Friday, September 2, 2011

the threshers





.
There's no use whining over lost worlds.
The old chicken never picks up the last grains,
And the threshers usually go home when night comes.

Have we thanked the sun for shining so well?
Have we blessed the clouds for their thoughtfulness?
Have we thanked the rain that falls on the fields?

It would be good to go back a hundred years,
And recite some of Wordsworth's sonnets to him.
But it's probable best to let him go on walking.

Let's just agree we're on our own now,
And that we have to wash our own pajamas,
And figure out some way to get home.

We can still tell stories about the Dillinger boys,
And we can still buy balloons for our children,
But it will be hard to make up The Book of Hours.

We know that most lost fathers never return,
And the clocks run only one way,
And the threshers always go home when night comes.




~ Robert Bly
from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey
art by van gogh





Thursday, September 1, 2011

these also once under moonlight





.
A snake
with two small hind-limbs
and pelvic girdle.

Large-headed dinosaurs
hunting in packs like dogs.
Others whose scaly plates
thistle to feathers.

Mammals sleekening, ottering,
simplified
back toward the waters.

Ours, too, a transitional species,
chimerical, passing,
what is later, always, called monstrous -
no longer one thing, not yet another.

Fossils greeting fossils,
fearful, hopeful.
Walking, sleeping, waking, wanting to live.

Nuzzling our young wildly, as they did.





~ Jane Hirshfield
from Come, Thief



vinegar and oil





.
Wrong solitude vinegars the soul,
right solitude oils it.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.

Coming and going unfinished,
puzzled by fate,

like the half-carved relief
of a fallen donkey, above a church door in Finland.




~ Jane Hirshfield
from Come, Thief




Tuesday, August 30, 2011

the grownup







.

All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

And she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-as-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play,
transfiguring and preparing for the future,
the first white veil descended, gliding softly

over her opened face, almost opaque there,
never to be lifted off again, and somehow
giving to all her questions just one answer:
In you, who were a child once — in you.




~ Rainer Maria Rilke


lying in the grass






.

Is this everything now, the quick delusions of flowers,
And the down colors of the bright summer meadow,
The soft blue spread of heaven, the bees’ song,
Is this everything only a god’s
Groaning dream,
The cry of unconscious powers for deliverance?
The distant line of the mountain,
That beautifully and courageously rests in the blue,
Is this too only a convulsion,
Only the wild strain of fermenting nature,
Only grief, only agony, only meaningless fumbling,
Never resting, never a blessed movement?
No! Leave me alone, you impure dream
Of the world in suffering!
The dance of tiny insects cradles you in an evening radiance,
The bird’s cry cradles you,
A breath of wind cools my forehead
With consolation.
Leave me alone, you unendurably old human grief!
Let it all be pain.
Let it all be suffering, let it be wretched-
But not this one sweet hour in the summer,
And not the fragrance of the red clover,
And not the deep tender pleasure
In my soul.




~ Hermann Hesse
art by camille pissarro








Sunday, August 28, 2011

this side







.

There is light. We neither see or touch it.
In its empty clarities rests
what we touch and see.
I see with my fingertips
what my eyes touch:
shadows, the world.
With shadows I draw worlds,
I scatter worlds with shadows.
I hear the light beat on the other side.




~  Octavio Paz
from  Selected Poems
translated by Eliot Weinberger
art by van gogh




attaining harmony






.

The best warriors
do not use violence.
The best generals
do not destroy indiscriminately.
The best tacticians
try to avoid confrontation.
The best leaders
become servants of their people.

This is called the virtue of non-competition.
This is called the power to manage others.
This is called attaining harmony with the heavens.





~ Tao Teh Ching
translation by j.h. mcdonald


Thursday, August 25, 2011

far company





.
At times now from some margin of the day 
I can hear birds of another country
not the whole song but a brief phrase of it
out of a music that I may have heard
once in a moment I appear to have 
forgotten for the most part that full day
no sight of which I can remember now
though it must have been where my eyes were then
that knew it as the present while I thought
of somewhere else without noticing that 
singing when it was there and still went on 
whether or not I noticed now it falls
silent when I listen and leaves the day
and flies before it to be heard again
somewhere ahead when I have forgotten






~ W.S. Merwin
from The Pupil
art by van gogh




Tuesday, August 23, 2011

always traveling







.



In one sense we are always traveling, 
and traveling as if we did not know where we were going. 
 In another sense we have already arrived. 
 We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, 
and that is why we are traveling and in darkness. 
 But we already possess Him by grace, 
and therefore, in that sense, we have arrived and 
are dwelling in the light. 
 But oh! How far have I to go to find You
 in Whom I have already arrived!





~ Thomas Merton
from The Seven Storey Mountain
art by van gogh





Sunday, August 21, 2011

the door I made





.
Outside the door I made but don't close
I glimpse the movements of unfamiliar birds
a handful of jade is worth a whole mountain
but gold can't buy a lifetime of freedom
the sound of icy falls on a dawnlit snowy ridge
the sight of distant peaks through leafless autumn woods
mist lifts from ancient cedars and days last forever
right and wrong don't get past the clouds






~ Stonehouse
from The Zen Works of Stonehouse
translated by Red Pine



Friday, August 19, 2011

kneeling









.

Moments of great calm, 
Kneeling before an altar 
Of wood in a stone church 
In summer, waiting for the God 
To speak; the air a staircase 

For silence; the sun's light 
Ringing me, as though I acted 
A great role. And the audiences 
Still; all that close throng 
Of spirits waiting, as I, 
For the message. 

Prompt me, God; 
But not yet. When I speak, 
Though it be you who speaks 
Through me, something is lost. 
The meaning is in the waiting. 




~ R. S. Thomas
with thanks to whiskey river


Thursday, August 18, 2011

the beauty






If any part of nature excites our pity, it is for ourselves we grieve, 
for there is eternal health and beauty.  
We get only transient and partial glimpses of the beauty of the world.  
Standing at the right angle, we are dazzled by the colors of the rainbow in colorless ice.  
From the right point of view, every storm and every drop in it is a rainbow.  
Beauty and music are not mere traits and exceptions.  
They are the rule and character.





~ Henry David Thoreau
from his journal, 1856
art by Roderick Maclver



Wednesday, August 17, 2011

paths which the mind travels





.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.  
Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, 
and could not spare any more time for that one.  
It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, 
and make a beaten track for ourselves.  I had not lived there a week
 before my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside; 
and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct... 
 
The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; 
and so with the paths which the mind travels.  How worn and dusty, 
then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts 
of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage,
 but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, 
for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. 
 I do not wish to go below now.




~ Henry David Thoreau
from the last chapter of Walden
art by van gogh










.
How invisibly
it changes color
in this world,
the flower
of the human heart.



~ Komachi


Monday, August 15, 2011

pebble





.
The pebble
is a perfect creature

equal to itself
mindful of its limits

filled exactly
with a pebbly meaning

with a scent which does not remind one of anything
does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire

its ardour and coldness
are just and full of dignity

I feel a heavy remorse
when I hold it in my hand 
and its noble body
is permeated by false warmth

-- Pebbles cannot be tamed
to the end they will look at us
with a calm and very clear eye





~ Zbigniew Herbert
translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott