Poetry for Mindfulness Courses

Once in a Poem

Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anaesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it had never been. Yet the promise is not of a monument. (Who, still on a battlefield, wants monuments?) The promise is that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experiences, which cried out.

Poems are nearer to prayers than to stories, but in poetry there is no one behind the language being prayed to.

From And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photosby John Bergere

The barn burned down,Now I can see the moon.Rumi

The MomentOh, the coming-out-of-nowhere momentwhen nothing happens, no what-have-I-to-do-today-list-

Maybe, for half a moment,the rush of traffic stops. The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be slows to silence, the white cotton curtains hanging still.by Marie Howe 

Wild GeeseYou do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--over and over announcing your place in the family of things. by Mary Oliver, Dream Work

The Guest House

This being human is a guest-houseEvery morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,some momentary awareness comesas an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,who violently sweep your houseempty of its furniture,still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing youout for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice,meet them at the door laughing,and invite them in.Be grateful for whoever comes,because each has been sentas a guide from beyond. Rumi

Chickpea to Cook~Jalaluddin Rumi(translated by Coleman Barks)

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it's being boiled.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.

"Don't you try to jump out. You think I'm torturing you. I'm giving you flavor, so you can mix with spices and rice and be the lovely vitality of a human being.

"Remember when you drank rain in the garden. That was for this."

Grace first. Sexual pleasure, then a boiling new life begins, and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea will say to the cook,

"Boil me some more. Hit me with the skimming spoon. I can't do this by myself.

"I'm like an elephant that dreams of gardens back in Hindustan and doesn't pay attention to his driver. You're my cook, my driver, my way into existence. I love your cooking."

The cook says, "I was once like you, fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time, and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

"My animal soul grew powerful. I controlled it with practices, and boiled some more, and boiled once beyond that, and became your teacher. by Rumi, trans. by Coleman Barks

On Commitment Until one is committed there is always hesitancy,the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness,there is one elementary truth,the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.All sorts of things occur to help that would never otherwise have occurred.A whole stream of events issues from the decision,Raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen accidents and meetingsAnd material assistance which no man could have dreamedWould come his way.Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it.Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. by Goethe

Between Before and After

Between before and after,the unimagined momentexpands and contracts.In love, like the eye’s iris,with the light. by Tom Devine

The Summer DayWho made the world?Who made the swan, and the black bear?Who made the grasshopper?This grasshopper, I mean-the one who has flung herself out of the grass,the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.I don't know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?

By Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems

The Journey

One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and

began,though the voices around

youkept shouting their bad advice --though the whole housebegan to trembleand you felt the old tugat your ankles."Mend my life!" each voice cried.But you didn't stop.You knew what you had to do,though the wind priedwith its stiff fingersat the very foundationsthough their melancholy was terrible.It was already lateenough, and a wild night,and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.But little by little,as you left their voices behind,the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voice,which you slowlyrecognized as your own,that kept you companyas you strode deeper and deeperinto the world,determined to dothe only thing you could do --determined to save the only life you could save.

by Mary Oliver

Go Among Trees and Sit StillI go among trees and sit still.All my stirring becomes quietAround me like circles on water.My tasks lie in their placesWhere I left them, asleep like cattle…

Then what I am afraid of comes.I live for a while in its sight.What I fear in it leaves it,And the fear of it leaves me.It sings, and I hear its song. by Wendell Berry from Sabbaths, 1987, North Point Press

 

The Peace of Wild ThingsWhen despair grows in meand I wake in the middle of the night at the least soundin fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,I go and lie down where the wood drakerests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.I come into the peace of wild thingswho do not tax their lives with forethoughtof grief. I come into the presence of still water.And I feel above me the day-blind starswaiting for their light. For a timeI rest in the grace of the world, and am free. Wendell Berry

What We Need Is Here Geese appear high over us,pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,as in love or sleep, holdsthem to their way, clearin the ancient faith: what we needis here. And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to bequiet in heart, and in eye,clear. What we need is here.

Wendell BerryIt may be that when we no longer know what to do,we have come to our real work,and when we no longer know which way to go,we have begun our real journey. Wendell Berry

The dogs of indecisionCross and cross the field of vision.A cloud, a buzzing flyDistract the lover’s eye.Until the heart has foundIts native piece of groundThe day withholds its light,The eye must stray unlit.The ground’s the body’s bride,

Who will not be denied.Not until all is givenComes the thought of heaven.When the mind’s an empty roomThe clear days come. Wendell Berry

Little GiddingWe shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate When the last of earth left to discover Is that which was the beginning; At the source of the longest river The voice of the hidden waterfall And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness Between two waves of the sea. Quick now, here, now, always- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flames are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.

Little Gidding is one of the Four Quartets, by T.S. Eliot

Still WaterWe can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us,  that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

by W.B. YeatsBetween Going and StayingBetween going and staying the day wavers,in love with its own transparency.The circular afternoon is now a baywhere 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 repeatsthe same unchanging syllable of blood.The light turns the indifferent wallinto a ghostly theater of reflections.I find myself in the middle of an

eye,watching myself in its blank stare.he moment scatters.

Motionless, I stay and go: I am a pause. by Octavio Paz

Hokusai Says

Hokusai says: Look carefully.He says pay attention, noticeHe says keep looking, stay curious.He says there is no end to seeing.

He says Look Forward to getting old.He says keep changing,you just get more who you really are.He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourselfas long as it's interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.He says keep praying.He says every one of us is a child,

every one of us is ancient,every one of us has a body.He says every one of us is frightened.He says every one of us has to find a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive -shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees.Wood is alive.Water is alive.Everything has its own life.Everything lives inside us.He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn't matter if you draw, or write books.It doesn't matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.It doesn't matter if you sit at homeand stare at the ants on your verandah or the shadows of the treesand grasses in your garden.

It matters that you care.It matters that you feel.It matters that you notice.It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.Joy is life living through you.Satisfaction and strengthare life living through you.Peace is life living through you.

He says don't be afraid.Don't be afraid.Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.Let life live through you.

by Roger Keyes

KindnessBefore you know what kindness really is,you must lose things,feel the future dissolve in a

momentlike salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,all this must go so you knowhow desolate the landscape can bebetween the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ridethinking the bus will never stop,the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,you must travelwhere the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,how he too was someonewho journeyed through the nightwith plans and the simple breath

that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrowas the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voicecatches the thread of all sorrowsand you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,only kindness that ties your shoesand sends you out into the dayto mail letters and purchase bread,only kindness that raises its headfrom the crowd of the world to sayit is I you have been looking for,and then goes with you every wherelike a shadow or a friend. by Naomi Shihab Nye

The Five Hindrances The desire for sense pleasure: pleasant sights, sounds, smells, tastes, bodily sensations, and mind states. Typically identified as an “If only . . .” seductive mentality. “When a pickpocket meets a saint, the pickpocket sees only the saint’s pockets.” Aversion, hatred, anger and ill will. Has a burning, tight quality to it that we can’t escape. Fear, judgment and boredom can all be forms of aversion, because they are based upon our dislike of some aspect of experience. Sloth and torpor. Includes laziness, dullness, lack of vitality, fogginess and sleepiness. Restlessness can be the opposite of sloth and torpor. Agitation, nervousness, anxiety and worry. The mind spins in circles or flops around like a fish out of water. Doubt. Can be the most difficult because when we believe it and get caught by it, our practice stops cold and we become paralyzed. Could be doubts about ourselves, our capacities, doubt about our teachers, doubts about the practice (“Does this really work?”)

From: Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, The Path of Insight Meditation by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, Shambhala Publications, 1987

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,be on good terms with all persons.Speak your truth quietly and clearly;and listen to others,even to the dull and the ignorant;they too have their story.Avoid loud and aggressive persons;they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,you may become vain or bitter,for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.Keep interested in your own career, however humble;it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,for the world is full of trickery.But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;many persons strive for high ideals,and everywhere life is full of heroism.Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love,for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,gracefully surrendering the things of youth.Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,be gentle with yourself.You are a child of the universeno less than the trees and the stars;you have a right to be here.And whether or not it is clear to you,no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,whatever you conceive Him to be.And whatever your labors and aspirations,in the noisy confusion of life,keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,it is still a beautiful world.Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. by Max Ehrmann, 1920s

AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN 5 SHORT CHAPTERSCHAPTER II walk down the street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I fall inI am lost . . . I am helpless

It isn’t my fault.It takes forever to find a way out.CHAPTER III walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.

I pretend I don’t see it.I fall in again.I can’t believe I am in the same place.But, it isn’t my fault.It still takes a long time to get out.CHAPTER IIII walk down the same streetThere is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I see it is there.I still fall in . . . it’s a habit.

My eyes are open.I know where I am.It is my fault.I get out immediately.CHAPTER IVI walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I walk around it.CHAPTER VI walk down another street. by Portia Nelson

Writing in the Dark

It’s not difficult.Anyway, it’s necessary.

Wait till morning, and you’ll forget.And who knows if morning will come.

Fumble for the light, and you’ll bestark awake, but the visionwill be fading, slippingout of reach.

You must have paper at hand,a felt-tip pen – ballpoints don’t always flow,pencil points tend to break. There’s nothingshameful in that much prudence: those are your tools.

Never mind about crossing your t’s dotting your i’s –but take care not to coverone word with the next. Practice will revealhow one hand instinctively comes to the aid of the otherto keep each lineclear of the text.

Keep writing in the dark:a record of the night, orwords that pulled you from depths of unknowing,words that flew through your mind, strange birdscrying their urgency with human voices,

or openedas flowers of a tree that bloomsonly once in a lifetime:

words that may have the powerto make the sun rise again.

Denise Levertov

                                                 Love After Love

The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self.Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

by Derek Walcott

If I Had My Life to Live Over

I'd dare to make more mistakes next time.I'd relax. I would limber up.I would be sillier than I have been this trip.I would take fewer things seriously.I would take more chances.I would take more trips.I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day.Oh, I've had my moments and if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments.One after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day.I've been one of those people who never go anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute.If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.If I had it to do again, I would travel lighter next time.I would go to more dances.I would ride more merry-go-rounds.I would pick more daisies. by Nadine Stair (age 85) from Condensed Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Patty Hansen

The Well of Grief Those who will not slip beneaththe still surface of the well of griefturning downward through its black waterto the place we cannot breathewill never know the source from which we drink,the secret water, cold and clear, nor find in the darkness glimmering

the small round coinsthrown away by those who wished for something else. by David Whyte from Close to Home

Between Going and StayingBetween going and staying the day wavers,in love with its own transparency.The circular afternoon is now a baywhere 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.he moment scatters. Motionless, I stay and go: I am a pause. by Octavio Paz

Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,pray that the road is long,full of adventure, full of knowledge.The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:You will never find such as these on your path,if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fineemotion touches your spirit and your body.The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,if you do not carry them within your soul,if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.

