winter afternoon by the lake

.

.

Black trunks, black branches, and white snow.

No one nearby, five o'clock, below zero,

Late January. No birds. No wind.

You look, and your life seems stopped.  Perhaps

.

You died suddenly earlier today.  But the thin

Moon says no.  The trees say, "It's been this way

Before, often.  It's cold, but it's quiet."  We've experienced

This before, among the messy Saxons putting back

.

The hide flap.  A voice says: "It's old.  You'll never

See this again, the way it is now, because

Just today you sensed that someone gave you

Life and said, 'Stay as long as you like.'"

.

The snow and the black trees, pause, to see if we're

Ready to re-enter that stillness.  "Not yet."

.

~ Robert Bly

For Owen

from Morning Poems

.

non-action

.

.

That which offers no resistance,

overcomes the hardest substances.

That which offers no resistance

can enter where there is no space.

.

Few in the world can comprehend

the teaching without words,

or understand the value of non-action.

.

~ Lao Tzu

from The Tao Te Ching
translation j.h. mcdonald

.

a way between voice and presence

.

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.

.

There is a way between voice and presence

where information flows.

.

In disciplined silence it opens.

With wandering talk it closes.

.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

.

this press of time

We set the pace,

But this press of time –

take it as a little thing

next to what endures.

All this hurrying

soon will be over

Only when we tarry

do we touch the holy.

Young ones,

don’t waste your courage

racing so fast

flying so high.

See how all things are at rest –

darkness and morning light

blossom and book.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

you know quite well

.

.

You know quite well, deep within you, 

that there is only a single magic,

a single power, a single salvation...

and that is called loving. 

.

~ Herman Hesse 

.

I am the truth

.

tomb of Hallaj

.

Kill me, my faithful friends,

For in my being killed is my life.

.

Love is that you remain standing

In front of your Beloved

When you are stripped of all your attributes;

Then His attributes become your qualities.

.

Between me and You, there is only me.

Take away the me, so only You remain

...

I am the One whom I love, and the One whom I love is myself.

We are two souls incarnated in one body;

if you see me, you see Him,

if you see Him, you see us.

.

~  Al-Hallaj

Mansur al-Hallaj was executed in Baghdad in 922.

Hallaj taught an interior expression,

 he was known to say “ana al-haq,” or “I am the Truth,”

for this he was executed.

.

each moment to fully engage

 .

.

Pursuing knowledge in childhood we rise

Until we become masterful and wise

But if we look through the disguise

We see the ties of worldly lies.

.

Early one morning I heard an angelic chime

Bringing news of a loving and joyous clime

Pursuit of the unimportant is the worst crime

Live in joy & love before the end of your time.

.

I watched the birds on nature’s stage

Playful, in flight, page after page

Thus opened the doors of my cage

& learnt each moment to fully engage.

.

~ Omar Khayyam

verses from The Rubaiyat

.

I sent my soul

.

I sent my soul into the invisible,

Some letter of that after life to spell.

And by and by my soul returned to me

And answered, I myself am heaven and hell.

.

~ Omar Khayyam 

from The Rubaiyat

.

a symphony

.

.

...Ever since I was a child, I have had the tendency to create a fictitious world around me, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances who never existed. ( I don’t know, of course, if they didn't really exist or if it is me who doesn't exist. On such matters, as in all others, one shouldn't be dogmatic.) Ever since I became aware of the thing that I call self, I can remember with mental precision, the figures, the movements, the character and the history of several fictitious people who were, to me, as visible and mine as those things which we, perhaps abusively, call real life. This tendency, which exists since I realized that I was a self, has always been with me, modifying slightly the kind of music it uses to bewitch me but never altering its manner of bewitching.

.

~ Fernando Pessoa

in a letter to his friend Casais Monteiro

.

My soul is like a hidden orchestra; I do not know which instruments 

grind and play away inside of me, strings and harps, timbales and drums. 

