Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Answer

Then what is the answer? - Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.

- Robinson Jeffers

You don't just choose these poems at random, do you?

My goodness, how timely this is. Thank you!

- R

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Answer

Then what is the answer? - Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one's own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history... for contemplation or in fact...
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man's pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.

- Robinson Jeffers

---

The Glass of Water

That the glass would melt in heat,
That the water would freeze in cold,
Shows that this object is merely a state,
One of many, between two poles. So,
In the metaphysical, there are these poles.

Here in the centre stands the glass. Light
Is the lion that comes down to drink. There
And in that state, the glass is a pool.
Ruddy are his eyes and ruddy are his claws
When light comes down to wet his frothy jaws

And in the water winding weeds move round.
And there and in another state--the refractions,
The metaphysica, the plastic parts of poems
Crash in the mind--But, fat Jocundus, worrying
About what stands here in the centre, not the glass,

But in the centre of our lives, this time, this day,
It is a state, this spring among the politicians
Playing cards. In a village of the indigenes,
One would have still to discover. Among the dogs
and dung,
One would continue to contend with one's ideas.

- Wallace Stevens

Paul Newman

If Paul Newman is dead,
then where now are the rest of us
whose mid-world lives were quickened by
that vital glance and pulse?

How can the sun
go on rising, when every morning it came
out of those blue eyes?

Eternal youth has succumbed:
All men are mortal, after all,
and the streams that refresh the living realms
must now go searching for a new darling.

- Max Reif

By the way, I found myself copying down certain phrases of an SF Chronicle article on Mr. Newman (by Mick LaSalle).

One tidbit: "(He) had not torment in the area of masculinity... lacking any conflict or confusion in that zone... could play men without defense or apology or bluff... building his own ethics system out of the few things he could trust."

Very Robert Bly-esque, I thought (much to my delight).

- R

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Paul Newman

If Paul Newman is dead,
then where now are the rest of us
whose mid-world lives were quickened by
that vital glance and pulse?

How can the sun
go on rising, when every morning it came
out of those blue eyes?

Eternal youth has succumbed:
All men are mortal, after all,
and the streams that refresh the living realms
must now go searching for a new darling.

- Max Reif

---

Remorseless Ripples

Everything will be snatched
out of our limbs,
as the fall winds
breeze and tease,
then tug and swell,
remorselessly tearing
our leaves
of money, shredding
our looks and bodily sheaths.

What's left in the land?
Only the roots and ripples
of our laughter,
troughs of tears,
the draughts of love
that we bring.

So now it is fall,
leaves fly, fly
to the earth,
and when our need
is to cling,
aren't we held in embrace
by pattering rain?

For in the fragile,
ribbed web of our being,
all is dissolving -
only the core remains.

- Raphael Block

We Have A Beautiful Mother

We have a beautiful
Mother
Her hills
Are buffaloes
Her buffaloes
Hills.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her oceans
Are wombs
Her wombs
Oceans.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her teeth
The white stones
At the edge
Of the water
The summer
Grasses
Her plentiful
Hair.
We have a beautiful
Mother
Her green lap
Immense
Her brown embrace
Eternal
Her blue body
Everything we know.

- Alice Walker

Everybody Knows

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows

- Leonard Cohen
- Leonard Cohen

Prepare

"Why don't you write me a poem that will prepare me for your
death?" you said.
It was a rare day here in our climate, bright and sunny. I didn't feel like
dying that day.
I didn't even want to think about it -- my lovely knees and bold
shoulders broken open,
Crawling with maggots. Good Christ! I stood at the window and I saw
a strange dog
Running in the field with its nose down, sniffing the snow, zigging and
zagging,
And whose dog is that? I asked myself. As if I didn't know. The limbs
of the apple trees
Were lined with snow, making a bright calligraphy against the world,
messages to me
From an enigmatic source in an obscure language. Tell me, how shall I
decipher them?
And a jay slanted down to the feeder and looked at me behind my glass
and squawked.
Prepare, prepare. Fuck you, I said, come back tomorrow. And here he
is in this new gray and gloomy morning.
We're back to our normal weather. Death in the air, the idea of death
settling around us like mist,
And I am thinking again in despair, in desperation, how will it happen?
Will you wake up
Some morning and find me lying stiff and cold beside you in our bed?
How atrocious!
Or will I fall asleep in the car, as I nearly did a couple of weeks ago,
and drive off the road
Into a tree? The possibilities are endless and not at all fascinating,
except that I can't stop
Thinking about them, can't stop envisioning that moment of hideous
violence.
Hideous and indescribable as well, because it won't happen until it's
over. But not for you
For you it will go on and on, thirty years or more, since that's the
distance between us
In our ages. The loss will be a great chasm with no bridge across it
(for we both know
Our life together, so unexpected, is entirely loving and rare). Living
on your own --
Where will you go? what will you do? And the continuing sense of
displacement
From what we've had in this little house, our refuge on our green or
snowbound
Hill. Life is not easy and you will be alive. Experience reduces itself to
platitudes always,
Including the one which says that I'll be with you forever in your
memories and dreams.
I will. And also in hundreds of keepsakes, such as this scrap of a poem
you are reading now.

- Hayden Carruth


Hayden Carruth died yesterday at age 87

Summer’s Gone

My very good friend is leaving,
won’t be back till next year.

In the place of her sunny, even-tempered disposition
and her hot breath on my neck
I will have a tempestuous and unpredictable
but colorful companion
who scatters leaves all over the yard
and wets the landscape.

Goodbye, my good friend!
I will miss you dearly
as I wind my fleecy scarf about my neck
against the chill of your alter ego.

- Jana deProsse

Extraordinary Times

Is it that we want: Armageddon?
Or are we merely tired of routine decades?
Adrenaline's fallout blasts the air:
warm currents from one side, Arctic winds from another,
a volatile mix that could upend
the patient efforts of a century or more.
Our homes, our jobs—safe? Milk
already $5.29 a half-gallon, and if prices spiral
until even the middle class can’t afford to live,
what then?

But there is something, something
we love: the danger itself, or the promise
of something beyond? Reality
seems closer now. But instead of arriving,
it teases like a tiger swiping a great paw,
then disappearing, then coming back to swipe again,
neither destroying us thus far, nor leaving us alone.

- Max Reif

Just Thinking

Got up on a cool morning. Leaned out a window.
No cloud, no wind. Air that flowers held
for awhile. Some dove somewhere.

Been on probation most of my life. And
the rest of my life been condemned. So these moments
count for a lot--peace, you know.

Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.

This is what the whole thing is about.

- William Stafford

Labor
I spent a couple of years during my undestined
Twenties on a north woods acreage
That grew, as the locals poetically phrased it,
"Stones and rocks." I loved it.

No real insulation in the old farmhouse,
Which meant ten cords of hardwood,
Which meant a muscled mantra of cutting,
Yarding, splitting, stacking and burning.

I was the maul coming down kerchunk
On the round of maple; I was the hellacious
Screeching saw; I was the fire.
I was fiber and grew imperceptibly.

I lost interest in everything except for trees.
Career, ambition and politics bored me.
I loved putting on my steel-toe, lace-up
Work boots in the morning. I loved the feel

Of my feet on grass slick with dew or frost
Or ice-skimmed mud or crisp snow crust.
I loved the moment after I felled a tree
When it was still again and I felt the awe

Of what I had done and awe for the tree that had
Stretched toward the sky for silent decades.
On Saturday night the regulars who had worked
In the woods forever mocked me as I limped into

The bar out on the state highway. "Workin' hard
There, sonny, or more like hardly workin'?"
I cradled my bottle between stiff raw hands,
Felt a pinching tension in the small of my back,

Inhaled ripe sweat, damp flannel,
Cheap whiskey then nodded—a happy fool.
They grinned back. Through their proper
Scorn I could feel it. They loved it too.

for Hayden Carruth

- Baron Wormser

Elegy for Matthew Shepard

In the end, let me believe this much: that only the first blow was
painful-what came after, no more than half-heard thunder, a
proselyte storm impending in Wyoming distances and speaking
in tones as low as a lover's voice in the floating time before sleep.

That the scarecrow night and a day on the buck fence were
nothing to him, who had carried himself to a place beyond
the hours, the thirty-degree freeze, the ropes that lashed
his arms apart in the unnatural opposite of embrace.

That God stood by to witness his ninth hour-a miracle this time
of presence-so that the broken-hearted question never came; and
sent the blank, dark face of midnight down to press its cheek
on his, still wet with tears, and come away all etched in stars.

Anyone who loved him would convince himself the same-
even those, not father or brother, lover or friend, whose
grief, its ragged fingers impotent as wind-ripped prayer flags,
loiters at the boundaries of our skin like shadows.

His silence now is pure rebuff. Wandering away on the indifferent
air, he slipped across the seam that sometimes opens where the earth
and sky brush edges, and, like strangers, step politely back, eager
now to kiss the boy whose reckless arms have stretched, since dawn,

from the far edge of the meadow. He won't turn back,
though we call, though we stand in groups as general as wildflowers
and bow and nod together in the wind:

He knows the calendar is all subjunctive now, that
death's no matter for the dead.

- Wendell Ricketts

This is the 10th anniversary of the attack on
Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay college student in Laramie, Wyoming. He
died on October 12, 1998 of his injuries.

In the Beginning

Sometimes simplicity rises
like a blossom of fire
from the white silk of your own skin.
You were there in the beginning
you heard the story, you heard the merciless
and tender words telling you where you had to go.
Exile is never easy and the journey
itself leaves a bitter taste. But then,
when you heard that voice, you had to go.
You couldn't sit by the fire, you couldn't live
so close to the live flame of that compassion
you had to go out in the world and make it your own
so you could come back with
that flame in your voice, saying listen...
this warmth, this unbearable light, this fearful love...
It is all here, it is all here.


- David Whyte

In The Absence Of Bliss

Museum of the Diaspora, Tel Aviv

The roasting alive of rabbis
in the ardor of the Crusades
went unremarked in Europe from
the Holy Roman Empire to 1918,
open without prerequisite
when I was an undergraduate.

While reciting the Sh’ma in full
expectation that their souls
would waft up to the bosom
of the Almighty the rabbis burned,
pious past the humming extremes
of pain. And their loved ones with them.
Whole communities tortured and set aflame
in Christ’s name
while chanting Hear, O Israel.

Why?
Why couldn’t the rabbis recant,
kiss the Cross, pretend?
Is God so simple that He can’t
sort out real from sham?
Did He want
these fanatic autos-da-fé, admire
the eyeballs popping,
the corpses shrinking in the fire?

We live in an orderly
universe of discoverable laws,
writes an intelligent alumna
in Harvard Magazine.
Bliss is belief,
agnostics always say
a little condescendingly
as befits mandarins who function
on a higher moral plane.

Consider our contemporary
Muslim kamikazes
hurling their explosives-
packed trucks through barriers.
Isn’t it all the same?
They too die cherishing the fond
certitude of a better life beyond.

We walk away from twenty-two
graphic centuries of kill-the-jew
and hail, of all things, a Mercedes
taxi. The driver is Yemeni,
loves rock music and hangs
each son’s picture—three so far—
on tassels from his rearview mirror.

I do not tell him that in Yemen
Jewish men, like women, were forbidden
to ride their donkeys astride,
having just seen this humiliation
illustrated on the Museum screen.

When his parents came
to the Promised Land, they entered
the belly of an enormous
silver bird, not knowing whether
they would live or die.
No matter. As it was written,
the Messiah had drawn nigh.

I do not ask, who tied
the leaping ram inside the thicket?
Who polished, then blighted the apple?
Who loosed pigs in the Temple,
set tribe against tribe
and nailed man in His pocket?

But ask myself, what would
I die for and reciting what?
Not for Yahweh, Allah, Christ,
those patriarchal fists
in the face. But would
I die to save a child?
Rescue my lover? Would
I run into the fiery barn
to release animals,
singed and panicked, from their stalls?

Bliss is belief, but where’s
the higher moral plane I roost on?
This narrow plank given to splinters.
No answers. Only questions.

- Maxine Kumin

Let America Be America Again



Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where it is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That anyone be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free".)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the people! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today-O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home-
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free".

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be-the land where every one is free.
The land that's mine-the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!

Langston Hughes

Lazy

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.

- Ryokan

The Second Coming

Turning and turning on the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again, but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats

Worship

A white heron
Hiding itself
In the snowy field,
Where even the winter grass
Cannot be seen.

- Dogen

Toward Bethlehem

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
W. B. Yeats

Yes, I know.
This is the time
of the second coming.
The great beast lurking,
the savage heart
beating once again.

Somewhere in the desert, yes,
that blank and pitiless stare.
The haunches moving.
The stealthy advamce.

Shall we watch in horror and dismay?
Do we turn away
or witness in silence and despair?

The vision falters,
the image fades again.
That distant struggle
in the clouds of dust--
is this the specter
we ourselves have made,
created from our inner dreamscape
of grasping and desire?
Are we ourselves
the approaching shape
of darkness drawing near?

- Dorothy Walters

In Washington

Suited banksters talk of debt default, crowd control, and martial law.

Grave politicians promise yet again to follow them through hell itself and a few local pet projects if necessary.

Concerned journalists soberly agree that something drastic must be done to restore confidence.

Meanwhile at my house,

Confident oak leaves deposit free sunshine into rash acorns.

Unruly kinglets comb the leaves for small spiders.

Friends gather in circles, newfound comfort in proximity.

Impenetrable blackberry tangles open onto riotous gopher burrows.

Outlaw scrub jays hide acorns under secret mattresses.

Undocumented stones crash unpredictably down the hillside.

I sit still on this buckwheat cushion, high grasses waving freedom all around me.

We are in this together

and we are ready

now.

- Barton Stone

In This World

In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.

- Kobayashi Issa

In The End

It is not death we fear
but rather a life un-lived.

For in the end
it will be the stars
that went unseen
and
the love we did not tend,

That will cause our soul
to weep.

- Ron Harding

OUCH!

- R

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

In The End

It is not death we fear
but rather a life un-lived...

That will cause our soul
to weep.

- Ron Harding

---

Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain


The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

- Li Po

Firefall

Though it is cold,
the fires in the Lodge
remain unlit all day;
the world outside still starched
and sifted with the flour
of yesterday’s snow.

For hours,
in the great hall of the Awahnee
I’ve been looking up at
a life-size portrait of John Muir.

He’s posing against a granite boulder—
larger-than-life,
mirroring my grammar-school memory
of his history--

When Muir hiked he ate only
the stale bread he could lift
off his father’s bakery in Mariposa,

dipping their rough crusts
into mountain streams
to loosen them up.

He stitched trails,
wove his thin body down
the crevices of every rock
these naked windows face--

All day, I’ve been trying to think
of something to give you--
a souvenir, a risk--

but the portrait of Muir,
the taste of his two thin lips,
has me fixed in this chair.

They’re like a pair of blue butterflies
I could trap in my palms
and press to my lips.

* * *

My mother has told me for years
about the firefalls--

from Glacier Point--
the highest peak,
the Rangers would light
huge bonfires every week

just to see them spill over
down to the valley floor
as they yelled from above:
Let the fire fall.

I have never seen it.
The firefalls were banned
years before I was born,

But I have grown accustomed
to believing my Mother.

She says loving is what’s
most important in life

not butterflies, not
marking what is yours--

What I’m giving you
is the possibility
of what might ignite--

fire falling down
as the men yell from above,
their voices echoing
through the whole discovered park.

- Iris Dunkle

Shed The Fear

Who has a face sees
the world,
but the world
is not

to be borne -
or only
when seen as
another:

how did this
come together? How
did I find you?
So many turns

in the road
so few of them
possible!
How not to spin out

in hairpin turns
of disbelief.
The Sufi martyrs
insisted

"The world
is a wedding."
Why not
go with them.

in the face of
present carnage,
centuries
later.

- Anselm Hollo

Sacred Wine

Sit with the pain in your heart, he said.
Hold it like a sacred wine in a golden cup.
The wine may break you and if it does, let it.
To be human is to be broken,
and only from brokenness can
one be healed.
The ancestors say:
the world is full of pain,
and each is allotted a portion.
If you do not carry your share,
then others are forced to carry it for you,
And the suffering you bring to the world is your sin,
But the suffering you bring to yourself will be your hell.
Sit with the pain in your heart, he said.
Hold it there like a sacred wine in a golden cup.

- Greg Kimura

Another Woman


Another woman
would keep her mouth shut,
not spout fervent beliefs
like a speaker on a soapbox.

Another woman
would have chosen
equity over experience,
settling down or
just plain settling.

Another woman
would have stayed the course,
refusing distraction and
the pangs of the heart
that lead to upheaval.

Another woman
would not vacillate hearing
the voices that preach security and
the voices that harp on ideals.

Another woman
would not succumb to worry,
knowing that it never helps
and only constricts.

Another woman
would revel in her children’s independence
instead of mourning
their day-to-day absence in her life.

Another woman
would live in gratitude every moment
for her sojourn on this gorgeous planet
and not slip into the mundane
routine of forgetting.

But I am not
another woman.
I am this woman,
led by my heart and
pulled by conflicting voices,
a woman who
worries,
mourns,
forgets.

I am this woman,
this aging, outspoken, heart-stirred,
frightened and sometimes grateful woman,
This woman,
with this particular life
and not another.

- Maya Spector