Tuesday, March 29, 2011

If only for once it were still





If only for once it were still.
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,
and the static my senses make -
if all of it didn't keep me from coming awake -

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you 
to all that lives,
in gladness.



~ Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Book of Monastic Life, I,7



Sunday, March 27, 2011

the great longing









Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea.

We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together
 is deep and strong and strange.  Nay, it is deeper than my sister's depth
 and stronger than my brother's strength,
 and stranger than the strangeness of my madness.

Aeons upon aeons have passed since the first grey dawn made us
 visible to one another; and though we have seen the birth and the fullness
 and the death of many world, we are still eager and young.

We are  young and eager and yet we are mateless and unvisited, 
and though we lie in unbroken half embrace, we are uncomforted. 
 And what comfort is there for controlled desire and unspent passion?  
Whence shall come the flaming god to warm my sister's bed?  
And what she-torrent shall quench my brother's fire? 
And who is the woman that shall command my heart?

In the stillness of the night my sister murmurs in her sleep
 the fire-god's unknown name, and my brother call 
afar upon the cool and distant goddess. 
 But upon whom I call in my sleep I know not


Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. 
 We three are one in loneliness, and the love 
that binds us together is deep and strong and strange.






~ Kahlil Gibran
from Poems, Parables and Drawings
drawing by the author



for a time of change









The mind of time is hard to read.
We can never predict what it will bring,
Nor even from all that is already gone
Can we say what form it finally takes;
For time gathers its moments secretly.
Often we only know it's time to change
When a force has built inside the heart
That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul
Or the love where we once belonged
Calls nothing alive in us anymore.

We drift through this gray, increasing nowhere
Until we stand before a threshold we know
We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step
Into the unknown that beckons us;
Trust that a richer life awaits us there,
That we will lose nothing
But what has already died;
Feel the deeper knowing in us sure
Of all that is about to be born beyond
The pale frames where we stayed confined,
Not realizing how such vacant endurance
Was bleaching our soul's desire.







~ John O'Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us



the remains


.



.

I empty myself of the names of others.
I empty my pockets, I empty my shoes and leave them beside
the road. At night I turn back the clocks; I open the family
album and look at myself as a boy.
.
What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away.
.
My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.
.

~ Mark Strand
with thanks to melancholynotes


.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

a man receives only what he is ready to receive


.


.
A man receives only what he is ready to receive,
whether physically or intellectually or morally,
as animals conceive at certain seasons their kind only.
We hear and apprehend only what we already half know.

.
~ Henry David Thoreau
from a journal entry, 1860
art by Roderick Maclver
from Thoreau and the Art of Life

.
.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

pure no-thing




.
God is pure no-thing,
concealed in now and here:
the less you reach for him,
the more he will appear.

.
~ Angelus Silesius

.

.

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river


.



For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river -
Unbearable pain becomes its own cure.

Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn to sighing;
In this way we learn how water can die into air.

When, after heavy rain, the stormclouds disperse,
Is it not that they've wept themselves clear to the end?

If you want to know a miracle, how wind can polish a mirror,
Look: the shining glass grows green in spring.

It's the rose's unfolding, Ghalib, that creates the desire to see -
In every color and circumstance, may the eyes be open for what comes.





~ Ghalib (1797-1869)



Monday, March 21, 2011

so many skins









A human being has so many skins inside, 
covering the depths of the heart. 
 
We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! 
Why, thirty or forty skins or hides,
as thick and hard as an ox’s or a bear’s, 
cover the soul. 
 
Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there. 
 
 
 

~ Meister Eckhart






ecstasy: Czechoslovakia, 1933





.
The actress was only seventeen
and so the director arranged
to have her pricked lightly with pins
at the needed moments.


.
~ Jane Hirshfield


I write these words to delay






What can I do with these thoughts,
given me as a dog is given her flock?
Or perhaps it is the reverse -
my life the unruly sheep, being herded.
At night,
all lie down on the mountain grasses,
while mirror sheep, a mirror guard-dog
follow one another through rock outcrops,
across narrow streams.  The drink and graze by starlight.
This morning, waking to unaccustomed calmness,
I write these words to stay in that silent, unfevered existence,
to delay the other words that are waiting.




~ Jane Hirshfield
from After



Sunday, March 20, 2011

his name is God-with-them




.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth ...
Here God lives among men.
He will make his home among them; 
they shall be his people and he will be their God;
his name is God-with-them.
He will wipe away all tears from their eyes;
there will be no more death, and no more mourning and sadness. 
 The world of the past has gone.
Then the One sitting on the throne spoke:
Now I am making the whole of creation new...

.
~ Revelations 21: 1-5

.

the longing for beauty





For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community.
Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. 
It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world 
and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty.  
And there it is ahead of all as...the Beloved ...toward which all things move, 
since it is the longing for beauty which actually brings them into being.




~ Pseudo-Dionysius
from The Divine Names



Saturday, March 19, 2011

to finding again

.



.
Everything else must have changed
must be different
by the time you appear
more than ever the same
.
taking me by surprise
in my difference
my age
long after I had come 
to the end 
of believing in you
to the end of hope
.
which was not even 
the first of the changes
.
when I imagined 
that I was forgetting you
you did not even need memory
to remain there
letting the years vanish
the miles depart
.
nothing surprising in that
.
even longing
does not need memory
to know what to reach for 
.
and nothing surprises you
who were always there
wherever it was
.
beyond belief

.
~ W.S. Merwin
from Present Company

.

secret places

.


.
Lovers find secret places inside this violent world
where they make transactions with beauty.
.
Reason says, Nonsense.
I have walked and measured the walls here.
There are no places like that.
.
Love says, There are.
.
Reason set up a market and begins doing business.
Love has more hidden work.
.
Hallaj steps away from the pulpit
and climbs the stairs of the gallows.
.
Lovers feel a truth inside themselves
that rational people keep denying.
.
It is reasonable to say, Surrender is just an idea
that keeps people from living their lives.
.
Love responds, No.
This thinking is what is dangerous.
.
Using language obscures what Shams came to give.
out of low word-clouds into burning silence.

.
~ Rumi
from The Big Red Book
translations by Coleman Barks



the adamantine perfection of desire








Nothing more strong 
than to be helpless before desire.

No reason,
the simplified heart whispers,
the argument over,
only This.

No longer choosing anything but assent.

Its bowl scraped clean to the bottom,
the skull-bone cup no longer horrifies,
but, rimmed in silver, shines.

A spotted dog follows a bitch in heat.
Gray geese flying past us, crying.
The living cannot help but love the world.



~ Jane Hirshfield
from Each Happiness Ringed by Lions