Sometimes

Sometimes, when a bird cries out,

Or the wind sweeps through a tree,

Or a dog howls in a far off farm,

I hold still and listen for a long time.

My soul turns and goes back to the place

Where, a thousand forgotten years ago,

The bird and the blowing wind

Were like me, and were my brothers.

My soul turns into a tree,

and an animal, and a cloud bank.

Then changed and odd it comes home

And asks me questions.  What should I reply?

~ Hermann Hesse

.

leading a strange life

At times he heard within him a soft, gently voice, which reminded him quietly, complained quietly, so that he could hardly hear it.  Then he suddenly saw clearly that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing many things that were only a game, that he was quite cheerful and sometimes experienced pleasure, but that real life was flowing past him and did not touch him.  Like a player who plays with his ball, he played with his business, with the people around him, watched them, derived amusement from them; but with his heart, with his real nature, he was not there.  His real self wandered elsewhere, far away, wandered on and on invisibly and had nothing to do with his life.  He was sometimes afraid of these thoughts and wished that he could also share their childish daily affairs with intensity, truly to take part in them, to enjoy and live their lives instead of only being there as an onlooker.

~ Herman Hesse

from Siddhartha

throw it all away

take each step

then throw it all away again,

suddenly,  beauty

overflows 

~ Hermann Hesse

from Rosshalde

separation left me

You went away but remained in me
And thus became my peace and happiness.

In separation, separation left me
And I witnessed the Unknown.

You were the hidden secret of my longing,
Hidden deep within my conscience deeper than a dream.

You were my true friend in the day
And in darkness my companion.

~ Mansur al- Hallaj
(9th Century)
English version by Mahmood Jamal

beneath the bark

We don't know who we are.

We are lost in the forest, and the black stars

move lazily above us as if they were 

only our dream.

But still, the second angel mumbled shyly,
there's always a little joy, and even beauty
lies close at hand, beneath the bark
of every hour, in the quiet heart of concentration,
and another person hides in each of us -
universal, strong, invincible.

 ...

Memory lives in the ocean, in galloping blood,

in black, burnt stones, in poems,

and in every quiet conversation.

The world is the same as it always was,

full of shadows and anticipation.

- Adam Zagajewski
from Three Angels
translated by Clare Cavanagh

the deep pull of love

When I am not present to myself, 

then I am only aware of that half of me, 

that mode of my being which turns outward to created things. 

And then it is possible for me to lose myself among them. 

Then I no longer feel the deep secret pull 

of the gravitation of love which draws my inward self toward God. 

My will and my intelligence lose their command of the other faculties. 

My senses, my imagination, my emotions, 

scatter to pursue their various quarries all over the face of the earth. 

Recollection brings them home. 

It brings the outward self into line with the inward spirit, 

and makes my whole being answer the deep pull of love 

that reaches down into the mystery of God.

~ Thomas Merton 

from No Man is an Island

sketch by the author

heavy

That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it-
books, bricks, grief-
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled-
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?




~ Mary Oliver



.

on another's sorrow

Wiping all our tears away.

O! no never can it be.

Never never can it be.

Can I see anothers woe,

And not be in sorrow too.

Can I see anothers grief,

And not seek for kind relief.

Can I see a falling tear

And not feel my sorrows share,

Can a father see his child,

Weep, nor be with sorrow fill'd.

Can a mother sit and hear,

An infant groan an infant fear-

No no never can it be.

Never never can it be.

And can he who smiles on all

Hear the wren with sorrows small,

Hear the small birds grief & care

Hear the woes that infants bear—

And not sit beside the nest

Pouring pity in their breast,

And not sit the cradle near

Weeping tear on infants tear.

And not sit both night & day,

He doth give his joy to all.

He becomes an infant small.

He becomes a man of woe

He doth feel the sorrow too.

Think not, thou canst sigh a sigh,

And thy maker is not by.

Think not thou canst weep a tear,

And thy maker is not near.

O! he gives to us his joy,

That our grief he may destroy

Till our grief is fled; gone

He doth sit by us and moan

~ William Blake

from The Complete Poetry and Prose

of William Blake

after long silence

Politeness fades,

a small anchovy gleam

leaving the upturned pot in the dish rack

after the moon has wandered out the window.

One of the late freedoms, there is the dark.

The leftover soup put away as well.

Distinctions matter.  Whether a goat's

quiet face should be called noble

or indifferent.  The difference between a right rigor and pride.

The untranslatable thought must be the most precise.

Yet words are not the end of thought, they are where it begins.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

what we call presence

There is a lovely, disconcerting moment between sleep and awakening.  
You have only half emerged from sleep, and for a few seconds
 you do not know where you are, who you are, or what you are.  
You are lost between worlds.  Then your mind settles, and you recognize
 the room and you take up your place again in your own life.  
And you realize that both you and the world have survived the crossing
 from night to reality.  It is a new day, and the world is faithfully there again, 
offering itself to your longing and imagination, stretching out beyond your room
 to mountains, seas, the countenances behind which other lives hide. 
 We take our world totally for granted.  It is only when we experience the momentary
 disturbance of being marooned in such an interim that we grasp what a surprise
 it is to be here and to have the wild companionship of this world.  
Such disturbances awaken us to the mystery of thereness that we call presence.
  Often, the first exposure to the one you will love or to a great work of art
 produces a similar disconcerting confusion.

