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Terza Rima
In this great form, as Dante proved in Hell,
There is no dreadful thing that can't be said
In passing. Here, for instance, one could tell
How our jeep skidded sideways toward the dead
Enemy soldier with the staring eyes,
Bumping a little as it struck his head,
And then flew on, as if towards Paradise.
- Richard Wilbur
Autumn Passage
On suffering, which is real.
On the mouth that never closes,
the air that dries the mouth.
On the miraculous dying body,
its greens and purples.
On the beauty of hair itself.
On the dazzling toddler:
“Like eggplant,” he says,
when you say “Vegetable,”
“Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
than vanished skyscrapers,
September zucchini,
other things too big. For her glory
that goes along with it,
glory of grown children’s vigil.
communal fealty, glory
of the body that operates
even as it falls apart, the body
that can no longer even make fever
but nonetheless burns
florid and bright and magnificent
as it dims, as it shrinks,
as it turns to something else.
- Elizabeth Alexander
*Monet Refuses the Operation
*
Doctor, you say that there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent.* The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases.* Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
*
- Lisel Mueller
Praise What Comes
surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise
talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks
before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps
you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions: did I love,
finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another
ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?
- Jeanne Lohmann
Gautama Christ
The names of God and especially those of His representative
Who is called Jesus or Christ according to holy books and
someone's mouth
These names have been used, worn out and left
On the shores of rivers of of human lives
Like the empty shells of a mollusk.
However when we touch these sacred but exhausted
Names, these wounded scattered petals
Which have come out of the oceans of love and fear
Something still remains, a sip of water,
A rainbow footprint that still shimmers in the light.
While the names of God were used
By the best and the worst, by the clean and the dirty
By the white and the black, by bloody murderers
And by victims flaming gold with napalm
While Nixon with his hands
Of Cain blessed those whom he condemned to death,
While fewer and fewer divine footprints were found
on the beach
People began to study colors,
The future of honey, the sign of uranium
They looked with anxiety and hope for the possibilities
Of killing themselves or not killing themselves, of organizing
themselves into a fabric
Of going further on, of breaking through limits without stopping
What we came across in these blood thirsty times
With their smoke of burning trash, their dead ashes
As we weren't able to stop looking
We often stopped to look at the names of God
We lifted them with tenderness because they reminded us
Of our ancestors, of the first people, those who said the prayers
Those who discovered the hymn that united them in misfortune
And now seeing the empty fragments which sheltered those
ancient people
We feel those smooth substances,
Worn out and used up by good and by evil.
- Pablo Neruda
A Penitent Considers Another Coming of Mary
For Reverend Theodore Richardson
If Mary came would Mary
Forgive, as Mothers may,
And sad and second Saviour
Furnish us today?
She would not shake her head and leave
This military air,
But ratify a modern hay,
And put her Baby there.
Mary would not punish men—
If Mary came again.
- Gwendolyn Brooks
What, Friends, Is A Life?
for Gabe Gudding
Killing a chicken for dinner always prompted
A quarrel about who had to do it. Today
You can take tours of virtual slave ships.
Many people are drawn to the dead
On their holidays. Because of its abundance
A large section of Birkenau was named Canada.
You could get good boots there & sometimes
A silk shawl or a jar of pickled herring. But it was
In America that fake birds were first made
To attract native fowl. The most familiar kinds
Of camouflage make one thing appear to be two,
Two things one & so on. Camouflage artists
Make it an arduous challenge to see a figure
On a ground (blending) or to distinguish one
Category of object from another (mimicry).
Less familiar but far more effective is dazzle
Camouflage in which a single thing appears
To be a hodgepodge of disparate components.
At Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the actors say
The audience always pays better attention
When it’s raining. Mother loved the sun,
She said, because its rays felt like ink to her
Fingers. Honestly I don’t understand many
People. But, Friends, if you plan on dying
By your own hand, don’t use pills. Swallowing
Is simply another way of marking time.
- Mark Yakich
I, Too
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America.
- Langston Hughes
Reverse Living
Life is tough.
It takes up a lot of your time. All your weekends.
And what do you get at the end of it -
Death - A great reward.
