directions

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Take a plane to London.
From King's Cross take the direct train to York.
Rent a car and drive across the vale to Ripon,
then into the dales toward the valley of the Nidd,
a narrow road with high stone walls on each side,
and soon you'll be on the moors. There's a pub,
The Drovers, where it's warm inside, a tiny room,
you can stand at the counter and drink a pint of Old Peculier.

For a moment everything will be all right. You're back
at a beginning. Soon you'll walk into Yorkshire country,
into dells, farms, into blackberry and cloud country.
You'll walk for hours. You'll walk the freshness
back into your life. This is true. You can do this.

Even now, sitting at your desk, worrying, troubled,
you can gaze across Middlesmoor to Ramsgill,
the copses, the abbeys of slanting light, the fells,
you can look down on that figure walking toward Scar House,
cheeks flushed, curlews rising in front of him, walking,
making his way, working his life, step by step, into grace.


—Joseph Stroud
Of this World

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some gods say

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Some gods say, the tiny ones
"I am not here in your vibrant, moist lips
That need to beach themselves upon
The golden shore of a
Naked body."

Some gods say, "I am not
The sacred yearning in the unrequited soul;
I am not the blushing cheek
Of every star and Planet--

I am not the applauding Chef
Of those precious sections that can distill
The whole mind into a perfect wincing jewel, if only
For a moment
Nor do I reside in every pile of sweet warm dung
Born of earth's
Gratuity."

Some gods say, the ones we need to hang,
"Your mouth is not designed to know His,
Love was not born to consume
The luminous
Realms."

Dear ones,
Beware of the tiny gods frightened men
Create
To bring an anesthetic relief
To their sad
Days.


—Hafiz
Ladinsky version

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Surrender. Be crumbled, so wild flowers will come up where you are.
You have been stony for too many years.

Try something different.

Surrender.


—Rumi

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listen

.

Be quiet. Ra is in the wind.
He speaks when the earth is silent and he alone existed until he named the names of things.
River, he said, and River lived.
Nile. Mountain. Beetle. Fisherman.

From his tongue springs words of water.
The river quakes with the sound of his voice.
Air escaping from his nose. Breathe deep.
The wind a sigh from his mother.

Such things are made everyday:
Duck, Mandrake, Raisin.
Grape, Pomegranate, Melon.
Cypress, Palm, Osiris.


—The Egyptian Book of the Dead

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die, and be quiet

.

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.

Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like somebody suddenly born into colour.
Do it now.
You’re covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks/John Moyne version

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divine medic(ine

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A woman's body, like the earth, has seasons;
when the mountain stream flows,
when the holy thaws,
when I am most fragile and in need,
it was then, it seemed, God came closest.

God, like a medic on a field, is tending our souls. Our horns get locked with desires, but don't hold yourself too accountable; for all desires are really innocent. That is what the compassion in His eyes tell me.

Why this great war between the countries - the countries inside of us?

What are all these insane borders we protect?
What are all these different names for the same church of love we kneel in together? For it is true, together we live; and only at that shrine where all are welcome will God sing loud enough to be heard.

Our horns got locked with the earth and sky in some odd marriage ritual; so what, don't worry. We should be proud of ourselves for everything we helped create in this magic world. And God is always there, if you feel wounded. 

He kneels over this earth like a divine medic, and His love thaws the holy in us.

—St. Teresa of Avila
Daniel Ladinsky version

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the outlines of being and its expressings

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There were ghosts that returned to earth to hear his phrases,
As he sat there reading, aloud, the great blue tabulae.
They were those from the wilderness of stars that had expected more.

There were those that returned to hear him read from the poem of life,
Of the pans above the stove, the pots on the table, the tulips among them.
They were those that would have wept to step barefoot into reality,

That would have wept and been happy, have shivered in the frost
And cried out to feel it again, have run fingers over leaves
And against the most coiled thorn, have seized on what was ugly

And laughed, as he sat there reading, from out of the purple tabulae,
The outlines of being and its expressings, the syllables of its law:
Poesis, poesis, the literal characters, the vatic lines,

Which in those ears and in those thin, those spended hearts,
Took on color, took on shape and the size of things as they are
And spoke the feeling for them, which was what they had lacked.


—Wallace Stevens
Large Red Man Reading

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planets image

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bird(spell

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I’ve figured it out, something that was never clear to me before—how all creation transposes itself out of the world deeper and deeper into our inner world, and why birds cast such a spell on this path into us.

The bird’s nest is, in effect, an outer womb given by nature; the bird only furnishes it and covers it rather than containing the whole thing inside itself.

As a result, birds are the animals whose feelings have a very special, intimate familiarity with the outer world; they know that they share with nature their innermost mystery.

That is why the bird sings its songs into the world as though it were singing into its inner self; that’s why we take a birdsong into our own innerselves so easily. It seems to us that we translate it fully, with no remainder, into our feelings.

A birdsong can even, for a moment, make the whole world into a sky within us, because we feel that the bird does not distinguish between its heart and the world’s.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

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the first dream

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The Wind is ghosting around the house tonight
and as I lean against the door of sleep
I begin to think about the first person to dream,
how quiet he must have seemed the next morning

as the others stood around the fire
draped in the skins of animals
talking to each other only in vowels,
for this was long before the invention of consonants.

He might have gone off by himself to sit
on a rock and look into the mist of a lake
as he tried to tell himself what had happened,
how he had gone somewhere without going,

how he had put his arms around the neck
of a beast that the others could touch
only after they had killed it with stones,
how he felt its breath on his bare neck.

Then again, the first dream could have come
to a woman, though she would behave,
I suppose, much the same way,
moving off by herself to be alone near water,

except that the curve of her young shoulders
and the tilt of her downcast head
would make her appear to be terribly alone,
and if you were there to notice this,

you might have gone down as the first person
to ever fall in love with the sadness of another.

—Billy Collins

.

 

 

hummingbird nest image

 

 

take nothing

  

 .

The birds don't alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.

They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.

Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We are the nervous ones.

If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn't hear
what singing completes us?


—Li-Young Lee
praise them
Book of My Nights

 

 

.

 

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;

But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four 

hills and a cloud.


—Wallace Stevens

Of the Surface of Things, excerpt

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arctic fox image

look deeply

  

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Don't say that I will depart tomorrow— 
even today I am still arriving. 

Look deeply: every second I am arriving 
to be a bud on a Spring branch, 
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, 
learning to sing in my new nest, 
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, 
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. 

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, 
to fear and to hope. 
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death 
of all that is alive. 

I am a mayfly metamorphosing 
on the surface of the river. 
And I am the bird 
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly. 

I am a frog swimming happily 
in the clear water of a pond. 
And I am the grass-snake 
that silently feeds itself on the frog. 

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, 
my legs as thin a bamboo sticks. 
And I am the arms merchant, 
selling deadly weapons to Uganda. 

I am the twelve-year-old girl, 
refugee on a small boat, 
who throws herself into the ocean 
after being raped by a sea pirate. 
And I am the pirate, 
my heart not yet capable 
of seeing and loving. 

I am a member of the politburo, 
with plenty of power in my hands. 
And I am the man who has to pay 
his "debt of blood" to my people, 
dying slowly in a forced labor camp. 

My joy is like Spring, so warm 
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. 
My pain is like a river of tears, 
so vast it fills the four oceans. 

Please call me by my true names, 
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, 
so I can see that my joy and pain are one. 
Please call me by my true names, 
so I can wake up 
and the door of my heart 
could be left open, 
the door of compassion.


—Thich Nhat Hanh
Please Call Me By My True Name

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one is the other and is neither

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The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.

The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.

The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.

One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.


—Octavio Paz 

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blossoming tree image

 

written in starlight

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Verse 1

These mist covered mountains

Are a home for me

But my home is the lowlands

And always will be

Someday you'll return to

Your valleys and your farms

And you'll no longer burn

To be brothers in arms


Verse 2

Through these fields of destruction

Baptisms of fire

I've witnessed your suffering

As the battle raged higher

And though they did hurt me so bad

In the fear and alarm

You did not desert me

My brothers in arms

Bridge

There's so many different worlds

So many different suns

And we have just one world

But we live in different ones


Verse 3

Now the sun's gone to hell

And the moon riding high

Let me bid you farewell

Every man has to die

But it's written in the starlight

And every line in your palm

We're fools to make war

On our brothers in arms

—Mark Knopfler
Berlin 2007

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you will(kiss me)go

 

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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 

 .

Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. —Heinlein

  

.

Love seeks no cause beyond itself and no fruit;
it is its own fruit, its own enjoyment.

I love because I love;
I love in order that I may love.


—Saint Bernard

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love is more thicker than forget

  

.

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

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Epic of Gilgamesh

turtle image

The Neurons Who Watch Birds

.

 

There are more like us. All over the world

there are confused people, who can’t remember

the name of their dog when they wake up, and people

who love God but can’t remember where

he was when they went to sleep. It’s

all right. The world cleanses itself this way.


—Robert Bly
from People Like Us 

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We have to think now what it would be like
To be old. Some funny little neurons,
Developed for high-speed runners, and quick
Handed bowmen, begin to get tired. They fire

But then lay down their bows and watch birds.
The kidney cells - "Too much thinking!" the Chinese
Say - look around for help, but the kids have
All gone to the city. Your friends get hit by lightning,

And your enemies live on. This isn't going to get
Better. Crows yelling from the telephone wires
Don't include you in the stories they tell, and they seem
To remember some story that you haven't heard.

What can you do? We'll have to round up
All those little people wandering about
In the body, get them to sit up straight, and study
This problem: How do we die?


—Robert Bly

December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021 
Morning Poems

.

.

a winter night

.

 

The storm puts its lips to the house
and blows to make a sound.
I sleep restlessly, turn over, with closed
eyes read the book of the storm.

But the child's eyes grow huge in the dark
and the storm whimpers for the child.
Both love to see the swinging lamp.
Both are halfway toward speech.

Storms have childlike hands and wings.
The caravan bolts off toward Lapland
and the house senses the constellation of nails
holding its wall together.

The night is quiet above our floor
(where all the died-away footsteps
are lying like sunken leaves in a pond)
but outside the night is wild!

A more serious storm is moving over us all.
It puts its lips to our soul
and blows to make a sound. We're afraid
the storm will blow everything inside us away.


—Tomas Tranströmer
Robert Bly version

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little vessel without lights

.

1


I wake in the night,
An old ache in the shoulder blades.
I lie amazed under the trees
That creak a little in the dark,
The giant trees of the world.

I lie on earth the way
Flames lie in the woodpile,
Or as an imprint, in sperm or egg, of what is to be.
I love the earth, and always
In its darkness I am a stranger.


2


6 A.M. Water frozen again. Melted it and made tea. Ate a raw egg and the last orange. Refreshed by a long sleep. the trail practically indistinguishable under 8" of snow. 9:30 A.M. Snow up to my knees in places. Sweat begins freezing under my shirt when I stop to rest. The woods are filled, anyway, with the windy noise of the first streams. 10:30 A.M. the sun at last. The snow starts to melt off the boughs at once, falling with little ticking sounds. Mist clouds are lying in the valleys. 11:45 A.M. Slow, glittering breakers roll in on the beaches ten miles away, very blue and calm. 12 noon. An inexplicable sense of joy, as if some happy news had been transmitted to me directly, by-passing the brain. 2 P.M. From the top of Gauldy I looked back into Hebo valley. Castle Rock sticks into a cloud. A cool breeze comes up from the valley, it is a fresh, earthly wind and tastes of snow and trees. It is not like those transcendental breezes that make the heart ache. It brings happiness. 2:30 P.M. Lost the trail. A woodpecker watches me wade about through the snow trying to locate it. The sun has gone back of the trees. 3:10 P.M. Still hunting for the trail. Getting cold. From an elevation I have an open view to the SE, a world of timberless, white hills, rolling, weirdly wrinkled. Above them a pale half moon. 3:45 P.M. Going on by map and compass. A minute ago a deer fled touching down every fifteen feet or so. 7:30 P.M. Made camp near the heart of Alder Creek. Trampled a bed into the snow and filled it with boughs. Concocted a little fire in the darkness. Ate pork and beans. A slug or two of whiskey burnt my throat. The night very clear. Very cold. That half moon is up there and a lot of stars have come out among the treetops. The fire has fallen to coals.


3


The coals go out,
The last smoke weaves up
Losing itself in the stars.
This is my first night to lie
In the uncreating dark.

In the heart of a man
There sleeps a green worm
That has spun the heart about itself,
And that shall dream itself black wings
One day to break free into the beautiful black sky.

I leave my eyes open,
I lie here and forget our life,
All I see is we float out
Into the emptiness, among the great stars,
On this little vessel without lights.

I know that I love the day,
The sun on the mountain, the Pacific
Shiny and accomplishing itself in breakers,
But I know I live half alive in the world,
Half my life belongs to the wild darkness.


—Galway Kinnell
middle of the way

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Initiation Song from the Finders' Lodge

 

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Please bring strange things.
Please come bringing new things. 

Let very old things come into your hands.
Let what you do not know come into your eyes.
Let desert sand harden your feet.
Let the arch of your feet be the mountains.
Let the paths of your fingertips be your maps
and the ways you go be the lines on your palms. 

Let there be deep snow in your inbreath
and your outbreath be the shining of ice.
May your mouth contain the shapes of strange words.
May you smell food cooking you have not eaten.
May the spring of a foreign river be your navel.
May your soul be at home where there are no houses. 

Walk carefully, well loved one,
walk mindfully, well loved one,
walk fearlessly, well loved one.
Return with us, return to us,
be always coming home.

—Ursula Le Guin
Always Coming Home

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questions

.

He kept falling backward every time
He was about to reach the top 

Now they tell him that he has no free will 

That bacteria inside his gut have goals 

That don’t jibe with his

Or as the scientist says, “Microbial manipulations might fill in 

Some of the puzzling holes 

In our understandings about food cravings” 

In other words, 

For his microbiome he is just a delivery system that 

Brings them sugar 

For them his body is a bakery 

Is there no end to subservience?

—Ishmael Reed 

The Diabetic Dreams of Cake, excerpt

the paris review

.

the keeper of flocks, excerpt

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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

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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

 

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