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(Sitin' on) The Dock of the Bay
Song by Otis Redding
Sittin' in the morning sun
I'll be sittin' when the evening comes
Watching the ships roll in
Then I watch them roll away again, yeah
I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time
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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Pomegranates
Hard pomegranates sundered
By excess of your seeds,
You make me think of mighty brows
Aburst with their discoveries!
If the suns you underwent,
O pomegranates severed,
Wrought your essence with the pride
To rend your ruby segments,
And if the dry gold of your shell
At instance of a power
Cracks in crimson gems of juice,
This luminous eruption
Sets a soul to dream upon
Its secret architecture.
- Paul Valéry
Les Grenades
Dures grenades entr'ouvertes
Cédent à l'excès des vos grains,
Je crois voir des fronts souverains
Eclatés de leurs découvertes!
Si les soleils par vous subis,
O grenades entre-bâillées,
Vous ont fait d'orgueil travaillées
Craquer les cloisons de rubis,
Et que si l'or sec de l'écorce
A la demande d'une force
Crève en gemmes rouges de jus,
Cette lumineuse rupture
Fait rÍver une âme que j'eus
De sa secrète architecture.
- Paul Valéry
Fire On The Hills
The deer were bounding like blown leaves
Under the smoke in front of the roaring wave of the brushfire;
I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.
Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror
Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned
Down the black slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle
Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,
Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders.
He had come from far off for good hunting
With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless
Blue and the hills merciless black,
The somber-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.
I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,
The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than mercy.
- Robinson Jeffers
the beauty of things :: robinson jeffers
To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things—earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun, moon and stars—
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality—
For man’s half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest’s diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.
thanks, Larry ... Mr Jeffferson rocks.
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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Tashlikh
These are the days of awe -
time of inventory
and a new beginning
when harvest of what we sowed
comes in.
(What have we sown
of discord & terror?
Where have we fallen short
of justice?)
The scales dip & teeter;
there is so much
to discard,
so much to atone.
When our temples stood
we loaded a goat
with our transgressions
and sent it to the wild.
Now we must search our pockets
for crumbs of our trespasses,
our sins to cast upon the rivers.
The days are upon us
to take stock of our hearts.
It is time to dust
the images of our household gods,
our teraphim,
our lares.
- Rafael Jesús GonzálezTashlij
Estos son los días de temor -
tiempo del inventario
y un nuevo comienzo
cuando la cosecha de lo que sembramos
entra.
(¿Qué hemos sembrado
de discordia y terror?
¿Dónde hemos fallado
en la justicia?)
Las balanzas se inclinan y columpian;
hay tanto de que deshacerse,
tanto por lo cual expiar.
Cuando estaban en pie nuestros templos
cargábamos una cabra
con nuestros pecados
y la echábamos al desierto.
Ahora tenemos que buscar en los bolsillos
las migas de nuestras faltas,
nuestros pecados para echarlos a los ríos.
Están sobre nosotros los días
para hacer inventario del corazón.
Es tiempo de sacudir
las imagines de nuestros dioses domésticos,
nuestros térafim,
nuestros lares.
- Rafael Jesús González
Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a
card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy somethin
they will call you. When they wnat you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
- Wendell Berry
Ode To Tomatoes
The street
filled with tomatoes
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera,
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhausible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.
- Pablo Neruda
Where the still small voice lives
Rosh Hashanah Poem 2015
This past year, how many times have you said to yourself
I knew it! I just KNEW it!!
I knew I shouldn’t have done that (but you did it)
I knew I should have done this (but you didn’t)
Between this knowing and that inconsistent action
Is noise
The bantering, whimpering, cajoling, cantankerous and singsong
Sound of our internal voices
It’s a cacophony of conflicting desires, wants and needs
That fills a giant internal tent
A 3 (million) ring circus at its center
Each act vying for our attention
Some with very strong opinions
Today one ring takes center stage and asks of us
Only one thing
Silence
The still small voice lives in this silence
The silence exists
Where time meets space
Where the void merges with eternity
Where Adonai resides with Eloheinu
This Silence with its answers and guidance
Lives in the sigh of a baby as it drifts to sleep
In the pause of breath in a passionate kiss
In the inhale between grief-filled sobs
The voice that speaks from this silence
Is soundless with texture and temperature
Or booms with flashing neon lights
Or comes on silent owl wings
This is the time of year to rejoice that another year
Has come and lived us fully and completely
In the noisy world of thought
We contemplate our successes and regrets
Our growth and losses
In the silence that the New Year invites
Is the chance to hear the Truth
Of how we really lived our days
To learn, or to regret?
