Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

We are Transmitters

As we live, we are transmitters of life.
And when we fail to transmit life, life fails to flow through us.

That is part of the mystery of sex, it is a flow onwards.
Sexless people transmit nothing.

And if, as we work, we can transmit life into our work,
life, still more life, rushes into us to compensate, to be ready
and we ripple with life through the days.

Even if it is a woman making an apple dumpling, or a man a stool,
if life goes into the pudding, good is the pudding
good is the stool,
content is the woman, with fresh life rippling in to her,
content is the man.

- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

There Are Some Things You Just Don’t Talk About

Fresh cut greens. The house sweeter,
This time of year, with cookies
gingerbread, candy canes and cinnamon.
She woke up earlier than her sister, and
They crept downstairs. The tree, a candle in the dark.

Christmas morning and the fat tree was flaming
tinsel and multicolored lights, topped
by an electric star, real icicles frozen in the window
like teeth, and snow drifting up like a tongue.
The house was silent with unspoken words.

She wanted a different bride doll than the one she got,
One more delicate, with finer features and porcelain skin
A dress with more lace, less satin, more petticoats,
ringlets that were vertical, the blonde paler
than this honey hair that hugged the doll’s fresh face.
Her mother had chosen the wrong one, and
She feels guilty her about her own deep longings.
Her mother is in the hospital still bleeding.

She can see that her father was young then with thick
John Kennedy hair, horn-rimmed glasses,
A plaid wool robe and a misleading smile, caught
In the black and white picture, from that day to this!
That Christmas, had to go on for our sake, despite
The still birth. No words to soften the winter edge to the air.

Thinking of it now the emotions are deckled edges,
the memory is an old photograph of her first imperfect Christmas.
Nothing can be done now to make it better but compassion.

- Judith Stone

[Larry Robinson]

Women Without Facelifts

Their smiles are strikingly similar. Without

vanity's masks and the veil of self conscious,
their wrinkly lips are lithe and unabashed.
Released at long last from image anxiety,
their glances are permeable, resonant, maps of
song lines and good will. The feast is in the
moment -- amusing, inevitable, tender or harsh
and all that's galling isn't worth the trouble.
Silence is power, grief a B Minor blues, and
sensuality? -- think evergreen branches awash
in warm summer afternoon rain. And to laugh!
is to vanish away into never and always,
cells and cymbal selves circling and winking
like fireflies, like frost breath, like stars.

- Cynthia Poten

[Larry Robinson]

The Book


Each heart carries the true book of its life.
Torn pages, a broken binding,
underlined or blacked-out passages, sure --
but the book, flapping in wind and rain
or lying open in a sunlit garden whispers
faintly as a pigeon's wing-beat across
a sunrise bay: This book is true.


We think we can read it through
the glare our own lives make. We think
we can write and read the story we are in
though the story drifts away with each telling
over cocktails, updated resume or paid obituary:
Those easy words that push away the true.


The book shadows the shadows our bodies make.
It refuses to sneeze in our dust turned to dust.
This is the book, in the end, we cannot read.
This is the book, from the beginning, that reads us.
Clasped to our breast like a romantic folly
we take to the grave where it is never so true.


- Mike Dillon

[Larry Robinson]

Phoenix

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled,

made nothing?
Are you willing to be made nothing?
dipped into oblivion?

If not, you will never really change.
The phoenix renews her youth
only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down
to hot and flocculent ash.

Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest
with strands of down like floating ash
shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,
immortal bird.

- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

the time has come
to break all my promises
tear apart all chains
and cast away all advice


disassemble the heavens
link by link
and break at once
all lovers' ties
with the sword of death


put cotton inside
both my ears
and close them to
all words of wisdom


crash the door and
enter the chamber
where all sweet
things are hidden


how long can i
beg and bargain
for the things of this world
while love is waiting


how long before
i can rise beyond
how i am and
what i am


- Jelalludin Rumi
(Ghazal 1591, translated by Nader Khalili)






In less than ten days, on Saturday, February 7, lovers of the spoken word from all over the Bay Area will arrive at Rumi's Caravan to refuel with the beauty, mystery, and wisdom of Rumi, Hafiz, and the mystic poets.

