Monday, September 12, 2011

call and answer






.

Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense
Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”

We will have to call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding
In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t
Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

How come we've listened to the great criers—Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now
We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.







~ Robert Bly





Saturday, September 10, 2011

opening the hands between here and here




.
On the dark road, only the weight of the rope.
Yet the horse is there.





~ Jane Hirshfield




Thursday, September 8, 2011

A Suite of Appearances









.

In another time, we will want to know how the earth looked
then, and were people the way we are now. In another time,
the records they left will convince us that we are unchanged
and could be at ease in the past, and not alone in the present.
And we shall be pleased. But beyond all that, what cannot
be seen or explained will always be elsewhere, always supposed,
invisible even beneath the signs – the beautiful surface,
the uncommon knowledge – that point its way. In another time,
what cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted
to say that language is error, and all things are wronged
by representation. The self, we shall say, can never be
seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.




~ Mark Strand
with thanks to whiskey river



birds nest




.
Birds nest in my arms,
on my shoulders, behind my knees,
between my breasts there are quails,
they must think I'm a tree.
The swans think I'm a fountain,
they all come down and drink when I talk.
When sheep pass, they pass over me,
and perched on my fingers, the sparrows eat,
the ants think I'm earth,
and men think I'm nothing.




~ Gloria Fuertes
translated by Philip Levine
sketch by van gogh



Wednesday, September 7, 2011

the holy longing








Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I  praise what is truly alive,
what longs to flame to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights
where you were begotten,  where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning..

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.











~ Goethe
translation by Robert Bly
art by van gogh



.

names





.
You should try to hear the name the Holy One has for things.
There is something in the phrase: "The Holy One taught him names."
We name everything according to the number of legs it has;
The holy one names it according to what is inside.
Moses waved his stick; he thought it was a "rod."
But inside its name was "dragonish snake."
We thought the name of Umar meant: "agitator against priests;"
But in eternity his name is "the one who believes."
No one knows our name until our last breath goes out.





~ Rumi
version by Robert Bly



the teaching









Enlightenment absorbs this universe of qualities.
When that merging occurs, there is nothing
but God. This is the only doctrine. 

There is no word for it, no mind
to understand it with, no categories
of transcendence or non-transcendence,
no vow of silence, no mystical attitude. 

There is no Shiva and no Shakti
in enlightenment, and if there is something
that remains, that whatever-it-is
is the only teaching. 




~ Lalla


Tuesday, September 6, 2011

across the swamp






.
It is the roots from all the trees that have died
out here, that's how you can walk
safely over the soft places.
Roots like these keep their firmness, it's possible
they've lain here centuries.
And there is still some dark remains
of them under the moss.
They are still in the world and hold
you up so you can make it over.
And when you push out into the mountain lake, high
up, you feel how the memory
of that cold person
who drowned himself here once
helps hold up your frail boat.
He, really crazy, trusted his life
to water and eternity.





~ Olav H. Hauge
translated by Robert Bly
photo by Jay Sturdevant








knowing nothing






.
Knowing nothing shuts the iron gates;
the new love opens them.

The sound of the gates opening wakes the beautiful woman asleep.

Kabir says:   Fantastic!  Don't let a chance like this go by!






~ Kabir
version by Robert Bly



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