song in the year of catastrophe

I began to be followed by a voice saying:

"It can't last.  It can't last.

Harden yourself.  Harden yourself.

Be ready.  Be ready."

"Go look under the leaves,"

it said, "for what is living there

is dead in your tongue."

And it said, "Put your hands

into the earth.  Live close

to the ground. Learn the darkness.

Gather round you all

the things that you love, name

their names, prepare

to lose them,  It will be

as if all you know were turned

around within your body."

And I went and put my hands 

into the ground, and they took root

and grew into a season's harvest.

I looked behind the veil

of the leaves, and heard voices

that I knew had been dead

in my tongue years before my birth.

I learned the dark.

And still the voice stayed with me. 

Waking in the early mornings,

I could hear it, like a bird

bemused among the leaves,

a mockingbird idly singing

in the autumn of catastrophe:

"Be ready.   Be ready.

Harden yourself.  Harden yourself."

And I heard the sound 

of a great engine pounding

in the air, and a voice asking:

"Change or slavery?

Hardship or slavery?"

and the voices answering:

"Slavery!  Slavery!"

And I was afraid, loving 

what I know would be lost.

Then the voice following me said:

"you have not yet come close enough.

Come nearer the ground.  Learn

from the woodcock in the woods

whose feathering is a ritual

of the fallen leaves,

and from the nesting quail

whose speckling makes her hard to see

in the long grass.

Study the coat of the mole.

For the farmer shall wear

the greenery and the furrows

of his fields, and bear

the long standing of the woods."

And I asked: "you mean a death, then?"

"yes," the voice said.  "Die

into what the earth requires of you."

Then let go all holds, and sank

like a hopeless swimmer into the earth,

and at last came fully into the ease

and the joy of that place,

all my lost ones returning.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

art by Roderick Maclver

still a mystery

How something is made flesh

no one can say. The buffalo soup

becomes a woman

who sings every day to her horses

or summons another to her private body

saying, come, touch, this is how

it begins, the path of a newly born

who, salvaged from other lives and worlds,

will grow to become a woman, a man,

with a heart that never rests,

and the gathered berries,

the wild grapes

enter the body,

human wine

which can love,

where nothing created is wasted;

the swallowed grain takes you through the dreams

of another night,

the deer meat becomes hands

strong enough to work.

But I love most

the white-haired creature

eating green leaves;

the sun shines there

swallowed, showing in her face

taking in all the light,

and in the end

when the shadow from the ground

enters the body and remains,

in the end, you might say,

This is myself,

still unknown, still a mystery.

–Linda Hogan

from Rounding the Human Corners

as we think, so we become

.

The thought manifests as the word,
The word manifests as the deed,
The deed develops into a habit,
And habit hardens in character,
.
So watch the thought and it's ways with care,
And let it spring from love,
Born out of concern for all beings...
.
As the shadow follows the body,
As we think so we become. 

~ Buddha, from the Dhammapada

. 

Sky: An Assay

A hawk flies though it, carrying

a still-twisting snake twice the length of its body.

Radiation, smoke, mosquitoes, the music of Mahler fly through it.

The sky makes room, adjusting its airy shoulders.

Sky doesn't age or remember,

carries neither grudges nor hope.

Every morning is new as the last one, uncreased

as the not quite imaginable first.

From the fate of thunderstorms, hailstorms, fog,

sky learns no lesson,

leaping through any window as soon as it's raised.

In speech, furious or tender,

it's still of passing sky the words are formed.

Whatever sky proposes is out in the open.

Clear even when not,

sky offers no model, no mirror - cloudy or bright -

to the ordinary heart: which is secretive,

rackety, domestic, harboring a wild uninterest in sky's disinterest.

And so we look right past sky, by it, through it,

to what also is moody and alters -

erosive mountains, eclipsable moons, stars distant but death-bound.

~ Jane Hirshfield

expioring the shadow

~ Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman

between the shadow and the soul

I do not love you as if you were the salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way 

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.



