Wednesday, April 3, 2013

an hour is not a house





An hour is not a house,
a life is not a house,
you do not go through them as if
they were doors to another.

Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,
four walls, a ceiling.
An hour can be dropped like a glass.

Some want quiet as others want bread.
Some want sleep.

My eyes went
to the window, as a cat or dog left alone does.




~ Jane Hirshfield
from Poetry, April 2013




Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Hildegard von Bingen





Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. 
Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns 
ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. 
Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, 
and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, 
not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along.
Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.




 - visionary, poet, composer, naturalist, healer, and theologian - 
founded convents; corresponded with secular and ecclesiastical leaders, 
as well as a vast range of people of lesser rank; and 
ventured forth as a monastic trouble-shooter, 
consultant exorcist, and visiting preacher. 

Even more remarkable for a woman of her time was the body of written work she produced. 
Its range - from natural history and medicine to cosmology, 
music, poetry, and theology - 
 possesses great beauty


.


extraordinary creativity was her accomplishment in music. 
In the poetry and melody of her songs, she reveals the full authority,
 intelligence and striking originality of her genius.




~ Hildegard von Bingen




Wednesday, March 27, 2013

multiplicity in properties




He who has lifted the veil sees multiplicity in properties, 
not in Essence; hence he knows that changes in properties 
cannot touch Essence, which owns a perfection subject to no mutability. 
Light merely seems to change as it shines through colored glass, but

light has no color.
Its rays shine through the glass
and only then 
do hues and tints appear.

Don't you understand?

Come then into my eyes
and...look!

and you will see

a sun shining
through a thousand bits of glass
beaming to plain sight through each
a ray of color
Why should any difference appear
between this one and that?
All light is one
but colors a thousandfold.




~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
from Divine Flashes



Saturday, March 23, 2013

the lips of insanity










~ Coleman Barks
~ Rumi




Friday, March 22, 2013

wait for the hour





Always trust yourself and your own feeling, 
as opposed to argumentations, discussion, 
or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, 
then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. 

Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, 
which, like all progress, must come from deep within 
and cannot be forced or hastened. 

Everything is gestation and then birthing. 
To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion,
 entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, 
beyond the reach of one’s own understanding, and with deep humility 
and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: 
this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.



~Rainer Maria Rilke
from Letters to a young poet, letter 3
translation by Stephen Mitchell
image found at art42

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

many waves





each image painted
on the canvas of existence
is the form
of the artist himself.
Eternal Ocean
spews forth new waves,
"Waves" we call them;
but there is only the Sea.

Many and disparate waves do not make the sea a multiplicity;
no more do the Names make the Named more than One.
When the sea breathes they call it mist;
when mist piles up they call it clouds.
It falls again,
they name it rain;
it gathers itself and rejoins the sea.
And it is now the same sea it ever was.


~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
from Divine Flashes



Sunday, March 17, 2013

meditation






~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche



Saturday, March 16, 2013

utterance




Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence




~ W. S. Merwin
 from The Rain in the Trees


the conditional





Say tomorrow doesn't come. 
Say the moon becomes an icy pit. 
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified. 
Say the sun's a foul black tire fire. 
Say the owl's eyes are pinpricks. 
Say the raccoon's a hot tar stain. 
Say the shirt's plastic ditch-litter. 
Say the kitchen's a cow's corpse. 
Say we never get to see it: bright 
future, stuck like a bum star, never 
coming close, never dazzling. 
Say we never meet her. Never him. 
Say we spend our last moments staring 
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn. 
Say, It doesn't matter. Say, That would be 
enough. Say you'd still want this: us alive, 
right here, feeling lucky.



~ Ada Limón
with thanks again to Lisa


about this poem the author said,
"There is so much to worry about. 
All the time, so much worry. 
Here, I wanted to take all the worry as far out as I could 
and then stamp it out 
under the heavy black boot of love." 