To forgive, or be forgiven?
Between our knowing and our action
Is where the still small voice lives
This voice needs air
Breath
This voice needs space
Be quiet, still yourself
Pause
Wait
- Sally Churgel
Summer’s End
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...0_16-23-04.pngAt 4:38 a.m. a mockingbird wakes to begin her concert. She prefers the topmost branches of the sycamore tree next door where she’s taken up residence. Throughout the day she entertains with a rapid succession of trills and chirps.
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...16-23-04-1.png
Meanwhile, in the fig tree
a blue jay wipes its beak
against a branch
From April to October the “national pastime” follows the long arc of the growing season. The highs and lows, wins and losses. Now, baseball is reaching its climax with the World Series and it too will soon go dormant.
Game-ending error
shortstop stares into his glove
-- the crowd … stunned silent
This afternoon entire trees are on fire. The liquidambars in the neighborhood proclaim the season with a spectacle of trees aglow in yellow, russet, and crimson.
Falling maple leaf
catches the sun’s failing light
for the last time
It’s time once again for the autumnal ritual of cleaning the gutters—another reminder that the road ahead is shorter than the one I’ve already traveled.
- andrew zarrillo
We Breathe You
There was a curious dusting of a talcum-like substance on my car one morning last week.
I drove away. It flew off, disappearing into the air.
Then it came to me.
The fires.
The terrible, terrible fires reducing your homes, your towns, even some of you into fine ash and carried on the wind thirty, forty, fifty, miles off.
We read newspapers, see the pictures and videos, wring our hands and pray.
My wife put together blankets, pillows, food and water.
“Paper says you can leave them at Community Market. They’ll get them to the victims.”
I couldn’t get into the market’s driveway for the long lines of those dropping off their boxes filled with concern and love.
Heard that I could take the items to a union hall – “We hopped to get enough to fill a semi truckload,” the man at the hall said, “but we got that on the first day, we’re sending another.”
So many good people.
And the ash of your homes, towns, of you - we breathe it in taking you into our bodies - you literally become us - streaming through our hearts.
- Armando Garcia-Dávila
Moonless Night, Tomales Bay
bioluminescence – n. the emission of light from living organisms
I set out upon an indigo bay
in evening's spare light,
yellow life jacket and red canoe, frail
against the muscle of dark water.
Pushing past the island
of cormorants and gull,
each stroke ignites ripples; oars
dripping with minute life.
An intimate, star-petaled sky
scatters its glow upon the sea.
Darting fish set a thousand blazes
and the spill of Milky Way
makes horizon meaningless.
Dazzled, I slip
beneath the surface,
the slide of my body against
the tide trails a comet of living light.
I stroke through
shimmering swells,
a second heartbeat.
Lit from inside, my hands open,
reveal the gold coins, passage
to life's unknown edge.
I am not yet ready to spend them,
but if I were, this might be the place,
purified by fire and water.
- Susan Lamont
Fall Comes to Healdsburg
Fall arrives, time’s most favored season—
at last the heart, the mind loosens its fist
so that I no longer need to know who I am
I return to the hills and the great presences—
light, heat, clouds, the bull pines—
to recover for myself the purity of the falling world
to enfold it like a pearl in the mind’s silence
I read the calligraphy of the oaks against
the fading skies, the grass bending in the meadow,
the last robins— I am a circle reaching
the first place for the first time—
in youth among fall leaves I refused
to acknowledge the ancient writing—
that the basket of summer empties, that
the hours of men are as wind-driven clouds—
and yet I stood among fall leaves overjoyed
with the beauty of loss
now I stand on autumn’s wooded knoll
that my life too may vanish
that night may fall into the earth’s arms
time is calling her trout
from their playgrounds in the sea
to river mouth, and redemption, and fury—
for it is by means of the long delay
that we come to the righteousness of passion.
