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 

deep innerness of all things

You are the future, 

the red sky before sunrise

over the fields of time.

You are the cock's crow when night is done,

you are the dew and the bells of matins,

maiden, stranger, mother, death.

You create yourself in ever-changing shapes

that rise from the stuff of our days -

unsung, unmourned, undescribed,

like a forest we never know.

You are the deep innerness of all things,

the last word that can never be spoken.

To each of us you reveal yourself differently:

to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Book of Hours, II.22

Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

photo:  Peter Bowers

its own beauty

The world is no more than the Beloved's single face;

In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.

Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being and being.

Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and madness.

Those who claim knowledge are wrong; prayer just leads to trance;

Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine.

Wherever the Footprint is found,

the handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds.  

This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love

That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.

Ghalib

Translated by Jane Hirshfield

Photo:  Peter Bowers

gift

When the heart rises to the insight
that everything is gift,

when it makes this discovery,
human beings no longer invent themselves. 

They cease to pretend.

They no longer need to imagine 
what they might be.

Finally they are. 

They acquire the substantial solidity 
which is displayed before their eyes
by the stars. 

Luigi Giussani

I am a man: little do I last

and the night is enormous.

But I look up:

the stars write.

Unknowing I understand:

I too am written,

and at this very moment

someone spells me out.

Octavio Paz

Photo:  Peter Bowers

with thanks: love is a place

between what i see and what i say

for Roman Jakobson

1

Between what I see and what I say,

Between what I say and what I keep silent,

Between what I keep silent and what I dream,

Between what I dream and what I forget:

poetry.

            It slips

between yes and no,

                                 says

what I keep silent,

                              keeps silent

what I say,

                  dreams

what I forget.

                      It is not speech:

it is an act.

                  It is an act

of speech.

                  Poetry

speaks and listens:

                               it is real.

And as soon as I say

                                 it is real,

it vanishes.

                   Is it then more real?

2

Tangible idea,

                       intangible

word:

        poetry

comes and goes

                          between what is

and what is not.

                          It weaves

and unweaves reflections.

                                          Poetry

scatters eyes on a page,

scatters words on our eyes.

Eyes speak,

                   words look,

looks think.

                   To hear

thoughts,

               see

what we say,

                      touch

the body of an idea.

                                 Eyes close,

the words open.

Octavio Paz 

A Tree Within

Translated by Eliot Weinberger

Photo: Peter Bowers

i would like to describe

I would like to describe the simplest emotion

joy or sadness

but not as others do

reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light

which is being born in me

but I know it does not resemble

any star

for it is not so bright

not so pure

and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage

without dragging behind me a dusty lion

and also anxiety

without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way

I would give all metaphors

in return for one word

drawn out of my breast like a rib

for one word

contained within the boundaries

of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love

I run around like mad

picking up handfuls of birds

and my tenderness

which after all is not made of water

asks the water for a face

and anger

different from fire

borrows from it

a loquacious tongue

so is blurred

so is blurred

in me

what white-haired gentlemen

separated once and for all

and said

this is the subject

and this is the object

we fall asleep

with one hand under our head

and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us

and taste the earth

with their tiny roots

which next morning

we tear out painfully

Zbigniew Herbert

Photo:  Peter Bowers

taste of morning

Time's knife slides from the sheath,

as fish from where it swims.

Being closer and closer is the desire 

of the body. Don't wish for union!

There's a closeness beyond that. Why 

would God want a second God?  Fall in 

love in such a way that it frees you 

from any connecting. Love is the soul's 

light, the taste of morning, no me, no

we, no claim of being. These words 

are the smoke the fire gives off as it

absolves its defects, as eyes in silence,

tears, face. Love cannot be said.

Rumi

Translation: Coleman Barks