We always see a surge in demand for tickets during the final week. And, sadly, in recent years, we've had to turn folks away for lack of seats.

Now, therefore, is the best time to invite friends to join you or to recommend tickets to folks who would also appreciate the celebration.

In order to accommodate everyone who wants to come, we added a 3 pm matinee performance this year.

And we've also just announced a special Group Rate for groups of six or more for the matinee. We trust this will satisfy the demand for seats.

TICKETS are available online at https://rumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com

These events are benefits/fundraisers for the Center for Climate Protection.

We are deeply grateful for this opportunity to co-create with you an experience so beautifully expressed by Artistic Director Kay Crista:

"With ecstatic poetry, a potency of feeling slips in with the words, bypasses the brain, pierces the heart, and enters directly into the soul . . . and we are uplifted, effortlessly, like grace."

We look forward to soul-lifting with you.

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” ~ Rumi

PS, To learn more about Rumi’s Caravan, please “like” our page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Rumi.Caravan

[Larry Robinson]

Animal Graves


The mower flipped it belly up,

a baby garter less than a foot long,
dull green with a single sharp

stripe of pale manila down its back,
same color as the underside
which was cut in two places,

a loop of intestine poking out.

It wouldn't live,
so I ran the blades over it again,

and cut it again but didn’t kill it,

and again and then again,
a cloud of two-cycle fuel smoke
on me like a swarm of bees.

It took so long
my mind had time to spiral
back to the graveyard

I tended as a child
for the dead ones, wild and tame:
fish from the bubbling green aquarium,

squirrels from the road,
the bluejay stalked to a raucous death
by Cicero the patient, the tireless hunter,

who himself was laid to rest
one August afternoon
under a rock painted gray, his color,

with a white splash for his white splash.

Once in the woods I found the skeleton
of a deer laid out like a diagram,

long spine curved like a necklace of crude, ochre spools
with the string rotted away,

and the dull metal shaft of the arrow
lying where it must have pierced

not the heart, not the head,
but the underbelly, the soft part
where the sex once was.

I carried home the skull
with its nubs of not-yet-horns
which the mice had overlooked,

and set it on a rock
in my kingdom of the dead.

Before I chopped the little snake
to bits of raw mosaic,

it drew itself
into an upward-straining coil,
head weaving, mouth open,

hissing at the noise that hurt it.

The stripe was made
of tiny paper diamonds,
sharp-edged but insubstantial,

like an x-ray of the spine
or the ghost beginning to pull away.

What taught the snake to make itself
seem bigger than it was,
to spend those last few seconds

dancing in the roar
and shadow of its death?

Now I see, though none exists,
its grave:

harebells withered in a jar,
a yellow spiral
painted on a green-black stone,

a ring of upright pine cones for a fence.
That’s how the deer skull lay in state

until one of the neighborhood dogs
came to claim it,

and carried it off to bury
in the larger graveyard of the world.

- Chase Twichell

[Larry Robinson]

The deer lay down their bones


I followed the narrow cliff side trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon. There was a little cataract crossed the path, flinging itself
Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling water
Pure from the mountain, but a bad smell came up. Wondering at it I clambered down the steep stream
Some forty feet, and found in the midst of bush-oak and laurel,
Hung like a bird's nest on the precipice brink a small hidden clearing,
Grass and a shallow pool. But all about there were bones lying in the grass,clean bones and stinking bones,
Antlers and bones: I understood that the place was a refuge for wounded deer; there are so many
Hurt ones escape the hunters and limp away to lie hidden; here they have water for the awful thirst
And peace to die in; dense green laurel and grim cliff
Make sanctuary, and a sweet wind blows upward from the deep gorge. - I wish my bones were with theirs.
But that's a foolish thing to confess, and a little cowardly. We know that life
Is on the whole quite equally good and bad, mostly gray neutral, and can be endured
To the dim end, no matter what magic of grass, water and precipice, and pain of wounds,
Makes death look dear. We have been given life and have used it - not a great gift perhaps - but in honesty
Should use it all. Mine's empty since my love died - Empty? The flame-haired grandchild with great blue eyes
That look like hers? - What can I do for the child? I gaze at her and wonder what sort of man
In the fall of the world . . . I am growing old, that is the trouble. My children and little grandchildren
Will find their way, and why should I wait ten years yet, having lived sixty-seven, ten years more or less,
Before I crawl out on a ledge of rock and die snapping, like a wolf
Who has lost his mate? - I am bound by my own thirty-year-old decision: who drinks the wine
Should take the dregs; even in the bitter lees and sediment
New discovery may lie. The deer in that beautiful place lay down their
bones: I must wear mine.


- Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

There is a community of the spirit.

Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in this circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

- Jelalludin Rumi


Rumi's Caravan posted in 15th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION of MYSTIC POETRY – Three Events in One Day – Please RSVP & Share

Rumi's Caravan

It looks likely that the 7 pm show may sell out. Good seats remain for the 3 pm Matinee. Matinee seats are $20* (*$10 per ticket when bought for a group of six or more. Tea and home-made cake included for about the price of a movie.)

[Larry Robinson]

The Little Ways That Encourage Good Fortune


Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life
you will be overwhelmed:
you may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life
but do not know why,
you are just lucky, and you will not move
in the little ways that encourage good fortune.


The saddest are those not right in their lives
who are acting to make things right for others:
they act only from the self -
and that self will never be right:
no luck, no help, no wisdom.


- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

The Silence Of The World

I can imagine the silence when the world
will have stilled itself—no more poems tossed
off the tongue, no more screams
of raven lugging entrails of porcupine,
no more tales of the Navajo, or Louisiana black man,
or old-time Vermonter,
no more breathing in the ear of last lover,
no more angelic beings left to be kissed
into the claustrophobia of flesh,
no more temples giving light
from open doors into bitter winter nights, no more
curious weasel who leaves
her black ring frozen in the air,
no more tooth that gnaws through gum and bones into
the cathedral of the mouth.
No more splat when singer spits
mouthwash into the washbasin after the concert,
no more “Quit yer bawlin!”
from punk principal to slob schoolboy
when sore mother hauls
small boy into classroom by sore ear.
No more young woman in large hat in profile
in afternoon light saying, “So what, darling?
I don’t hate you. I love you. So what?”
No more flutesman trudging through snow
on 125th Street on the last Sunday morning of his jeopardy.
No more husband saying, “Snack bar’s the other way.”
No more wife replying, “You aren’t going to eat again, are you?”
No more husband replying, “I don’t want to eat,
I was just telling you where the snack bar is.”
No more wife replying, “For Chrissake! I know where it is.”
No more caesura or else everything one endless caesura,
no more feminine rhyme such as “lattice” and “thereat is,”
no more parallelismus membrorum panting in one ear,
no more Neruda’s slowly deepening voice saying,
“Federico, te acuerdas, debajo de la tierra . . .”
From across the valley the thud of an axe
arrives later than its strike
and the call of goodbye slowly separates itself
little by little from the vocal chords of everything.

- Galway Kinnell

[Larry Robinson]

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you've broken your vow
a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come.


- Jelalludin Rumi
(Coleman Barks translation)








Rumi's Caravan
LADIES and GENTLEMEN, please welcome Rumi’s Caravan.
The Caravan has traveled across exotic cultures and belief systems, forward to the future and back to the origins of the cosmos. Along the way, it’s picked up the wisdom of the sages, learned by heart the voices of loving-kindness, and experienced the ecstasy of union with the divine.
Now, the Caravan and its band of god-intoxicated drunkards is pulling into Santa Rosa to unpack its precious cargo.
There is still room in the tent for a few souls who long to participate in the beauty and mystery of the two worlds. Come co-create with us a heart-opening experience.
“Ours is not a caravan of despair,” – Rumi.
ONLY 1 DAY LEFT - Some good seats remain
TICKETS: rumiscaravan2015.brownpapertickets.com.
- 3 pm Matinee - $20* (*And only $10 per ticket when bought for a group of six or more. Tea and home-made cake included for about the price of a movie. Bring a caravan to the Caravan!)
- 7 pm Performance - $35
LEARN MORE: www.facebook.com/events/1585583911671679/

[Larry Robinson]

The Rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.

- Robert Creeley

[Roland Jacopetti]

The Rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
...
- Robert Creeley

What a beautiful Creeley poem, Larry. He was part of the local scene when we lived in Bolinas 1970-74. The town, with its close community and artists of all sorts part of daily life, was a lot like Sebastopol. Thank you!

[Larry Robinson]

The Icelandic Language

In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it.

In this language, no flush toilet; you stumble
through dark and rain with a handful of rags.
The door groans; the old smell comes
up from under the earth to meet you.

But this language believes in ghosts;
chairs rock by themselves under the lamp; horses
neigh inside an empty gully, nothing
at the bottom but moonlight and black rocks.

The woman with marble hands whispers
this language to you in your sleep; faces
come to the window and sing rhymes; old ladies
wind long hair, hum, tat, fold jam inside pancakes.

In this language, you can't chit-chat
holding a highball in your hand, can't
even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,
all your grief and failure come clear at last.

Old inflections move from case to case,
gender to gender, softening consonants, darkening
vowels, till they sound like the sea moving
icebergs back and forth in its mouth.


- Bill Holm

[Roland Jacopetti]

Quadruple gratitude, Larry!

The Icelandic Language

In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it.

...

[Larry Robinson]

Magic Words


In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen --
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That's the way it was.


- Nalungiaq

[sandoak]

Thank you, Larry. "Icelandic Language" and "Magic Words" are perennial soul favorites.

Magic Words


In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen --
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That's the way it was.


- Nalungiaq

[Larry Robinson]

I Happened To Be Standing
I don't know where prayers go,
or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
growing older every year?
I know I can walk through the world,
along the shore or under the trees,
with my mind filled with things
of little importance, in full
self-attendance. A condition I can't really
call being alive
Is a prayer a gift, or a petition,
or does it matter?
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that's their way.
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not.
While I was thinking this I happened to be standing
just outside my door, with my notebook open,
which is the way I begin every morning.
Then a wren in the privet began to sing.
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm,
I don't know why. And yet, why not.
I wouldn't persuade you from whatever you believe
or whatever you don't. That's your business.
But I thought, of the wren's singing, what could this be
if it isn't a prayer?
So I just listened, my pen in the air.


- Mary Oliver

[BManna]

Fascinating. The "other Indian" (of India) culture also tells of a time (Sat Yuga, era of Truth) when beings were so pure that their words would manifest. Thank you Larry.

Magic Words

In the very earliest time,

when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen --
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody can explain this:
That's the way it was.


- Nalungiaq

[Larry Robinson]

Complaints


The dead complain we lack
the skill to keep them buried.
But that's the grave's job
and there's no safe burial ground.
They'll shine up through the earth
spreading their affection.


They're offered refuge
under markers and memorials
but they refuse and wait
for us in unlit places
tapping their white canes
with the terrible patience
of those possessing time.


In the slow caress of years,
our weight is doubled by
the burden of others
we cultivate and carry,
and deep in the future
our children keep us alive.


- Ruth Daigon

[sandoak]

Beautiful poem, Larry. Here's a related painting, Fox Walks with Those Who Are Gone But Still Loved:



You can see it at Sebastopol Gallery.

Complaints


The dead complain we lack
the skill to keep them buried.
But that's the grave's job
and there's no safe burial ground.
They'll shine up through the earth
spreading their affection.


They're offered refuge
under markers and memorials
but they refuse and wait
for us in unlit places
tapping their white canes
with the terrible patience
of those possessing time.


In the slow caress of years,
our weight is doubled by
the burden of others
we cultivate and carry,
and deep in the future
our children keep us alive.


