which

Which shouldn’t exist

in this world,

the one who forgets

or the one

who is forgotten?

Which is better,

to love

one who has died

or not to see

each other when you are alive?

Which is better,

the distant lover

you long for

or the one you see daily

without desire?

Which is the least unreliable

among fickle things—

the swift rapids,

a flowing river,

or this human world?

~ Izumi Shikibu

 translation by Jane Hirshfield

from  The Ink Dark Moon

~ Jane Hirshfield

from the San Francisco International Poetry Festival

there is none

Many have gone mad looking for a solid center,

but there is none.

We think of centering as only a continual narrowing

of focus until we touch the pearl

but in practice it is often a continual expansion

of focus until we become the ocean.

Our center is vast space, boundless awareness

indistinguishable from unconditional love.

Of course I play the fool when I dare allow

consciousness to describe itself!  Isn't that the birth

of the ego, the "I am this" that closed behind us

when we entered the body?

~ Stephen Levine

ripen

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. 

For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps 

the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, 

the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which

 all other work is merely preparation. 

That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, 

are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. 

With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, 

anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. 

But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, 

for a long time ahead and far on into life, is: solitude, a heightened 

and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. 

Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person 

(for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?),

 it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, 

to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; 

it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him 

and calls him to vast distances. 

Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves 

("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people 

use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and 

every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, 

for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, 

is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from Letter to a Young Poet, #7

art by picasso

comes naturally to an end

Love is something that is new, fresh, alive. 

It has no yesterday and no tomorrow. 

It is beyond the turmoil of thought.

It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, 

and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent.

 To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought 

endlessly through sacrifice, through worship, 

through relationship, through sex, 

through every form of pleasure and pain,

 is only possible when thought 

comes to understand itself 

and comes naturally to an end. 

Then love has no opposite, 

then love has no conflict.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Freedom from the Known

art by van gogh

hearing music at dawn

It is sweet to hear music when the night

Is just retreating from the smoky branches

And the sun's enemies are throwing down their gloves.

Music is always reminding us whom we love,

One or two notes dissolve the auditor's mind

So we are swimming once more in the old river.

We are all failed farmers learning to play whist.

We have a lot of hands to play before midnight.

Someone else will have to worry about time.

I'm always glad when I hear that an old hen

Has been seen crossing the road at dusk.

It means our old teacher is still all right.

We keep remembering Barborossa's life.

A little whiskey fits in well with our lives.

The time of the Depression is not really over.

Poems like this amount to some form of music.

We dance for two hours.  When we look up,

We see that all the musicians have disappeared.

~ Robert Bly

from Talking into the Ear of a Donkey

the key

Morning unlocks the lake

as a woman with many keys might

come to open a house

where others are sleeping.

Enjoying the quiet possession.

Wiping the shelves of the mountain

with a lemony rag until they catch.

It is not hers. Those who live

there will claim it with raised voices,

with the closet doors' casual banging.

But for now, a single rowboat

drifts on the silvery water.

The oars are banked, the one sound

drips from the blades and widens

toward the enormous, dark-held shore.

There, the house is dreaming:

a red barrette on a wooden dresser,

somehow important.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from The Lives of the Heart

art by Elizabeth Torak

supposed to be

It is hard to be as popular as we are supposed to be. 

The superego or interior judge has altered its requirements ...

For one who fails to become successful and well-loved, 

punishment is swift and thorough. 

Self-esteem receives a battering from the inside, 

everyone feels insignificant and unseen until, in desperation, 

we finally agree to go on a talk show and tell it all. 

Once that moment is over, 

and universal love has not poured over our heads 

following the program, we fall still farther.

~ Robert Bly

from The Sibling Society

water

I was born in a drouth year. That summer 

my mother waited in the house, enclosed 

in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind, 

for the men to come back in the evenings, 

bringing water from a distant spring. 

veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank. 

And all my life I have dreaded the return 

of that year, sure that it still is 

somewhere, like a dead enemy's soul. 

 Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me, 

and I am the faithful husband of the rain, 

I love the water of wells and springs 

and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns. 

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise 

of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup. 

My sweetness is to wake in the night 

after days of dry heat, hearing the rain.

....

Like the water

of a deep stream,

love is always too much.

We did not make it.

Though we drink till we burst,

we cannot have it all,

or want it all.

In its abundance

it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore

to drink our fill,

and sleep,

while it flows

through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us,

except we keep returning to its rich waters

thirsty.

We enter,

willing to die,

into the commonwealth of its joy.

~ Wendell Berry

... while you're alive

~ Bill Moyers

 interview with Robert Bly

a delicious disease

~ Ibn Hazm

read by Robert Bly

sight, taste, touch, hearing, stopped

~ St. John of the Cross

read by Robert Bly

the present

I wanted to give you something —

no stone, clay, bracelet,

no edible leaf could pass through.

Even a molecule's fragrance by then too large.

Giving had been taken, as you soon would be.

Still, I offered the puffs of air shaped to meaning.

They remained air.

I offered memory on memory,

but what is memory that dies with the fallible inks?

I offered apology, sorrow, longing. I offered anger.

How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.

I stood on one side of the present, you stood on the other.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Come, Thief

the light that’s blazing

A story is like water

that you heat for your bath.

It takes messages between the fire

and your skin. It lets them meet,

and it cleans you!

Very few can sit down

in the middle of the fire itself

like a salamander or Abraham.

We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes,

but it usually takes some bread

to bring it.

Beauty surrounds us,

but usually we need to be walking

in a garden to know it.

The body itself is a screen

to shield and partially reveal

the light that’s blazing

inside your presence.

Water, stories, the body,

all the things we do, are mediums

that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them,

and enjoy being washed

with a secret we sometimes know,

and then not.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from The Essential Rumi

once, I

Once, I

was seven Spanish bullocks in a high meadow,

sleepy and nameless.

As-ifness strange to myself, but complete.

Light on the neck-nape

of time

as two wings of one starling,

or lovers so happy

neither needs think of the other.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Poetry (April 2013)

a new loveliness

You cannot live without dying. 

You cannot live if you do not die psychologically every minute. 

This is not an intellectual paradox. To live completely, 

wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness,

 there must be dying to everything of yesterday, 

otherwise you live mechanically, 

and a mechanical mind can never know what 

love is or what freedom is.

~ J. Krishnamurti

from Freedom from the Known

art by van gogh

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

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

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

the lips of insanity

~ Coleman Barks

~ Rumi

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

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

meditation

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

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." 

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

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

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

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