the eyes of others

You can't see yourself. 

You know what you look like because of mirrors and photographs, 

but out there in the world, as you move among your fellow human beings,

 whether strangers or friends or the most intimate beloveds, 

your own face is invisible to you. 

 

You can see other parts of yourself, arms and legs, hands and feet, 

shoulders and torso, but only from the front, 

nothing of the back except the backs of your legs 

if you twist them into the right position,

 but not your face, never your face, and in the end -

 at least as far as others are concerned - your face is who you are,

 the essential fact of your identity. Passports do not contain pictures

 of hands and feet. Even you, who have lived inside your body

 for sixty-four years now, would probably be unable to recognize

 your foot in an isolated photograph of that foot, not to speak of your ear,

 or your elbow, or one of your eyes in close-up. 

 

All so familiar to you in the context of the whole,

 but utterly anonymous when taken piece by piece. 

We are all aliens to ourselves, and if we have any sense of who we are,

 it is only because we live inside the eyes of others.

~  Paul Auster

 

 

your mirror

Each soul is created to serve as your mirror.

All things in the two worlds

are only your mirrors.

The heart is the mirror of your most royal

beauty -

and both of these worlds

are the case of that mirror.

~ Najm al-Din Daya Razi

from Love's Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition

translation by David and Sabrineh Fideler

between the hammers our heart endures

 

 

 

 

 

 Happy are those who know
behind all words, the Unsayable stands,
and from that source, the Infinite
crosses over to gladness, and us.

Free of those bridges we raise
with constructed distinctions;
so that always, in each separate joy,
we gaze at the single, wholly mutual core.

...

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here

apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way

keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.

Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,

just once. And never again. But to have been

this once, completely, even if only once:

to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

 

 ...

 

Here is the time for the say-able, here is its homeland.

Speak and bear witness. More than ever

the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for

what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.

An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as

the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.

Between the hammers our heart

endures, just as the tongue does

between the teeth and, despite that,

still is able to praise.

 

 

 

 

 

 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

art by Keith Hennig

 

unending love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

 

 

 

~  Rabindranath Tagore

from Selected Poems

 

 

 

 

the first peace

The first peace, which is the most important, 
is that which comes within the souls of people 
when they realize their relationship, their oneness,
 with the universe and all its powers, 
and when they realize that at the center of the universe 
dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), and that this center
 is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
 This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this.

The second peace is that which is made between two individuals,
 and the third is that which is made between two nations.
 But above all you should understand that there can never be peace
 between nations until there is known that true peace, 
which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.

~  Black Elk

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