Thursday, May 13, 2010

question and answer


.
.
question and answer
beginning and end
post and comment
fits and starts
.
these all dissolve
beautifully into one
(a one with no parts)
when we let go
of our heads
and enter our hearts
.
~ Benjamin Dean
.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

the grip of life








Say "death" and the whole room freezes--
even the couches stop moving,
even the lamps.
Like a squirrel suddenly aware it is being looked at.

Say the word continuously,
and things begin to go forward.
Your life takes on
the jerky texture of an old film strip.

Continue saying it, hold it moment after moment inside the mouth,
it becomes another syllable.
A shopping mall swirls around the corpse of a beetle.

Death is voracious, it swallows all the living.
Life is voracious, it swallows all the dead.
neither is ever satisfied, neither is ever filled,
each swallows and swallows the world.

The grip of life is as strong as the grip of death.

(but the vanished, the vanished beloved, o where?)



~ Jane Hirshfield










Unto our very selves we are abridged


.
.
Whether we write or speak or do but look 
We are ever unapparent. What we are 
Cannot be transfused into word or book. 
Our soul from us is infinitely far. 
However much we give our thoughts the will 
To be our soul and gesture it abroad, 
Our hearts are incommunicable still. 
In what we show ourselves we are ignored. 
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged 
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming. 
Unto our very selves we are abridged 
When we would utter to our thought our being. 
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams, 
And each to each other dreams of others’ dreams.
.
~ Fernando Pessoa 
.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

A Letter (to Ed McClanahan)


.
.
Dear Ed,
.
I dreamed that you and I were sent to Hell.
The place we went to was not fiery
or cold, was not Dante's Hell or Milton's,
but was, even so, as true a Hell as any.
It was a place unalterably public
in which crowds of people were rushing
in weary frenzy this way and that,
as when classes change in a university
or at quitting time in a city street,
except that this place was wider far
than we could see, and the crowd as large 
as the place.  In that crowd every one
was alone.  Every one was hurrying.
Nobody was sitting down.  Nobody
was standing around.  All were rushing
so uniformly frantic, that to average them
would have stood them still.  It was a place 
deeply disturbed.  We thought, you and I,
that we might get across and come out
on the other side, if we stayed together,
only if we stayed together.  The other side
would be a clear day in a place we would know.
We joined hands and hurried along,
snatching each other through small openings 
in the throng.  But the place was full
of dire distractions, dire satisfactions.
We were torn apart, and I found you 
breakfasting upon a huge fried egg.
I snatched you away: "Ed! Come on!"
And then, still susceptible, I met
a lady whose luster no hell could dim.
She took all my thought.  But then,
in the midst of my delight, my fear
returned: "Oh! Damn it all! Where's Ed?"
I fled, searching, and found you again.
We went on together.  How this ended
I do not know.  I woke before it could end.
But, old friend, I want to tell you
how fine it was, what a durable
nucleus of joy it gave my fright
to force that horrid way with you, how
heavenly, let us say, in spite of Hell.
.
P.S.
Do you want to know shy
you were distracted by an egg, and I
by a beautiful lady?  That's Hell.
.
~ Wendell Berry
.

The body is a single creature




God, how I hate names
of the body's chemicals and anatomy,
the frore and glum department
of its parts, each alone in the scattering
of the experts of Babel.

The body
is a single creature, whole
its life is one, never less that one, or more,
so is its world, and so
are two bodies in their love for one another
one.  In ignorance of this
we talk ourselves to death.



~  Wendell Berry


The abyss of no-meaning


.
.
The abyss of no-meaning-what
can prevail against it?  Love
for the water in its standing
fall through the hill's wrist
from the town down to the river.
There is no love but this,
and it extends from Heaven
to the land destroyed,
to the hurt man in his cage,
to the dead man in his grave.
.
~ Wendell Berry
.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Sorrows of the Moon


.
.
Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness,
And, like a beauty on her cushions, lies at rest;
While drifting off to sleep, a tentative caress
Seeks, with a gentle hand, the contour of her breast;
.
As on a crest above her silken avalanche,
Dying, she yields herself to an unending swoon,
And sees a pallid vision everywhere she’d glance,
In the azure sky where blossoms have been strewn.
.
When sometime, in her weariness, upon her sphere
She might permit herself to sheda furtive tear,
A poet of great piety, a foe of sleep,
.
Catches in the hollow of his hand that tear,
An opal fragment, iridescent as a star;
Within his heart, far from the sun, it’s buried deep.