That the summer mornings are many, when,with such pleasure, with such joyyou will enter ports seen for the first time;stop at Phoenician markets,and purchase fine merchandise,mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,and sensual perfumes of all kinds,as many sensual perfumes as you can;visit many Egyptian cities,to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.To arrive there is your ultimate goal.But do not hurry the voyage at all.It is better to let it last for many years;and to anchor at the island when you are old,rich with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.Without her you would have never set out on the road.She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.Wise as you have become, with so much experience,you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

by Constantine P. Cavafy (1911)

from The Cure at Troy (from Seamus Heaney’s re-telling of the story of Philoctetes) Human beings suffer,they torture one another,they get hurt and get hard.No poem or play or songcan fully right a wronginflicted or endured. The innocent in gaolsbeat on their bars together.A hunger-striker's fatherstands in the graveyard dumb.The police widow in veilsfaints at the funeral home. History says, Don't hopeon this side of the grave.But then, once in a lifetimethe longed for tidal wave

of justice can rise up,and hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-changeon the far side of revenge.Believe that a further shoreis reachable from here.Believe in miraclesand cures and healing wells. Call the miracle self-healing:The utter self-revealingdouble-take of feeling.If there's fire on the mountainOr lightning and stormAnd a god speaks from the sky That means someone is hearingthe outcry and the birth-cryof new life at its term. Seamus Heaney

 

Faint Music(excerpt)Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.

When everything broken is broken,and everything dead is dead,and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt,and the heroine has studied her face and its defectsremorselessly, and the pain they thought might,as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselveshas lost its novelty and not released them,and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly,watching the others go about their days—likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears—that self-love is the one weedy stalk

of every human blossoming, and understood,therefore, why they had been, all their lives,in such a fury to defend it, and that no one—except some almost inconceivable saint in his poolof poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automaticlife’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears.

by Robert Haas

In Praise of Self-Deprecation

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.Scruples are alien to the black panther.Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.The locust, alligator, trichina, horseflylive as they live and are glad of it.

The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilosbut in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-likethan a clear conscienceon the third planet of the Sun.

Wislawa SzymborskaWislawa Szymborska (born 1923) of Poland won the Nobel Prize in

Literature in 1996. Her poems have been translated (and published in book form) in English, German, Swedish, Italian, Danish, Hebrew, Hungarian,

Czech, Slovakian, Serbo-Croatian, Romanian, Bulgarian and other languages. They have also been published in many foreign anthologies of

Polish poetry.

DO NOT BE ASHAMED

You will be walking some night in the comfortable dark of your yard and suddenly a great light will shine round about you, and behind you will be a wall you never saw before. It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape, and that you are guilty: you misread the complex instructions, you are not a member, you lost your card or never had one. And you will know that they have been there all along, their eyes on your letters and books, their hands in your pockets, their ears wired to your bed. Though you have done nothing shameful,

they will want you to be ashamed. They will want you to kneel and weep and say you should have been like them. And once you say you are ashamed, reading the page they hold out to you, then such light as you have made in your history will leave you. They will no longer need to pursue you. You will pursue them, begging forgiveness. They will not forgive you. There is no power against them. It is only candor that is aloof from them, only an inward clarity, unashamed, that they cannot reach. Be ready. When their light has picked you out and their questions are asked, say to them: "I am not ashamed." A sure horizon will come around you. The heron will begin his evening flight from the hilltop. by Wendell BerryOut beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,there is a field. I’ll meet you there.When the soul lies down in that grass,the world is too full to talk about.Ideas, language. Even the phrase each otherdoesn’t make any sense. RumiTen LampsIf ten lamps are present in one place,Each differs in form from the other;Yet you can’t distinguish whose radiance is whoseWhen you focus on the light.In the field of spirit, there is no division;No individuals exist.Sweet is the oneness of the Friend with his friends.Catch hold of the spirit.Help this headstrong self disintegrate;That beneath it you may discover unity,Like a buried treasure. Rumi

I am not I.I am this oneWalking beside me whom I do not see,Whom at times I manage to visit,And at other times I forget.The one who remains silent when I talk,The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,The one who will remain standing when I die.

Juana Ramon Jimenez, I AM NOT I translated by Robert Bly

Stand still.

Stand still.The trees before you and the bushes beside you are not lost.Wherever you are is a place called Here,And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,Must ask permission to know it and be known.The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,I have made this place around you,If you leave it you may come back again saying Here.No two trees are the same to Raven.No two branches the same to Wren.If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knowsWhere you are. You must let it find you.

David WagonerEven after all these yearsthe sun doesn't say"You owe me".Look what happens!The whole world lights up.

Hafiz

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,in which you see me hurrying.Much stands behind me: I stand before it like a tree:I am only one of my many mouthsand at that, the one that will be still the soonest.I am the rest between two notes,which are somehow always in discordbecause deaths note wants to climb over-but in the dark interval, reconciled,They stay here trembling.And the song goes on, beautiful. Ranier Maria Rilke, Translated by Robert Bly

Today like every other dayWe wake up empty and scared.Don't open the door of your studyAnd begin reading.Take down a musical instrument.Let the beauty we love be what we doThere are hundreds of way to kneelAnd kiss the earth.

Rumi

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.Don’t go back to sleep.You must ask for what you really want.

Don’t go back to sleep.People are going back and forth across the door sillWhere the two worlds touch.The door is round and open.Don’t go back to sleep. Rumi

Ring the bells that can still ring,Forget your perfect offering,There is a crack in everything,That's how the light gets in. Leonard Cohen

When your eyes are tiredthe world is tired also.

When your vision has goneno part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the darkwhere the night has eyesto recognize its own.