~ Pablo Neruda 

 art by Odilon Redon, Golden Cell

hands and shadows

While the hand moves
the shadow must follow.
Since the shadow gains its substance
from the hand
it has none of itself.
That which derives existence
from something else
how can we say
it truly exists?
It has a name, yes,
but is not that existence
which subsists through God.




~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
from Divine Flashes

transforming darkness

~ Jack Kornfield

 

aloneness

But loneliness is entirely different from aloneness. That loneliness must be passed to be alone. Loneliness is not comparable with aloneness. The man who knows loneliness can never know that which is alone. Are you in that state of aloneness? Our minds are not integrated to be alone. The very process of the mind is separative. And that which separates knows loneliness.

But aloneness is not separative. It is something which is not the many, which is not influenced by the many, which is not the result of the many, which is not put together as the mind is; the mind is of the many. Mind is not an entity that is alone, being put together, brought together, manufactured through centuries. Mind can never be alone. Mind can never know aloneness. But being aware of the loneliness when going through it, there comes into being that aloneness. Then only can there be that which is immeasurable. Unfortunately most of us seek dependence. We want companions; we want friends; we want to live in a state of separation, in a state which brings about conflict. That which is alone can never be in a state of conflict. But mind can never perceive that, can never understand that; it can only know loneliness.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from the talk On Love and Loneliness (1952)

national geographic photo

all these insane borders we protect

A woman's body, like the earth, has seasons;

when the mountain stream flows,

when the holy thaws,

when I am most fragile and in need,

it was then, it seemed,

God came closest.

God, like a medic on a field, is tending our souls.

Our horns get locked with desires, but don't hold yourself

too accountable; for all desires are really innocent. 

That is what the compassion in His eyes tell me.

Why this great war between the countries -- the countries --

inside of us?

What are all these insane borders we protect?

What are all these different names for the same church of love

we kneel in together? For it is true, together we live; and only

at that shrine where all are welcome will God sing

loud enough to be heard.

Our horns got locked with the earth and sky in some odd

marriage ritual; so what, don't worry. We should be proud of

ourselves for everything we helped create in this

magic world.

And God is always there, if you feel wounded. He kneels

over this earth like a divine medic,

and His love thaws the holy in us.

~ St. Teresa of Avila

from Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West

version by Daniel Ladinsky
art by Steve Shinn

together in a tapestry

We are all bound together in a tapestry that like the sea gives the impression of movement 
towards something but is actually just a maternal body of material...

The flowers buzz when the vibration of the bees stimulates their pistons 
and their molecules swell and their petals hum like cellos. Rocks are alive,
 the firstborn of the natural world, somber without will.

There is no freedom from this universe we were born into, because it is our
 vague source of sensation, our soul, the container of our guilt.

Skins liquefy in heat. And when a bald baby swallow dies on your palm, 
you feel warmth pouring over your skin, a kind of burning fountain 
that scalds you like pepper spray.

Do you think this is a sign of the spirit ripping its energy into you to carry
 to the other side? I do. There are no actual objects over there, no materials
 but unformed steaming clouds, colors that harmonize musically, 
no gravity exists but elasticity composed of invisible images.

 

~ Fanny Howe
from 'The Child's Child'
The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth

a hand is shaped for what it holds or makes

.

A hand is shaped for what it holds or makes.

Time takes what's handed to it then - warm bread, a stone,

a child whose fingers touch the page to keep her place.

Beloved, grown old separately, your face

shows me the changes on my own.

I see the histories it holds, the argument it makes

against the thresh of trees, the racing clouds, the race

of birds and sky birds always lose:

the lines have ranged, but not the cheek's strong bone.

My finger touching there recall that place.

Once we were one.  Then what time did, and hands, erased

us from the future we had owned.

For some, the future holds what hands release, not made.

We make a bridge.  We walked it.  Laced

night's sounds with passion.

Owls' pennywhistles, after, took our place.

Wasps leave their nest. Wind takes the papery case.

Our wooden house, less easily undone,

now houses others.  A life is shaped by what it holds or makes.

I make these words for what they can't replace.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

we victims - our suffering

~ Gangaji

change

~ Jack Kornfield

 

an old story

with thanks to brainpickings