.
~  Charles Baudelaire 
.

This is what you shall do



.
.
This is what you shall do:
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
Stand up for the stupid and crazy,
Devote your income and labors to others,
Hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
Have patience and indulgence toward the people,
Take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,
Or to any man or number of men,
Go freely with powerful uneducated persons,
And with the young and with the mothers of families,
Read these leaves in the open air,
Every season of every year of your life,
Reexamine all you have been told,
At school at church or in any book,
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul,
And your very flesh shall be a great poem,
And have the richest fluency not only in its words,
But in the silent lines of its lips and face,
And between the lashes of your eyes,
And in every motion and joint of your body.
.
~  Walt Whitman
.


the thorns


.
.


I was a child. I remember, I used to pick
once, wild roses.
They has so many thorns,
but I didn’t wanted to break them.
I thought they were - buds,
and they are going to bloom.
.
I met you, then. Oh, how many,
how many thorns you had!
but I didn’t wanted to undress you -
I thought they will bloom.
.
Today, everything passes
in front of my eyes and I smile.
I smile and I wander through valleys
Playful, in the blowing of the wind.
I was a child.
.
~   Lucian Blaga
.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

my love is building a building


.
.
my love is building a building
around you,a frail slippery
house,a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning
.
of your smile)a skilful uncouth
prison,a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)
.
my love is building a magic,a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)
.
when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall
.
crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He'll not my tower, 
                                                     laborious, casual
.
where the surrounded smile
                                                 hangs
.
                                                                            breathless
.
e. e. cummings
art by Sandy Eastoak,  http://www.sandyeastoak.com/
.

Thursday, May 6, 2010

"wandering-on"



 
 
Samsara literally means "wandering-on." 
 
Many people think of it as the Buddhist name 
for the place where we currently live. 
But in the early Buddhist texts,
 it's the answer,
 not to the question,
 "Where are we?"
 but to the question,
 "What are we doing?"
 Instead of a place,
 it's a process:
 
 the tendency to keep creating worlds
 and then moving into them.
 As one world falls apart,
 you create another one and go there. 
At the same time, you bump into other people
 who are creating their own worlds, too.


The process can sometimes be enjoyable.
 In fact, it would be perfectly innocuous
 if it didn't entail so much suffering. 
The worlds we create keep caving in and killing us.
 
 Moving into a new world requires effort:
 not only the pains and risks of taking birth, 
but also the hard knocks -
 mental and physical -
 that come from going through 
childhood into adulthood, 
over and over again.
 
 
 
- Geoffrey DeGraff



not all





Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.



~  Edna St. Vincent Millay


The Family Garden


.
.
Tell me again about your garden
           Tell me how you planted, in the small
                      flat of mountain land, corn seed

and bean seed, how your finger poked the soil
           then you dropped in three dark bean seeds
                      for every yellow seed of corn.

Trees and mountains collared your land,
           but the fenced garden opened freely
                      to sun and warm summer rains.

Your potato rows bulged in July. You ached
           from digging them up, your hands down in dirt,
                      the cool lump of a tuber, brown-spotted,

just recovered, a greeting, like shaking hands.
           Baskets full of bumpy brown potatoes filled
                      your basement until fall, until you gave

away what you could, throwing out the rest.
           You gave away honey from the white hive too,
                      that box of bees beside the garden,

honey stored in Mason jars, a clearest honey
           nectar from lin tree blossoms and wild flowers.
                      The bright taste of honey on the tongue

spoke of the place, if a place can be known
           by the activity of bees and a flavor in the mouth,
                      if a person can be known by small acts

such as these, such as the way you rocked
           summer evenings from a chair on the porch
                      tending your inner garden, eyes closed.
.
Hank Hudepohl
.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010


.



Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; 
the world is a wonderfully weird place;
 consensual reality is significantly flawed; 
no institution can be trusted, 
but love does work; 
all things are possible; 
and we all could be happy and fulfilled
 if we only had the guts to be truly free
 and the wisdom to shrink our egos 
and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.
 
 
 
— Tom Robbins
 
 
 

To walk inside yourself


.


To walk inside yourself and and meet no one for hours -
that is what you must be able to attain.
To be solitary as you were when you were a child,
when the grown-ups walked around
involved with matters that seemed large and important
because they looked so busy
and because you didn't understand a thing
about what they were doing.






~ Rainer Maria Rilke