The Swan

.

.

This laboring through what is still undone,

as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,

is like the awkward walking of the swan.

.

And dying - to let go, no longer feel

the solid ground we stand on every day -

is like his anxious letting himself fall

.

into the water, which receives him gently

and which, as though with reverence and joy,

draws back past him in streams on either side;

while, infinitely silent and aware,

in his full majesty and ever more

indifferent, he condescends to glide.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from New Poems

translated by Stephen Mitchell

.

stand firm

.

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:

What is this river you want to cross?

There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.

Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?

.

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.

There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.

There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

.

And there is no body, and no mind!

Do you believe there is some place that will make the

soul less thirsty?

In that great absence you will find nothing.

.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;

there you have a solid place for your feet.

Think about it carefully!

Don't go off somewhere else!

.

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of

imaginary things,

and stand firm in that which you are. 

.

~ Kabir

thanks to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights

.

When I was a boy...

.

When I was a boy 

a god would often rescue me 

from the shouting and violence of humans. 

Then, safe and well, I would play 

with the meadow flowers, 

and heaven's breezes 

would play with me. 

.

And as you delight the heart 

of plants, stretching their tender 

arms toward you, 

Father Helios, 

so you delighted my heart, 

and I was your beloved, 

holy Luna, just like Endymion!

.

All you faithful 

friendly gods! 

I wish you knew 

how my soul loved you!

.

Naturally I couldn't call you 

by name then, nor did you use 

mine, as humans do, as if 

they really knew each other.

.

But I was better acquainted with you 

than I ever was with humans. 

I knew the stillness of the Aether: 

I never understood the words of men.

.

The euphony of the rustling 

meadow was my education; 

among flowers I learned to love.

.

I grew up 

in the arms of the gods.

.

~ Friedrich Hölderlin

.

the joy that shapes dance

.

.

Sound and gesture are contemporary,

identical and indistinguishable...

Linked to its own past,

the gesture fills up with music

and becomes rounded,

like the universe...

The beauty of gesture

renders time visible.

.

~ Catherine David

.

Stillness,

 is the canvas 

against which movement 

can become beautiful.

.

~ John O'Donohue

from The Invisible Embrace, Beauty

.

How it Happens

 

 

 

The sky said I am watching

to see what you

can make out of nothing

I was looking up and I said

I thought you

were supposed to be doing that

the sky said Many

are clinging to that

I am giving you a chance

I was looking up and I said

I am the only chance I have

then the sky did not answer

and here we are

with our names for the days

the vast days that do not listen to us

 

 

 

~ W. S. Merwin

.

The Gazelle

.

Enchanted thing: how can two chosen words

ever attain the harmony of pure rhyme

that pulses through you as your body stirs?

Out of your forehead branch and lyre climb,

.

and all your features pass in simile,through

the songs of love whose words, as light as rose-

petals, rest on the face of someone who 

has put his book away and shut his eyes:

.

to see you: tensed, as it each leg were a gun

loaded with leaps, but  not fired while your neck

holds your head still, listening: as when,

.

while swimming in some isolated place,

a girl hears leaves rustle, and turns to look:

the forest pool reflected in her face.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell

.

Dogs

.

.

Many times loneliness

is someone else

an absence

then when loneliness is no longer

someone else many times

it is someone else's dog

that you're keeping

then when the dog disappears

and the dog's absence

you are alone at last

and loneliness many times

is yourself

that absence

but at last it may be

that you are your own dog

hungry on the way

the one sound climbing a mountain

higher than time

.

~ W.S. Merwin

Writings To An Unfinished Accompaniment

thanks to http://whiskeyriver.blogspot.com/

.

Lights Out

.

The old grieving autumn goes on calling to its summer

the valley is calling to other valleys beyond the ridge

each star is roaring alone into darkness

there is not a sound in the whole night

.

~ W.S. Merwin

.

the deep innerness of all things

You are the future, 

the red sky before sunrise

over the fields of time.

You are the cock's crow when night is done,

you are the dew and the bells of matins,

maiden, stranger, mother, death.

You create yourself in ever-changing shapes

that rise from the stuff of our days -

unsung, unmourned, undescribed,

like a forest we never know.

You are the deep innerness of all things,

the last word that can never be spoken.

To each of us you reveal yourself differently:

to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,22

deep inside the flower

.

I know of a place not ruled by flatness 

Or constant risings depressions, 

 those alive are not afraid to die. 

There wild flowers come up through the leafy floor, 

 the fragrance of "I am he" floats on the wind. 

...There the love bee stays deep inside the flower 

and cares for no other thing.

~ Kabir

transparent

.

.

When all thoughts 

Are exhausted

I slip into the woods

And gather

A pile of shepherd's purse.

.

Like the little stream

Making its way

Through the mossy crevices

I, too, quietly

Turn clear and transparent.

.

~ Ryokan

photo by Jack Spencer

.

Stop struggling!

.

Since you saw this spring, why didn't

you become water?

Since you saw the Friend near, why do

you still have love for yourself?

Since you are in the shop of the sweet-seller,

why this bitter look?

Since you are swimming in the river of life,

why are you dry and miserable?

Don't be stubborn, do not flee from happiness.

You are imprisoned in a net from which

you can't escape,

Stop struggling! Stop struggling!

.

~  Rumi

translated by Muriel Maufroy

.

Thomas Merton on becoming the poet that you were meant to become (note to self)

Many poets are not poets 

for the same reason that 

many religious men are not saints: 

they never succeed in being themselves. 

They never get around to being the particular poet 

or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. 

They never become the man or the artist who is called 

for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. 

They waste their years in vain efforts 

to be some other poet, some other saint...

They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor 

to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems.

There is intense egoism in following everybody else. 

People are in a hurry to magnify themselves 

by imitating what is popular--

too lazy to think of anything better.

~ Thomas Merton

thanks to http://behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/

the polished surface of our being

.

.

I have my dead, and I have let them go,

and was amazed to see them so contented,

so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful,

so unlike their reputation.  Only you

return; brush past me, loiter, try to knock

against something, so that the sound reveals

your presence.  Oh don't take from me what I 

am slowly learning.  I'm sure you have gone astray

it you are moved to homesickness for anything 

in this dimension.  We transform these Things;

they aren't real, they are only the reflections 

upon the polished surface of our being.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

excerpt from "Requiem," written on the occasion of the death 

of his friend Paula Modersohn-Becker. This is a  portrait she painted of Rilke.

.

the gesture which small flowers make

.

.

For the sake of a single poem, 

you must see many cities, 

many people and things, 

you must understand animals, 

must feel how birds fly, 

and know the gesture which small flowers 

make when they open in the morning.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

.