- Ruth Daigon

[Larry Robinson]

Water Comes Upon Us We wander the blossom filled meadow of a newly birthed common spring in our blood, the taste of spring on our skin, in our hair. Spring is in the songs of the wending words floating between us, words taken from the latest film, the latest book, the news. We give each other the music of our mouths, hard land crunching beneath our heels, note the young trees with their first blooms. For decades I have watched you - young girl in a frilly dress belted by guns and holsters - leap from the blue bridge into the Niagara. Your determination was a lovely dive, a dare, your platinum hair an unwilling accessory to grace. As you flew off between paper mill and docks, I climbed hills backwards to face the bay, my Golden Gate. We hadn't met, of course, but I thought I heard you say, Lean into me like a wave. We rode the water as the water wanted - smooth at times, then rough. Stars landed their light on the slick deep blue of it or turned to us their black backs. We walk and I say The apple blossoms of young trees fade so soon, but you are in the middle of a story pulling a girl to shore, pulling me, those falls roaring in the distance, and I know, as that water always knew, something about electricity, how we'd go over together. - Katherine Hastings

[Larry Robinson]

Meeting at Night


The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.


Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
- Robert Browning

[Larry Robinson]

The Song of Wandering Aengus




I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.


When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.


Though I am old from wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.


- William Butler Yeats

[BothSidesNow]

Oh, YES, thank you for this, Larry--one of my favorites of all time--surely one of the greatest, loveliest poems of all time. Janet

The Song of Wandering Aengus
...

[Larry Robinson]

Premonition At Twilight


The magpie in the Joshua tree
Has come to rest. Darkness collects,
And what I cannot hear or see,
Broken limbs, the curious bird,
Become in darkness darkness too.
I had been going when I heard
The sound of something called the night;
I had been going but I stopped
To see the bird restrain his flight.
The bird in place, the shadows dropped
As if they waited in the light
Before I came for centuries
For something I could never see;
And what it was became itself,
And then the bird, and then the tree;
And then the force behind the breeze
Became at last the whole of me.


- Philip Levine
(1928-2015)

[Larry Robinson]

No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night


No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
against our faces and mixing with your tears
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and your mouth soft and warm
no moon no stars no jagged pain
of lightning only my impotent tongue
and the red rage within my brain
knowing that the chilling rain was our forever
even as I tried to explain:

“A revolutionary is a doomed man
with no certainties but love and history.”
“But our children must grow up with certainties
and they will make the revolution.”
“By example we must show the way so plain
that our children can go neither right
nor left but straight to freedom.”
“No,” you said. And you left.

No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and praying that like the rain
returns to the sky you would return to me again.


- Etheridge Knight

[Timothy Gega]

No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night


No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
against our faces and mixing with your tears
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and your mouth soft and warm
no moon no stars no jagged pain
of lightning only my impotent tongue
and the red rage within my brain
knowing that the chilling rain was our forever
even as I tried to explain:

“A revolutionary is a doomed man
with no certainties but love and history.”
“But our children must grow up with certainties
and they will make the revolution.”
“By example we must show the way so plain
that our children can go neither right
nor left but straight to freedom.”
“No,” you said. And you left.

No moon floods the memory of that night
only the rain I remember the cold rain
and praying that like the rain
returns to the sky you would return to me again.


- Etheridge Knight

What a beautiful poem, Larry.

[Larry Robinson]

An Abandoned Factory, Detroit The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands, An iron authority against the snow, And this grey monument to common sense Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands, Of protest, men in league, and of the slow Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence. Beyond, through broken windows one can see Where the great presses paused between their strokes And thus remain, in air suspended, caught In the sure margin of eternity. The cast-iron wheels have stopped; one counts the spokes Which movement blurred, the struts inertia fought, And estimates the loss of human power, Experienced and slow, the loss of years, The gradual decay of dignity. Men lived within these foundries, hour by hour; Nothing they forged outlived the rusted gears Which might have served to grind their eulogy. - Philip Levine