lute music

The Earth will be going on a long time

Before it finally freezes;

Men will be on it; they will take names,

Give their deeds reasons.

We will be here only

As chemical constituents—

A small franchise indeed.

Right now we have lives,

Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,

Like everybody had once—

Here at the year’s end, at the feast

Of birth, let us bring to each other

The gifts brought once west through deserts—

The precious metal of our mingled hair,

The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs,

The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses—

Let us celebrate the daily

Recurrent nativity of love,

The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,

While the earth rolls away under us

Into unknown snows and summers,

Into untraveled spaces of the stars.

Kenneth Rexroth

Photo:  Peter Bowers

precious gift

No, I was not busy when you came!

I was not preparing to be busy.

That's the armour everyone puts on

to pretend they had a purpose in the world. 

Naomi Shihab Nye

excerpt: Red Brocade

The most precious gift you can give

to the one you love is your true presence. 

Do you have enough time to love?

My dear, I am here for you.  

Thich Nhat Hanh

True Love 

... Why not become the one who lives

with the full moon in each eye

that is always saying

with that sweet moon language 

what every other eye in this

world is dying to hear.

Hafiz

Photo:  Peter Bowers

between going and staying

Between going and staying

the day wavers,

in love with its own transparency.

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,

all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall

into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,

watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters.  Motionless,

I stay and go:  I am a pause.

Octavio Paz

Translated by Eliot Weinberger

Photo: Peter Bowers

 

the last verse

not pretending to know

not pretending to not know

with no place to stand

she steps into her shoes

tushti

photo: Peter Bowers

recognition

They were like two mirrors facing each other.  

Who sees, who is seen?

Seeing each other like this, 

they experienced the recognition everyone craves  - 

to be seen exactly as we are, 

nothing more, 

and nothing less.

Seen like this, 

all the many forms in the world 

are the same 

as one's own hand,

one's own face.

the iron grinder, Liu Tiemo (780-859)

Women of the Way

 Sallie Tisdale

Photo:  Peter Bowers

transition

for WCW

I wish I understood the beauty

in leaves falling. To whom

are we beautiful

as we go?

I lie in the field

still, absorbing the stars

and silently throwing off

their presence. Silently

I breathe and die

by turns.

He was ripe 

and fell to the ground

from a bough

out where the wind

is free

of the branches

David Ignatow

---

Attempting to answer David Ignatow's question

I wish I understood the beauty

in leaves falling. To whom 

are we beautiful

as we go?

We are beautiful to the Mother as we go.

There are mysterious roads in jade that

Old men follow,

Routes that migratory birds walk on,

The circle dances

Iron filings do,

The things we cannot say.

Salmon find their way to old beds;

Sleeping bodies are not alone.

Robert Bly

thank you beauty we love 

whatever happens

 

Whatever happens. Whatever

what is is is what

I want. Only that. But that.

Galway Kinnell

a song on the end of the world

On the day the world ends

A bee circles a clover,

A fisherman mends a glimmering net.

Happy porpoises jump in the sea,

By the rainspout young sparrows are playing

And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends

Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,

A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,

Vegetable peddlers shout in the street

And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,

The voice of a violin lasts in the air

And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder

Are disappointed.

And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps

Do not believe it is happening now.

As long as the sun and the moon are above,

As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,

As long as rosy infants are born

No one believes it is happening now...

Czeslaw Milosz

The Collected Poems 1931-1987

the life of a day

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has its own personality quirks which can easily be seen if you look closely. But there are so few days as compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it would be surprising if a day were not a hundred times more interesting than most people. But usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason we like to see days pass, even though most of us claim we don’t want to reach our last one for a long time. We examine each day before us with barely a glance and say, no, this isn’t one I’ve been looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for the next, when we are convinced, our lives will start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by perfectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light breeze scented with a perfume made from the mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak leaves, and the faint odor of last night’s meandering skunk.

Tom Hennen

from Darkness Sticks to Everything:

Collected and New Poems

Photo: Peter Bowers

barriers

Your task is not to seek for love, 

but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself

that you have built against it.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

everything that happens

Everything that happens is the message:

you read an event and be one and wait,

like breasting a wave, all the while knowing

by living, though not knowing how to live.

Or workers built an antenna - a dish

aimed at stars - and they themselves are its message, 

crawling in and out, being worlds that loom, 

dot-dash, and sirens, and sustaining beams.

And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up

eye and ear - suddenly we fall into

sound before it begins, the breathing

so still it waits there under the breath - 

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills

where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied

stillness unfolding their careful words:

"Everything counts.  The message is the world."

William Stafford

Photo:  Peter Bowers