that moment

  

.

 

And I, infinitesima­l being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.


—Pablo Neruda

.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, 
and each moment then, 

In the faces of men and women I see God, 
and in my own face in the glass, 

I find letters from God dropped in the street — and everyone is sign’d by God’s name, 

And I leave them where they are, 
for I know that whereso'er I go 

Others will punctually come forever and ever.


—Walt Whitman
Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass

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All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.

And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death, but only longing for what belongs to us and serving earth, lest we remain unused.
 

—Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God 

 

.

 

Love is the mystery of water and a star. —Pablo Neruda

  

.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire. 

—Seneca

.

Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.

Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;

Your life will bring heaven to earth.


—The Sutta-Nipāta

.

In the end these things matter most: 

How well did you love?

How fully did you love?

How deeply did you learn to let go?


—Buddha 

.

this is the drop of an instant

 

.

The future is a concept, it does not exist.
There is no such thing as tomorrow.
There never will be, because time is always now.

That is one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking.
We find that there is only present, with an eternal now.


—Alan Watts

.

Time
is divided
into two rivers:
one flows backward, devouring
life already lived;
the other
moves forward with you
exposing
your life. 

For a single second
they may be joined.
Now.
This is that moment,
the drop of an instant
that washes away the past.
It is the present.
It is in your hands.
Racing, slipping,
tumbling like a waterfall.
It is yours.


—Pablo Neruda
ode to the past

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My soul itself may be straight and good;
ah, but my heart, my bent-over blood,
all the distortions that hurt me inside 
it buckles under these things.

And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:
All life is being lived.

Who is living it then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?


—Rainer Maria Rilke
Book of Hours, excerpts

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consolation

  

.

The tiny particles which form the vast universe are not tiny at all.
Neither is the vast universe vast. 

These are notions of the mind, which is like a knife,
always chipping away at the Tao,
trying to render it graspable and manageable. 

But that which is beyond form is ungraspable, and 
that which is beyond knowing is unmanageable. 

There is, however, this consolation:
She who lets go of the knife will find the Tao at her 
fingertips.


—Lao Tzu
Hua Hu Ching

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There is no insurmountable solitude. 

All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. 

And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song — but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.


—Pablo Neruda 

.

Cannot you see clearly that everything that appears to happen happens in consciousness? 

It is all imaginary, a temporary hallucination. 

Don’t be led astray, none of it reflects your true state.

—Nisargadatta

.

small bird on fire

    

.

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day. 

The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through which the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;

I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.


—Pablo Neruda
Ode to the moment

.

 

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let us not speak in any language,
let us stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his wounded hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I will count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.


—Pablo Neruda
Keeping Quiet

.

Live to the point of tears. —Albert Camus

  

.

The rhyme is the line's birthday, as you know, and there are certain customary twins in Russian as in other tongues. 

For instance, love automatically rhymes with blood, nature with liberty, sadness with distance, humane with everlasting, prince with mud, moon with a multitude of words, but sun and song and wind and life and death with none.


—Vladimir Nabokov
An Evening of Russian Poetry

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There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song — but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.


—Pablo Neruda

   

.

As we are a doomed race, chained to a sinking ship, as the whole thing is a bad joke, let us, at any rate, do our part; mitigate the suffering of our fellow-prisoners; decorate the dungeon with flowers and air-cushions; be as decent as we possibly can.


—Virginia Woolf

.

ancient rites of conscience

 

.

There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. 

And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song — but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.


—Pablo Neruda

.

invitation

 

.

Let us look for secret things

somewhere in the world

on the blue shores of silence.

.

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

—Pablo Neruda

.

stop for one second

.

The real world is beyond the mind’s ken; we see it through the net of our desires, divided into pleasure and pain, right and wrong, inner and outer. 

To see the universe as it is, you must step beyond the net. It is not so hard to do so, for the net is full of holes.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

 

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his wounded hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.


—Pablo Neruda
Keeping Quiet
Ian Sanders

.

there is no closed figure in nature

.

The misconception which has haunted philosophic literature throughout the centuries is the notion of ‘independent existence.’ There is no such mode of existence; every entity is only to be understood in terms of the way it is interwoven with the rest of the universe.


—Alfred North Whitehead
Essays in Science and Philosophy

.

There is no closed figure in nature. 

Every shape participates with another. 

No one thing is independent of another,
and one thing rhymes with another,
and light gives them shape.


—Henri Cartier-Bresson

.

We need to sit on the rim of the well of darkness 

and fish for fallen light with patience. 

—Pablo Neruda

.

I keep turning you over in my mind. I keep turning you over in my heart. —Li-Young Lee

   

.

From so much loving and journeying, books emerge.
And if they don’t contain kisses or landscapes,
if they don’t contain a man with his hands full,
if they don’t contain a woman in every drop,

hunger, desire, anger, roads,
they are no use as a shield or a bell:
they have no eyes, and won’t be able to open them,
they have the dead sound of precepts.

I loved the entangling of flesh,
and out of blood and love I carved my poems.
In hard earth I brought a rose to flower,
fought over by fire and dew.

That’s how I could keep on singing.


—Pablo Neruda
Ars Magnetica

. 

So he lent her books. After all, one of life’s best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves: Now she is reading or has just read the scene with the mirrors; she who is so lovely is drinking in that loveliness I’ve drunk.

—William T. Vollmann

Europe Central 

 

.

... late in this century and on a Wednesday morning,
bearing the mark of one who’s experienced
neither heaven nor hell,

my birthplace vanished, my citizenship earned,
in league with stones of the earth, I
enter, without retreat or help from history,
the days of no day, my earth
of no earth, I re-enter

the city in which I love you.
And I never believed that the multitude
of dreams and many words were vain.


—Li-Young Lee

.

Every person is a half-open door / leading to a room for everyone. —Tomas Tranströmer

.

This is a place where a door might be
here where I am standing
In the light outside all the walls

there would be a shadow here
all day long
and a door into it
where now there is me
and somebody would come and knock
on this air
long after I have gone
and there in front of me a life
would open


—W. S. Merwin

.

I like darkness and confusion and absurdity, but I like to know that there could be a little door that you could go out into a safe life area of happiness. 

—David Lynch

.

 

Tie your heart at night to mine, Love,
and we will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves. 

Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.

Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement, to the grip on life that beats in your breast, with the wings of a submerged swan, 

So that our dream might reply
to the sky’s questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow.


—Pablo Neruda

.

who am I if I was not I while I slept?

   

.

Is there death for you? For whom is death? The body which dies, were you aware of it, did you have it, during sleep? The body was not, when you slept, but you existed even then. When you awoke, you got the body and even in the waking state you exist. You existed both in sleep and waking. But the body did not exist in sleep and exists only in waking. That which does not exist always, but exists at one time and not at another, cannot be real. You exist always and you alone are therefore real.

We are so engrossed with the objects or appearances revealed by the light, that we pay no attention to the light. In the waking or dream state in which things appear, and in the sleep state in which we see nothing, there is always the light of Consciousness or Self, like the hall lamp which is always burning. The thing to do is to concentrate on the seer and not on the seen, not on the objects, but on the Light which reveals them.


—Sri Ramana Maharshi

.

During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. 

We may even dream of interpreting a dream. 

Only on waking do we know it was a dream. 

Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream.

—Chuang Tzu

.

 

Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays

and the week with the whole year.

Time cannot be cut

with your weary scissors,

and all the names of the day

are washed out by the waters of night.

No one can claim the name of Pedro,

nobody is Rosa or Maria,

all of us are dust or sand,

all of us are rain under rain.

They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,

of Chiles and of Paraguays;

I have no idea what they are saying.

I know only the skin of the earth

and I know it is without a name.

When I lived amongst the roots

they pleased me more than flowers did,

and when I spoke to a stone

it rang like a bell.

It is so long, the spring

which goes on all winter.

Time lost its shoes.

A year is four centuries.

When I sleep every night,

what am I called or not called?

And when I wake, who am I

if I was not I while I slept?

This means to say that scarcely

have we landed into life

than we come as if new-born;

let us not fill our mouths

with so many faltering names,

with so many sad formalities,

with so many pompous letters,

with so much of yours and mine,

with so much of signing of papers.

I have a mind to confuse things,

unite them, bring them to birth,

mix them up, undress them,

until the light of the world

has the oneness of the ocean,

a generous, vast wholeness,

a crepitant fragrance.

—Pablo Neruda

Too Many Names

.

The moon is the earth’s conscience. —Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

 

.

The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. 

The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. 

Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all.

—E. B. White
July 26, 1969

.

here i came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning.


—Pablo Neruda

.

fishing for falling light

 

.

The changing of bodies into light and light into bodies is very comfortable to the course of nature which seems delighted with transmutations.


—Sir Isaac Newton

.

Use your own light and return to the source of light.

This is called practicing eternity.

—Lao-Tzu

.

If each day falls 
inside each night, 
there exists a well 
where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim 
of the well of darkness 
and fish for fallen light 
with patience.


—Pablo Neruda

.

quest(ions

   

 

 .

What in your life is calling you?

When all the noise is silenced, 
the meetings adjourned,
the lists laid aside, 
and the wild iris blooms by itself
in the dark forest,
what still pulls on your soul?


—Rumi 

.

Through what roads and how did you find my soul? 

Who taught you the steps that would lead you to me? 

What flower, what stone, what smoke revealed my abode?


—Pablo Neruda
milky night

.

this is how you become everything that lives

  

.

You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.


—Pablo Neruda
love sonnet, XXXIV

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