after a death

Once there was a shock

that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.

It keeps us inside.  It makes the TV pictures snowy.

It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun

through brush where a few leaves hang on.

They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.

Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat

but often the shadow seems more real than the body.

The samurai looks insignificant

beside his armor of black dragon scales.

~ Tomas Transtromer

from The Half-Finished Heaven

translated by Robert Bly

listen to me as one listens to the rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,

not attentive, not distracted,

light footsteps, thin drizzle,

water that is air, air that is time,

the day is still leaving,

the night has yet to arrive,

figurations of mist

at the turn of the corner,

figurations of time

at the bend in this pause,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

without listening, hear what I say

with eyes open inward, asleep

with all five senses awake,

it’s raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,

air and water, words with no weight:

what we are and are,

the days and years, this moment,

weightless time and heavy sorrow,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

wet asphalt is shining,

steam rises and walks away,

night unfolds and looks at me,

you are you and your body of steam,

you and your face of night,

you and your hair, unhurried lightning,

you cross the street and enter my forehead,

footsteps of water across my eyes,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

the asphalt’s shining, you cross the street,

it is the mist, wandering in the night,

it is the night, asleep in your bed,

it is the surge of waves in your breath,

your fingers of water dampen my forehead,

your fingers of flame burn my eyes,

your fingers of air open eyelids of time,

a spring of visions and resurrections,

listen to me as one listens to the rain,

the years go by, the moments return,

do you hear the footsteps in the next room?

not here, not there: you hear them

in another time that is now,

listen to the footsteps of time,

inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,

listen to the rain running over the terrace,

the night is now more night in the grove,

lightning has nestled among the leaves,

a restless garden adrift—go in,

your shadow covers this page.

~ Octavio Paz

 translation by Eliot Weinberger

the solitary man

.

No, what my heart will be is a tower,

and I will be right out on its rim:

nothing else will be there, only pain

and what can’t be said, only the world.

Only one thing left in the enormous space

that will go dark and then light again,

only one final face full of longing,

exiled into what is always full of thirst,

only one farthest-out face made of stone,

at peace with its own inner weight,

which the distances, who go on ruining it,

force on to deeper holiness.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

interview - simple but not easy

~ Robert Wright, Joseph Goldstein

the faraway

O'Keeffe grew to love the desert, which she called 
"the faraway." 
She felt that the thin, dry air enabled her to see farther, 
and she was awed by the seemingly infinite space 
that surrounded her.

 She would devote much of the rest of her career to painting desert scenery.

~ Georgia O'Keeffe

1918 photo by Alfred Stieglitz
from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe

dive for dreams

dive for dreams

or a slogan may topple you

(trees are their roots

and wind is wind)

trust your heart

if the seas catch fire

(and live by love

though the stars walk backward)

honour the past

but welcome the future

(and dance your death

away at the wedding)

never mind a world

with its villains or heroes

(for good likes girls

and tomorrow and the earth)

in spite of everything

which breathes and moves, since Doom

(with white longest hands

neating each crease)

will smooth entirely our minds

-before leaving my room

i turn, and (stooping

through the morning) kiss

this pillow, dear

where our heads lived and were.

silently if, out of not knowable

silently if, out of not knowable

night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess

(only which is this world)more my life does

not leap than with the mystery your smile

sings or if(spiraling as luminous

they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,

less into heaven certainly earth swims

than each my deeper death becomes your kiss

losing through you what seemed myself,i find

selves unimaginably mine;beyond

sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears

yours is the light by which my spirit's born:

yours is the darkness of my soul's return

-you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars

e. e. cummings
 art by the author

readings

~ William Stafford

traveling through

Death is a favour to us,
But our scales have lost their balance.
The impermanence of the body
Should give us great clarity, deepening the wonder in our
Senses and eyes
Of this mysterious existence we share
And surely are just traveling through.

If I were in the tavern tonight,
Hafiz would call for drinks
And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
That all I know of life and myself is that
We are just a mid-air flight of golden wine
Between His Pitcher and His cup.


If I were in the tavern tonight,
I would buy freely for everyone in this world
Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
Of time and space cannot endure very long.


Death is a favour to us,
But our minds have lost their balance.
The miraculous existence and impermanence of
Form
Always makes the illumined ones
Laugh and sing.





~ Hafiz

from  The subject tonight is Love –  poems of Hafiz
Versions by Daniel Ladinsky

time will come

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.





