Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[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

[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*
*

[Larry Robinson]

The Creek

I want to live my life the way a creek
runs faithful to the land and the seasons.

I want to rest in deep pools
rich with algae and fish,
tranquil under the sun and moon.

I want to rush wide awake in rapids
tumbling over rocks and branches
In the hidden depths,
fearless in my gravitational pull to the sea.

I want to feel that utter surrender
when the creek runs dry
giving myself to cloud
waiting in stillness and silence
to flow again

I want to race wildly reborn
swelling the banks
with my endless devotion to returning

And in all these expressions of the One,
I want to – BE
in the most ordinary of ways.
Grateful to be water,
rock, cloud, sun, moon – reflecting
all this beauty back to itself.

- Kay Crista

[RexCasteel]

Thank you for sharing this one, today, Larry.

I was stunned by this poem last night (at the Rumi night). And now I'm stunned again to find that Kay was reciting her own poem.

Thank you, Kay, where ever you are.

And thank you, Larry (and all the rest), for another unforgettable night.

- Rex

The Creek

I want to live my life the way a creek
runs faithful to the land and the seasons...

- Kay Crista

[Larry Robinson]

Exercise

First forget what time it is
for an hour
do it regularly every day

then forget what day of the week it is
do this regularly for a week
then forget what country you are in
and practice doing it in company
for a week
then do them together
for a week
with as few breaks as possible

follow these by forgetting how to add
or to subtract
it makes no difference
you can change them around
after a week
both will help you later
to forget how to count

forget how to count
starting with your own age
starting with how to count backward
starting with even numbers
starting with Roman numerals
starting with fractions of Roman numerals
starting with the old calendar
going on to the old alphabet
going on to the alphabet
until everything is continuous again

go on to forgetting elements
starting with water
proceeding to earth
rising in fire

forget fire

- W.S. Merwin

[Larry Robinson]

Beloved

I used to love certain things ….
Like the way sun's light slants bright in the
Dark of redwood grove;
Like the sound of river water growling
Over submerged stone;
Like the dark blue of sky - so much darker
And so much bluer after
The season's first true snow ….
I used to love
The sharp smelly tang of wet ocean beach
As the tide turned low ….
I once loved the soundless sound of water
Dripping from lifted paddle on a stretch of
Quiet water ….
I once loved the sensation of a deep
Belly laugh, rising uncontrollably and
Ending in tears of joy ….
I used to love the velvet black of
Sky, suddenly and unexpectedly split
By the explosion of an ancient falling star;
I used to love the smell of puppy breath,
The bright round eyes of a curious kitten,
Or the contented sounds of a well-kept
Horse munching on breakfast hay ….
I once loved the way dawn would sometimes
Sweep in with vivid crimson and iridescent
Gold….
Or in the far North how dusk would linger
On and on and on and on until night seemed like
An afterthought ….
But now, I realize, what could I possibly
Have known about loving?
Because of you, I am so opened and
So full, that every note of every song
Only now has meaning.
- Michele Cruz

[Larry Robinson]

How to See Deer

Forget roadside crossings.
Go nowhere with guns.
Go elsewhere your own way,

lonely and wanting. Or
stay and be early:
next to deep woods

inhabit old orchards.
All clearings promise.
Sunrise is good,

and fog before sun.
Expect nothing always;
find your luck slowly.

Wait out the windfall.
Take your good time
to learn to read ferns;

make like a turtle:
downhill toward slow water.
Instructed by heron,

drink the pure silence.
Be compassed by wind.
If you quiver like aspen

trust your quick nature:
let your ear teach you
which way to listen.

You've come to assume
protective color; now
colors reform to

new shapes in your eye.
You've learned by now
to wait without waiting;

as if it were dusk
look into light falling;
in deep relief

things even out. Be
careless of nothing. See
what you see.

- Philip Booth

[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

[RexCasteel]

I know that smell exactly. I came across it night after night, on a forest trail, a couple of months ago.

On occasion, a vulture would make a spectacular liftoff as it sensed me.

Finally, I went wading into the ferns and thickets and natural cacophony that keeps us mostly on the trails. I went looking for the bones.

I couldn't find them, but it was near a stream. And now I know that is not coincidence...

The deer lay down their bones

I followed the narrow cliff side trail half way up the mountain
Above the deep river-canyon...

The deer in that beautiful place lay down their
bones: I must wear mine.

- Robinson Jeffers

[Larry Robinson]

Notice

This evening, the sturdy Levi's
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball court,
showered,
got into his street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed, you who read this,
& drop to your knees now & again
like the poet Christopher Smart,
& kiss the earth & be joyful,
& make much of your time,
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not believe
it will happen,
you too will one day be gone,
I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.

- Steve Kowit

[Larry Robinson]

Marsh Languages

The dark soft languages are being silenced:
Mothertongue Mothertongue Mothertongue
falling one by one back into the moon.

Language of marshes,
languages of the roots of rushes tangled
together in the ooze,
marrow cells twinning themselves
inside the warm core of the bone:
pathways of hidden light in the body fade and wink out.

The sibilants and gutturals,
the cave language, the half-light
forming at the back of the throat,
the mouth's damp velvet moulding
the lost syllable for "I" that did not mean separate,
all are becoming sounds no longer
heard because no longer spoken,
and everthing that could once be said in them has
ceased to exist.

The languages of the dying suns
are themselves dying,
but even the word for this has been forgotten.
The mouth against skin, vivid and fading,
can no longer speak both cherishing and farewell.
It is now only a mouth, only skin.
There is no more longing.

Translation was never possible.
Instead there was always only
conquest, the influx
of the language of hard nouns,
the language of metal,
the language of either/or,
the one language that has eaten all the others.

- Margaret Atwood

[Larry Robinson]

WHILE ATTENDING THE ANNUALCONVOCATION
OF CAUSE THEORIST AND BIGBANGISTS AT THE
LOCAL PROVINCIAL RESEARCH UNIVERSITY, THE
MAD FARMER INTERCEDES FROM THE BACK ROW

“Chance” is a poor word among
the mazes and causes and effects, the last
stand of these all-explainers who,
backed up to the first and final Why,
reply, “By chance, of course!” As if
that tied up ignorance with a ribbon.
In the beginning something by chance
existed that would bang and by chance
it banged, obedient to the by-chance
previously existing laws of existence
and banging, from which the rest proceeds
by logic of cause and effect also
previously existing by chance? Well,
when all that happened who was there?
Did the chance that made the bang then make
the Bomb, and there was no choice, no help?
Prove to me that chance did ever
make a sycamore tree, a yellow-
throated warbler nesting and singing
high up among the white limbs
and the golden leaf-light, and a man
to love the tree, the bird, the song
his life long, and by his love to save
them, so far, from all the machines.
By chance? Prove it, and I
by chance will kiss your ass.

- Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

Almond Blossom

Even iron can put forth,
Even iron.

This is the iron age,
But let us take heart
Seeing iron break and bud,
Seeing rusty iron puff with clouds of blossom.

The almond-tree,
December's bare iron hooks sticking out of earth.

The almond-tree,
That knows the deadliest poison, like a snake
In supreme bitterness.

Upon the iron, and upon the steel,
Odd flakes as if of snow, odd bits of snow,
Odd crumbs of melting snow.

But you mistake, it is not from the sky;
From out the iron, and from out the steel,
Flying not down from heaven, but storming up,
Strange storming up from the dense under-earth
Along the iron, to the living steel
In rose-hot tips, and flakes of rose-pale snow
Setting supreme annunciation to the world.

Nay, what a heart of delicate super-faith,
Iron-breaking,
The rusty swords of almond-trees.

Trees suffer, like races, clown the long ages.
They wander and are exiled, they live in exile through long ages
Like drawn blades never sheathed, hacked and gone black,
The alien trees in alien lands: and yet
The heart of blossom,
The unquenchable heart of blossom!

Look at the many-cicatrised frail vine, none more scarred and frail,
Yet see him fling himself abroad in fresh abandon
From the small wound-stump.

