Thursday, February 10, 2011

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 






Wednesday, February 9, 2011

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
.



Tuesday, February 8, 2011

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

.

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



Monday, February 7, 2011

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


.

the call away





.




A cold wind flows over the cornfields;
Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.
I want to be in that wild, be
Outdoors, live anywhere in the wind.

I settle down, with my back against
A shed wall where no one can find me.
I stare out at the box elder leaves
Moving in this mysterious water.

What is it that I want? Not money,
Not a large desk, a house with ten rooms.
This is what I want to do: To sit here,
Take no part, be called away by wind.




~ Robert Bly
from Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poems



to a writer of reputation



... the man must remain obscure.
                                   ~ Cezanne

.
Having begun in public anonymity,
you did not count on this
literary sublimation by which
some body becomes a "name" -
as if you have died and have become
a part of mere geography.  Greet,
therefore, the roadsigns on the road.
.
Or perhaps you have become deaf and blind,
or merely inanimate, and may 
be studied without embarrassment
by the disinterested, the dispassionate,
and the merely curious,
not fearing to be overheard.
Hello to the grass, then, and to the trees.
.
Or perhaps you are secretly
still alert and moving, no longer the one
they have named, but another,
named by yourself,
carrying away this morning's showers
for your private delectation.
Hello, river.

.
~ Wendell Berry
from Given

.

to bring ourselves to birth







.

One of the lovely things about being a human is that we are called in each moment to bring ourselves to birth.
.
Part of the difficulty of our times is that we have reduced the magnificent adventure of being a human being to endless, wearisome projects of self-improvement and self-analysis according to the flattest and most boring maps that could be made


.
~ John O'Donohue
from Beauty the Invisible Embrace

.

Friday, February 4, 2011

under the day




.
To come back like autumn
to the moss on the stones 
after many seasons 
to recur as a face
backlit on the surface
of a dark pool one day
after the year has turned
from the summer it saw
while the first yellow leaves
stare from their forgetting
and the branches grow spare
.
is to waken backward
down through the still water
knowing without touching
all that was ever there
and has been forgotten 
and recognize without
name or understanding
without believing or
holding or direction
in the way that we see
at each moment the air.

.
~ W.S. Merwin
from The Pupil

.

the comet museum

.


.
So the feeling comes afterward
some of it may reach us only
long afterward when the moment 
itself is beyond reckoning
.
beyond time beyond memory 
as though it were not moving in 
heaven neither burning farther
through any past nor ever to 
arrive again in time to be 
when it has gone the senses wake
.
all through the day they wait for it
here are pictures that someone took
of what escaped us at the time
only now can we remember
.

~ W.S. Merwin
from The Pupil

.



the beauty of the heart






.



The beauty of the heart
is the lasting beauty:
its lips give to drink
of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,
that which pours,
and the one who drinks.
All three become one when
your talisman is shattered.
That oneness you can't know
by reasoning. 

.

~ Rumi


.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

blending




.

Ryokan's Hut 
located at the present day Gogo-an temple in Niigate prefecture Japan
.


Blending with the wind, 
Snow falls; 
Blending with the snow, 
The wind blows. 
By the hearth 
I stretch out my legs, 
Idling my time away 
Confined in this hut. 
Counting the days, 
I find that February, too, 
Has come and gone 
Like a dream.

.
~ Ryokan
from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan
 translated by John Stevens




.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

transparent




.

.

Like the little stream 
Making its way 
Through the mossy crevices 
I, too, quietly 
Turn clear and transparent.

.
~ Daigu Ryokan (1758-1831)

from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan
 translated by John Stevens

.


elsewhere






.

Elsewhere shows pictures as language
where no words exist.
Elsewhere describes vague places;
undefined and only to be discovered intuitively.
Visual moments elude clear descriptions.
Elsewhere touches edges of perception
and gives the suppressed attention.
.
Elsewhere is fleeing
away from here.
From finding without searching.
It needs the here
to be elsewhere.
At the place studying the unknown
far away, understanding home.
Longing as a companion.
.
Elsewhere unifies contradictions.
It overcomes inside and outside.
In the distance it is narrow.
.
Elsewhere is noise in the silence.
Shocks are dull and quiet.
Elsewhere raises questions
merely for the sake of the questions.
And causes contented comfort to be questionable.
.
Sometimes it is cold from the inside.
.

~   Mareile Mack
with thanks to Crashingly Beautiful

.


Tuesday, February 1, 2011

I





.
The shallow “I” of individualism can be possessed,
 developed, cultivated, pandered to, 
satisfied: it is the center of all our strivings for gain and satisfaction, 
whether material or spiritual.
.

But the deep “I” of the spirit, of solitude and of love, 
cannot be had, possessed, developed, perfected.
 It can only be, and act, 
according to the inner laws that are not of man’s contriving,
 but which come from God. . . .
.
It is beyond limitation. It is beyond selfish affirmation.
.

~ Thomas Merton