There you can be sureyou are not beyond love.

The dark will be your wombtonight.

The night will give you a horizonfurther than you can see.

You must learn one thing.The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worldsexcept the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweetconfinement of your alonenessto learn

anything or anyonethat does not bring you aliveis too small for you.

David Whyte, from "Sweet Darkness"

For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river-Unbearable pain becomes its own cure,Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn into sighing;In this way we learn how water can die into air,When, after heavy rain, the storm clouds disperse,is it not that they’ve wept themselves clear to the end?If you want to know the miracle, how wind can polish a mirror,Look: the shining glass grows green in Spring.It’s the rose’s unfolding, Ghalib, that creates the desire to see-In every color and circumstance, may the eyes be open for what comes.

GhalibEarth teach me stillness

as the grasses are stilled with light.Earth teach me sufferingas the old stones suffer with memory.Earth teach me humilityas blossoms are humble with beginning.Earth teach me caringas the mother who succors her young.Earth teach me courageas the tree which stands all alone.Earth teach me limitationas the ant which crawls on the ground.Earth teach me freedomas the eagle which soars in the sky.Earth teach me resignationas the leaves which die in the fall.Earth teach me generationas the seed which rises in the spring.Earth teach me to forget myselfas melted snow forgets its life.Earth teach me to remember kindnessas dry fields weep with rain. UTE Prayer

We are what we think.All that we are arises with our thoughts.With our thoughts we make the world.Speak or act with an impure mindAnd Trouble will follow youAs the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.We are what we think.All that we are arises with our thoughts.With our thoughts we make the world.Speak or act with a pure mindand happiness will follow you

As your shadow, unshakable."Look how he abused me and beat me,How he threw me down and robbed me."Live with such thoughts and you live in hate."Look how he abused me and beat me,How he threw me down and robbed me."Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.

Buddha

Summer grasses ---All that remains of great soldiers’ imperial dreams

Basho

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -that perches in the soul -and sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all. Emily Dickinson

Starting here, what do you want to remember?How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?What scent of old wood hovers, what softenedsound from outside fills the air?Will you ever bring a better gift for the worldthan the breathing respect that you carrywherever you go right now? Are you waitingfor time to show you some better thoughts?When you turn around, starting here, lift thisnew glimpse that you found; carry into eveningall that you want from this day. This interval you spentreading or hearing this, keep it for life--What can anyone give you greater than now,starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford, “You Reading This, Be Ready”Wage peace with your breath.Breathe in firemen and rubble,breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.Breathe in terroristsand breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.Make soup.Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.Learn to knit, and make a hat.Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,imagine griefas the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.Swim for the other side.Wage peace.Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:Have a cup of tea and rejoice.Act as if armistice has already arrived.Celebrate today. Judyth Hill, “Wage Peace”Let the Soul banish all that disturbs;Let the Body that envelopes it be still,And all the frettings of the Body,And all that surrounds it.Let Earth and Sea and Air be stillAnd Heaven itself.And then let the Body thinkOf the Spirit as streaming, pouring,Rushing and shining into it fromAll sides while it stands quiet.

Plotinus, 205

Now we will count to twelveand we will all keep still.For once on the face of the earth,let’s not speak in any language,let’s stop for a second,and not move our arms so much.It would be an exotic momentwithout rush, without engines;we would all be togetherin a sudden strangeness…

If we were not so single-mindedabout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselveswith death.Perhaps the earth can teach usas when everything seems dead in winterand later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelveand you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda, “Extravagaria” translated by Alastair Reid

The birds have vanished into the sky,and now the last cloud drains away.We sit together, the mountain and me,until only the mountain remains.

Li Po

Please Call Me By My True NamesDo not say that I will depart tomorrowbecause even today I still arrive

Look deeply: I arrive in every secondto be a bud on a spring branchto be a tiny bird, with wings still so fragilelearning to sing in my new nestto be a caterpillar in the heart of flowerto be a jewel hiding itself in stone

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,in order to fear and to hope,

the rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of the pond,and I am also the grass-snake who,approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

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

I am the 12 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 labour camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,so I can hear all my cries and my 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 so the door of my heart can be left open,the door of compassion. Thich Nhat Hahn, “Please Call Me by My True Names”

Enough. These few words are enough.If not these words, this breath.If not this breath, this sitting here.This opening to the lifewe have refusedagain and againuntil now.Until now David Whyte, “Enough”

Those who will not slip beneath

the still surface on the well of griefturning downward through its black waterto the place we cannot breathewill never know the sourcefrom which we drinkthe secret water, cold and clear,nor find in the darkness glimmeringthe small round coinsthrown by those who wished forsomething else David Whyte, “Well of Grief”

Unconditional

Willing to experience aloneness,I discover connection everywhere;Turning to face my fear,I meet the warrior who lives within;Opening to my loss,I gain the embrace of the universe;Surrendering into emptiness,I find fullness without end.Each condition I flee from pursues me,Each condition I welcome transforms meAnd becomes itself transformedInto its radiant jewel-like essence.I bow to the one who has made it so,Who has crafted this Master Game;To play it is purest delight –To honor its form, true devotion. Jennifer Paine Welwood, “Unconditional”

Your acceptance of what IS takes you to a deeper level where your inner state as well as your sense of self no longer depend on the mind’s judgments of “good” or “bad.”

When you say “yes” to the “isness” of life, when you accept this moment as it is, you can feel a sense of spaciousness within you that is deeply peaceful;

On the surface, you may still be happy when it’s sunny and not so happy when it’s rainy; you may be happy at winning a million dollars and unhappy at losing all your possessions. Neither happiness nor unhappiness, however, go all that deep anymore. They are ripples on the surface of your Being. The background peace within you remains undisturbed regardless of the nature of the outside condition.

The “yes” to what IS reveals a dimension of depth within you that is dependent neither on external conditions nor on the internal conditions of constantly fluctuating thoughts and emotions.”

From Stillness Speaks, Eckhart TolleIn the tug and pull of desire's grip I unravelTattered shreds of a once regal robe fall awayNothing comes....nothing

I ride out the battle with time and breathtime and breathtime and breath

Acceptance breezes in (crafty sage that she is)Wraps this heart in sumptuous golden silkWarms this heart to a trusting stillness, then Leaves a knowing kiss upon this slowly smoothing brow. Donna Sherman, "Acceptance"

Emptinesswhere all is possiblesilencewhere all sound is bornstillnessthe birth of all movement

Empty us out of ourselves

Darknessthe keeper of lightmysterythe place of unfoldmentsurrenderembracing bold faith

Empty us out of ourselves

Fearbelieving we are lostfearbelieving we are separate

fearforgetting that story is born of mystery

Empty us out of ourselves

Lovereturning me to my heartlovereturning you to yoursloveall that is left to hold

Hearing the silencestill in the arms of expansive breathhere among the shards of earthmay all the tearsEmpty us out of ourselves.

Donna Sherman, Ayin

We Have not Come to Take PrisonersWe have not come here to take prisonersBut to surrender ever more deeplyto freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite worldto hold ourselves hostage from love. Run, my dear,from anything that may not strengthenyour precious budding wings,

Run like hell, my dear,from anyone likely to put a sharp knifeinto the sacred, tender visionof your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriendthose aspects of obediencethat stand outside of our houseand shout to our reason"oh please, oh pleasecome out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners,or to confine our wondrous spirits,But to experience ever and ever more deeplyour divine courage, freedom,and Light!

Hafiz, "The Gift"

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,in which you see me hurrying.Much stands behind me: I stand before it like a tree:I am only one of my many mouthsand at that, the one that will be still the soonest.I am the rest between two notes,which are somehow always in discordbecause deaths note wants to climb over-but in the dark interval, reconciled,They stay here trembling.And the song goes on, beautiful. Ranier Maria Rilke, Translated by Robert Bly

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,This is the best season of your life.

Wu-men

A Discipline

Turn toward the holocaust, it approachesOn every side, there is no other placeTo turn.

Dawning in your veinsIs the light of the blast.That will print your shadow on stoneIn a last antic of despairTo survive you in the dark.

Man has put his history to sleepIn the engine of our doom.

It fliesOver his dreams in the night,A blazing cocoon.

O gaze into the fireAnd be consumed by man’s despair,

And be still, and wait, and then seeThe world go on with the patient workOf season, embroidering birdsongUpon itself as for a wedding, and feelYour heart set out in the morningLike a young traveler, arguing the worldFrom the kiss of a pretty girl.

It is the time’s discipline to thinkOf the death of all living, and yet live. – Wendell Berry

To Look at Any Thing

To look at any thing,If you would know that thing,You must look at it long:To look at this green and say,'I have seen spring in theseWoods,' will not do-you mustBe the thing you see:You must be the dark snakes ofStems and ferny plumes of leaves,You must enter inTo the small silences between the leaves,You must take your timeAnd touch the very peaceThey issue from. by John MoffittFrom Teaching With Fire

Clinging to one’s school and condemning othersIs the certain way to waste one’s learning.Since all dharma teachings are good,Those who cling to sectarianismDegrade Buddhism and severThemselves from liberation.

- Milarepa, The One Hundred Thousand Songs

In My Two Hands

I hold my facein my two handsNo I am not cryingI hold my face in my two handsto keep my loneliness warmto cradle my hungershelter my heartfrom the rain and the thunderTwo hands protectingTwo hands nourishingTwo hands preventingmy soul from flyingin anger.

I hold my facein my two handsMy hands cuppedto catch what might fallfrom within meDeeper than cryingno, I am not cryingI am in my two hands.------------------------Thich Nhat Hanh wrote this poem when bombs were falling on his beloved Vietnam, and he had to take care of his anger in solitude.

A Spontaneous PoemI am walking in the woodsand everything is realmore realyou are as real to meas the birds, as my footsteps, as the rustling of the leavesand slowly, and suddenlythe world is in my sight

the world is intrusively realas if i do not know who i amor even ifi am.

Rani from winter 2010 PAMF MBSR course

I have always knownThat at last I wouldTake this road, but yesterdayI did not know that it would be today.            Narichira (850 AD)It Felt Love

How did the roseEver open its heartAnd give to this world

All its beauty?It felt the encouragement of lightAgainst its being,Otherwise,We all remainToo frightened. Hafiz

Come, come, whoever you are Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a thousand times Come, yet again, come, come. Rumi (translate by Coleman Barks)

Saint Francis and the SowThe budstands for all things,even for those things that don't flower,or everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;though sometimes it is necessaryto reteach a thing its loveliness,to put a hand on its browof the flowerand retell it in words and in touchit is lovelyuntil it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;as Saint Francisput his hand on the creased foreheadof the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sowbegan remembering all down her thick length,from the earthen snout all the waythrough the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,from the hard spininess spiked out from the spinedown through the great broken heartto the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shudderingfrom the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneaththem:the long, perfect loveliness of sow. ~ Galway Kinnell

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal:it is the courage to continue that counts."

Winston Churchill

Billy Collins - Shoveling Snow With Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wokyou would never see him doing such a thing,tossing the dry snow over a mountainof his bare, round shoulder,

his hair tied in a knot,a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the wordfor what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?Is this not implied by his serene expression,that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,one shovelful at a time.We toss the light powder into the clear air.We feel the cold mist on our faces.And with every heave we disappearand become lost to each otherin these sudden clouds of our own making,these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.This is the true religion, the religion of snow,and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snowas if it were the purpose of existence,as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear drivewayyou could back the car down easily

and drive off into the vanities of the worldwith a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,me with my commentaryand he inside his generous pocket of silence,until the hour is nearly noonand the snow is piled high all around us;then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milkand bring cups of hot chocolate to the tablewhile you shuffle the deck.and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyesand leaning for a moment on his shovelbefore he drives the thin blade againdeep into the glittering white snow.

Subject: The Writer's Almanac for September 20, 2010

The Writer's Almanac for September 20, 2010Listenhttp://www.elabs7.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,n2mt,dv,k2kf,55tg,a0cr,vzu

How to listenhttp://www.elabs7.com/ct.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,n2mt,dv,kygc,iidi,a0cr,vzuHow the Stars Came Down  

Night. How the stars came downarching over us, and the only namewe had for them was shooting stars.Why there were so many was anybody's guess.My great grandmother thought the worldwas coming to an end when Haley's cometflared across the sky. I lay flat on my backand watched the night sky fallingall around me and I wanted,more than anything, never to go home.I did, of course. They put us campers into bussesand drove us back to tenements,asphalt and streetlights in the city.What I didn't know that nightin my bedroll at Sherwood Forest Campwas that when I got home,home wasn't my real home any more.I had a new home in my rememberingand it was dark and safe and beautifulwith shooting stars still falling all around.

"How the Stars Came Down" by Pat Schneider, from Another River. (c) Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be. For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance. I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance.

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears. Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years. Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

Night. How the stars came downarching over us, and the only namewe had for them was shooting stars.Why there were so many was anybody's guess.My great grandmother thought the worldwas coming to an end when Haley's cometflared across the sky. I lay flat on my backand watched the night sky fallingall around me and I wanted,more than anything, never to go home.I did, of course. They put us campers into bussesand drove us back to tenements,asphalt and streetlights in the city.What I didn't know that nightin my bedroll at Sherwood Forest Camp

was that when I got home,home wasn't my real home any more.I had a new home in my rememberingand it was dark and safe and beautifulwith shooting stars still falling all around.

"How the Stars Came Down" by Pat Schneider, from Another River. (c) Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission.

The Manifestation

Many arrivals make us live: the tree becomingGreen, a bird tipping the topmost bough,A seed pushing itself beyond itself,The mole making its way through darkest ground,The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil—Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,The motion of the moon, and waves at play,A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.We come to something without knowing why.Theodore Roethke

The Right Thing

Let others probe the mystery if they can.Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will—The right thing happens to the happy man.

The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;The hill becomes the valley, and is still;Let others delve that mystery if they can.

God bless the roots!—Body and soul are one!The small become the great, the great the small;The right thing happens to the happy man.

Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,His being single, and that being all:The right thing happens to the happy man.

Or he sits still, a solid figure whenThe self-destructive shake the common wall;Takes to himself what mystery he can,

And, praising change as the slow night comes on,Wills what he would, surrendering his willTill mystery is no more: No more he can.The right thing happens to the happy man.Theodore Roethke

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A BLACKBIRD

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,The only moving thingWas the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a womanAre one.A man and a woman and a blackbirdAre one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,The beauty of inflectionsOr the beauty of innuendoes,The blackbird whistlingOr just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long windowWith barbaric glass.The shadow of the blackbirdCrossed it, to and fro.The moodTraced in the shadowAn indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,Why do you imagine golden birds?Do you not see how the blackbirdWalks around the feetOf the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accentsAnd lucid, inescapable rhythms;But I know, too,That the blackbird is involvedIn what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,It marked the edgeOf one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirdsFlying in a green light,Even the bawds of euphonyWould cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over ConnecticutIn a glass coach.Once, a fear pierced him,In that he mistookThe shadow of his equipageFor blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.The blackbird must be flying

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.It was snowingAnd it was going to snow.The blackbird satIn the cedar-limbs.

(1917)

THE MAN WITH THE BLUE GUITAR

I

The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar."

And they said then, "But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,

A tune upon the blue guitar Of things exactly as they are."

II

I cannot bring a world quite round, Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero'd head, large eye And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

III

Ah, but to play man number one, To drive the dagger in his heart,

To lay his brain upon the board And pick the acrid colors out,

To nail his thought across the door, Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,

To strike his living hi and ho, To tick it, tock it, turn it true,

To bang it from a savage blue, Jangling the metal of the strings...

IV

So that's life, then: things are they are? It picks its way on the blue guitar.

A million people on one string? And all their manner in the thing,

And all their manner, right and wrong, And all their manner, weak and strong?

And that's life, then" things as they are, This buzzing of the blue guitar.

V

Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry, Of the torches wisping in the underground,

Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light. There are no shadows in our sun,

Day is desire and night is sleep. There are no shadows anywhere.

The earth, for us, is flat and bare. There are no shadows. Poetry

Exceeding music must take the place Of empty heaven and its hymns,

Ourselves in poetry must take their place, Even in the chattering of your guitar.

VI

A tune beyond us as we are, Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;

Ourselves in the tune as if in space, Yet nothing changed, except the place

Of things as they are and only the place As you play them, on the blue guitar,

Placed so, beyond the compass of change, Perceived in a final atmosphere;

For a moment final, in the way The thinking of art seems final when

The thinking of god is smoky dew. The tune is space. The blue guitar

Becomes the place of things as they are, A composing of senses of the guitar.

VII

It is the sun that shares our works. The moon shares nothing. It is a sea.

When shall I come to say of the sun, It is a sea; it shares nothing;

The sun no longer shares our works And the earth is alive with creeping men,

Mechanical beetles never quite warm? And shall I then stand in the sun, as now

I stand in the moon, and call it good, the immaculate, the merciful good,

Detached from us, from things as they are? Not to be part of the sun? To stand

Remote and call it merciful? The strings are cold on the blue guitar.

VIII

The vivid, florid, turgid sky, The drenching thunder rolling by,

The morning deluged still by night, The clouds tumultuously bright

And the feeling heavy in cold chords Struggling toward impassioned choirs,

Crying among the clouds, enraged By gold antagonists in air--

I know my lazy, leaden twang Is like the reason in a storm;

And yet it brings the storm to bear. I twang it out and leave it there.

IX

And the color, the overcast blue Of the air, in which the blue guitar

Is a form, described but difficult, And I am merely a shadow hunched

Above the arrowy, still string, The maker of a thing yet to be made;

The color like a thought that grows Out of a mood, the tragic robe

Of the actor, half his gesture, half His speech, the dress of his meaning, silk

Sodden with his melancholy words, The weather of his stage, himself.

X

Raise reddest columns. Toll a bell And clap the hollows full of tin.

Throw papers in the streets, the wills Of the dead, majestic in their seals.

And the beautiful trombones--behold The approach of him whom none believes,

Whom all believe that all believe, A pagan in a varnished car.

Roll a drum upon the blue guitar. Lean from the steeple. Cry aloud,

"Here am I, my adversary, that Confront you, hoo-ing the slick trombones,

Yet with a petty misery At heart, a petty misery,

Ever the prelude to your end, The touch that topples men and rock."

XI

Slowly the ivy on the stones Becomes the stones. Women become

The cities, children become the fields And men in waves become the sea.

It is the chord that flasifies. The sea returns upon the men,

The fields entrap the children, brick Is a weed and all the flies are caught,

Wingless and withered, but living alive. The discord merely magnified.

Deeper within the belly's dark Of time, time grows upon the rock.

XII

Tom-tom, c'est moi. the blue guitar And I are one. The orchestra

Fills the high hall with shuffling men High as the hall. The whirling noise

Of a multitude dwindles, all said, To his breath that lies awake at night.

I know that timid breathing. Where Do I begin and end? And where,

As I strum the thing, do I pick up That which momentously declares

Itself not to be I and yet Must be. It could be nothing else.

XIII

The pale intrusions into blue Are corrupting pallors...ay di mi,

Blue buds of pitchy blooms. Be content-- Expansions, diffusions--content to be

The unspotted imbecile revery, The heraldic center of the world

Of blue, blue sleek with a hundred chins, The amorist Adjective aflame...

XIV

First one beam, then another, then A thousand are radiant in the sky.

Each is both star and orb; and day Is the riches of their atmosphere.

The sea appends its tattery hues. The shores are banks of muffling mist.

One says a German chandelier-- A candle is enough to light the world.

It makes it clear. Even at noon It glistens in essential dark.

At night, it lights the fruit and wine, The book and bread, things as they are,

In a chiaroscuro where One sits and plays the blue guitar.

XV

Is this picture of Picasso's, this "hoard Of destructions," a picture of ourselves,

Now, an image of our society? Do I sit, deformed, a naked egg,

Catching at Good-bye, harvest moon, Without seeing the harvest or the moon?

Things as they are have been destroyed. Have I? Am I a man that is dead

At a table on which the food is cold? Is my thought a memory, not alive?

Is the spot on the floor, there, wine or blood And whichever it may be, is it mine?

XVI

The earth is not earth but a stone, Not the mother that held men as they fell

But stone, but like a stone, no: not The mother, but an oppressor, but like

An oppressor that grudges them their death, As it grudges the living that they live.

To live in war, to live at war, To chop the sullen psaltery,

To improve the sewers in Jerusalem, To electrify the nimbuses--

Place honey on the altars and die, You lovers that are bitter at heart.

XVII

The person has a mould. But not Its animal. The angelic ones

Speak of the soul, the mind. It is An animal The blue guitar--

On that its claws propound, its fangs Articulate its desert days.

The blue guitar a mould? That shell? Well, after all, the north wind blows

A horn, on which its victory Is a worm composing on a straw.

XVIII

A dream (to call it a dream) in which I can believe, in face of the object,

A dream no longer a dream, a thing, Of things as they are, as the blue guitar

After long strumming on certain nights Gives the touch of the senses, not of the hand,

But the very senses as they touch The wind-gloss. Or as daylight comes,

Like light in a mirroring of cliffs, Rising upward from a sea of ex.

XIX

That I may reduce the monster to Myself, and then may be myself

In face of the monster, be more than part Of it, more than the monstrous player of

One of its monstrous lutes, not be Alone, but reduce the monster and be,

Two things, the two together as one, And play of the monster and of myself,

Or better not of myself at all, But of that as its intelligence,

Being the lion in the lute Before the lion locked in stone.

XX

What is there in life except one's ideas. Good air, good friend, what is there in life?

Is it ideas that I believe? Good air, my only friend, believe,

Believe would be a brother full Of love, believe would be a friend

Friendlier than my only friend, Good air. Poor pale, poor pale guitar...