Even the wilful, obstinate, gummy fig-tree
Can be kept down, but he'll burst like a polyp into prolixity.

And the almond-tree, in exile, in the iron age!

This is the ancient southern earth whence the vases were baked, amphoras, craters, cantharus, oenochoe, and open-hearted cylix,
Bristling now with the iron of almond-trees

Iron, but unforgotten,
Iron, dawn-hearted,
Ever-beating dawn-heart, enveloped in iron against the exile, against the ages.

See it come forth in blossom
From the snow-remembering heart
In long-nighted January,
In the long dark nights of the evening star, and Sirius, and the Etna snow-wind through the long night.

Sweating his drops of blood through the long-nighted Gethsemane
Into blossom, into pride, into honey-triumph, into most exquisite splendour.
Oh, give me the tree of life in blossom
And the Cross sprouting its superb and fearless flowers!

Something must be reassuring to the almond, in the evening star, and the snow-wind, and the long, long, nights,
Some memory of far, sun-gentler lands,
So that the faith in his heart smiles again
And his blood ripples with that untenable delight of once-more-vindicated faith,
And the Gethsemane blood at the iron pores unfolds, unfolds,
Pearls itself into tenderness of bud
And in a great and sacred forthcoming steps forth, steps out in one stride
A naked tree of blossom, like a bathing in dew, divested of cover,
Frail-naked, utterly uncovered
To the green night-baying of the dog-star, Etna's snow-edged wind
And January's loud-seeming sun.

Think of it, from the iron fastness
Suddenly to dare to come out naked, in perfection of blossom, beyond the sword-rust.
Think, to stand there in full-unfolded nudity, smiling,
With all the snow-wind, and the sun-glare, and the dog-star baying epithalamion.

Oh, honey-bodied beautiful one,
Come forth from iron,
Red your heart is.
Fragile-tender, fragile-tender life-body,
More fearless than iron all the time,
And so much prouder, so disdainful of reluctances.

In the distance like hoar-frost, like silvery ghosts communing on a green hill,
Hoar-frost-like and mysterious.

In the garden raying out
With a body like spray, dawn-tender, and looking about
With such insuperable, subtly-smiling assurance,
Sword-blade-born.

Unpromised,
No bounds being set.
Flaked out and come unpromised,
The tree being life-divine,
Fearing nothing, life-blissful at the core
Within iron and earth.

Knots of pink, fish-silvery
In heaven, in blue, blue heaven,
Soundless, bliss-full, wide-rayed, honey-bodied,
Red at the core,
Red at the core,
Knotted in heaven upon the fine light.

Open,
Open,
Five times wide open,
Six times wide open,
And given, and perfect;
And red at the core with the last sore-heartedness,
Sore-hearted-looking.

- D.H. Lawrence

[Larry Robinson]

One
*
The mosquito is so small
it takes almost nothing to ruin it.
Each leaf, the same.
And the black ant, hurrying.
So many lives, so many fortunes!
Every morning, I walk softly and with forward glances
down to the ponds and through the pinewoods.
Mushrooms, even, have but a brief hour
before the slug creeps to the feast,
before the pine needles hustle down
under the bundles of harsh, beneficent rain.
*
How many, how many, how many
make up a world!
And then I think of that old idea: the singular
and the eternal.
One cup, in which everything is swirled
back to the color of the sea and sky.
Imagine it!
*
A shining cup, surely!
In the moment in which there is no wind
over your shoulder,
you stare down into it,
and there you are,
your own darling face, your own eyes.
And then the wind, not thinking of you, just passes by,
touching the ant, the mosquito, the leaf,
and you know what else!
How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky,
how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you,
even your eyes, even your imagination.
*
- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Preludes

I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
Six o’clock.
The burnt-out ends of smoky days.
And now a gusty shower wraps
The grimy scraps
Of withered leaves about your feet
And newspapers from vacant lots;
The showers beat
On broken blinds and chimney-pots,
And at the corner of the street
A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

II
The morning comes to consciousness
Of faint stale smells of beer
From the sawdust-trampled street
With all its muddy feet that press
To early coffee-stands.
With the other masquerades
That time resumes,
One thinks of all the hands
That are raising dingy shades
In a thousand furnished rooms.