I think that the life cycle is all backwards.
You should die first. Get it out of the way.
Then you live 20 years in an old folks home.
You get kicked out when you're too young.
You get a good watch. You go to work.
You work for 40 years until you are young enough to enter college.
You learn to party until you are ready for High School.
You go to High School, Grade School,
You become a little kid.
You play, you have no responsibilities.
You become a little baby.
You go back into the womb.
You spend the last nine months floating
Only to finish off as a gleam in somebodies eye.
- Lynne Vance
The Hour Glass
It was but twelve months ago that the hour glass that is 2008 was turned. And now we watch in anticipation as the final grains of sand follow one another to end the year.
A man with a long white beard who needs a cane to help him remain on his feet takes the hand of the child in diapers standing on his plump little legs.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” warns the old man, “it passes quickly.”
And a nation down on its luck looks back, shamed by the misdeeds of its president. “We can do what is right!” It screams out to its neighbors around the earth, “we have chosen a leader so different from all of the rest, you will see. You will see!”
And even though it is the dead of winter and the longest and coldest nights of the year are upon us, we nonetheless continue a measured and steady trek toward spring and day by day hope slowly approaches.
Ah yes, the hour glass of 2009 will be turned in a few short hours its top globe filled not so much by the sands of time as the hopes of a people.
- Armando Garcia-Dávila
Quoting ChoQosh Auh'Ho'Oh:
> Where do you live (not just geographically)?
> What is it that you do?
> How are your relationships?
> Are you in right relation with the Earth?
> Where is your water?
> Know your garden (and nature around you).
> Speak your truth; it is time now.
> Be good to each other.
> Don't look outside yourself for the leader.
> This could be a good time.
That last one gets me every day...
Happy New Year,
- Rex
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
A Day is Coming
A day is coming
in which misery will end.
A day is coming
in which poverty
will open bank accounts
in every nation.
A day is coming.
I hear it coming.
A day is coming
in which the
campesino
will gather his children a green spring
and go on vacations.
I believe it.
I see it.
A day is coming
in which a soldier will be
decorated
for helping
instead of killing
his poor brother.
A day is coming
in which lovers
will serve themselves from large bowls
warm love and faithfulness.
A day is coming
in which the Christ who returns
is the Christ who never left.
A day is coming
in which the father will ask the son
for friendship
instead of respect.
A day is coming
in which the student
and a poor laborer
will be half and half.
A day is coming
in which the prisoners
come out
running in the fields and shouting
about their freedom.
A day is coming,
I see it coming.
- Lalo Delgado
The Mystery
Some come at it
with weights and measures,
some waving a sieve.
Some sing to it,
ballads and carols,
hoping to coax forth
its hidden center,
unwind the sheath
of who it is.
Some tap on it,
or deal heavy blows
with hammers,
trying to smash
its thick shield
force it to bow down.
Some seek ways to clamber in,
explore its hidden vaults
and chambers.
Some lie down beside it,
breathe its cool scent,
become its own self.
- Dorothy Walters
Testament
1.
Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath
Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --
A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire
His surly art of imitating life; conspire
Against him. Say that my body cannot now
Be improved upon; it has no fault to show
To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh
Has a perfect compliance with the grass
Truer than any it could have striven for.
You will recognize the earth in me, as before
I wished to know it in myself: my earth
That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,
And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,
And all my hopes. Say that I have found
A good solution, and am on my way
To the roots. And say I have left my native clay
At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.
Traveler to where? Say you don't know.
2.
But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say
Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure
Your hope. That will be generous
To me and to yourselves. Why settle
For some know-it-all's despair
When the dead may dance to the fiddle
Hereafter, for all anybody knows?
And remember that the Heavenly soil
Need not be too rich to please
One who was happy in Port Royal.
I may be already heading back,
A new and better man, toward
That town. The thought's unreasonable,
But so is life, thank the Lord!
3.
So treat me, even dead,
As a man who has a place
To go, and something to do.
Don't muck up my face
With wax and powder and rouge
As one would prettify
An unalterable fact
To give bitterness the lie.
Admit the native earth
My body is and will be,
Admit its freedom and
Its changeability.
Dress me in the clothes
I wore in the day's round.
Lay me in a wooden box.
Put the box in the ground.
4.
Beneath this stone a Berry is planted
In his home land, as he wanted.
He has come to the gathering of his kin,
Among whom some were worthy men,
Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,
But one was a cobbler from Ireland,
Another played the eternal fool
By riding on a circus mule
To be remembered in grateful laughter
Longer than the rest. After
Doing that they had to do
They are at ease here. Let all of you
Who yet for pain find force and voice
Look on their peace, and rejoice.
- Wendell Berry
Well Being/Being Well
Wishing all the world well being,
Starving dark thoughts while
Feasting on joy and humor so they thrive
Even when the body complains.
This is the goodness we can claim;
This is the healing we crave;
In the face of every ugly thing,
To choose to merge with
Mu- the Zen nothing,
The Christian love,
The Congolese ntu (everything)
Why give mistrust a foothold when
Pain can be washed away
With more care to
Mind, heart and hearth?
Why choose independence as a mask,
A too easy refuge for ego,
Negating the deeper peace of
Vulnerability and loving surrender?
In these short, grey winter days, then,
Let there be more tenderness, more light,
So, like angels our spirits may fly.
- Connie Madden
A Taoist Visits
I. "A foolish man is always doing, yet much remains to be done."
- Lao Tsu Tao Te Ching
How can I wash the dishes
when on the front porch
he contemplates tree roots
and watches ants disappear
Into sidewalk cracks?
I know which one
Of us
Is foolish.
II. "The great Tao flows everywhere….It nourishes the ten thousand things, and yet is not their lord. It is very small…. It is very great…."
- Lao Tsu Tao Te Ching
He holds the Tao
as a peach, peeling
the skin with his teeth.
The Tao expands
spanning the late summer sky.
It brushes his arm
as a fallen feather.
III. "Do you think you could take over the universe and improve it? I do not believe it can be done…. The universe is sacred…. So sometimes things are ahead, and sometimes they are behind…sometimes one is up and sometimes down…."
- Lao Tsu Tao Te Ching
I follow him now
through a drought-yellowed
cornfield where dry stalks
confess the sins that prevent
the summer rain. They would whisper
anything that might end the white kernels
withering.
Uncorking rice wine, the Taoist and I
celebrate the sacred universe now
both behind and down.
In all this field
only he and I know
no sin keeps the rain
from coming.
- Cheryl Todd
Persephone Again
Everyone wants to talk
about Persephone.
Especially the poets.
How she was grabbed
and carried off,
how she was kept in darkness
so many months,
while her mother searched everywhere,
waited for her darling
to come home.
Some say
the daughter
liked what had happened
(you know the story,
how women really want it
even when they say no),
others claim it is in fact
the mother who is at fault,
that it is she
who drove her daughter
away, forced her to
leave home and
flee into that hidden world,
because of her own impossible
demands.
And then of course
there are those
who read it as a simple
nature myth--nine months
of fertility and sun,
three of winter and death
over the land.
What do I think?
I think she is the soul
of each of us,
going down to obscurity,
resurrecting like a flower
over and over
as the seasons return.
- Dorothy Walters
Burning the Old Year
Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.
So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.
Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.
Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
Year’s End
Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.
I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.
There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii
The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.
These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.
- Richard Wilbur
America
Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison
Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,
And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu
Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels
Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America
And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,
And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
It was not blood but money
That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,
He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart—
And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—
Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets,
And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
And I think, “I am asleep in America too,
And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:
“I was listening to the cries of the past,
When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”
But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be
When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river
Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters
And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?
- Tony Hoagland
My goodness. Adbusters meets "Iron John" meets ___.
I bought a copy of Adbusters the other day. It was the first time in a long time...
As always, thanks Larry.
- Rex
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
For the Anniversary of My Death
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what
- W. S. Merwin
The Pieces That Fall To Earth
One could
almost wish
they wouldn't;
they are so
far apart,
so random.
One cannot
wait, cannot
abandon waiting.
The three or
four occasions
of their landing
never fade.
Should there
be more, there
will never be
enough to make
a pattern
that can equal
the commanding
way they matter.
- Kay Ryan
For Presence
Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.
- John O'Donohue
White-Eyes
In winter
all the singing is in
the tops of the trees
where the wind-bird
with its white eyes
shoves and pushes
among the branches.
Like any of us
he wants to go to sleep,
but he's restless—
he has an idea,
and slowly it unfolds
from under his beating wings
as long as he stays awake.
But his big, round music, after all,
is too breathy to last.
So, it's over.
In the pine-crown
he makes his nest,
he's done all he can.
I don't know the name of this bird,
I only imagine his glittering beak
tucked in a white wing
while the clouds—
which he has summoned
from the north—
which he has taught
to be mild, and silent—
thicken, and begin to fall
into the world below
like stars, or the feathers
of some unimaginable bird
that loves us,
that is asleep now, and silent—
that has turned itself
into snow.
- Mary Oliver
Holy Thursday: Is this a holy thing to see
Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduc'd to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
Is that trembling cry a song?
Can it be a song of joy?
And so many children poor?
It is a land of poverty!
And their sun does never shine,
And their fields are bleak and bare,
And their ways are fill'd with thorns:
It is eternal winter there.
For where-e'er the sun does shine,
And where-e'er the rain does fall,
Babe can never hunger there,
Nor poverty the mind appall.
- William Blake
God brings you into a new land
God brings you into a new land
Look, it’s just over this hill
Not the one with ten miles of gridlock before your exit
Not even the hill covered with auburn grape vines
The hill between you and this new land
Is of your own creation
It’s the hill made of spent dreams and regrets
Comparisons and despair
This hill is not as steep as it seems
It is covered with the sweet lilac scent of longing
You cannot walk this hill alone
The soft, yielding hand of the Divine is always present
You shall not lack for anything in this land
This is a land of olive oil and honey
Where bread of every description abounds
Here, truth is like a fig, chewy and sweet
It’s no longer like a pomegranate
With only small bursts of fleeting flavor
Here, your heart is as resilient as iron but as yielding
As a field of barley in a summer breeze
Your body and soul are entwined like
A dazzling vine of bronze stems and copper leaves
Even in this land you must be still in order to hear the
Sound of water flowing from deep springs
God brings you into a new land
But you still must walk
The wind will still blow in your face
Your heart can close again
If in the morning you wake and the hill is here again
Just put on your walking shoes
And climb again
And again, if need be
Remember you cannot climb this hill alone
- Sally Churgel
And then, it happened to us.
We, who had always been young,
grew old.
Hair thinned,
kidneys shrunk,
teeth fell.
Strength was within.
- Tina Rosa
NEW YEAR, 2009
Venus in the arc of the young moon
is a boat in the arms of a bay,
the sky clear to infinity
but for the trailing gossamer
of a transatlantic plane.
The old year and the old era dead,
pushed burning out to sea
bearing the bones of heroes, tyrants,
ideologues, thieves and deceivers
in a smoke of burning money.
The dream is over. Glaciers will melt.
Seas will rise to swallow golden islands.
Somewhere a volcano may whelm a city,
earth shake its skin like an old horse,
a hurricane topple a town to rubble.
Yet tonight, under the cold beauty
of the moon and Venus, something like hope begins,
as if times can turn, the world change course,
as if truth can speak, good men come to power,
and words have meaning again.
Maybe black-hearted boys in love with death
won't blow themselves and us to smithereens.
Maybe guns will fall silent, the powerful
cease slaughtering the weak, the rich
will not gorge as the poor starve.
Hope spoke the word 'Yes', the word 'we', the word 'can',
and a thousand British teenagers at Poetry Live
rose to their feet in a single yell of joy -
black, white, Christian, Muslim, Jew,
faithful and faithless. We are all in this together.
- Gillian Clarke
I will be on retreat until January 26. This will be my last post until then.
Larry
The Road Taken
(with apologies to Robert Frost)
The wood was green,
though it could just as well
have been yellow.
The roads did indeed diverge, though.
Those who know me would not be surprised
to hear that I took the one
marked "No Trespassing".
On the other side
I found myself already there.
I won't say what else I found there.
I will say that I will be back.
I'll leave it to you
to decide which side
was in and which was out.
Two roads converged
and that erased
all the difference.
- Larry Robinson
Beginning
Long before spring
king of the black cranes
rises one day
from the black
needle's eye
on the white plain
under the white sky
the crown turns
and the eye
drilled clear through his head
turns
it is north everywhere
come out he says
come out then
the light is not yet
divided
it is a long way
to the first
anything
come even so
we will start
bring your nights with you
- W.S. Merwin
Learning to Read
If I had to look up every fifth or sixth word
so what. I looked them up.
I had nowhere important to be.
My father was unavailable, and my mother
looked like she was about to break,
and not into blossom, every time I spoke.
My favorite was called the Iliad. True,
I had trouble pronouncing the names,
but when was I going to pronounce them, and
to whom?
My stepfather maybe?
Number one, he could barely speak English;
two, he had sufficient intent
to smirk or knock me down
without any prompting from me.
Loneliness, boredom and terror
my motivation
fiercely fuelled.
I get down on my knees and thank God for them.
Du Fu, the Psalms, Whitman, Rilke.
Life has taught me
to understand books.
- Franz Wright
Praise Song For The Day
Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.
- Elizabeth Alexander
And The Trees Danced
A bitter wind blew through the land
And screams of rage could be heard
From every corner of the sky,
Echoing throughout all of the Earth.
The ground was red from the battle, the long and endless battle,
Where neither one side, nor the other
Was heard to profess an element of understanding,
And pleas screamed would only break on ears of stone,
As each claimed that their god would reign victorious.
And there were those who loved and simply watched,
Who could see beyond the shades of skin,
And the acclamations of divine intent,
And would weep helplessly,
As they watched the ebb and flow of the bleeding tides,
Cursing the shades and pointing to the color that all beings shared,
Spilled relentlessly on fields of intolerance and greed.
And the reddened brown mud dried and cracked over the earth,
And the land was parched with flame and ash,
And the waters became putrid so no one could drink,
And the air thickened, and was brown with smoke and dust,
And the food would not grow because the rains would not fall,
And all of the Earth settled into a deep despair.
Then, just when all of the world agreed that the end was near,
And that nothing could be done to reverse the turn,
A man with skin the color of coffee and milk
Stepped out onto the battlefield,
And with his eyes, ears and heart open wide,
He listened.
And he heard the cries of the people,
And he spoke to them of Hope,
And the hearts of the many who heard his words
Chose him above all others to be their voice,
And to speak the truth for them.
A fuse was ignited and all around the world,
Tall columns built on worm ridden pedestals
Began to crumble and collapse,
As the age of plenty built on shards of illusion
And the backs of slaves
Could not stand tall,
And cowered in the brilliant light of Hope
And words of Truth.
And all of the people fighting
In all of the lands,
Increased their battles,
Reaching farther into the darkness,
Looting whatever remained of anything precious.
They waged on in their wars, in the names of their gods,
Utilizing women and children, in the crimes of their greed,
And causing a great wave of grief throughout the world.
Then on the eve of the day before the man was to become
The voice of the people,
A great cloud filled the heavens and settled over the land,
And a long and quiet snow fell throughout the night,
And covered the fields stained red in the blood of slaves and soldiers
With a soft blanket of redemption.
And in the morning light,
As the sun shown on the fields of ice and snow,
The man the color of coffee and milk
Stood in front of all the world,
And spoke of Peace and the Promise of Humanity.
And all of the people from all four corners of the earth,
Heard the words,
And wept,
For the broken hearts of the many,
That had finally been redeemed.
And the trees, that had stood guard in watch of their fields,
Who witnessed the toils of the pickers and planters,
Those unlucky, who as children
Had been stolen from the arms of their mothers
And sent in the bottoms of ships, in sickness and shackles
To toil in the fields,
The trees who watched helplessly,
Baring silent witness to the rape of young girls,
Who thought the dream was a fool’s folly
As the weight of somebody’s child
Swung heavily from their branches,
Though try as they might,
They could not release them,
The very trees whose limbs hung heavy in frozen tears,
Suddenly stood tall and reaching their naked branches to the sky,
They danced with their shadows in the fields of snowy white.
Filled with the blood of the ages they sounded in words heard clearly
In the hearts of the crying spirits of mothers and children of Africa,
"Hallelujah!" They sang.
"Behold, a brand new day!"
- Catherine Vibert
Witnessing a World of People and Places
Requiem
It came to me the other day:
Were I to die, no one would say,
“Oh, what a shame! So young, so full
Of promise — depths unplumbable!”
Instead, a shrug and tearless eyes
Will greet my overdue demise;
The wide response will be, I know,
“I thought he died a while ago.”
For life’s a shabby subterfuge,
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
The shock of it will register
Nowhere but where it will occur.
- John Updike
Infirmity
In purest song one plays the constant fool
As changes shimmer in the inner eye.
I stare and stare into a deepening pool
And tell myself my image cannot die.
I love myself: that’s my one constancy.
Oh, to be something else, yet still to be!
Sweet Christ, rejoice in my infirmity;
There’s little left I care to call my own.
Today they drained the fluid from a knee
And pumped a shoulder full of cortisone;
Thus I conform to my divinity
By dying inward, like an aging tree.
The instant ages on the living eye;
Light on its rounds, a pure extreme of light
Breaks on me as my meager flesh breaks down—
The soul delights in that extremity.
Blessed the meek; they shall inherit wrath;
I’m son and father of my only death.
A mind too active is no mind at all;
The deep eye sees the shimmer on the stone;
The eternal seeks, and finds, the temporal,
The change from dark to light of the slow moon,
Dead to myself, and all I hold most dear,
I move beyond the reach of wind and fire.
Deep in the greens of summer sing the lives
I’ve come to love. A vireo whets its bill.
The great day balances upon the leaves;
My ears still hear the bird when all is still;
My soul is still my soul, and still the Son,
And knowing this, I am not yet undone.
Things without hands take hands: there is no choice,—
Eternity’s not easily come by.
When opposites come suddenly in place,
I teach my eyes to hear, my ears to see
How body from spirit slowly does unwind
Until we are pure spirit at the end.
- Theodore Roethke
February
Winter. Time to eat fat
and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
a black fur sausage with yellow
Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
to get onto my head. It’s his
way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
He’ll think of something. He settles
on my chest, breathing his breath
of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
which are what will finish us off
in the long run. Some cat owners around here
should snip a few testicles. If we wise
hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
or eat our young, like sharks.
But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
thirty below, and pollution pours
out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
February, month of despair,
with a skewered heart in the centre.
I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
with a splash of vinegar.
Cat, enough of your greedy whining
and your small pink bumhole.
Off my face! You’re the life principle,
more or less, so get going
on a little optimism around here.
Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
- Margaret Atwood
Mind Wanting More
Only a beige slat of sun
above the horizon, like a shade pulled
not quite down. Otherwise,
clouds. Sea rippled here and
there. Birds reluctant to fly.
The mind wants a shaft of sun to
stir the grey porridge of clouds,
an osprey to stitch sea to sky
with its barred wings, some dramatic
music: a symphony, perhaps
a Chinese gong.
But the mind always
wants more than it has --
one more bright day of sun,
one more clear night in bed
with the moon; one more hour
to get the words right; one
more chance for the heart in hiding
to emerge from its thicket
in dried grasses -- as if this quiet day
with its tentative light weren't enough,
as if joy weren't strewn all around.
- Holly Hughes
Old News
I walk past the Hardin-Bergia:
it hasn’t got the news.
Sending forth tender purple micro
blossoms crafted
to celebrate the coming spring,
it’s oblivious to
this global meltdown.
The nectarine tree readies
its small bursts of
snowy hope
on stems’ ends,
unclear
or unconcerned,
that the collapse is coming.
What to make of this ignorant
spring grass engorging the orchard?
Birds who flit from tree to tree
and sing alive
these futile mornings?
Who store their seeds,
depart on their migrations?
Something still is
working:
the only true ground, spreading the word:
our next deposit,
our next withdrawal, as near as
our next spent
breath.
- Scott O'Brien
For Presence
Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.
- John O'Donohue
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
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*
*
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
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
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by 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
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
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
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
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...
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by 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