I can only recognize myself as a symphony.

.

from The Book of Disquiet

.

present truth

.

one must be 

in the moment 

for life to 

ever come true 

.

touch the ground 

and be grounded 

find comfort here 

.

living, being, 

breathing, now 

this is where 

it will all happen

.

~ Benjamin Dean

from straighten the heart, the mind disappears

.

ash ode

.

.

When I saw you ahead I ran two blocks 

shouting your name then realizing it wasn't 

you but some alarmed pretender, I went on 

running, shouting now into the sky, 

continuing your fame and luster. Since I've

 been incinerated, I've oft returned to this thought, 

that all things loved are pursued and never caught, 

even as you slept beside me you were flying off. 

At least what's never had can’t be lost, the sieve 

of self stuck with just some larger chunks, jawbone, 

wedding ring, a single repeated dream, 

a lullaby in every elegy, descriptions 

of the sea written in the desert, your broken 

umbrella, me claiming I could fix it.

.

~ Dean Young

I died for beauty

.

I died for beauty, but was scarce

Adjusted in the tomb,

When one who died for truth was lain

In an adjoining room.

.

He questioned softly why I failed?

“For beauty,” I replied.

“And I for truth, -the two are one;

We brethren are,” he said.

.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,

We talked between the rooms,

Until the moss had reached our lips,

And covered up our names.

.

~ Emily Dickinson

.

da capo

Take the used-up heart like a pebble

and throw it far out.

Soon there is nothing left.

Soon the last ripple exhausts itself

in the weeds.

Returning home, slice onions, carrots, celery.

Glaze them in oil before adding

the lentils, water, and herbs.

Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt.

Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.

You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted.

Begin again the story of your life.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

unpetalled

.

I unpetalled you, like a rose,

to see your soul,

and I didn't see it.

.

But everything around

--horizons of lands and of seas--

everything, out to the infinite,

was filled with a fragrance,

enormous and alive.

.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

translated by Stephen Mitchell

.

in a stolen boat

push off what seemed safe: The fishing dock,

pitch pines, children glazed to sheen

by ruthless summers. Past

 

the jetty, past the past, to open sea--

all violet and green, that choppy path between doom and luck--

Put your back into it, and row.

 

 

 

~ April Bernard

.

this love has no name

Holiness is falling in love with your own self.

This is devotion, and it is not different from love!

What you love you are devoted to and

what you are devoted to you love.

When this love has no object, and goes nowhere

but to itself, it will reveal itself to you in whatever

form you desire; manifest or unmanifest.

If you desire this love don't try to love a particular

person because this love has no personality, no

form, and no name. God is this love.

~ Papaji

from The Truth Is

in a train

.

There has been a light snow.

Dark car tracks move in out of the darkness.

I stare at the train window marked with soft dust.

I have awakened at Missoula Montana utterly happy.

.

~ Robert Bly

.

hidden things

.

.

After Long Busyness

.

I start out for a walk at last after weeks at the desk.

Moon gone plowing underfoot no stars; not a trace of light!

Suppose a horse were galloping toward me in this open field?

Every day I did not spend in solitude was wasted.

.

.

Watering the Horse

How strange to think of giving up all ambition!

Suddenly I see with such clear eyes

The white flake of snow

That has just fallen in the horse's mane!

.

~ Robert Bly

a life entirely given

.

.

Hell is timely, for Hell is the thought

that Hell will go on, on and on, without end.

Heaven is only present, instantaneous and eternal,

a mayfly, a blue dayflower, a life entirely given,

complete forever in its hour.

.

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings

photo by magda berny

.

newness

When we are alone on a starlit night,
 when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn
 descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see 
children in a moment when they are really children, 
when we know love in our own hearts; or when, 
like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog
 land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times
 the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, 
the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make
 themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

~ Thomas Merton

photo by Kathleen Connally

One Valley

.

.