~ Derek Walcott

why is there a fear of death?

.

Questioner:  The fact of death stares everybody in the face,

 yet its mystery is never solved.  Must it always be so?

Krishnamurti:  Why is there a fear of death? 

 When we cling to continuity, there is the fear of death.

 Incomplete action brings the fear of death. 

 There is a fear of death as long as there is the desire for continuity

 in character, continuity in action, in capacity, in the name, and so on.

  As long as there is action seeking a result, there must be the thinker 

who is seeking continuity.  Fear comes into being when this continuity 

is threatened through death.  So, there is fear of death as long

 as there is the desire for continuity. 

     That which continues disintegrates.  Any form of continuity, 

however noble, is a process of disintegration.  In continuity there is never renewal, 

and only in renewal is there freedom from the fear of death.  If we see the truth 

of this, then we will see the truth in the false.  Then there would be the liberation 

from the false.  Then there would be no fear of death.  Thus living, experiencing,

 is in the present and not a means of continuity.

     Is it possible to live from moment to moment with renewal?

  There is renewal only in ending and not in continuity.  In the interval 

between the ending and the beginning of another problem,

 there is renewal.

     Death, the state of non-continuity, the state of rebirth, is the unknown.

  Death is the unknown.  The mind, which is the result of continuity,

 cannot know the unknown.  It can know only the known.  It can only act

 and have its being in the known, which is continuous.  So the known is in fear

 of the unknown.  The known can never know the unknown, and so death 

remains the mystery.  If there is an ending from moment to moment,

 from day to day, in this ending the unknown comes into being.

     Immortality is not the continuation of "me".  The me and the mine is of time,

 the result of action towards an end.  So there is no relationship between the me

 and the mine and that which is immortal, timeless.  We would like to think 

there is a relationship, but this is an illusion.  That which is immeasurable 

cannot be caught in the net of time.

     There is fear of death where there is search for fulfillment. 

 Fulfillment has no ending.  Desire is constantly seeking and changing

 the object of fulfillment, and so it is caught in the net of time. 

 So the search for self-fulfillment is another form of continuity, 

and frustration seeks death as a means of continuity.  Truth is not continuous. 

 Truth is a state of being, and being is action without time.  This being

 can be experienced only when desire, which gives birth to continuity,

 is wholly and completely understood.  Thought is founded on the past,

 so thought cannot know the unknown, the immeasurable.  

The thought process must come to an end.  

Then only the unknowable comes into being.

.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from a talk in Bombay March 14 1948

art by Klimt

silence shall be my answer

All things change and die and disappear.

Questions arrive, assume their actuality, and disappear.

In this hour I shall cease to ask them 

and silence shall be my answer.

The world that Your love created,

that the heat has distorted,

that my mind is always misinterpreting,

shall cease to interfere with our voices.

~ Thomas Merton

from Dialogues with Silence

.

The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message
 that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty
 because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words 
that will transform his darkness into light.  He does not even anticipate
 a special kind of transformation.  He does not demand light instead of darkness.
  He waits in silence, and, when he is "answered," it is not so much by a word
 that bursts into his silence.  It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably
 revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God.

from The Climate of Monastic Prayer

(one of last books he prepared for publication)

sketch by the author

when we no longer know what to do

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

~  Wendell Berry

how to be

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down.  Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection,  reading,  knowledge,

skill -- more of each

than you have  -- inspiration,

work,  growing older,  patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity.  Any readers

who like your work,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly.  Live

a three - differential life;

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of silence,  like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

~ Wendell Berry

photo - Sitting Bull

by F.A. Rinehart

a journey of one inch

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, 

no matter how long, 

but only by a spiritual journey, 

a journey of one inch, 

very arduous and humbling and joyful, 

by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, 

and learn to be at home.

~ Wendell Berry

(Collected Poems)

photo by: Kathleen Connally

the language we’ve inherited

The language we’ve inherited confuses (this). 
We say “my” body and “your” body and “his”
 body and “her” body, but it isn’t that way. … 

This Cartesian “Me,” this autonomous little homunculus 
who sits behind our eyeballs looking out through them 
in order to pass judgment on the affairs of the world,
 is just completely ridiculous. 

This self-appointed little editor of reality
 is just an impossible fiction that collapses
 the moment one examines it.

~ Robert M. Pirsig
from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance