Wednesday, April 20, 2022

my dear

 






.




You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God's heart at all.
Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy
To hear.

So what if the music has stopped for a while.
So what
If the price of admission to the Divine
Is out of reach tonight. 
So what, my dear,
If you do not have the ante to gamble for
Real Love. 

The mind and the body are famous
For holding the heart ransom,
But Hafiz knows the Beloved's eternal habits. 
Have patience,
For He will not be able to resist your longing For Long. 

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One. 
You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet, O my sweet crushed angel.


—Hafiz


.







Tuesday, April 19, 2022

the keeper of flocks, excerpt








.



Metaphysics?
What metaphysics do these trees have?

That of being green and having crowns and branches
And that of giving fruit at their hours, 
– which is not what makes us think – us, 
who don't know to be aware of them.

But what better metaphysics than theirs,
Which is not knowing why they live
And not knowing they don't know? 


—Fernando Pessoa



.






Sunday, April 17, 2022

for a birthday (alive again today)








.




i thank You God for this most amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened


—E. E. Cummings



.







Description Without Place

 






.




In a description hollowed out of hollow-bright,
The artificer of subjects still half night. 

It matters, because everything we say
Of the past is description without place, a cast 

Of the imagination, made in sounds;
And because what we say of the future must portend, 

Be alive with its own seemings, seeming to be
Like rubies reddened by rubies reddening.


—Wallace Stevens
closing lines to section V


 
.

 





Friday, April 1, 2022

note to self










Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.


—Alan Wilson Watts