Sunday, October 7, 2012

sabbaths 2001





I

He wakes in darkness. All around
are sounds of stones shifting, locks
unlocking. As if some one had lifted
away a great weight, light
falls on him. He has been asleep or simply
gone. He has known a long suffering
of himself, himself shaped by the pain
of his wound of separation he now
no longer minds, for the pain is only himself
now, grown small, become a little growing
longing joy. Something teaches him
to rise, to stand and move out through
the opening the light has made.
He stands on the green hilltop amid
the cedars, the skewed stones, the earth all
opened doors. Half blind with light, he
traces with a forefinger the moss-grown
furrows of his name, hearing among the others
one woman's cry. She is crying and laughing,
her voice a stream of silver he seems to see:
"Oh William, honey, is it you? Oh!"

II

Surely it will be for this: the redbud
pink, the wild plum white, yellow
trout lilies in the morning light,
the trees, the pastures turning green.
On the river, quiet at daybreak,
the reflections of the trees, as in
another world, lie across
from shore to shore. Yes, here
is where they will come, the dead,
when they rise from the grave.

III

White
dogwood flowers
afloat
in leafing woods
untrouble
my mind.

IV

Ask the world to reveal its quietude—
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellows, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.

V

A mind that has confronted ruin for years
Is half or more a ruined mind. Nightmares
Inhabit it, and daily evidence
Of the clean country smeared for want of sense,
Of freedom slack and dull among the free,
Of faith subsumed in idiot luxury,
And beauty beggared in the marketplace
And clear-eyed wisdom bleary with dispraise.

VI

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

VII

The wind of the fall is here.
It is everywhere. It moves
every leaf of every
tree. It is the only motion
of the river. Green leaves
grow weary of their color.
Now evening too is in the air.
The bright hawks of the day
subside. The owls waken.
Small creatures die because
larger creatures are hungry.
How superior to this
human confusion of greed
and creed, blood and fire.

VIII

The question before me, now that I
am old, is not how to be dead,
which I know from enough practice,
but how to be alive, as these worn
hills still tell, and some paintings
of Paul Cezanne, and this mere
singing wren, who thinks he's alive
forever, this instant, and may be.





~ Wendell Berry
from Given
photo by Christopher Burkett







Saturday, October 6, 2012

the grammatist and the boatman




A grammatist once got into a boat.
That self-regarding man looked at the boatman

And said, 'Do you know grammar?'  'No,' he said.
'And half your life has gone!' he chided him.

The boatman's heart was broken by the pain,
but for the moment made his answer silence.

The wind then blew the boat into a whirlpool.
The boatman hollered to the grammatist,

'Do you know how to swim at all, please tell me?'
He said. 'Our boat is sinking in these whirlpools.'

Absorption's needed here, not grammar, see!'
If you're absorbed, jump in.  There is no danger.

The ocean wave will raise the dead aloft.
How can the living man escape the sea?

And if you've died to human qualities,
the sea of secrets sets you at its summit.

And you who've called the people asinine,
now you're the one who's like an ass on ice.

World's greatest scholar of your time you may be,
but note this world is passing - watch the time!



~ Rumi
from the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi
art by Theodore Clement Steele




Friday, October 5, 2012

when the dumb shall speak




There is a joyful night in which we lose
Everything, and drift
Like a radish
Rising and falling, and the ocean,
At last throws us into the ocean,
And on the water we are sinking
As if floating on darkness.
The body raging
And driving itself, disappearing in smoke,
Walks in large cities late at night,
Or reading the Bible in Christian Science windows,
Or reading a history of Bougainville.
Then the images appear:
Images of death,
Images of the body shaken in the grave,
And the graves filled with seawater;
Fires in the sea,
The ships smoldering like bodies,
Images of wasted life,
Life lost, imagination ruined,
The house fallen,
The gold sticks broken,
Then shall the talkative be silent,
And the dumb shall speak.




~ Robert Bly
from The Light Around the Body
photo by mudgalbharat




Thursday, October 4, 2012

looking into a face





Conversation brings us so close! Opening
The surfs of the body,
Bringing fish up near the sun,
And stiffening the backbones of the sea!

I have wandered in a face, for hours,
Passing through dark fires.
I have risen to a body
Not yet born,
Existing like a light around the body,
Through which the body moves like a sliding moon.




~ Robert Bly
from The Light Around the Body
art by Leonardo da Vinci


Monday, October 1, 2012

peace of charity in the annihilated






Of this life, says Love, we wish to speak, in asking what one could find:

1. A Soul
2. who is saved by faith without works
3. who is only in love
4. who does nothing for God
5. who leaves nothing to do for God
6. to whom nothing can be taught
7. from whom nothing can be taken
8. nor given
9. and who possesses no will




~ Marguerite Porete
from Mirror of Simple Souls
english version by Ellen Babinsky
with thanks to poetry chaikhana



Thursday, September 27, 2012

meditation










~ Dolano


you said is







you said Is
there anything which
is dead or alive more beautiful
than my body,to have in your fingers
(trembling ever so little)?
Looking into
your eyes Nothing,i said,except the
air of spring smelling of never and forever.

….and through the lattice which moved as
if a hand is touched by a
hand(which
moved as though
fingers touch a girl’s
breast,
lightly)
Do you believe in always,the wind
said to the rain
I am too busy with
my flowers to believe,the rain answered




e.e. cummings
from his Complete Poems (1904-1962)
with thanks to life love yoga

mirrors of perfection






The master bonesetter will pay his call
where there is someone with a broken leg.

When there's no sickly patient, how then can
the beauty of the healing arts be known?

And how can alchemy be seen if copper's
low-grade, inferior nature is not known?

Deficiencies are mirrors of perfection;
the vilest things are mirrors of His glory.

For opposites make known their opposites
as honey's taste is known is vinegar.

Whoever understands his own defects
has galloped to perfection with ten horses.

And why is he not flying to his Lord
is that he thinks himself already perfect.

There is no sickness of the soul that's worse
than being convinced of your perfection, sir!

Much blood must flow out of your heart and eyes
until this smugness takes its leave of you.




~ Rumi
from the Masnavi-ye Ma'navi
excerpt from Joseph and his guest
translation by alan williams
art by gustav klimt




Wednesday, September 26, 2012

confusion





The mystery does not get clearer by repeating the questions,
nor is it bought with going to amazing places.

Until you've kept your eyes
and your wanting still for years,
you don't begin to cross over from confusion.




~ Rumi
from The Essential Rumi
translations by Coleman Barks and John Moyne



Monday, September 24, 2012

News of the Universe




The first film to explore Bly’s long and prolific life - 
as poet, translator, mythologist, guiding light of men's work, 
antiwar activist and cultural gadfly.




~ Robert Bly



a shared language through metaphor






~ Jane Hirshfield

Sunday, September 23, 2012

religion means





I think the word religion means gathering together
all energy at all levels, physical, moral, spiritual,
at all levels, gathering all this energy which will bring
about a great attention. And from there move.
To me that is the meaning of that word.

The gathering of total energy to understand
what thought cannot possibly capture.

Thought is never new, never free, and therefore
it's always conditioned, fragmentary, and so on.

So religion is not a thing put together by Thought,
or by fear, or by the pursuit of satisfaction and pleasure.
But something totally beyond all this, which isn't romanticism,
speculative belief, or sentimentality. And I think if we
could keep to the meaning of that word, putting aside
all the superstitious nonsense that is going on in the world
in the name of religion.


 

~ J. Krishnamurti

Friday, September 21, 2012

nocturne





You are woken in the night
by something that cannot speak
in daylight, that has no purchase
in the hard currency of your life.

Outside is the shallow well
of a sleeping town; electric lights
peek faintly into black space,
and the lithe ghost of the dark

slips into the only house that
bids it welcome. Your husband
lies snoring, dreams of another
world, offers you rough the gift

of aloneness. Know this:
what arrives here cannot
be other than itself, and
has no care for you. It

has no words, and no respect
for yours, so finds your body,
colonizes your spine, feeds
you up into the sea of stars. You

may think you are changing,
or hope; but you are simply
failing to forget, allowing
stillness to be recognized.

You are momentarily disappearing,
to enter your own voice, see
with your own eyes, become
the body you gave birth to;

you have returned to
your own faithfulness,
your own unimaginable
emptiness.




~ Andrew Colliver
from the unpublished manuscript A Day of Light




september





it rained in my sleep
and in the morning the fields were wet

I dreamed of artillery
of the thunder of horses

in the morning the fields were strewn
with twigs and leaves

as if after a battle
or a sudden journey

I went to sleep in the summer
I dreamed of rain

in the morning the fields were wet
and it was autumn




~ Linda Pastan
from Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems
with thanks to the mark on the wall


new rooms





The mind must
set itself up
wherever it goes
and it would be
most convenient
to impose its
old rooms — just
tack them up
like an interior
tent. Oh but
the new holes
aren't where
the windows
went.





~ Kay Ryan 
from Poetry July/August 2012
with thanks to whiskey river