- Lee Perron
September. At the Lake
In early June the lake is new.
Glaciers on the granite rim melt,
rivulets of ice-clouded water gush
down lime-streaked vertical walls.
It is alpine here
with an awareness of snow in every cloud,
even on brilliant blue warm days.
At dawn, wood smoke rises from chimneys.
Campers awake chilled, don sweaters,
brew coffee, greet the morning, wait
for voices rising up along the trail.
Youngsters arrive to scramble over boulders,
climb the cliffs as a test of themselves,
hesitate, then dare the perilous leap.
They fling themselves airward
and the dark lake swallows them in a bellowing splash
until they emerge, gasping.
Throughout the summer, we make the pilgrimage,
yearning to recapture a dream -
these cabins, cold lemonade at the store,
black and white photographs of a time before the road,
a pristine world that once was, everywhere.
The long, endless days stretch toward autumn.
September. The quiet time.
Nothing left to prove, no need to hurry.
The lake is its own slow clock.
It mirrors leaves glowing gold and red.
Trout rise in spreading circles,
aspens shiver dry and sound like
a memory of rain,
jays and squirrels grow plump,
and one last trickle winds its way
from the peak to the lake
playing brook music on the water.
- Elaine Watkins
Autumn
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, are holding up all this falling.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Robert Bly)
Relax
Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat–
the one you never really liked–will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up–drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice -one white, one black -scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.
- Ellen Bass
The Way It Is
There is a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what things you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
But you don't ever let go of the thread.
- William Stafford
Eclipse
Hey, the moon doesn't care
and the clouds don't either.
It was just by chance
that the veil lifted
and there she was
small round inscrutable
high away up in the solstice sky.
A different color,
yes, a little rosy like they’d said,
but only a little,
otherwise not so very different
from any other midnight moon.
Then the cloud curtains closed
and I went back inside.
It was tempting to personify,
but I didn't.
It was just by luck the mist drew back,
just by chance
the rains held off,
and when I felt that friendly
though distant moon saying
“Hello, how do I look like this?”
it was just me making it up.
- Julia Bartlett
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)
A Momentary Creed
I believe in the ordinary day
that is here at this moment and is me
I do not see it going its own way
but I never saw how it came to me
it extends beyond whatever I may
think I know and all that is real to me
it is the present that it bears away
where has it gone when it has gone from me
there is no place I know outside today
except for the unknown all around me
the only presence that appears to stay
everything that I call mine it lent me
even the way that I believe the day
for as long as it is here and is me
- W.S. Merwin
I, Coyote, Stilled Wonder
When did I get this bejawed look,
that flashes up out of creeks and pools?
Was it when I fled across
pasture and through woods,
up to ledge, and came out
in the world to let myself think events
back into their right sequence again?
Man glaring into bloody mess on ground,
cow, who has birthed calf, I,
Coyote, actually tasted,
ate of it well past demarcating line
where calf becomes aftermatter.
I think it was then, when I fled
singing, happy, to wood’s edge.
I could see Man raise arms,
steady his over-and-under, and squeeze.
I, Coyote, I was there, yes I saw it all,
even the flock of tiny lead
that went scattering past.
I felt in me all those that hit,
nearly shattered wraith, clinging
to crushed jawbone, invisibly
slickering through trees, from here on
alone, I, Coyote, stilled wonder.
- Galway Kinnell
Autumn Equinox
Light pregnant with gold develops from
the first glow of red over the horizon,
its shining presence eager to arrive before
the full moon has left the sky.
It is a promise that its decision to leave day by day
will have meaning.
I am held in the stillness of this honeyed presence,
reminded of the exquisite nature of being
in those last moments
before loss becomes certain.
- Jean Norelli
Fig Tree
Offering herself to strangers,
ripe purple ova,
sweet sacks of seeds
soft for the squeezing and tasting--
somebody tell her
not to do that!
Sprawled all over the sidewalk
for any dogwalker to finger,
any old lady, hobbling by on her walker, gets one,
or homeless guy settling in for a smoke,
or surreptitious single mother
with her plastic bags,
her army of climbing kids.
Not very ladylike,
crotch open for a sneakered foot,
a panting embrace,
and all that black honey, oozing.
See how her heart’s left
smashed on the sidewalk
for feral cats to sniff,
her intimate goo underfoot,
pecked by pigeons, swarmed with ants.
Should have pruned her harder,
brought her up short
before she showed her desire so freely
upraised arms opening to sky, profligate
branches that could poke somebody’s eye out:
such crazy need to feed the world.
- Allison Luterman
I love it! An Open Secret about figs! :): Wish the heck I could find some, the only big tree around here is all picked, nothin' on the ground at all! She is one of my favorite poets, but I sent her my work to critique and she was more critical than I'd thought she'd be, ouch! So I haven't read as much of her since the bruised ego, and now this poem of hers about bruised figs, which is DELICIOUS! :heart:
The Word
Down near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,
between "green thread"
and "broccoli," you find
that you have penciled "sunlight."
Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful. It touches you
as if you had a friend
and sunlight were a present
he had sent from someplace distant
as this morning - to cheer you up,
and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thing
that also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kinds
of love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinder
or a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a clue,
but today you get a telegram
from the heart in exile,
proclaiming that the kingdom
still exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,
- to any one among them
who can find the time
to sit out in the sun and listen
- Tony Hoagland
right on, Baby!
Chant
We live to stay
Alive. Prey all, alert
For predators, aware
We will be eaten.
Omnivorous, life eats all,
Grass, sheep,
The upright Sapiens,
Wolf whole.
Ferocious, tenacious life
Hangs in beautiful balance.
Feral child of chance,
Luck and luckless.
The wily mind
Calculates its chances,
The heart drums
Her maniacal mantra:
Alive, alive, alive.
- Rebecca del Rio
Enlightenment
Ten years ago I couldn't stop thinking, feeling,
Just anger, just rage, until this moment.
A crow laughs, the dust clears, I hold the arhat's fruit.
Spotted sunlight in Zhaoyang Palace, a pale face chanting.
- Ikkyu
(translated by Sarah Messer and Kidder Smith)
ON REMAINING NEUTRAL WHILE YOUR FIVE-YEAR-OLD HANDLES A GUN
It takes practice. It must,
to find just the right balance,
the right way to sift, to modulate energy,
attitude, so he won’t walk
back to the car, eyes glued to asphalt,
filled with rapture or
steeped in judgment,
after touching that thing. You want
him to be infused with nothing but sky. The barrel
is propped (mounted, I guess) on the edge
of a Vietnam copter. A boy
in fatigues keeps watch, with a personal
Airsoft lazily tossed beneath the seat
of the vintage machine he’s been left with.
A boy in fatigues. Left with a Vietnam copter.
The gun’s metal is dull, not the sleek shine
your son’s mind was led to expect by the small
doses of gunplay he’s been able to see
in his carefully-crafted home environment.
Softly, softly, he asks, Mom, what’s this?
His small hands lift and lower the gun on
its perch, no sign of bullets, or battle, or death.
A gun, you answer, so cool. His hands flutter
a moment, then return with a question.
It won’t work anymore, you tell him. Again,
so cool. What was it for? For war. Four days
later, up north, one more young man, barely
a man, releases his misplaced white-hot vitriol into the bodies
of students. Your crafted, elusive
equanimity gone, you unloose all your anger
and fear of the gun not in your home (hush!) but on
Facebook. You even piss off your sister-
in-law. The way we can walk with such marked
restraint amidst casual displays of masculine
violence is itself an object of wonder, you think.
And while you lie on your bed, frazzled and knowing
the sweet, twisted, quite normal joy
of kids being kids, while you fervently
wish the NRA could truly be sent
to a hell you know
will never, ever exist, your five-year-old
wanders in. Elbows propped, small hands under chin:
Mom, I really want a dart-gun.
Shit. It takes practice.
- Amy Elizabeth Robinson
Maple Seeds and Squirrels
How amazing it is
that maple seeds spinning their way down
nourish squirrels
and seeds of all sorts birds feed on
to fly on air that supports bats and flying bugs
who do their own feeding dance
and all so obvious and miraculous at once
and all so at once that time can hold and carry us
until we fall away to spin like maple seeds
and the urgency of sperm and egg
mates new us's to continue spinning
down through whispering atmosphere
thick enough to caress with the wings of our souls
thin enough to let us go when time tells us so.
- Tim Hicks
what a wonderful and gloriously run-on sentence ...
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
Objector In line at lunch I cross my fork and spoonto ward off complicity—the ordered lifeour leaders have offered us. Thin as a knife,our chance to live depends on such a signwhile others talk and The Pentagon from the moonis bouncing exact commands: "Forget your faith;be ready for whatever it takes to win: we faceannihilation unless all citizens get in line."I bow and cross my fork and spoon: somewhereother citizens more fearfully bowin a place terrorized by their kind of oppressive state.Our signs both mean, "You hostages over therewill never be slaughtered by my act." Our vowscross: never to kill and call it fate. - William Stafford
"...we feel that war is acceptable; in general, nobody feels that war is criminal or that accepting it is a criminal attitude.
In fact, we have been brainwashed."
— from The Realities of War, by The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
The Call Away
A cold wind flows over the cornfields;
Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.
I want to be out of here, go out,
Outdoors, anywhere in wind.
My back against a shed wall, I settle
Down where no one can find me.
I stare out at the box-elder leaves
Moving frond-like in that mysterious water.
What is it that I want? Not money,
Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.
This is what I want to do: to sit here,
To take no part, to be called away by wind.
I want to go the new way, build a shack
With one door, sit against the door frame.
After twenty years, you will see on my face
The same expression you see in the grass.
- Robert Bly
Shadows
Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast
Terrible shadows, that each of the so-called
Senseless acts has its thread looping
Back through the world and into a human heart.
And meanwhile
The gold-trimmed thunder
Wanders the sky; the river
May be filling the cellars of the sleeping town.
Cyclone, fire, and their merry cousins
Bring us to grief --- but these are the hours
With the old wooden-god faces;
We lift them to our shoulders like so many
Black coffins, we continue walking
Into the future. I don’t mean
There are no bodies in the river,
Or bones broken by the wind. I mean
Everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar
Of the tornado swears there was no mention ever
Of any person, or reason --- I mean
The waters rise without any plot upon
History, or even geography. Whatever
Power of the earth rampages, we turn to it
Dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever
The name of the catastrophe, it is never
The opposite of love.
- Mary Oliver
Artificial Tears
We are outliving our eyes
We no longer can cry
In a wicked world politically
uncaring to weep is to act
in some small but at least human
way out or through hopelessness.
Today we watched a dead child
on a foreign beach far from his home
another on a Hungarian railroad track
his father pulling mother and child there
rather than return them to the untenable
and we discovering ourselves to be helpless
are but for this verse individually useless.
- Ed Coletti
Old Friends
Each a mentor
a sherpa
a pathway
a wilderness
Old friends now
elders in gradual
departure into
deeper layers
undiscovered edges
shifting shorelines
a kind of breathing
a sort of threading
in and out
in and out
weaving each other
into living fabric
- Clare Morris
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.
- Goethe
(translated by Robert Bly)
For Natalie Rogers:
On the Death of the Beloved
Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or might or pain can reach you.
Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.
The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.
Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.
Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.
We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.
Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul's gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.
Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.
When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.
May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.
- John O'Donohue
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away to the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
That, we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect.
Without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolute unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you.
For an interval.
Somewhere. Very near.
Just around the corner.
All is well.
- Henry Scott Holland
This is how I feel about your usually daily offerings, Larry. Too often we wait until we have lost a loved one to speak our appreciation for that loved one's beautiful contributions to our lives. Thank you!
Quote:
Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:
The Decision
There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.
The thorax of an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weighs more.
Yet something slips through it —
looks around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.
- Jane Hirshfield
Then we will go to Europe
Then we will go to Europe, go
to Venice or Berlin, and live like Rilke
in communes of verse and there,
maybe there, we will shake off this disease
which dulls our senses and dulls everything
and spreads like aluminium
and clings like a plastic bag in a high branch,
like crude to a gannet’s feathers. Or
if not in the cities then in the forests
or in red caves in red deserts
or around the craters of gunungs in the archipelago
or among sandstone towers in the valleys of the West.
Oh ’
I don’t know. Just take me
somewhere it has not yet reached, somewhere
lonely and still real and let me
stand there and feel nothing
and lose the fear and, finally,
breathe.
- Paul Kingsnorth
Doubts and a Hesitation
Even your name
I have doubts about
and about the trees
about their branches, if perhaps
they are roots
and we have been living
all these years underground.
Who has dislocated the world?
and why are birds circling in our stomachs?
Why does a pill defer my birth?
For years we’ve been living underground
and perhaps
on a day in my seventies I’ll be born
and feel that death
is a shirt we all come to put on,
whose buttons we can either fasten
or leave undone…
a man may roll up his sleeves
or he might…
I am
a captive man’s conjectures
about the seasons behind the wall.
- Garous Abdolmalekian
(translated from the Persian by Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey)
To My Brother Miguel In Memoriam
Brother, today I sit on the brick bench of the house,
where you make a bottomless emptiness.
I remember we used to play at this hour, and mama
caressed us: "But, sons..."
Now I go hide
as before, from all evening
lectures, and I trust you not to give me away.
Through the parlor, the vestibule, the corridors.
Later, you hide, and I do not give you away.
I remember we made ourselves cry,
brother, from so much laughing.
Miguel, you went into hiding
one night in August, toward dawn,
but, instead of chuckling, you were sad.
And the twin heart of those dead evenings
grew annoyed at not finding you. And now
a shadow falls on my soul.
Listen, brother, don't be late
coming out. All right? Mama might worry.
- Cesar Vallejo
Air Mail
On a hunt for a mailbox
I carried the letter through town.
In the great forest of stone and concrete
this lost butterfly fluttered.
The stamp’s flying carpet
the address’s reeling letters
plus my sealed-in truth
now winging over the ocean.
The Atlantic’s crawling silver.
The cloudbanks. The fishing boat
like a spat-out olive pit.
And the wakes’ pale scars.
Down here work goes slowly.
I often sneak peeks at the clock.
The tree-shadows are black figures
in the greedy silence.
The truth is there on the ground
but no one dares to take it.
The truth is out on the street.
No one makes it their own.
- Tomas Transtomer
(Translated by Patty Crane from Swedish)
En Route
This poem is for you who gaze up
from the rooftops
hammers resting in hands,
for the souls that don’t count
stars,
whose glowing faces darken
when they walk away from the computer,
for you who look up at the sun and forget
it, too, is here for a brief moment,
it, too, has not arrived to its final destination.
And should the bright memory of some star
burn through the stratosphere
and catch your gaze as it hurls itself towards
some new land or sea,
your presence - as you are right now -
burns with the same force of God.
You who are alive and not yet arrived.
- Kara Stricker
Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner - what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
(translation by Robert Bly)
More than Once
I have crossed the border by going under the fence,
Crawling through one of its many tears.
This is no news:
People cross this way every day.
For us who lived there it was a game
But for those passing through, it was a life.
Once, I sat on the cement footing,
The fence pulled up enough for me to sit there,
Its wires in my hands, and — in that moment —
I felt the fence as an instrument.
My fingers strummed it, tried to play it
But no music came forth. No song.
The wires were too stiff, with no give.
It would not be a guitar, no mandolin.
It simply made the dull rasp of a fence
Bothered, rough on the fingers,
A little dry,
A little dangerous.
- Alberto Ríos