XXI

A substitute for all the gods: This self, not that gold self aloft,

Alone, one's shadow magnified, Lord of the body, looking down,

As now and called most high, The shadow of Chocorua

In an immenser heaven, aloft, Alone, lord of the land and lord

Of the men that live in the land, high lord. One's self and the mountains of one's land,

Without shadows, without magnificence, The flesh, the bone, the dirt, the stone.

XXII

Poetry is the subject of the poem, From this the poem issues and

To this returns. Between the two, Between issue and return, there is

An absence in reality, Things as they are. Or so we say.

But are these separate? Is it An absence for the poem, which acquires

Its true appearances there, sun's green, Cloud's red, earth feeling, sky that thinks?

From these it takes. Perhaps it gives, In the universal intercourse.

XXIII

A few final solutions, like a duet With the undertaker: a voice in the clouds,

Another on earth, the one a voice Of ether, the other smelling of drink.

The voice of ether prevailing, the swell Of the undertaker's song in the snow

Apostrophizing wreaths, the voice In the clouds serene and final, next

The grunted breath serene and final, The imagined and the real, thought

And the truth, Dichtung und Wahrheit, all Confusion solved, as in a refrain

One keeps on playing year by year, Concerning the nature of things as they are.

XXIV

A poem like a missal found In the mud, a missal for that young man,

That scholar hungriest for that book, The very book, or, less, a page

Or, at the least, a phrase, that phrase, A hawk of life, that latined phrase:

To know; a missal for brooding-sight. To meet that hawk's eye and to flinch

Not a the eye but at the joy of it. I play. But this is what I think.

XXV

He held the world upon his nose And this-a-way he gave a fling.

His robes and symbols, ai-yi-yi-- And that-a-way he twirled the thing.

Sombre as fir-trees, liquid cats Moved in the grass without a sound.

They did not know the grass went round. The cats had cats and the grass turned gray

And the world had worlds, ai, this-a-way: The grass turned green and the grass turned gray.

And the nose is eternal, that-a-way. Things as they were, things as they are,

Things as they will be by and by... A fat thumb beats out ai-yi-yi.

XXVI

The world washed in his imagination, The world was a shore, whether sound or form

Or light, the relic of farewells, Rock, of valedictory echoings,

To which his imagination returned, From which it sped, a bar in space,

Sand heaped in the clouds, giant that fought Against the murderous alphabet:

The swarm of thoughts, the swarm of dreams Of inaccessible Utopia.

A mountainous music always seemed To be falling and to be passing away.

XXVII

It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air.

It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.

This gloom is the darkness of the sea. Geographers and philosophers,

Regard. But for that salty cup, But for the icicles on the eaves--

The sea is a form of ridicule. The iceberg settings satirize

The demon that cannot be himself, That tours to shift the shifting scene.

XXVIII

I am a native in this world And think in it as a native thinks,

Gesu, not native of a mind Thinking the thoughts I call my own,

Native, a native in the world And like a native think in it.

It could not be a mind, the wave In which the watery grasses flow

And yet are fixed as a photograph, The wind in which the dead leaves blow.

Here I inhale profounder strength And as I am, I speak and move

And things are as I think they are And say they are on the blue guitar.

XXIX

In the cathedral, I sat there, and read, Alone, a lean Review and said,

"These degustations in the vaults Oppose the past and the festival.

What is beyond the cathedral, outside, Balances with nuptial song.

So it is to sit and to balance things To and to and to the point of still,

To say of one mask it is like, To say of another it is like,

To know that the balance does not quite rest, That the mask is strange, however like."

The shapes are wrong and the sounds are false. The bells are the bellowing of bulls.

Yet Franciscan don was never more Himself than in this fertile glass.

XXX

From this I shall evolve a man. This is his essence: the old fantoche

Hanging his shawl upon the wind, Like something on the stage, puffed out,

His strutting studied through centuries. At last, in spite of his manner, his eye

A-cock at the cross-piece on a pole Supporting heavy cables, slung

Through Oxidia, banal suburb, One-half of all its installments paid.

Dew-dapper clapper-traps, blazing From crusty stacks above machines.

Ecce, Oxidia is the seed Dropped out of this amber-ember pod,

Oxidia is the soot of fire, Oxidia is Olympia.

XXXI

How long and late the pheasant sleeps... The employer and employee contend,

Combat, compose their droll affair. The bubbling sun will bubble up,

Spring sparkle and the cock-bird shriek. The employer and employee will hear

And continue their affair. The shriek Will rack the thickets. There is no place,

Here, for the lark fixed in the mind, In the museum of the sky. The cock

Will claw sleep. Mourning is not sun, It is this posture of the nerves,

As if a blunted player clutched The nuances of the blue guitar.

It must be this rhapsody or none, The rhapsody of things as they are.

XXXII

Throw away the lights, the definitions, And say of what you see in the dark

That it is this or that it is that, But do not use the rotted names.

How should you walk in that space and know Nothing of the madness of space,

Nothing of its jocular procreations? Throw the lights away. Nothing must stand

Between you and the shapes you take When the crust of shape has been destroyed.

You as you are? You are yourself. The blue guitar surprises you.

XXXIII

That generation's dream, aviled In the mud, in Monday's dirty light,

That's it, the only dream they knew, Time in its final block, not time

To come, a wrangling of two dreams. Here is the bread of time to come,

Here is its actual stone. The bread Will be our bread, the stone will be

Our bed and we shall sleep by night. We shall forget by day, except

The moments when we choose to play The imagined pine, the imagined jay.