the last day

This may be the last day of my life.

I lifted my right hand to wave at the sun,

but I did not wave at it in farewell.

I was glad I could still see it - that's all.

~ Fernando Pessoa

translation by Richard Zenith

 

love

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills—

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesn't always understand.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

translation by Robert Hass

from The Collected Poems

art by Picasso

so little

I said so little.

Days were short.

Short days.

Short nights.

Short years.

I said so little.

I couldn't keep up.

My heart grew weary

From joy,

Despair,

Ardor,

Hope.

The jaws of Leviathan

Were closing upon me.

Naked, I lay on the shores

Of desert islands.

The white whale of the world

Hauled me down to its pit.

And now I don’t know

What in all that was real.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee

priceless gifts

An empty day without events.

And that is why

it grew immense

as space. And suddenly

happiness of being

entered me.

I heard

in my heartbeat

the birth of time

and each instant of life

one after the other

came rushing in

like priceless gifts.

~ Anna Swirszczynska

from Talking to My Body

 translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

between the roof planks

It is true,

the wind blows terribly here -

but moonlight

also leaks between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

~ Izumi Shikibu, (974-1034)

She is considered by some to be the greatest woman poet of Japanese literature.

from:  Women in Praise of the Sacred, edited by Jane Hirshfield

the white horse

 The youth walks up to the white horse, to put its halter on

and the horse looks at him in silence.

They are so silent they are in another world.

~ D. H. Lawrence

singing

On a branch

floating downriver,

a cricket singing.

Issa

 art by Seiko

 

all will come again

All will come again into its strength:

the fields undivided, the waters undammed,

the trees towering and the walls built low.

And in the valleys, people as strong

and varied as the land.

And no churches where God

is imprisoned and lamented

like a trapped and wounded animal.

The houses welcoming all who knock

and a sense of boundless offering

in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,

no belittling of death,

but only longing for what belongs to us

and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
 from: 'The Book of Hours'

a face

It's just by chance, who
you are, but given myself
I take care of this being.
Nobody else will remember
its hunger, cold, loneliness:
I will be reminded, and care.

This face, like an old watch,
I carry wherever I go.
Grandmothers, grandfathers, you pictures,
you should forgive my regret:
my wanting another. I carry it
as you did. It belongs
somewhere, and I am taking it there.

On corners I let the wind
have all the world, and I turn
as a ship accepts the waves
but is itself and has a voyage
built into it, stubbornly.

The choice of being who you are
is offered us, or being nothing.
The mask of myself is an old gift
nobody else took. So I brought it here.

  ~ William Stafford

I am not I

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.






~ Juan Ramon Jimenez
translated by Robert Bly

inside a stone

Go inside a stone

That would be my way.

Let somebody else become a dove

Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.

I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:

No one knows how to answer it.

Yet within, it must be cool and quiet

Even though a cow steps on it full weight,

Even though a child throws it in a river;

The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed

To the river bottom

Where the fishes come to knock on it

An listen.

I have seen sparks fly out

When two stones are rubbed,

So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;

Perhaps there is a moon shining

From somewhere, as though behind a hill-

Just enough light to make out

The strange writings, the star-charts

On the inner walls.

~ Charles Simic 

photo by  Hans Strand

Capricho Arabe

~ Sharon Isbin

just a story

~ James Ford

from  Journeys on the Razor-Edged Path

  by Simons Roof

the promise

Stay, I said

to the cut flowers.

They bowed

their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,

who fled.

Stay, leaf.

It reddened,

embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.

It sat as a dog does,

obedient for a moment,

soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth

of riverine valley meadows,

of fossiled escarpments,

of limestone and sandstone.

It looked back

with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.

Each answered,

Always.

~ Jane Hirshfield

on finding a guide

You wear coarse wool, but you're a king,

as the soul's energy hides, as love

remembers. You enter this room in a human

shape and as the atmosphere we breathe.

You are the central pole through the nine

levels connecting them and us to absolute

absence. So that we can have what we want,

you give failure and frustration. You want

only the company of the lion and the lion

cub, no wobbly legs. That man there, you

suggest, might remove his head before

entering the temple. Then he could listen

without ears to a voice that says, My

creature. A month of walking the road, you

make that distance in one day. Never mind

gold and silver payments. When you feel

generous, give your head. My beauty,

you have no need for a guide. The one

who follows and the one who leads are

inseparable, as the moon and the circle

around it. An Arab drags his camel town

to town. You go through your troubles

and changing beliefs, both no different from

the moon moving across or basil growing

and getting cut for a bouquet. It doesn't

matter you've been lost. The hoopoe is

still looking for you. It's another

beginning, my friend, this waking in a

morning with no haze, and help coming

without your asking! A glass submerged

is turning inside the wine. With grief

waved away, sweet gratefulness arrives.

~ Rumi 

Coleman Barks, Nevit Ergin version