III
You tossed a blanket from the bed,
You lay upon your back, and waited;
You dozed, and watched the night revealing
The thousand sordid images
Of which your soul was constituted;
They flickered against the ceiling.
And when all the world came back
And the light crept up between the shutters
And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,
You had such a vision of the street
As the street hardly understands;
Sitting along the bed’s edge, where
You curled the papers from your hair,
Or clasped the yellow soles of feet
In the palms of both soiled hands.

IV
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

- T.S.Eliot

[Larry Robinson]

Ask Much, The Voice Suggested

Ask much, the voice suggested, and I startled.
Feeling my body like the trembling body of a horse
tied to its tree while the strange noise
passes over its ears.
I who in extremity had always wanted less,
even of eating, of sleeping.
Agile, the voice did not speak again, but waited.
"Want more" --
a cure for longing I had not thought of.
But that is how it is with wells.
Whatever is taken refills to the steady level.
The voice agreed, though softly, to quiet the feet of the horse:
a cup taken out, a cup reappears; a bucketful taken, a bucket.

- Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

The Holy Longing

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and, finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(translated by Robert Bly)

[Larry Robinson]

As we head over this precipice together,
please remember your original face.
I know they say
to talk about it with words
is to move farther from it,

But how far away could you ever be
from that gentleness you were
before your birth, or from that warm dark Mother
Who fashioned you of mud and blood,
Who kissed and pinched your apple cheeks,
and sent you wide awake
into this world of ten thousand things?

Today your original face
is a soft cricket on the hardwood floor,
rain coming from the west,
the green fuse force of leaves and sun,
and yes, that fear of falling, falling.

In other words, nothing.
More or less than
all of it, exactly as it is,
alive and with you all the way
down.

- Barton Stone

[Larry Robinson]

Last Breath

… just walking
in the wet light of morning,
all your joys and heartaches
shattered by a wind-felled oak

-- your upturned umbrella
filling with rain

- Andrew Zarrillo

[Larry Robinson]

Ten Years Later

When the mind is clear
and the surface of the now still,
now swaying water
slaps against
the rolling kayak,
I find myself near darkness,
paddling again to Yellow Island.
Every spring wildflowers
cover the grey rocks.
Every year the sea breeze
ruffles the cold and lovely pearls
hidden in the center of the flowers
as if remembering them
by touch alone.
A calm and lonely, trembling beauty
that frightened me in youth.
Now their loneliness
feels familiar, one small thing
I've learned these years,
how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world.

- David Whyte

[Larry Robinson]

For the Unknown Self

So much of what delights and troubles you
Happens on a surface
You take for ground.
Your mind thinks your life alone,
Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,
Yet it seems that a little below your heart
There houses in you an unknown self
Who prefers the patterns of the dark
And is not persuaded by the eye's affection
Or caught by the flash of thought.

It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience
With all your unfolding expression,
Is never drawn to break into light
Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness
And misjudge what you do and who you are.

It presides within like an evening freedom
That will often see you enchanted by twilight
Without ever recognizing the falling night,
It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
All you do and say and think is fostered
Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.

It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
That is not ruffled by disappointment;
It presides in a deeper current of time
Free from the force of cause and sequence
That otherwise shapes your life.

Were it to break forth into day,
Its dark light might quench your mind,
For it knows how your primeval heart
Sisters every cell of your life
To all your known mind would avoid,

Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
Offering you only discrete glimpses
Of how you construct your life.

At times, it will lead you strangely,
Magnetized by some resonance
That ambushes your vigilance.

It works most resolutely at night
As the poet who draws your dreams,
Creating for you many secret doors,
Decorated with pictures of your hunger;

It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to wholesome ease.

- John O'Donohue

[Larry Robinson]

A Dialogue Of Self And Soul

{My Soul} I summon to the winding ancient stair;
Set all your mind upon the steep ascent,
Upon the broken, crumbling battlement,
Upon the breathless starlit air,
"Upon the star that marks the hidden pole;
Fix every wandering thought upon
That quarter where all thought is done:
Who can distinguish darkness from the soul

{My Self}. The consecretes blade upon my knees
Is Sato's ancient blade, still as it was,
Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass
Unspotted by the centuries;
That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn
>From some court-lady's dress and round
The wodden scabbard bound and wound
Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn

{My Soul.} Why should the imagination of a man
Long past his prime remember things that are
Emblematical of love and war?
Think of ancestral night that can,
If but imagination scorn the earth
And interllect is wandering
To this and that and t'other thing,
Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

{My self.} Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it
Five hundred years ago, about it lie
Flowers from I know not what embroidery --
Heart's purple -- and all these I set
For emblems of the day against the tower
Emblematical of the night,
And claim as by a soldier's right
A charter to commit the crime once more.

{My Soul.} Such fullness in that quarter overflows
And falls into the basin of the mind
That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind,
For intellect no longer knows
Is from the Ought, or knower from the Known --
That is to say, ascends to Heaven;
Only the dead can be forgiven;
But when I think of that my tongue's a stone.

{My Self.} A living man is blind and drinks his drop.
What matter if the ditches are impure?
What matter if I live it all once more?
Endure that toil of growing up;
The ignominy of boyhood; the distress
Of boyhood changing into man;
The unfinished man and his pain
Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;
The finished man among his enemies? --
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what's the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?
I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch,
A blind man battering blind men;
Or into that most fecund ditch of all,
The folly that man does
Or must suffer, if he woos
A proud woman not kindred of his soul.
I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

- William Butler Yeats

[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

[Larry Robinson]

Prescription for the Disillusioned

Come new to this
day. Remove the rigid
overcoat of experience,
the notion of knowing,
the beliefs that cloud
your vision.

Leave behind the stories
of your life. Spit out the
sour taste of unmet expectation.
Let the stale scent of what-ifs
waft back into the swamp
of your useless fears.

Arrive curious, without the armor
of certainty, the plans and planned
results of the life you’ve imagined.
Live the life that chooses you, new
every breath, every blink of
your astonished eyes.

- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

How He Left

(for John O’Donohue, Who Departed Early)

He already knew all he needed to know.
He had plumbed the depths,
met the strange forms below,
captured their wisdom.

When dawn broke,
the birds caroled
their knowings
into his ear.
He listened,
and understood,
meaning behind the sounds.

The winds carried him
to unmarked places,
revelation swept
over him
until he was filled
like a holy vessel
with radiance
from the ancient source.

These gifts found meaning
in what he gave to others:
the world was his parish,
humanity his flock.
His words fed many.

When his time came,
he acquiesced gracefully
and departed like a bright lantern
carried upward on the currents
into the final light
above.

- Dorothy Walters

[Larry Robinson]

The War-Widows Are Heard, Nepal 2006

The country where your husband is accused by a debt-ridden neighbor,
seized in the sun-dried cornfield, is the country no one can escape,
the country we all live in, encased in smooth walls, clean laundry,
paper cut-out newsmen and bold-faced fashion fronts.

Your homespun shawl and burning eyes hold the still point
for a room of squirming children, a youth old before his time,
a woman who will never weep again. You travel far to tell
your story in a place where nobody knows who you are.

You stand watch behind the woven walls of a house
while men throw other men into a river like sacks of evidence,
while men who have nothing to lose push faces underwater
until they thin out, pale as words coming through two languages

transparent as tadpoles, though words swim better than men,
better than we do through two languages, better than your husband,
who wishes to be a fish, who wishes to slip away
but gets caught, buckles, floats to a place of blind eyes.

The men in khaki shorts haul their catch onto tractors,
water dripping off the bruised and splayed limbs.
The relevant authorities cannot offer words at all
in any language, but you speak, you go on speaking.

- Ann Hunkins

[Larry Robinson]

Garden of Love

I went to my garden of love
And saw what I never had seen,
A chapel was built in the midst
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of the chapel were shut,
And “Thou Shalt Not” writ over the door,
So I turned from my garden of love,
Which had so many sweet flowers bore,

And saw it was filled with weeds
And thorns where roses should be,
And priests in black gowns
Were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars
My joys and desires.

- William Blake

[Larry Robinson]

Jailbreak


It’s time to break out -
Jailbreak time.
Time to punch our way out of
the dark winter prison.
Lilacs are doing it
in sudden explosions of soft purple,
And the jasmine vines, and ranunculus, too.
There is no jailer powerful enough
to hold Spring contained.
Let that be a lesson.
Stop holding back the blossoming!
Quit shutting eyes and gritting teeth,
curling fingers into fists, hunching shoulders.
Lose your determination to remain unchanged.
All the forces of nature
want you to open,
Their gentle nudge carries behind it
the force of a flash flood.
Why make a cell your home
when the door is unlocked
and the garden is waiting for you?

- Maya Spector

[Larry Robinson]

Ode To Walking And Singing

Someday I'll set off
walking and singing a Holy Name
and never come back
because there's nothing like it,
small body under a great sky,
walking stick and hat
and the path-ribbon stretching out
as far as you want to go,
there's no good reason,
really, to stop

especially when you sing,
because the human voice
is a bird in a cage
and song allows it to soar,
and when at the top of its arc the bird
finds the sky is only another cage
a plaintive wail enters its voice,
the longing to go still farther,
knocking itself
against the door Beyond.

Amazing what the human voice can do,
this bellows of air transmuting longing
into a golden bird of song!

You have to walk and sing
to know what I'm saying.
Melody is a choice every second,
and if not a choice, a wild heart-stab;
timbre and rhythm, all improv, too,
every step's unique
signature in the air.

Sometimes for awhile the eye takes over,
soothed by green, gathering in spring's sprigs,
passing them deep to keep
against future drought;
or looking at water or distant hills,
or watching the slow meditation of the clouds
as they follow deliberately, gracefully
their invisible shepherd.

Cares begin to fly off,
first the ones that always come
at work or in traffic or even at home,
those small, silent freeloaders,
then, after awhile, the bigger cares,
more deeply buried,
cranes or geese leaving on migration,

and one is again the pilgrim
he was at twenty,
pack tied on a stick over the shoulder,
steadying staff in the other hand

and even the next step
a letter as yet unwritten
by the Moving Hand

- Max Reif

[Larry Robinson]

The Moon

The moon can be taken in teaspoons
or as a capsule every two hours.
It is a good hypnotic or narcotic
and can also relieve
hangovers of those drunk on philosophy.
A piece of the moon tucked in the pocket
is a better good luck charm than a rabbit’s foot;
It works as a love charm,
to get rich without connections
and to ward off doctors.
It can be given as a treat to children
when they can’t sleep.
A few moon drops in the eyes of the elderly
help them die well.

Put a fresh moon leaf
under your pillow
and you will see your heart’s desire.
Always carry a small jar of moon air
for when you are drowning,
And give a key to the moon
to prisoners and the disillusioned,
to those condemned to death
and those condemned to life.
There is no better tonic than the moon
given in precise, controlled doses.

- Jaime Sabines (1926-99), unauthorized translation by Rebeca del Rio

The Moon

La luna se puede tomar a cucharadas
o como una cápsula cada dos horas.
Es buena como hipnótico y sedante
y también alivia
a los que se han intoxicado de filosofía.
Un pedazo de luna en el bolsillo
es mejor amuleto que la pata de conejo:
sirve para encontrar a quien se ama,
para ser rico sin que lo sepa nadie
y para alejar a los médicos y las clínicas.
Se puede dar de postre a los niños
cuando no se han dormido,
y unas gotas de luna en los ojos de los ancianos
ayudan a bien morir.

Pon una hoja tierna de la luna
debajo de tu almohada
y mirarás lo que quieras ver.
Lleva siempre un frasquito del aire de la luna
para cuando te ahogues,
y dale la llave de la luna
a los presos y a los desencantados.
Para los condenados a muerte
y para los condenados a vida
no hay mejor estimulante que la luna
en dosis precisas y controladas.

- Jaime Sabines