Saturday, March 3, 2012

moonlight sonata








Wilhelm Kempff plays Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata mvt. 1
published on this date in 1802

Friday, March 2, 2012

within this tree




Within this tree
another tree
inhabits the same body;
within this stone
another stone rests,
its many shades of grey
the same,
its identical
surface and weight.
And within my body,
another body,
whose history, waiting,
sings: there is no other body,
it sings,
there is no other world.










~ Jane Hirshfield
from The October Palace
art by tara turner





Thursday, March 1, 2012

death could come!





The musician's finger do not hurry at all as they climb up the Jacob's Ladder of her bass.   They are not accomplishing tasks laid down by others, but have agreed to luminous labors suggested - by whom?  The fingers go higher. The Cantata says: "Death is not far off... Death could come!"  Men's and women's voices all around cry out:  "It is the ancient law!"

Now we sense the odor of roots, of partridge berries, masses of leaves that give up their lives without complaining.

The musician's fingers appear from the house of the hand-back, as if the hand were a being in itself, with its own slow joys, and its own cottage where it lives, sleeping long on winter nights.

Now the beings run up the mountain path; they are goats that do a firm dance, one foot down, then the other, many fields and mountain paths with goats on them leaping...And we who listen, are crossing a mountain at dusk. We walk a long time through the moor in the dark, at last we see a hut with one lamp lit...




~ Robert Bly
from Reaching Out to the World
(For Susan Mathews Allard and Her Double Bass)
art by picasso


Friday, February 24, 2012

complete unknowing





Happy Birthday, Jane

Awareness and self-consciousness are delicate matters. Trying to examine more deeply what poems are and how they work has informed my life and brought me great joy. I don't think that attentiveness ever diminishes experience. There are times, however, when you don't want to be self-conscious. One is while writing the first draft of a new poem. At that stage too much consciousness is limiting and therefore damaging. It can wall off the permeable, the mysterious, everything you don't already know. When I write, I don't know what is going to emerge. I begin in a condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. A word appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery. Everything I am and know and have lived goes into a poem. I hope I'll never be governed by theoretical knowledge when I set out to write. Poems are born in part from the history and culture of other poems, but in writing I hope to learn a new thing, something fresh about what's going on in that moment, in my own life and in the world. Craft consciousness is essential to the finished poem, but comes later.




~ Jane Hirshfield
 from a 1997 Atlantic Monthly interview



straw dogs






Heaven and Earth are impartial;
they treat all of creation as straw dogs.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she treats everyone like a straw dog.

The space between Heaven and Earth is like a bellows;
it is empty, yet has not lost its power.
The more it is used, the more it produces;
the more you talk of it, the less you comprehend.

It is better not to speak of things you do not understand.





~ Lao Tzu
from the Tao Te Ching
translation by j.h.mcdonald
art by van gogh


Thursday, February 23, 2012

words do not come






words do not come
there is no need for profound utterances or
deep truths
here is an ordinary evening
why spoil it with dramatic overstatement

the silence amidst the noise
the gem at the core 
of every experience
is polished by simple attention
into shining magnificence





~ Nirmala
from Gifts with no Giver: A Love affair with Truth




the tower of spirit






The spirit has an impregnable tower
Which no danger can disturb
As long as the tower is guarded
By the invisible Protector
Who acts unconsciously, and whose actions
Go astray when they become deliberate,
Reflexive, and intentional.

The unconsciousness
And entire sincerity of Tao
Are disturbed by any effort
At self-conscious demonstration.
All such demonstrations
Are lies.

When one displays himself
In this ambiguous way
The world outside storms in 
And imprisons him.

He is no longer protected 
By the sincerity of Tao.
Each now act
Is a new failure.

If his acts are done in public, 
In broad daylight,
He will be punished by men.
If they are done in private
And in secret,
They will be punished
By spirits.

Let each one understand 
The meaning of sincerity
And guard against display!

He will be at peace
With men and spirits
And will act rightly, unseen,
In his own solitude,
In the tower of his spirit.