Thursday, March 14, 2013

the wealth of poverty





I have seen that the lane of piety stretches out,
far, far into the distance;
My dearest friends, can you not show me then
the way of the madman?
Bring me a glass of Magian wine
that I may drink deep
for I have given up all thought
of ascetic piety;
or if the pure wine has all been downed
bring me the cloudy dregs
for thick residue lights up the heart 
and illuminates the eyes.
Tuppence for the Sufi meeting house!
I flee the company of the righteous;
fill up a row of glasses with wine
and bring me the first.
I have no rules or regulations,
nor heart nor religion -
only I remain, and you, sitting in the corner
and the wealth of Poverty.
All fear of God, all self-denial I deny;
bring wine, nothing but wine
for in all sincerity I repent
my worship which is but hypocrisy.
Yes, bring me wine, for I have renounced all renunciation
and all my vaunted self-righteousness
seems to me but swagger and self-display.
Now for a time let my proof be wine
against the sorrow of Time
for only in drunkenness can one be free
of the hour's grief.
Once I am thoroughly drunk, what difference
if I end up in a church or in Mecca?
Once I've abandoned myself, what matter
if I win Union - or separation?
I've been to the gambling house and seen 
that the losers there are pure;
I've been to the monastery and have found
no one but hypocrites.
Now I've broken my repentance, at least
do not break our covenant:
at least welcome this broken heart and say
"How are you? Where have you been?"
I've been to Mecca, to circle the Kaaba
but they refused me entrance
saying "Off with you!  What merit have you earned
outside, that we should admit you within?"
Then, last night, I knocked
at the tavern door;
from within came a voice: "'Iraqi! Come in!
for you are one of the chosen!"




~ Fakhruddin 'Iraqi
from the introduction to Divine Flashes
translation by William Chittick and Peter Wilson


Wednesday, March 13, 2013

three times my life has opened





.
Three times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts
to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, to the fire that holds all.
These three are not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves
like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door.  It opens.  Then it is closed.  But a slip of light
stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.








~ Jane Hirshfield
from The Lives of the Heart



Monday, March 4, 2013

a wind-swept spirit




In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit, for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind.  
This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business.  It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering  between doubts of one kind and another. 
At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry.  The fact is, it knows no other art than writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more of less blindly.




~ Matsuo Basho
from Journal of a Travel-Worn Satchel
translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa





A wanderer all his life both in body and spirit, Basho concerned himself less with destination than with the quality of the traveler's attention.  A poem, he said, only exists while it's on the writing desk; by the time its ink has dried, it should be recognized as just a scrap of paper.  In poetry as in life, he saw each moment as gate-latch.  Permeability mattered more in this process than product or will:  "If we were to gain mastery over things, we would find their lives would vanish under us without a trace."




~ Jane Hirshfield 
from The Heart of Haiku


Sunday, March 3, 2013

this was once a love poem




This was once a love poem,
before its haunches thickened, its breath grew short,
before it found itself sitting,
perplexed and a little embarrassed,
on the fender of a parked car,
while many people passed by without turning their heads.

It remembers itself dressing as if for a great engagement.
It remembers choosing these shoes,
this scarf or tie. Once, it drank beer for breakfast,
drifted its feet
in a river side by side with the feet of another.

Once it pretended shyness, then grew truly shy,
dropping its head so the hair would fall forward,
so the eyes would not be seen. It spoke with passion of history, of art.
It was lovely then, this poem.
Under its chin, no fold of skin softened.
Behind the knees, no pad of yellow fat.
What it knew in the morning it still believed at nightfall.
An unconjured confidence lifted its eyebrows, its cheeks.

The longing has not diminished.
Still it understands. It is time to consider a cat,
the cultivation of African violets or flowering cactus. Yes, it decides:
many miniature cacti, in blue and red painted pots.

When it finds itself disquieted
by the pure and unfamiliar silence of its new life,
it will touch them-one, then another-
with a single finger outstretched like a tiny flame.