Presence is alive.  You sense and feel presence; it comes towards you
 and engages you.  Landscape has a vast depth and subtlety of presence. 
 The more attentive you are, and the longer you remain in a landscape,
 the more you will be embraced by its presence.  Though you may be
 completely alone there, you know that you are not on your own. 
 In our relentless quest for human contact, we have forgotten the solace
 and friendship of Nature.  It is interesting in the Irish language
 how the word for the elements and the word for desire is the same word:
 duil. As the term for creation, its accent is on the elemental nature of creation.   
Duil suggests a vital elemental-ism.  It also means longing. 
 "Duil a chur I gceol" means "to get a longing for music." 
 Duil also holds the sense of expectation and hope..
 Could it be that duil originally suggested that human longing 
was an echo of the elemental vitality of Nature?

You feel the presence in Nature sometimes in great trees that stand 
like ancient totem spirits night and day, watching over a landscape
 for hundreds of years.  Water also has a soothing and seductive presence
 that draws us towards it.  John Montague writes: "Part order, part wilderness 
/ Water creates its cadenced illusion."  Each shape of water - the well, stream, 
lake, river and ocean - has a distinctive rhythm of presence.  
Stone, too, has a powerful presence.  Michelangelo used to say 
that sculpture is the art of liberating the shape hidden and submerged in the rock. 
 I went one morning to visit a sculptor friend.  He showed me a stone 
and asked if I saw any hidden form in it.  I could not.  Then he pointed out 
the implicit shape of a bird.  He said, "For ten years I have been passing that stone 
on the shore and only this morning did I notice the secret shape of the bird." 
 Whereas human presence is immediate, the presences in landscape are mediate; 
 they are often silent and indirect.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

the mind's desire

.

Thought is the form of the mind's desire.  It is in our thinking that the depth of our longing comes to expression.  This longing can never be fulfilled by any one person, project, or thing.  The secret immensity of the soul is the longing for the divine.  This is not simply a haunted desire for an absent, distant divine presence that is totally different from us.  Our longing is passionate and endless because the divine calls us home to presence.  Our longing is an echo of the divine longing for us.  Our longing is the living imprint of divine desire.  This desire lives in each of us in that ineffable space in the heart where nothing else can satisfy or still us.  This is what gives us that vital gift we have called "the sense of life." 

The wonder of presence is the majesty of what it so subtly conceals.  Real presence is eternity become radiant.   This is why the "sense of life" in us has such power and vitality.  Our deepest longing is like a restless artist who tirelessly seeks to make our presence real in order that the mystery we harbour may become known to us.  The glory of human presence is the divine longing fully alive.

~ John O'Donohue
 from Eternal Echoes

peace in presence

~ Rupert Spira

 

listen

My father could hear a little animal step,

or a moth in the dark against the screen,

and every far sound pulled the listening out

into places the rest of us had never been.

More spoke to him from the soft wild night

than came to our porch for the family on the wind;

we watched him listen, and his face go keen,

till the walls of the world flared, widened.

My father brought in so much that we still stand

inviting the quiet by turning the face,

waiting for the time when the soft wild night

will reach to us here, from that other place.

~ William Stafford 

from West of your City

first lesson about man

Man begins in zoology

He is the saddest animal

He drives a big red car

Called anxiety

He dreams at night

Of riding all the elevators

Lost in the halls

He never finds the right door

Man is the saddest animal

A flake-eater in the morning

A milk drinker

He fills his skin with coffee

And loses patience

With the rest of the species

He draws his sin on the wall

On all the ads in all the subways

He draws mustaches on all the women

Because he cannot find his joy

Except in zoology

Whenever he goes to the phone

To call joy

He gets the wrong number

Therefore he likes weapons

He knows all guns

By their right names

He droves a big black Cadillac

Called death

Now he is putting anxiety

Into space

He flies his worries

All around Venus

But it does him no good

In space where for a long time

There was only emptiness 

He drives a big white globe

Called death

Now dear children you have learned

The first lesson about man

Answer your test

"Man is the saddest animal

He begins in zoology

And gets lost

In his own bad news."

~ Thomas Merton

from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

art by Picasso

the one who is at home

Each day I long so much to see

The true teacher. And each time

At dusk when I open the cabin

Door and empty the teapot,

I think I know where he is:

West of us in the forest.

Or perhaps I am the one

Who is out in the night,

The forest sand wet under

My feet, moonlight shining

On the sides of the birch trees,

The sea far off gleaming.

And he is the one who is 

At home. He sits in my chair

Calmly; he reads and prays

All night. He loves to feel

His own body around him;

He does not leave the house.

–Francisco Albanez

Robert Bly translation

art by Van Gogh