Sunday, June 12, 2011

for Japan




.




to the present visitors






Now we come to the famous classroom 
where every year a fortunate few
in the days of their youth study
autumn forgetting the numbers beforehand
as they have been doing since the words 
were all in Latin no cameras
allowed in here notice the slight breeze 
from the windows here among the trees
and the fragrance at the end of spring
notice the leaves outside the window frames
the new grass in the light of morning
notice the charts of colors on the walls
set in order and the moons in the calendars
the constellations the dark dials
the portraits of flowers still as the tables
here they study what is too far away
ever to grasp and too near to recognize
notice the leaves changing as we watch
then it will be summer and these studies
will be over and then it will be autumn
and most of them will be forgotten
notice the bell in place outside the door
and the dog lying near the foot of the stairs
waiting for a time that she remembers



~ W.S. Merwin
from Present Company
art by van gogh





stranger (excerpt)






.
Closer and clearer
Than any wordy master
Thou inward Stranger
Whom I have never seen,

Deeper and cleaner
Than the clamorous ocean,
Seize up my silence
Hold me in Thy Hand!

Now act is waste
And suffering undone
Laws become prodigals
Limits are torn down
For envy has no property
And passion is none.

Look, the vast Light stands still
Our cleanest Light is One!


.
~ Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton
art by picasso


Saturday, June 11, 2011

get your living by loving





.
The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body - 
so that life be not a failure... 

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, 
as most appear to do, 
I am sure that for me there would be nothing left worth living for.  

I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.  
I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well.  
There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.  

All great enterprises are self-supporting.  
The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, 
as a steam planing mill feeds its boiler with the shavings it makes.  
You must get your living by loving.



.
~ Henry David Thoreau
from his journal, March 13, 1853
art by roderick maclver


the active life -





.



Friday, June 10, 2011

to the present tense




.
By the time you are
by the time you come to be
by the time you read this
by the time you are written
by the time you forget
by the time you are water through fingers
by the time you are taken for granted
by the time it hurts 
by the time it goes on hurting
by the time there are no words for you
by the time you remember
but without names
by the time you are in the papers
and on the telephone
passing unnoticed there too

who is it
to whom you come 
before whose very eyes
you are disappearing
without making yourself known


.
~ W.S. Merwin
from Present Company



Wednesday, June 8, 2011

respite





Day after quiet day passes.
I speak to no one besides the dog.
To her,
I murmur much I would not otherwise say.

We make plans
then break them on a moment's whim.
She agrees;
though sometimes bringing
to my attention a small blue ball.

Passing the fig tree
I see it is
 suddenly huge with green fruit,
which may ripen or not.

Near the gate,
I stop to watch
the sugar ants climb the top bar
and cross at the latch,
as they have now in summer for years.

In this way I study my life.
It is,
I think today,
like a dusty glass vase.

A little water, 
a few flowers would be good,
I think;
but do nothing. Love is far away.
Incomprehensible sunlight falls on my hand.



~ Jane Hirshfield
from The Lives of the Heart



Friday, May 27, 2011

where does the dance begin, where does it end?


.


.
Don't call the world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe, until at last, now, the shine
in your own yard?

Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?


.

~ Mary Oliver
from Why I wake Early



each separate fragment






.

Love all that has been created by God,
 both the whole and every grain of sand. 
Love every leaf and every ray of light. 
Love the beasts and the birds, love the plants, 
love every separate fragment. 

If you love each separate fragment, 
you will understand the mystery of the whole resting in God. 




~ Dostoyevsky

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

dog and bear






The air this morning,
blowing between fog and drizzle,

is like a white dog in the snow
who scents a white bear in the snow
who is not there.

Deeper than seeing,
deeper than hearing,
they stand and glare, one at the other.

So many listen lost, in every weather.

The mind has mountains,
Hopkins wrote, against his sadness.

The dog held the bear at bay, that day.



~ Jane Hirshfield
from After
photo by  Kathleen Connally






to be admired






.


They are to be admired those survivors
of solitude who have gone with no maps
into the room without feature,
where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,
no path of dance to a cold summit
to look back on and feel exuberant,
no clarity of territories yet untouched
that tremble near the human breath,
no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores
to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,
no friendship of other explorers
drawn into the dawn of the unknown.

No. They do not belong to the outside worship
of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior
space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,
where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human
and a poultice of silence pulls every sound
out of a circulation down into the ground,
where in the panic of being each breath unravels
an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,
shawls of though fall off, empty and lost,
where the only red scream of blood continues unheard
within anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring
is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere. 



~ John O'Donohue
from Echoes of Memory




clam







.

Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its
place in the universe is not found out. Like us, they
have a heart and a stomach; they know hunger, and
probably a little satisfaction too. Do not mock them
for their gentleness, they have a muscle that loves
being alive. They pull away from the light. They pull
down. They hold themselves together. They refuse to
open.

But sometimes they lose their place and are tumbled
shoreward in a storm. Then they pant, they fill
with sand, they have no choice but must open the
smallest crack. Then the fire of the world touches
them. Perhaps, on such days, they too begin the
terrible effort of thinking, of wondering who, and 
what, and why. If they can bury themselves again in 
the sand they will. If not, they are sure to perish,
though not quickly. They also have resources beyond 
the flesh; they also try very hard not to die.



~ Mary Oliver
from What Do We Know

with thanks to whiskeyriver





happy 70th bob, and thanks





.

born: May 24 1941
Duluth, Minnesota 
named Robert Allen Zimmerman
(Hebrew name Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham)






The truth was obscure, 
Too profound and too pure, 
To live it you had to explode


~ Bob Dylan
















Monday, May 23, 2011

only one search






.
Lovers think they are looking for each other,
but there is only one search.

Wandering this world is wandering that,
both inside one transparent sky.
In here there is no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself,
not what he said or did about the future.
Forget the future. I would worship someone
who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not,
but if you can say, "There is nothing ahead,"
there will be nothing there.

Stretch your arms and take hold
the cloth of your clothes with both hands.
The cure for pain is in the pain.

Good and bad are mixed. If you don't have both,
you do not belong with us.

When someone gets lost, is not here,
he must be inside us. There is no place like that
anywhere in the world.


.
~ Rumi
 translated by Coleman Barks
art: self portrait by picasso





floor







.

The nails, once inset, rise to the surface—
or, more truly perhaps, over years
the boards sink down to meet what holds them.
Worn, yes, but not worn through:
the visible work reveals itself in iron,
to be pounded down again, for what we've declared
the beautiful to be.


.
~ Jane Hirshfield