for the shop

He wrapped them up carefully, neatly,
in expensive green silk.
Roses of rubies, lilies of pearl,
violets of amethyst: according to his taste, his will,
his vision of their beauty - not as he saw them in nature
or studied them. He'll heave them in the safe,
examples of his bold, his skillful work.
Whenever a customer comes into the shop,
he brings out other things to sell - first class ornaments:
bracelets, chains, necklaces, rings.





~ Constantine Cavafy
(translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

hIdden things

.

From all I did and all I said
let no one try to find out who I was.
An obstacle was there distorting
the actions and the manner of my life.
An obstacle was often there
to stop me when I'd begin to speak.
From my most unnoticed actions,
my most veiled writing -
from these alone will I be understood.
But maybe it isn't worth so much concern,
so much effort to discover who I really am.
Later, in a more perfect society,
someone else made just like me
is certain to appear and act freely.






~ Constantine Cavafy
(translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)
Cavafy's Painting by Karavia

.

Anyone who has probed the inner life

.

Anyone who has probed the inner life, 

who has sat in silence long enough to experience 

the stillness of the mind behind its apparent noise,

is faced with a mystery. 

Apart from all the outer attractions of life in the world, 

there exists at the center of human consciousness 

something quite satisfying and beautiful in itself,

a beauty without features. 

The mystery is not so much that these two dimensions exist - 

an outer world and the mystery of the inner world -

but that we are suspended between them, 

as a space in which both worlds meet . . . 

as if the human being is the meeting point, 

the threshold between two worlds.

~ Kabir Helmisnski, 

The Knowing Heart

Love the earth

.

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 labor 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 or families,

re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,

and dismiss whatever insults your own soul;

and your very flesh shall be a great poem....

.

~ Walt Whitman

(from the Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition)

.

Pocket of Fog

In the yard next door,

a pocket of fog like a small heard of bison

swallows azaleas, koi pond, the red-and-gold koi.

To be undivided must mean not knowing you are.

The fog grazes here, then there,

all morning browsing the shallows,

leaving no footprint between my fate and the mountain's.

~ Jane Hirshfield, 

(After)

photo by Kathleen Connally

only foam trails on the sea

.

.

Walker, your footsteps

are the road, and nothing more.

Walker, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

Walking you make the road,

and turning to look behind

you see the path you never

again will step upon.

Walker, there is no road,

only foam trails on the sea.

.

~ Antonio Machado

(Border of a Dream: Selected Poems, translated by Willis Barnstone)

.

climbs out of fate

.

You are the future, the immense morning sky

turning red over the prairies of eternity.

You are the rooster-crow after the night of time,

the dew, the early devotions, and the Daughter,

the Guest, the Ancient Mother, and Death.

.

You are the shape that changes its own shape,

that climbs out of fate, towering,

that which is never shouted for, and never mourned for,

and no more explored than a savage wood.

.

You are the meaning deepest inside things,

that never reveals the secret of its owner.

And how you look depends on where we are:

from a boat you are shore, from the shore a boat.

.

~  Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Soul is Here for Its Own Joy
translation by Robert Bly

.

in cloudy speech

God speaks to each of us before we are,

Before he's formed us — then, in cloudy speech,

But only then, he speaks these words to each

And silently walks with us from the dark:

Driven by your senses, dare

To the edge of longing. Grow

Like a fire's shadowcasting glare

Behind assembled things, so you can spread

Their shapes on me as clothes.

Don't leave me bare.

Let it all happen to you: beauty and dread.

Simply go — no feeling is too much —

And only this way can we stay in touch.

Near here is the land

That they call Life.

You'll know when you arrive

By how real it is.

Give me your hand.

~  Rainer Maria Rilke

(Translation by Leonard Cottrell)

Evening

.

.

Slowly the evening puts on the garments

held for it by a rim of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands divide from you,

one going heavenward, one that falls;

.

and leave you, to neither quite belonging, 

not quite so dark as the house sunk in silence,

not quite so surely pledging the eternal

as that which grows star each night and climbs-

.

and leave you (inexpressibly to untangle)

your life afraid and huge and ripening,

so that it, now bound in and now embracing, 

grows alternately stone in you and star.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

(The Book of Images, translated by Edward Snow)

.

BECOMING HUMAN

.

Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about

“His great visions of God” he felt he was having.

.

He asked me for confirmation, saying,

“Are these wondrous dreams true?”

.

I replied, “How many goats do you have?”

.

He looked surprised and said,

“I am speaking of sublime visions

And you ask 

About goats!”

.

And I spoke again saying,

“Yes, brother – how many do you have?”

.

“Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.”

.

“And how many wives?”

Again he looked surprised, then said,

“Four.”

.

“How many rose bushes in your garden,

How many children,

Are your parents still alive,

Do you feed the birds in winter?”

.

And to all he answered.

.

Then I said,

“You asked me if I thought your visions were true,

I would say that they were if they make you become

More human,

.

More kind to every creature and plant

That you know."

.

~ Hafiz

(“The Gift” – translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

This is now

.

.

This is now. Now is,

all there is. Don't wait for Then;

strike the spark, light the fire.

.

Sit at the Beloved's table,

feast with gusto, drink your fill

.

then dance

the way branches

of jasmine and cypress

dance in a spring wind.

.

The green earth

is your cloth;

tailor your robe

with dignity and grace.

.

~ Rumi

.

Why, then have to be human?

.

.

Why, then have to be human?

Oh, not because happiness exists,

Nor out of curiosity...

But because being here means so much;

Because everything here,

Vanishing so quickly, seems to need us,

And strangely keeps calling to us... To have been

Here once, completely, even if only once,

To have been at one with the earth -

This is beyond undoing.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

.

Everything is plundered

.

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,

Death's great black wing scrapes the air,

Misery gnaws to the bone.

Why then do we not despair?

By day, from the surrounding woods,

cherries blow summer into town;

at night the deep transparent skies

glitter with new galaxies.

And the miraculous comes so close

to the ruined, dirty houses --

something not known to anyone at all,

but wild in our breast for centuries.

~ Anna Akhmatova

from Poems of Akhmatova
 edited and translated by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward

.

When Death Comes

.

.

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

.

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox;

.

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

.

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

.

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

.

and I think of each life as a flower, as common 

as a field daisy, and as singular,

.

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth

tending as all music does, toward silence,

.

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened

or full of argument.

.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

.

~ Mary Oliver

(New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

.

Miracles

.

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge

of the water, 

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with anyone I love, or sleep in the bed

at night with anyone I love,

Or sit at the table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honeybees busy around the hive

of a summer forenoon, 

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining

so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon

in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread

with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim-the rocks-the motion of the waves

-the ships with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there?

.

~ Walt Whitman

(Leaves of Grass)