Saturday, June 12, 2010

The birds don't alter space




.
.
The birds don't alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We're the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn't hear
what singing completes us?
.
~ Li-Young Lee
(from:  Book of My Nights)

The Book of Time (excerpt)




.
.
I rose this morning early as usual, and went to my desk.
But it's spring,
and the thrush is in the woods,
somewhere in the twirled branches, and he is singing.
And so, now, I am standing by the open door.
And now I am stepping down into the grass.
I am touching a few leaves.
I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies
move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field.
And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening
is the real work.
Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem.
.
~ Mary Oliver
(from: The Leaf and the Cloud)
.

Friday, June 11, 2010

The Wish to Be Generous




.
.
All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass.
.
~ Wendell Berry
.
(The Collected Poems, 1957-1982)
.

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



Thursday, June 10, 2010

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


Wednesday, June 9, 2010

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)


Monday, June 7, 2010

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)
.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

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
.