wisdom of a storyteller

~ Elif Shafak

work song - part 2 a vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow growing trees

on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it...

then a long time after we are dead

the lives our lives prepare will live

here, their houses strongly placed

upon the valley sides...

The river will run

clear, as we will never know it...

On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down

the old forest, an old forest will stand,

its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.

The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields...

Memory,

native to this valley, will spread over it

like a grove, and memory will grow

into legend, legend into song, song

into sacrament. The abundance of this place,

the songs of its people and its birds,

will be health and wisdom and indwelling

light. This is no paradisal dream.

Its hardship is its reality.

~ Wendell Berry
art by Andrew Wyeth

the holy longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent 

for the massman will mock it right away. 

I praise what is truly alive, 

what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm waters of the love-nights 

where you were begotten, where you have begotten, 

a strange feeling comes over you 

when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught 

in this obsession with darkness, 

and a desire for higher love-making 

sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter, 

now, arriving in magic, flying, 

and, finally, insane for the light, 

you are the butterfly and you are the light.

And so long as you haven’t experienced 

this: to die and so to grow, 

you are only a troubled guest 

on the dark earth. 

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

translation by Robert Bly

do not be ashamed

You will be walking some night

in the comfortable dark of your yard

And suddenly a great light will shine

round about you, and behind you

will be a wall you never saw before.

It will be clear to you suddenly

that you were about to escape,

And that you are guilty: you misread

The complex instructions, you are not

a member, you lost your card

or never had one. And you will know

that they have been there all along,

Their eyes on your letters and books,

their hands in your pockets,

their ears wired to your bed.

Though you have done nothing shameful.

They will want you to be ashamed.

They will want you to kneel and weep

and say you should have been like them.

And once you are ashamed,

reading the page they hold out to you,

Then such light as you have made

In your history will leave you.

They will no longer need to pursue you,

You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.

They will not forgive you.

There is no power against them.

It is only candor that is aloof from them,

only an inward clarity, unashamed,

that they cannot reach. Be ready.

When their light has picked you out

and their questions are asked, say to them:

“I am not ashamed.” A sure horizon

will come around you. The heron will begin

his evening flight from the hilltop.

~ Wendell Berry

from Antiques and Collectibles

elegy for a walnut tree

Old friend now there is no one alive

who remembers when you were young

it was high summer when I first saw you

in the blaze of day most of my life ago

with the dry grass whispering in your shade

and already you had lived through wars

and echoes of wars around your silence

through days of parting and seasons of absence

with the house emptying as the years went their way

until it was home to bats and swallows

and still when spring climbed toward summer

you opened once more the curled sleeping fingers

of newborn leaves as though nothing had happened

you and the seasons spoke the same language

and all these years I have looked through your limbs

to the river below and the roofs and the night

and you were the way I saw the world

~ W. S. Merwin

a struggle with water and wind

All my life’s a struggle with water and wind. 

two against one must be my story— 

as I make my way into the earth

 under the waves. There’s no country

 I can call my own. But I’ve learned

 to grow strong by being still. I know

 if I fail I’ll be broken, and all

 that’s part of me will be torn from me. 

Let me find my place 

 among the stones, and be held.

~ Lawrence Raab

from The Word Exchange

Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation

who am i being?

~ Benjamin Zander

the great way is not difficult

The Great Way is not difficult 

for those who have no preferences. 

When love and hate are both absent 

everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction, however 

and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth 

then hold no opinions for or against anything. 

To set up what you like against what you dislike 

is the disease of the mind. 

When the deep meaning of things is not understood 

the minds essential peace is disturbed to no avail. 

The Way is perfect like vast space 

where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. 

Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject 

that we do not see the true nature of things. 

Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, 

nor in inner feelings of emptiness.

Be serene in the oneness of things 

and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.

When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity 

your very effort fills you with activity. 

As long as you remain in one extreme or the other 

you will never know Oneness.

~ Seng-T’san

a friend's umbrella

Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end

of his life, found the names

of familiar objects escaping him.

He wanted to say something about a window,

or a table, or a book on a table.

But the word wasn't there,

although other words could still suggest

the shape of what he meant.

Then someone, his wife perhaps,

would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry,

is there a draft?" He'd nod.

She'd rise. Once a friend dropped by

to visit, shook out his umbrella

in the hall, remarked upon the rain.

Later the word umbrella

vanished and became

the thing that strangers take away.

Paper, pen, table, book:

was it possible for a man to think

without them? To know

that he was thinking? We remember

that we forget, he'd written once,

before he started to forget.

Three times he was told

that Longfellow had died.

Without the past, the present

lay around him like the sea.

Or like a ship, becalmed,

upon the sea. He smiled

to think he was the captain then,

gazing off into whiteness,

waiting for the wind to rise. 

~ Lawrence Raab

from The History of Forgetting

found here: http://deathdeconstructed.blogspot.com/

the power of introverts

~ Susan Cain

all kinds of minds

~ Temple Grandin

happiness and bare consciousness

~ Matthieu Ricard

a hide

There's a skin or hide between ourselves and our inner being.  And in the West that skin is very thick.  Inside us there's a sea and that sea is your inner life, your spiritual life, and your sexual impulses - everything you've gotten from the memory stores of evolution.  Then there's the outside world made of buildings and automobiles.  And these two worlds can't rub against each other.  It's too painful.  Therefore you develop a hide exactly like a cow develops a hide.  You don't want her guts to rub against the barn.

~  Robert Bly

spoken to Lewis Hyde in an interview

taken here from Robert Bly - In This World

that lonesome valley

~ Pete Seeger and Joan Baez

the return of the rivers

All the rivers run into the sea;

yet the sea is not full;

unto the place from whence the rivers come,

thither they return again. 

It is raining today

in the mountains. 

It is a warm green rain

with love

in its pockets

for spring is here,

and does not dream

of death.

Birds happen music

like clocks ticking heaves

in a land

where children love spiders,

and let them sleep

in their hair. 

A slow rain sizzles

on the river

like a pan

full of frying flowers,

and with each drop

of rain

the ocean

begins again.

~ Richard Brautigan