the remains

.

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.

I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road.

At night I turn back the clocks;

I open the family album and look at myself as a boy.

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.

I say my own name. I say goodbye.

The words follow each other downwind.

I love my wife but send her away.

My parents rise out of their thrones

into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?

Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.

I empty myself of my life and my life remains.

~ Mark Strand

photo by Nancy Crampton

something that is neither yours nor from yourself

.

To belong to Allah

Is to see in your own existence

And in all that pertains to it

Something that is neither yours

Nor from yourself,

Something you have on loan;

To see your being in His Being,

Your subsistence in His Subsistence,

Your strength in His Strength:

Thus you will recognize in yourself

His title to possession of you

As Lord,

And your own title as servant:

Which is Nothingness. 

~ Thomas Merton

in response to writings of  Ibn Abbad

by technique?

.

All truly contemplatives souls have this in common: 

not that they gather exclusively in the desert, 

or that they shut themselves up in reclusion, 

but that where He is, there they are. 

And how do they find Him? By technique? 

There is no technique for finding Him. 

They find Him by His will. And His will, 

bringing them grace within and arranging their lives exteriorly, 

carries them infallibly to the precise place in which they can find Him. 

Even there they do not know how they have got there, 

or what they are really doing.

Thomas Merton

from  Thoughts in Solitude

sketch by the author

 

entrance

.

Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight,

Out of the room that lets you feel secure.

Infinity is open to your sight.

Whoever you are.

With eyes that have forgotten how to see

From viewing things already too well-known,

Lift up into the dark a huge, black tree

And put it in the heavens: tall, alone.

And you have made the world and all you see.

It ripens like the words still in your mouth.

And when at last you comprehend its truth,

Then close your eyes and gently set it free.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

sitting together

.

We sit in this courtyard,

two forms, shadow outlines with one soul.

Birdsound, leaf moving, early evening star,

fragrant damp, and a sweet sickle curve of moon.

You and I in a round, unselved idling

in the garden-beauty detail.

The raucous parrots laugh,

and we laugh inside their laughter, 

the two of us on a bench in Konya, 

yet amazingly in Khorasan and Iraq as well.

Friends abiding this form,

yet also in another, outside of time, you and I.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from The Big Red Book

the angel standing in the sun

.

by J.M.W. Turner

from the Tate Gallery, London

For those with eyes to see, the world is filled with the glory of God.

wine grapes for breakfast

.

Sweet

at first

on the tongue,

hours later

the red grapes

still sting,

as if trying 

to tell me something -

what the hook

tells the fish

perhaps,

or the wand

or stick hears

before conductor 

or mule driver

brings it down.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Lives of the Heart

counsel

.

It is possible 

that even the best counsel

cannot be processed

by the body.

All supplements to

our personal chemistry

are screened by tiny fanatical secret organs

that refuse much more than

they accept.  It is hard

to add even minerals.

Iron tablets, for example,

are not correct

and pass through us like

windowless alien crafts.

What the body wants is so exact.

~ Kay Ryan

from The Best of It

song of a man who has come through

.

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!

A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.

If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!

If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!

If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed

By the fine, fine, wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world

Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;

If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge

Driven by invisible blows,

The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,

I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,

Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?

What is the knocking at the door in the night?

It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.

Admit them, admit them.

~ D.H. Lawrence

from The Complete Poems of  D.H. Lawrence

many thanks to poetry chaikhana

a cedary fragrance

.

Even now,

decades after,

I wash my face with cold water –

Not for discipline,

nor memory,

nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice

choosing

to make the unwanted wanted.

~ Jane Hirshfield

 from Given Sugar, Given Salt

art by Cecile Chalouni

age

.

As some people age 

they kinden.

The apertures

of their eyes widen.

I do not think they weaken;

I think something weak strengthens

until they are more and more it,

like letting in heaven.

But other people are 

mussels or clams, frightened.

Steam or knife blades mean open.

They hear heaven, they think boiled or broken.

.

~ Kay Ryan

from The Best of It

avoiding discord leads to war

.

The goddess of discord, Eris, was naturally not popular in Olympus, and when the gods gave a banquet they were apt to leave her out.  Resenting this deeply, she determined to make trouble... into an important marriage celebration to which she was not invited she threw a golden a golden apple marked "For the Fairest."  Of course all the goddesses wanted it.  Zeus was asked to judge between Aphrodite, Hera, and Pallus Athena, but wisely refused.  He told them that prince Paris was an excellent judge of beauty, and that they should go to him.  He was not asked, however, to gaze at the radiant divinities and choose which seemed to him the fairest, but only to consider the bribes each offered and choose which seemed to him best worth taking.  What men cared about most was set before him.  Hera promised to make him Lord of Europe and Asia, Athena, that he would lead the Trojans to victory against the Greeks and lay Greece in ruins; Aphrodite, that the fairest woman in all the world should be his.  He gave Aphrodite the apple and in doing so, set the stage for the Trojan War.

~ Edith Hamilton

from Mythology - Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

story originally from The Judgement of Paris which 
is part of the play Trojan Woman by Euripides

human being

.

.

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu

Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East

or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not

composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,

did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace

of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two

worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that

breath breathing human being.

~ Rumi

 translated by Coleman Barks

from The Essential Rumi

a woman who was beautiful

.

A woman who was beautiful

one day

removed her face

her head became smooth

blind and deaf

safe from the snares of mirrors

and from looks of love

amid the reeds of the sun

her head hatched by a sparrowhawk

could not be found

secrets much more beautiful

for not having been said

words not written

steps erased

nameless ashes flown away

without marble plaque

desecrating memory

so many wings to break

before nightfall.

~ Alice (Rahon) Paalen

painting of Alice by her husband Wolfgang Paalen

with thanks to leda-swanson

lovers of all your elements?

.

.

And the priestess spoke again and said: 

Speak to us of Reason and Passion.

And he answered, saying:

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason 

and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, 

that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody.

But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, 

nay, the lovers of all your elements?

Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul.

If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, 

or else be held at a standstill in mid-seas.

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion,

 unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, 

that it may sing;

And let it direct your passion with reason, 

that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, 

and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.

I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite 

even as you would two loved guests in your house.

Surely you would not honour one guest above the other; 

for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and the faith of both.

Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars, 

sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows -- 

then let your heart say in silence, "God rests in reason."

And when the storm comes, and the mighty wind shakes the forest, 

and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, -- 

then let your heart say in awe, "God moves in passion."

And since you are a breath in God's sphere, 

and a leaf in God's forest, 

you too should rest in reason and move in passion.

.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from The Prophet

with thanks to poetry chaikhana