Once I thought I could find

where it began

but that never happened

though I went looking for it

time and again

cutting my way past 

empty pools and dry waterfalls

where my dog ran straight up the stone

like an unmoored flame

.

it seemed that the beginning

could not be far then as I went on through the trees 

over the rocks toward the mountain

until I came out in the open

and saw no sign of it

.

where the roaring torrent

raced at one time

to carve farther down

those high walls in the stone

for the silence that I hear now

day and night on its way to the sea

.

~ W.S. Merwin
from The Shadow of Sirius
photo by Ansel Adams

.

a song on the end of the world

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet

Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,

Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

There will be no other end of the world,

There will be no other end of the world.

~  Czeslaw Milosz 

losing a language

.

A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back

yet the old still remember something that they could say

.

but they know now that such things are no longer believed

and the young have fewer words

.

many of the things the words were about

no longer exist

.

the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree

the verb for I

.

the children will not repeat

the phrases their parents speak

.

somebody has persuaded them

that it is better to say everything differently

.

so that they can be admired somewhere

farther and farther away

.

where nothing that is here is known

we have little to say to each other

.

we are wrong and dark

in the eyes of the new owners

.

the radio is incomprehensible

the day is glass

.

when there is a voice at the door it is foreign

everywhere instead of a name there is a lie

.

nobody has seen it happening

nobody remembers

.

this is what the words were made

to prophesy

.

here are the extinct feathers

here is the rain we saw

.

~ W.S. Merwin

from Migration

.

all their actions have vanished

.

.

In an age when the Tao is followed,

no one rewards the talented

or pays special attention

to the lovely, the virtuous, or the wise.

Those who govern

are simply the highest branches

on the tree, and the people wander

in freedom, like deer in the woods.

They are honest but think nothing of it,

they naturally do what is right,

they are kind without any conception

of kindness, and are trustworthy

though they wouldn't know what that means.

They keep no records of their good deeds,

because good deeds are so common.

That is why all their actions

have vanished, without a trace.

.

~ Stephen Mitchell

from The Second Book of the Tao

photo by  Kathleen Connally

.

metempsychosis

Some stories last many centuries,

others only a moment.

All alter over that lifetime like beach-glass,

grow distant and more beautiful with salt.

Yet even today, to look at a tree

and ask the story Who are you? is to be transformed.

There is a stage in us where each being, each thing, is a mirror.

Then the bees of self pour from the hive-door,

ravenous to enter the sweetness of flowering nettles and thistle.

Next comes the ringing a stone or violin or empty bucket

gives off --

the immeasurable's continuous singing,

before it goes back into story and feeling.

In Borneo, there are palm trees that walk on their high roots.

Slowly, with effort, they lift one leg then another.

I would like to join that stilted transmigration,

to feel my own skin vertical as theirs:

an ant-road, a highway for beetles.

I would like not minding, whatever travels my heart.

To follow it all the way into leaf-form, bark-furl, root-touch,

and then keep walking, unimaginably further.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Given Sugar, Given Salt: Poems


photo of the Socratea exorrhiza or walking palm
which can move itself up to about a meter per year

beauty and love

.

.

Look at something which you have seen which is actually marvelously beautiful: a statue, a poem, a lily in the pond, or a well-kept lawn. And when you see such a piece of beauty - no, no, when you see such, not piece - when you see such beauty what takes place? 

.

At that moment, the very majesty of a mountain makes you forget yourself. Right? Have you ever been in that position? When you have seen that you don't exist, only that grandeur exists. But a few seconds later or a minute later the whole cycle begins, the confusion, the chatter. 

.

So beauty is where you are not. Have you understood this? Do you understand, sir? Oh, what a crowd! The tragedy of it. Truth is where you are not. Beauty, love is where you are not. Because we are not capable to look at this extraordinary thing called truth.

.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from a talk in Bombay, January 31st 1982

thanks to J. Krishnamurti Online

.