what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan,  and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention,  how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me,  what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver



.

In my sky at twilight

...
In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.
...
The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!
...
You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.
...
You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of you eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.
....
~ Pablo Neruda


.

don't go back to sleep

.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

.You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

.People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

.The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

~ Rumi

I dream of a quiet man

I dream of a quiet man

who explains nothing and defends

nothing, but only knows

where the rarest wildflowers

are blooming, and who goes,

and finds that he is smiling

not by his own will.

~ Wendell Berry

you shall above all things be glad and young

.

you shall above all things be glad and young

For if you're young,whatever life you wear

..

it will become you;and if you are glad

whatever's living will yourself become.

Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:

i can entirely her only love

..

whose any mystery makes every man's

flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

..

that you should ever think, may god forbid

and(in his mercy)your true lover spare:

for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave

called progress,and negation's dead undoom.

..

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

..

~ e.e.cummings

.

from 'Walden'--In proportion as he simplifies his life

In proportion as he simplifies his life, 
the laws of the universe will appear less complex, 
and solitude will not be solitude, 
nor poverty poverty, 
nor weakness weakness. 
If you have built castles in the air, 
your work need not be lost; 
that is where they should be. 
Now put the foundations under them.

~ Henry Thoreau 

.

Do you have the patience 
to wait until your mud settles, 
and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving

 until the right action arises by itself? .


~ Lao-tzu

.

perfect dogma

.

'There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.'

.

~ Hermann Hesse 

.

from 'On the Road'

.
... the mad ones 
the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'
.
~ Jack Kerouac,


.

The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

~ Mary Oliver

i carry your heart with me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you


here is the deepest secret nobody knows


(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart


i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)




~ e.e.cummings

.

escape from these two worlds.

There is no salvation for the soul 

But to fall in Love.

It has to creep and crawl 

Among the Lovers first.

Only Lovers can escape 

From these two worlds. 

This was written in creation.

Only from the Heart 

Can you reach the sky. 

The rose of Glory 

Can only be raised in the Heart.

~ Rumi

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

it is so long since my heart has been with yours

shut by our mingling arms through

a darkness where new lights begin and 

increase,

since your mind has walked into

my kiss as a stranger

into the streets and colours of a town-

that i have perhaps forgotten

how,always(from

these hurrying crudities

of blood and flesh)Love

coins His most gradual gesture,

and whittles life to eternity

-after which our separating selves become museums

filled with skilfully stuffed memories

~ e.e.cummings

.

e.e.cummings-charcoal sketch

Just keep going

Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final

~ Rainer Maria Rilke