Monday, July 12, 2010

One of the Butterflies


.
.
The trouble with pleasure is the timing
it can overtake me without warning
and be gone before I know it is here
it can stand facing me unrecognized
while I am remembering somewhere else
in another age or someone not seen
for years and never to be seen again
in this world and it seems that I cherish
only now a joy I was not aware of
when it was here although it remains
out of reach and will not be caught or named
or called back and if I could make it stay
as I want to it would turn into pain
.
W.S. Merwin
from: The Shadow of Sirius
.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Falling


.
.
Long before daybreak
none of the birds awake
rain comes down with the sound
of a huge wind rushing
through the valley trees
it comes down around us
all at the same time
and beyond it there is nothing
it falls without hearing itself
without knowing
there is anyone here
without seeing where it is
or where it is going
like a moment of great 
happiness of our own
that we cannot remember
coasting with the lights off
.
W.S. Merwin
.

a momentary creed






I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me

I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me

It extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me

it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me

there is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me

the only presence that appears to stay 
everything that I call mine it lent me

even the way that I believe the day
for as long as it is here and is me




~ W.S. Merwin
from:  The Shadow of Sirius

.

That sounds wonderful


.
.
Good poetry
Makes a beautiful naked woman
Materialize from
Words,
.
Who then says,
With a sword precariously waving
In her hands,
.
"If you look at my loins
I will cut off your head,
.
And reach down and grab your spirit
By its private parts,
.
And carry you off to heaven
Squealing in joy."
.
Hafiz says,
"That sounds wonderful, just
Wonderful.
.
Someone please - start writing
Some great
Lines."
.



- Hafiz
from: The subject tonight is love
- versions by Daniel Ladinsky
.

Friday, July 9, 2010

what the bird with the human head knew




I went to the bird
with the human head,
and asked,
Please Sir,
where is God?

God is too busy
to be here on earth,
His angels are like one thousand geese assembled
and always flapping.
But I can tell you where the well of God is.

Is it on earth?
I asked.
He replied,
Yes. It was dragged down
from paradise by one of the geese.

I walked many days,
past witches that eat grandmothers knitting booties
as if they were collecting a debt.
Then, in the middle of the desert
I found the well,
it bubbled up and down like a litter of cats
and there was water,
and I drank,
and there was water,
and I drank.

Then the well spoke to me.

It said: Abundance is scooped from abundance,
yet abundance remains.

Then I knew.







~ Anne Sexton
.
(Few established poets nowadays have a background as non-spectacular as that of Anne Sexton (1928-1974), a mediocre student who neither went to college nor formally studied literature. For a time she worked as a fashion model. Emotional, impetuous, she even eloped at the age of 19.
.
Anne Sexton began falling to pieces in her early 20’s after the births of her two daughters. Her psychiatrist recommended writing poetry as a form of therapy; she took to the typewriter at the age of 26 and never looked back.)


what's that


.
 
 
Before it came inside
I had watched it from my kitchen window,
watched it swell like a new balloon,
watched it slump and then divide,
like something I know I know —
a broken pear or two halves of the moon,
or round white plates floating nowhere
or fat hands waving in the summer air
until they fold together like a fist or a knee.
After that it came to my door. Now it lives here.
And of course: it is a soft sound, soft as a seal’s ear,
that was caught between a shape and a shape and then returned to me.
 
 
You know how parents call
from sweet beaches anywhere, come in come in
and how you sank under water to put out
the sound, or how one of them touched in the hall
at night: the rustle and the skin
you couldn’t know, but heard, the stout
slap of tides and the dog snoring. It’s here
now, caught back from time in my adult year —
the image we did forget: the crackling shells on our feet
or the swing of the spoon in soup. It is as real
as splinters stuck in your ear. The noise we steal
is half a bell. And outside cars whisk by on the suburban street
 
 
and are there and are true.
What else is this, this intricate shape of air?
calling me, calling you.
 
 
 
 
~ Anne Sexton
.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

The divine will



.
The divine will
is a deep abyss
of which the present 
moment is the entrance.
If you plunge
into this abyss
you will find it
infinitely more vast
than your
desires.
.
~ Jean Pierre de Caussade
(French Jesuit who in the 18th century coined the phrase
"the sacrament of the present moment."  
He said,
"It is necessary to disengage from all we feel and do
in order to walk with God in the duty of the present moment...")
.
.

The Pentecost Castle (excerpt)


.

I shall go down
to the lovers' well
and wash this wound
that will not heal

beloved soul
what shall you see
nothing at all
yet eye to eye

depths of non-being
perhaps too clear
my desire dying
as I desire



~ Geoffrey Hill


You who want


.
.
You who want
knowledge,
seek the Oneness
within
.
There you
will find
the clear mirror
already waiting
.
~ Hadewijch II
art by Picasso
.

Tighten


.
 
 
Tighten
to nothing
the circle
that is
the world's things.
 
Then the Naked
circle
can grow wide,
enlarging,
embracing all
 
 
 
 
~ Hadewijch II
 
 
 

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

stretching out toward God




When you go apart to be alone for prayer, put from your mind 
everything you have been doing or plan to do.  
Reject all thoughts, be they good or be they evil.  
Do not pray with words unless you are really drawn to this; 
or if you do pray with words, pay no attention to whether they are many or few.  
Do not weigh them or their meaning. 
 Do not be concerned about what kind of prayers you use, 
for it is unimportant whether or not they are official liturgical prayers, 
psalms, hymns, or anthems; whether they are for particular or general intentions; 
or  whether you formulate them interiorly, by thoughts, 
or express them aloud, in words.  
See that nothing remains in your conscious mind 
save a naked intent stretching out toward God.





from chapter 1 of The Book of Privy Counseling
by an anonymous fourteenth-century English author



The Fall


.
.
There is no where in you a paradise that is no place and there
You do not enter except without a story.
.
To enter there is to become unnameable.
...
Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist
except unborn:
No disguise will avail him anything
.
Such a one is neither lost nor found.
.
But he who has an address is lost.
...
Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.
.
They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn
flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree.  It must remain unseen until words
end and arguments are silent.
.
~ Thomas Merton
(excerpt from The Fall)
.

Are you looking for me?


.
.
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. 
My shoulder is against yours.
.
You will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, 
nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
.
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but vegetables.
.
When you really look for me, you will see me.
instantly -- you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
.
He is the breath inside the breath.
.
~ Kabir
.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

In Silence



.
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your
.
Name.
Listen 
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
Silence are you?
.
Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet.) Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.
.
~ Thomas Merton
(excerpt from In Silence)
.
.

I loved what I could love




I had a natural passion for fine clothes, excellent food, and
lively conversation about all matters that concern
the heart still alive.  And even a passion 
about my own 
looks.

Vanities: they do not exist.

Have you ever walked across a stream stepping on
rocks so not to spoil a pair of shoes?

All we can touch, swallow, or say
aids in our crossing to God
and helps unveil the 
soul.

Life smooths us, rounds, perfects, as does the river the stone,
and there is no place our Beloved is not flowing
though the current's force you
may not always
like.

Our passions help to lift us.

I loved what I could love until I held Him,
for then - all things - every world
disappeared.



~ Saint Teresa of Avila




The Inner History of a Day


.
.
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
.
~ John O'Donohue
(excerpt from The Inner History of a Day)
.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Love letters


.
.
Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters sent by the wind
and rain, the snow and moon.
.
~ Ikkyu
(Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology,
 trans. by Sonya Arutzen)
.

from: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front






Ask the questions that have no answers. 
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. 

Say that your main crop is the forest 
that you did not plant, 
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested 
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. 
Put your faith in the two inches of humus 
that will build under the trees 
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear 
close, and hear the faint chattering 
of the songs that are to come. 
Expect the end of the world. Laugh. 
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful 
though you have considered all the facts. 
So long as women do not go cheap 
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy 
a woman satisfied to bear a child? 
Will this disturb the sleep 
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields. 
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head 
in her lap. Swear allegiance 
to what is highest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos 
can predict the motions of your mind, 
lose it. Leave it as a sign 
to mark the false trail, the way 
you didn't go.
Be like the fox 
who makes more tracks than necessary, 
some in the wrong direction. 
Practice resurrection.




~ Wendell Berry
from Collected Poems

Look it Over



.
I leave behind even
my walking stick.  My knife
is in my pocket, but that
I have forgot.  I bring
no car, no cell phone,
no computer, no camera,
no CD player, no fax, no
TV, not even a book. I go
into the woods.  I sit on
a log provided at no cost.
It is the earth I've come to,
the earth itself, sadly
abused by the stupidity
only humans are capable of
but, as ever, itself. Free.
A bargain!  Get it while it lasts.
.
~ Wendell Berry
(Leavings)
.

Friday, June 25, 2010

As a caterpillar


.
.
As a caterpillar, having come to the end of 
one blade of grass, draws itself together and 
reaches out for the next, so the Self, having 
come to the end of one life and dispelled 
all ignorance, gathers in his faculties and 
reaches out from the old body to a new.
~ The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
.

Always in the distance



.
Always in the distance
the sound of cars is passing
on the road, that simplest form
going only two ways,
both ways away.  And I 
have been there in that going.
.
But now I rest and am 
apart, a part of the form
of the woods always arriving
from all directions home,
this cell of wild sound,
the hush of the trees, singers
hidden among the leaves -
.
a form whose history is old,
needful, unknown, and bright
as the history of the stars
that tremble in the sky at night
like leaves of a great tree.
.
~ Wendell Berry
(A Timbered Choir)
.

The world of machines



The world of machines is running
Beyond the world of trees
Where only a leaf is turning
In a small high breeze.
.
~ Wendell Berry
(A Timbered Choir)
.
photo by: Kathleen Connally
.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

the smallest word




Of all that God has shown me
I can speak just the smallest word,
Not more than a honey bee
Takes on his foot
From an overspilling jar.



~ Mechtild of Magdeburg

in every moment




True love in every moment praises God.
Longing love brings a sorrow sweet to the pure.
Seeking love belongs to itself alone.
Understanding love gives itself equally to all.
Enlightened love is mingled with the sadness of the world.
But selfless love bears an effortless fruit,
Working so quietly even the body cannot say how it comes and goes.



~ Mechtild of Magdeburg



Sunday, June 20, 2010

They come singly


.
.
They come singly, the little streams,
Out of their solitude.  They bear
In their rough fall a spate of gleams
That glance and dance in morning air.
.
They com singly, and coming go
Ever downward toward the river
Into whose dark abiding flow
They come, now quieted, together.
.
In dark they mingle and are made
At one with light in highest flood
Embodied and inhabited,
The budded branch as red as blood.
.
~ Wendell Berry 
(Given)
.

Things will go where they're supposed to go


.
.
Things will go where they're supposed to go 
if you just let them take their natural course. 
Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt 
when it's time for them to be hurt. 
Life is like that. 
I know I sound like I'm preaching from a podium, 
but it's about time for you to learn to live like this. 
You try too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. 
If you don't want to spend time in an insane asylum, 
you have to open up a little more 
and let yourself go with life's natural flow.
.
~ Haruki Murakami
(Norwegian Wood)
.
.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

at night



.
at night,
deep in the mountains,
I breathe...
everything is still,
all thoughts emptied
into the night.
my robe has become
a garment of frost.
suddenly, above the
highest peak,
the full moon appears.
.
~ Ryokan
.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Eating Together





.
In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago. Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him,
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.
.
~ Li-Young Lee
(Rose)
.

The Hammock






When I lay my head in my mother's lap
I think how day hides the stars,
the way I lay hidden once, waiting
inside my mother's singing to herself. And I remember 
how she carried me on her back
between home and the kindergarten,
once each morning and once each afternoon.

I don't know what my mother's thinking.

When my son lays his head in my lap, I wonder:
Do his father's kisses keep his father's worries
from becoming his? I think, Dear God, and remember
there are stars we haven't heard from yet:
They have so far to arrive. Amen,
I think, and I feel almost comforted.

I've no idea what my child is thinking.

Between two unknowns, I live my life.
Between my mother's hopes, older than I am
by coming before me, and my child's wishes, older than I am
by outliving me. And what's it like?
Is it a door, and good-bye on either side?
A window, and eternity on either side?
Yes, and a little singing between two great rests.




~ Li-Young Lee
(Book of My Nights)

We were standing by the road

.


.
IV.
We were standing by the road,
seven of us and a small boy.
We had just rescued a yellow swallowtail
disabled on the pavement when a car
approached too fast.  I turned to make sure
of the boy, and my old border collie
Nell, too slow coming across,
was hit, broken all to pieces, and died
at once, while the car sped on.
And I cried, not thinking what
I meant, "God damn!" And I wish
all automobiles in Hell,
where perhaps they already are.
.
V.
Nell's small grave, opening
at the garden's edge to receive her
out of this world's sight forever,
reopens many graves.  Digging,
the old man grieves for his old dog
with all the grief he knows,
which seems again to be approaching
enough, though he knows there is more.
.
VI.
How simple to be dead! - the only
simplification there is, in fact, Thoreau
to the contrary notwithstanding.
Nell lay in her grave utterly still
under the falling earth, the world
all astir above, a million leaves
alive in the wind, and what do we know?
.
~ Wendell Berry
(Leavings, Sabbaths, 2005)
.