What I wear is pants.
What I do is live.
How I pray is breathe.—Thomas Merton
.
Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks.
I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
—Wendell Berry
.
What I wear is pants.
What I do is live.
How I pray is breathe.—Thomas Merton
Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks.
I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.
—Wendell Berry
Out of a great need
we are all holding hands
and climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,the terrain around here
is
far too
dangerous
for
that.
—Hafiz
Words, even if they come from
the soul, hide the soul, as fog
rising off the sea covers the sea,
the coast, the fish, the pearls.
It's noble work to build coherent
philosophical discourses, but
they block out the sun of truth.
See God's qualities as an ocean,
this world as foam on the purity
of that. Brush away and look
through the alphabet to essence,
as you do the hair covering your
beloved's eyes. Here's the mystery:
this intricate, astonishing world
is proof of God's presence even as
it covers the beauty. One flake
from the wall of a gold mine does
not give much idea what it's like
when the sun shines in and turns
the air and the workers golden.
—Rumi
I am where I was:I walk behind the murmur,
footsteps within me, heard with my eyes,
the murmur is in the mind, I am my footsteps,
I hear the voices that I think,
the voices that think me as as I think them.I am the shadow my words cast.
—Octavio Paz
closing lines to A Draft of Shadows
Eliot Weinberger translation
Verse 1These mist covered mountainsAre a home for meBut my home is the lowlandsAnd always will beSomeday you'll return toYour valleys and your farmsAnd you'll no longer burnTo be brothers in arms
Verse 2
Through these fields of destructionBaptisms of fireI've witnessed your sufferingAs the battle raged higherAnd though they did hurt me so badIn the fear and alarmYou did not desert meMy brothers in arms
BridgeThere's so many different worldsSo many different sunsAnd we have just one worldBut we live in different ones
Verse 3Now the sun's gone to hellAnd the moon riding highLet me bid you farewellEvery man has to dieBut it's written in the starlightAnd every line in your palmWe're fools to make warOn our brothers in arms
—Mark Knopfler
Berlin 2007
.
up into the silence the green
silence with a white earth in it
you will(kiss me)go
out into the morning the young
morning with a warm world in it
(kiss me)you will go
on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it
you will go(kiss me
down into your memory and
a memory and memory
i)kiss me(will go)
—E. E. Cummings
.
'This doesn't compare to the feel of your skin'
.
somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will enclose methough i have closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first roseor if your wish be to close me,i andmy life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,as when the heart of this flower imaginesthe snow carefully everywhere descending;nothing which we are to perceive in this world equalsthe power of your intense fragility:whose texturecompels me with the colour of its countries,rendering death and forever with each breathing(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
—E. E. Cummings
Even if I now saw you only once,
I would long for you through worlds,
worlds.
—Izumi Shikibu
The Ink Dark Moon, excerpt
Jane Hirshfield translation
true lovers in each happening of their hearts
live longer than all which and every who;
despite what fear denies,what hope asserts,
what falsest both disprove by proving true
(all doubts,all certainties,as villains strive
and heroes through the mere mind’s poor pretend
—grim comics of duration:only love
immortally occurs beyond the mind)
such a forever is love’s any now
and her each here is such an everywhere,
even more true would truest lovers grow
if out of midnight dropped more suns than are
(yes;and if time should ask into his was
all shall,their eyes would never miss a yes)
—E. E. Cummings
love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fall
it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea
love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive
it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky
—E. E. Cummings
i am so glad and very
merely my fourth will cure
the laziest self of weary
the hugest sea of shore
so far your nearness reaches
a lucky fifth of you
turns people into eachs
and cowards into grow
our can'ts were born to happen
our mosts have died in more
our twentieth will open
wide a wide open door
we are so both and oneful
night cannot be so sky
sky cannot be so sunful
i am through you so i
—E. E. Cummings
love is every only god
who spoke this earth so glad and big
even a thing all small and sad
man,may his mighty briefness dig
for love beginning means return
seas who could sing so deep and strong
one queerying wave will whitely yearn
from each last shore and home come young
so truly perfectly the skies
by merciful love whispered were,
completes its brightness with your eyes
any illimitable star
—E. E. Cummings
The clear bead at the center
changes everything.
There are
no edges to my loving now.
You've heard it said there's
a window that opens from one
mind to another,
but if there's no wall,
there's no need for
fitting the window, or the latch.
—Rumi