~ Chuang Tzu
translation by Thomas Merton
sketch by Thomas Merton


the frontiers of language







Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? 
He is the one I would like to talk to. 

~ Chuang Tzu



But before we come to that which is unspeakable and unthinkable, 
the spirit hovers on the frontiers of language, 
wondering whether or not to stay on its own side of the border, 
in order to have something to bring back to other men. 
This is the test of those who wish to cross the frontier. 
If they are not ready to leave their own ideas and their own words behind them, 
they cannot travel further. 

~ Thomas Merton
from No Man is an Island




The unconsciousness
And entire sincerity of Tao
Are disturbed by any effort
At self-conscious demonstration. 

~ Chuang Tzu




In The Way of Chuang Tzu, Merton is communicating his own joy from his spirit’s tower. He has found a new friend who has taught him the irony of words as well as the value of irony. Like the best of Merton’s words, The Way of Chuang Tzu points to an experience of contemplation, while it reverently and wisely backs away from providing or insisting upon such an experience. Just as Merton kicks away Chuang Tzu like a ladder after experiencing the unknowing Chuang Tzu describes, Merton invites us to climb his own words and to forget them as well. 


~ commentary from slow reads



Wednesday, February 22, 2012

gods






Gods are everywhere:
war between Koshi and Izumo
tribes still rages.

The all of All, the One
ends distinctions.

The three thousand worlds
are in that plum blossom.
The smell is God.





~ Shinkichi Takahashi
translation by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
from  Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter
art by Zheng Faxiang





destruction








The universe is forever falling apart --
No need to push the button,
It collapses at a finger's touch:
Why, it barely hangs on the tail of a sparrow's eye.

The universe is so much eye secretion,
Hordes leap from the tips
Of your nostril hairs. Lift your right hand:
It's in your palm. There's room enough
On the sparrow's eyelash for the whole.

A paltry thing, the universe:
Here is all the strength, here the greatest strength.
You and the sparrow are one
And, should he wish, he can crush you.
The universe trembles before him.





~ Shinkichi Takahashi
translation by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
with thanks to poetry chaikhana






Anouar Brahem






أنــور ابـراهــيــم Anouar Brahem (oud) • Klaus Gesing (bass clarinet) • Björn Meyer (bass) • Khaled Yassine (darbouka, bendir)


with thanks to Chemin faisant



Saturday, February 18, 2012

a voice of love






Every second a voice of love 
comes from every side. 
Who needs to go sightseeing? 

We came from a majesty, 
and we go back there.




~ Rumi
translation by Coleman Barks
from Rumi - Bridge to the Soul



Thursday, February 16, 2012

koku










虚空(高画質版) koku (High Quality)
眞玉 和司 matama kazushi, 尺八 shakuhachi
2008/02/11 四季の音50回 shikino-ne 50



snowed in again







Snow has been falling for three days.  The horses stay in the barn.   At four I leave the house, sinking to my waist in snow, and push open the door of my writing shack.  Snow falls in.  At the desk there is a plant in blossom.

The plant faces the window where snow sweeps past at forty miles an hour.  So the snow and the flowers are a little like each other.  In both there is the same receiving, the longing to circle slowly upward or sink down toward roots.  Perhaps the snow and the orangey blossoms are both the same flow, that starts out close to the soil, close to the floor, and needs no commandments, no civilizations, no drawing room lifted on the labor of the claw hammer, but is at home where one or two are present.

The two people sit quietly near each other.  In the storm, millions of years come close behind us.  Nothing is lost, nothing is rejected.  The body is ready to sing all night, and be entered by whatever wishes to enter the human body singing.





~ Robert Bly
from Reaching out to the World
New and Selected Prose Poems
art by Daoji, c.1695, Qing dynasty



brother





I looked into my brother’s eye
and saw a tree there waving. 
I passed beyond a garden gate 
and heard a mountain calling. 
I walked a long a stony path 
and tasted waves a–spraying. 
I looked into my brother’s eye 
and felt a fire – burning. 

Deep beyond the black, black sky, 
I looked into my brother’s eyes 
and saw myself there waving.



~ John Lavan
more at Real Poems