, 

not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along.

Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.

 - visionary, poet, composer, naturalist, healer, and theologian - 

founded convents; corresponded with secular and ecclesiastical leaders, 

as well as a vast range of people of lesser rank; and 

ventured forth as a monastic trouble-shooter, 

consultant exorcist, and visiting preacher. 

Even more remarkable for a woman of her time was the body of written work she produced. 

Its range - from natural history and medicine to cosmology, 

music, poetry, and theology - 

 possesses great beauty

.

extraordinary creativity was her accomplishment in music. 

In the poetry and melody of her songs, she reveals the full authority,

 intelligence and striking originality of her genius.

~ Hildegard von Bingen

multiplicity in properties

He who has lifted the veil sees multiplicity in properties, 
not in Essence; hence he knows that changes in properties 
cannot touch Essence, which owns a perfection subject to no mutability. 
Light merely seems to change as it shines through colored glass, but

light has no color.

Its rays shine through the glass

and only then 

do hues and tints appear.

Don't you understand?

Come then into my eyes

and...look!

and you will see

a sun shining

through a thousand bits of glass

beaming to plain sight through each

a ray of color

Why should any difference appear

between this one and that?

All light is one

but colors a thousandfold.

~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
from Divine Flashes

the lips of insanity

~ Coleman Barks

~ Rumi

wait for the hour

Always trust yourself and your own feeling, 

as opposed to argumentations, discussion, 

or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, 

then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. 

Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, 

which, like all progress, must come from deep within 

and cannot be forced or hastened. 

Everything is gestation and then birthing. 

To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion,

 entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, 

beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility 

and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: 

this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

from Letters to a young poet, letter 3

translation by Stephen Mitchell
image found at art42

many waves

each image painted

on the canvas of existence

is the form

of the artist himself.

Eternal Ocean

spews forth new waves,

"Waves" we call them;

but there is only the Sea.

Many and disparate waves do not make the sea a multiplicity;

no more do the Names make the Named more than One.

When the sea breathes they call it mist;

when mist piles up they call it clouds.

It falls again,

they name it rain;

it gathers itself and rejoins the sea.

And it is now the same sea it ever was.

~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi

from Divine Flashes

meditation

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

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

 from The Rain in the Trees

the conditional

Say tomorrow doesn't come. 

Say the moon becomes an icy pit. 

Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified. 

Say the sun's a foul black tire fire. 

Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks. 

Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain. 

Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter. 

Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse. 

Say we never get to see it: bright 

future, stuck like a bum star, never 

coming close, never dazzling. 

Say we never meet her. Never him. 

Say we spend our last moments staring 

at each other, hands knotted together,

clutching the dog, watching the sky burn. 

Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be 

enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive, 

right here, feeling lucky.

~ Ada Limón

with thanks again to Lisa

about this poem the author said,

"There is so much to worry about. 
All the time, so much worry. 
Here, I wanted to take all the worry as far out as I could 
and then stamp it out 
under the heavy black boot of love." 

the wealth of poverty

I have seen that the lane of piety stretches out,

far, far into the distance;

My dearest friends, can you not show me then

the way of the madman?

Bring me a glass of Magian wine

that I may drink deep

for I have given up all thought

of ascetic piety;

or if the pure wine has all been downed

bring me the cloudy dregs

for thick residue lights up the heart 

and illuminates the eyes.

Tuppence for the Sufi meeting house!

I flee the company of the righteous;

fill up a row of glasses with wine

and bring me the first.

I have no rules or regulations,

nor heart nor religion -

only I remain, and you, sitting in the corner

and the wealth of Poverty.

All fear of God, all self-denial I deny;

bring wine, nothing but wine

for in all sincerity I repent

my worship which is but hypocrisy.

Yes, bring me wine, for I have renounced all renunciation

and all my vaunted self-righteousness

seems to me but swagger and self-display.

Now for a time let my proof be wine

against the sorrow of Time

for only in drunkenness can one be free

of the hour's grief.

Once I am thoroughly drunk, what difference

if I end up in a church or in Mecca?

Once I've abandoned myself, what matter

if I win Union - or separation?

I've been to the gambling house and seen 

that the losers there are pure;

I've been to the monastery and have found

no one but hypocrites.

Now I've broken my repentance, at least

do not break our covenant:

at least welcome this broken heart and say

"How are you? Where have you been?"

I've been to Mecca, to circle the Kaaba

but they refused me entrance

saying "Off with you!  What merit have you earned

outside, that we should admit you within?"

Then, last night, I knocked

at the tavern door;

from within came a voice: "'Iraqi! Come in!

for you are one of the chosen!"

~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi

from the introduction to Divine Flashes

translation by William Chittick and Peter Wilson

three times my life has opened

.

Three times my life has opened.

Once, into darkness and rain.

Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts

to remember each time it enters the act of love.

Once, to the fire that holds all.

These three are not different.

You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.

But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves

like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.

Neither are we different in what we know.

There is a door.  It opens.  Then it is closed.  But a slip of light

stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,

or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart