late ripeness

.

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,

I felt a door opening in me and I entered

the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,

like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas

assigned to my brush came closer,

ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,

grief and pity joined us.

We forget – I kept saying – that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division

into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part

of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago – 

a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror

of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel

staving its hull against a reef – they dwell in us,

waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,

as are all men and women living at the same time,

whether they are aware of it or not.

.

~ Czeslaw Milosz
from Collected Poems, 1931-1987
translation by Robert Hass

.

some days we are passive

.

Some days we are passive, listening to the incoming waves.

On other days, we are like a light that sweeps

Out over the husky soybean fields all night.

What did we see today? Horses at the end

Of their tethering ropes, the wing of affection going over,

Flying bulls glimpsed passing the moon disc.

Rather than arguing about whether Giordano Bruno

Was right or not, it might be better to fall silent

And lose ourselves in the curved energy.

We know how many men live alone in their twenties,

And how many women are married to the wrong person,

And how many father and sons are strangers to each

other.

It’s all right if we keep forgetting the way home.

It’s all right if we don’t remember when we were born.

It’s all right if we write the same poem over and over.

Robert, I don’t know why you talk so confidently

About yourself in this way. There are a lot of shady

Characters in this town, and you are one of them.

.

~ Robert Bly

.

how would I paint happiness

.

.

Something sudden, a windfall,

a meteor shower. No -

a flowering tree releasing

all its blossoms at once,

and the one standing beneath it

unexpectedly robed in bloom,

transformed into a stranger

too beautiful to touch.

.

~ Lisel Mueller

from Imaginary Paintings

Alive Together: New And Selected Poems

with thanks to whiskey river

.

investigate what the mind is and it will disappear

Investigate what the mind is and it will disappear, 

There is no such thing as 'mind' apart from 'thought.' 

There is no use removing doubts. 

If we clear one doubt another arises, 

and there will be no end of doubts. 

All doubts will cease only 
when the doubter and his source have been found. 

Seek for the source of the doubter, 

and you will find that he is really non-existent. 

Doubter ceasing, doubts will cease.

~ Ramana Maharshi

you, darkness, that I come from

.

You, darkness, that I come from,

I love you more than all the fires

that fence in the world,

for the fire makes a circle of light for everyone

and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything-

shapes and fires, animals and myself,

how easily it gathers them! -

powers and people-

and it is possible a great presence is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

photo:  passport picture

.

a blessing for weddings

.

.

Today when persimmons ripen

Today when fox-kits come out of their den into snow

Today when the spotted egg releases its wren song

Today when the maple sets down its red leaves

Today when windows keep their promise to open

Today when fire keeps its promise to warm

Today when someone you love has died

or someone you never met has died

Today when someone you love has been born

or someone you will not meet has been born

Today when rain leaps to the waiting of roots in their dryness

Today when starlight bends to the roofs of the hungry and tired

Today when someone sits long inside his last sorrow

Today when someone steps into the heat of her first embrace

Today, let this light bless you

With these friends let it bless you

With snow-scent and lavender bless you

Let the vow of this day keep itself wildly and wholly

Spoken and silent, surprise you inside your ears

Sleeping and waking, unfold itself inside your eyes

Let its fierceness and tenderness hold you

Let its vastness be undisguised in all your days

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Tricycle magazine

art by chagall

.

explanations topple

.

.

Explanations topple into their events, 

merely other events, smaller and less

significant.  They disappear, or die away 

like little cries at sundown, and the old trees 

receive the night again in dignity

and patience, present beyond the complex

lineages of cause and effect, each one

lost to us in what it is. For us, the privilege

is only to see, within the long shade,

the present standing of what has come and is

to come: the straight trunks aspiring

between earth and sky, bearing upon all years

the year's new leaves.

.

~ Wendell Berry

from A Timbered Choir

.

the Russians

.

.

The Russians had few doctors on the front line.

My father's job was this: after the battle

Was over, he'd walk among the men hit,

Sit down and ask: 'Would you like to die on your

Own in a few hours, or should I finish it?'

Most said, 'Don't leave me.' The two would have

A cigarette. He'd take out his small notebook—

We had no dogtags, you know— and write the man's

Name down, his wife's, his children, his address, and what

He wanted to say. When the the cigarette was done,

The soldier would turn his head to the side. My father

Finished off four hundred men that way during the war.

He never went crazy. They were his people.

He came to Toronto. My father in the summers

Would stand on the lawn with a hose, watering

The grass that way. It took a long time. He'd talk

To the moon, to the wind. 'I can hear you growing'—

He'd say to the grass. 'We come and go.

We're no different from each other. We are all

Part of something. We have a home.' When I was thirteen,

I said, 'Dad, do you know they've invented sprinklers

Now?' He went on watering the grass.

'This is my life. Just shut up if you don't understand it.'

.

~ Robert Bly

photo by Dmitri Bal'termants

with thanks to  when pen and paper meet

.

.

the nick of time

.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, 

I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, 

and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities,

 the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. 

You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men's, 

and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from Economy, 1854

.

imaginary career

At first a childhood, limitless and free

of any goals.  Ah sweet unconsciousness.

Then sudden terror, schoolrooms, slavery,

the plunge into temptation and deep loss.

Defiance.  The child bent becomes the bender,

inflicts on others what he once went through.

Loved, feared, rescuer, wrestler, victor,

he takes his vengeance, blow by blow.

And now in vast, cold, empty space, alone.

Yet hidden deep within the grown-up heart,

a longing for the first world, the ancient one...

Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from the Uncollected Poems

world was in the face of the beloved

.

World was in the face of the beloved -,

but suddenly it poured out and was gone:

world is outside, world can not be grasped.

.

Why didn't I,  from the full,  beloved face

as I raised it to  my lips,  why didn't I drink

world,  so near that I could almost taste it?

.

Ah, I drank.  Insatiably I drank.

But I was filled up also,  with too much

world, and, drinking, I myself ran over.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Uncollected Poems

art by Robin Urton

.

.

the most pertinent question

.

The longest silence is the most pertinent question

most pertinently put.

Emphatically silent.

The most important question,

whose answers concern us more than any, 

are never put in any other way.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

from his journal, 1851

.

ambition

.

.

Three men met at a tavern table.  One was a weaver, another a carpenter and the third a ploughman. 

.

Said the weaver, " I sold a fine linen shroud today for two pieces of gold.  Let us have all the wine we want."

.

"And I," said the carpenter, "I sold my best coffin.  We will have a great roast with the wine."

.

"I only dug a grave," said the ploughman, "but my patron paid me double.   Let us have honey cakes too."

.

And all that evening the tavern was busy,  for they called often for wine and meat and cakes.  And they were merry.

.

And the host rubbed his hands and smiled at his wife; for his guests were spending freely.

.

When they left the moon was high, and they walked along the road singing and shouting together.

.

The host and his wife stood in the tavern door and looked after them.

.

"Ah!" said the wife, "these gentlemen!  So freehanded and so gay!  If only they could bring us such luck every day!  Then our son need not be a tavern-keeper and work so hard.  We could educate him, and he could become a priest."

.

~ Kahlil Gibran

from Poems, Parables, and Drawings

.

follow the perfume, not the tracks

.

.

Jalaluddin El-Rumi & Shams El Tabriz from Raphael Rousseau Sason on Vimeo.

.

the moon

.

.

After writing poems all day,

I go off to see the moon in the pines.

Far in the woods I sit down against a pine.

The moon has her porches turned to face the light,

But the deep part of her house is in the darkness.

.

~ Robert Bly

from Eating the Honey of Words

.