silent friend of many distances

 

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I've always loved friends of the Way
Always held them dear

Meeting a stranger with silent springs
Greeting a guest talking zen

Talking about mysteries on a moonlit night
Searching for truth until dawn

When the tracks of our inventions
disappear and we see who we really are.


—Han Shan
Cold Mountain

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Let’s be friendly and open together
I’ll give you my well-filled life

and you give me a view of the planets
No one exactly dies
Rather souls change their looks and address.


—Mahmoud Darwish
John Berger amd Rema Hammami version
Mural

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Silent friend of many distances, feel
how your breath enlarges all of space.
Let your presence ring out like a bell
into the night. What feeds upon your face

grows mighty from the nourishment thus offered.
Move through transformation, out and in.
What is the deepest loss that you have suffered?
If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine.

In this immeasurable darkness, be the power
that rounds your sense in their magic ring,
the sense of their mysterious encounter.

And if the earthly no longer knows your name,
whisper to the silent earth: I’m flowing.
To the flashing water say: I am.


—Rainer Maria Rilke
Steven Mitchell version
The Sonnets to Orpheus, II, 29

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