take me to the alley

~  Gregory Porter

we are many

Of the many men who I am, who we are,

I can't find a single one;

they disappear among my clothes,

they've left for another city.

When everything seems to be set

to show me off as intelligent,

the fool I always keep hidden

takes over all that I say.

At other times, I'm asleep

among distinguished people,

and when I look for my brave self,

a coward unknown to me

rushes to cover my skeleton

with a thousand fine excuses.

When a decent house catches fire,

instead of the fireman I summon,

an arsonist bursts on the scene,

and that's me. What can I do?

What can I do to distinguish myself?

How can I pull myself together?

All the books I read

are full of dazzling heroes,

always sure of themselves.

I die with envy of them;

and in films full of wind and bullets,

I goggle at the cowboys,

I even admire the horses.

But when I call for a hero,

out comes my lazy old self;

so I never know who I am,

nor how many I am or will be.

I'd love to be able to touch a bell

and summon the real me,

because if I really need myself,

I mustn't disappear.

While I am writing, I'm far away;

and when I come back, I've gone.

I would like to know if others

go through the same things that I do,

have as many selves as I have,

and see themselves similarly;

and when I've exhausted this problem,

I'm going to study so hard

that when I explain myself,

I'll be talking geography.

~  Pablo Neruda 

translated by Alastair Reid

art by picasso

undress them

.

This means that we have barely 

disembarked into life, 

that we've only just now been born, 

let's not fill our mouths 

with so many uncertain names, 

with so many sad labels, 

with so many pompous letters, 

with so much yours and mine, 

with so much signing of papers. 

I intend to confuse things, 

to unite them, make them new-born 

intermingle them, undress them, 

until the light of the world 

has the unity of the ocean, 

a generous wholeness, 

a fragrance alive and crackling. 

~ Pablo Neruda

keeping quiet

.

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

This one time upon the earth,

let’s not speak any language,

let’s stop for one second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be a delicious moment,

without hurry, without locomotives,

all of us would be together

in a sudden uneasiness.

The fishermen in the cold sea

would do no harm to the whales

and the peasant gathering salt

would look at his torn hands.

Those who prepare green wars,

wars of gas, wars of fire,

victories without survivors,

would put on clean clothing

and would walk alongside their brothers

in the shade, without doing a thing.

What I want shouldn’t be confused

with final inactivity:

life alone is what matters,

I want nothing to do with death.

If we weren’t unanimous

about keeping our lives so much in motion,

if we could do nothing for once,

perhaps a great silence would

interrupt this sadness,

this never understanding ourselves

and threatening ourselves with death,

perhaps the earth is teaching us

when everything seems to be dead

and then everything is alive.

.

Now I will count to twelve

and you keep quiet and I’ll go.

~ Pablo Neruda 
from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon

St. Vith, December 21, 1944

TANKS OF THE 7TH ARMORED DIVISION in a temporary position near St. Vith

Cut off in front of the line

that now ran through St. Vith,

the five American tanks sat

in a field covered with snow

in the dark. And now they must

retreat to safety, which they

could do only through gunfire

and flame in the burning town.

They went, firing, through the fire,

GIs and German prisoners

clinging to the hulls, and out

again into the still night beyond.

In the broad dark, someone

began to sing, and one by one

the others sang also, the German

prisoners singing in German,

the Americans in English,

the one song. "Silent night,"

they sang as the great treads

passed on across the dark

countryside muffled in white

snow, "Holy night."

~ Wendell Berry

nothing else

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There is nothing else than now. 

There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any tomorrow. 

How old must you be before you know that? 

There is only now, and if now is only two days, 

then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. 

This is how you live a life in two days. 

And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get,

 you will have a good life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

~ Ernest Hemingway 

from For Whom the Bell Tolls

photo by Robin Zygelman

with thanks to whiskey river

 

 

each time

.

.

 

The soul said, "Give me something to look at."

So I gave her a farm.  She said,

"It's too large."  So I gave her a field.

The two of us sat down.

.

Sometimes I would fall in love with a lake

Or a pine cone.  But I liked her

Most.  She knew it.

"Keep writing," she said.

.

So I did.  Each time the new snow fell,

We would be married again.

The holy dead sat down by our bed.

This went on for years.

.

"This field is getting too small," she said.

"Don't you know anyone else

To fall in love with?"

What would you have said to Her?

 

 

 

 

 

~ Robert Bly

.

.

where no one has a home

.

.

The wind blows where it likes: that is what 

Everyone is like who is born from the wind.

Oh now it's getting serious.  We want to be those

Born from the wind that blows along the plains

And over the sea where no one has a home.

And that Upsetting Rabbi, didn't he say:

"Take nothing with you, no blanket, no bread.

When evening comes, sleep wherever you are.

And if the owners say no, shake out the dust

From your sandals; leave the dust on their doorstep."

Don't hope for what will never come.  Give up hope,

Dear friends, the joists of life are laid on the winds.

.

 

 

~ Robert Bly

excerpt from A Poem for Giambattista Vico 

.

the hope of results

Do not depend on the hope of results. 

… you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless 

and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. 

As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results
 but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. 

~ Thomas Merton

in a letter to Jim Forest dated February 21, 1966, 

reproduced in The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters by Thomas Merton

art by Winslow Homer

the beginning of love

.

The beginning of love 

is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, 

and not to twist them to fit our own image. 

Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

~ Thomas Merton

sketch by the author

the secret beauty

.

 

 

 

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, 

the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire

 nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality,

 the person that each one is in God's eyes.

 

 If only they could see themselves as they really are. 

If only we could see each other that way all the time,

 there would be no more war, no more hatred, 

no more cruelty, no more greed... 

 

I suppose the big problem would be 

that we would fall down and worship each other.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Thomas Merton 

photo by konrad gos

.

gratitude to old teachers

When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,

We place our feet where they have never been.

We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.

Who is down there but our old teachers? 

Water that once could take no human weight-

We were students then-holds up our feet,

And goes on ahead of us for a mile.

Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.

~ Robert Bly 

from Eating the Honey of Words

what caused us each to live hidden?

What caused us each to live hidden?
A wound, the wind, a word, a parent.
Sometimes we wait in a helpless way,
awkwardly, not whole and not healed.

When we hid the wound, we fell back
from a human to a shelled life.



~ Robert Bly
from Stealing Sugar from the Castle



.

inviting you to be generous

Wonder, as the child of mystery, is a natural source of prayer.  

One of the most beautiful forms of prayer is the prayer of appreciation.
  This prayer arises out of the recognition of the gracious kindness of creation.
  We have been given so much.  We could never have merited or earned it.
  When you appreciate all you are and all you have, 
you can celebrate and enjoy it. 

 You realize how fortunate you are. 
 Providence is blessing you and inviting you to be generous with your gifts.
  You are able to bless life and give thanks to God. 
 The prayer of appreciation has no agenda but gracious thanks.
  Nothing is given to you for yourself alone.  
When you receive some blessing or gift, 
you do it in the name of others;
 through you, they, too, will come to share
 in the kindness of Providence.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

the only time you are alive

You think you will never forget any of this, 
you will remember it always just the way it was. 

But you can't remember it the way it was.
 To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it 
right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. 

Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them
 that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. 
And so you have a life that you are living only now, now
 and now and now, gone before you can speak of it,
 and you must be thankful for living day by day,
 moment by moment, in this presence.

But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you.
 You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present,
 and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life 
in a different world and time. When you remember the past,
 you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is.
 It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present,
 alive with you in the only time you are alive.

~ Wendell Berry

from Hannah Coulter