~ Jane Hirshfield
from Given Sugar Given Salt
with thanks to writers almanac


Friday, February 22, 2013

the birds' doubt





The hoopoe intones: 'So you must desire with your heart and more
Beyond the enticement of words and knowledge of the stars.
You must want with all your being, you must be sure
Of your substance, which first you have to find far
Within you, to mine your soul's gold to start on the Way.
If you cannot stomach a grain nor sip a simple glass
How do you think that you can sit at the Simurgh's table, pray?
If you drown in a drop, blotted out by a hand's pass,
You will never learn to plumb the depths nor rise 
To the heaven you say you seek, that waits for you.
You must learn to be bewildered, restore surprise
In your heart and eyes, and learn to know what's true.'
The birds consider his challenge with hooded eyes, let it burn
Their serried minds, then they reply: 'We are weak
And aimless atoms, we have no wit to seek and discern
Him who stands above and beyond yet within, we cannot seek
What we do not understand.  He is Solomon, the Ark
That contains us all, we are peripheral, mere ants
At the bottom of the pit scrabbling about in the dark.
We cannot see nor speak of the great Simurgh, we pant
With trepidation when we even begin to consider His being;
He is beyond all moral exchange, or the burden of seeing.'
The hoopoe hears these words with rising ire:
'You are without true aspiration, your hearts are 
Devoid of discrimination, you chatter as you enter the fire
Unwittingly, you fail to see that you can be within that far
And near mystery if only you would charter love and set out
With opened eyes, do not falter, discount your petty life here.
He is the light that ferries shadows which crave to live without
But always fail, His gaze turns them into fleeing birds where
All is form and substance erased; you are shadows of His word.
You must pierce this empty space with your shadowed mind
And if you speak with the discipline of love, you will sense
The Simurgh's shadow which is you, and in your desert find
The Way, that ocean in which you can immerse yourself, in His being
That resides in your heart and in the planted stars without you seeing.'




~ Farid ud-Din Attar
from The Conference of Birds
interpreted by Raficq Abdulla
photo of the Folger Shakespear Theatre's production
by Scott Suchman


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

as intimately as if it were your own body





When I start to write, I’m not a guide or teacher; I’m not even a poet. I’m a person far out at sea, and the poem is a raft made of whatever floats past in the water. Those almost accidental rescuing pieces are words, rhythms, musics, ideas, the memory that is mine and the memory that is all of ours and the memory that is held in language itself. The experience of writing, for me at least, isn’t confidence or wisdom; it’s closer to desperation. You are naked as Odysseus when he’s lost his ship and all his men, before he’s met by the courageous young girl Nausicaa—a version perhaps of the rescuing muse, who helps us find our way back into the world shared with others but only if we bring our own resourcefulness to the situation as well. There is some faint memory that this raft business has worked before, some memory of knot-tying, of the intention to live. There is that in us that recognizes: “this is water; this is land.” A poem is land found, as if for the first time. If I already knew what it would hold, I wouldn’t need the poem, and if what it holds were knowable by any other words or way, I wouldn’t need the poem. 

 You have to welcome both your own strangeness and your own fierceness. And you have to have an ear, an eye, that will recognize when a poem has stumbled in its music, seeing, courage, or path, so you can know that you need to work with it further, to ask of it more.

[Poems offer] A door. One that stands outside our usual addresses and maps—or more truly, perhaps, many doors at once, that lead simultaneously outward and inward, into both the life we share with others and the privacy in which self can take stock with original eyes. I hope my poems might offer: “Here is one experience of life, of its possibilities, exhilarations, bewilderments, griefs. Enter. Now, here is another.” When we bring that spirit of openness, permeability, exploration, and courage into our lives and our hands, everything else follows: a deeper saturation and compassion, a recalibrating sense of proportion, an increase of the possible. Good poems make clarity without making simple. They do not erase darkness; if anything, they open into it.

It's odd perhaps that many of the moments in my life I'm most grateful for are those in which nothing seems to have happened. Yet everything that followed was changed by those moments outside of eventfulness, because I was changed. Thought takes time, feeling takes time. The deepest thought and feeling stop time entirely. You disappear into the poem, the painting, the mountain, the music, the idea, the emotion, the loved person. You disappear into action, even, as every athlete or dancer knows. And by that disappearance, you become your own fullest self, unlimited by ego or skin. Something in us recognizes the sanity of not being so worried about periphery and center. You emerge from those time-stopping moments more able to take care of both your own life and the lives of everyone and everything, which are also yours. If a slope in Patagonia is ruined by toxins or erosion, that's felt as intimately as if it were your own body.




~ Jane Hirshfield 
from an interview with Kim Rosen