Topic: Verses for the Black-Winged and Ordinary

[nichi]

Only if Love Should Pierce You
 
Do not forget that you live in the midst of the animals,
horses, cats, sewer rats
brown as Solomon's woman, terrible
camp with colours flying,
do not forget the dog with harmonies of the unreal
in tongue and tail, nor the green lizard, the blackbird,
the nightingale, viper, drone.  Or you are pleased to think
that you live among pure men and virtuous
women who do not touch
the howl of the frog in love, green
as the greenest branch of the blood.
Birds watch you from trees, and the leaves
are aware that the Mind is dead
forever, its remnant savours of burnt
cartilage, rotten plastic; do not forget
to be animal, fit and sinuous,
torrid in violence, wanting everything here
on earth, before the final cry
when the body is a cadence of shrivelled memories
and the spirit hastens to the eternal end;
remember that you can be the being of being
only if love should pierce you deep inside.
 
~ Salvatore Quasimodo ~

[nichi]

   
Coyotes

Is this world truly fallen? They say no.
For there's the new moon, there's the Milky Way,
There's the rattler with a wren's egg in its mouth,
And there's the panting rabbit they will eat.
They sing their wild hymn on the dark slope,
Reading the stars like notes of hilarious music.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?

And yet we're crying over the stars again,
And over the uncertainty of death,
Which we suspect will divide us all forever.
I'm tired of those who broadcast their certainties,
Constantly on their cell phones to their redeemer.
Is this a fallen world? For them it is.
But there's that starlit burst of animal laughter.

The day has sent its fires scattering.
The night has risen from its burning bed.
Our tears are proof that love is meant for life
And for the living. And this chorus of praise,
Which the pet dogs of the neighborhood are answering
Nostalgically, invites our answer, too.
Is this a fallen world? How could it be?


~ Mark Jarman ~

[nichi]

POETRY
 
And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.
 
~ Pablo Neruda ~

[nichi]

Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of
the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks
 

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I'm fooled-
I'm wading along

in the sunlight-
and I'm sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead-
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week's trees,
and I plan to be there soon-
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don't know where
such certainty comes from-
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind-

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage-
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.



~ Mary Oliver ~

[nichi]

Two Bears
 
Once
After a hard day's forage
Two bears sat together in silence
On a beautiful vista
Watching the sun go down
And feeling deeply grateful
For life.
 
Though, after a while
A thought-provoking conversation began
Which turned to the topic of
Fame.
 
The one bear said,
"Did you hear about Rustam?
He has become famous
And travels from city to city
In a golden cage;
 
He performs to hundreds of people
Who laugh and applaud
His carnival
Stunts."
 
The other bear thought for
A few seconds
 
Then started
Weeping.
 
 
~Hafiz by Ladinsky~

[Michael]

The Camel


Don't tell a camel about need and want.

Look at the big lips
pursed
in perpetual kiss,
the dangerous lashes
of a born coquette.

The camel is an animal
grateful for less.

It keeps to itself
the hidden spring choked with grass,
the sharpest thorn
on the sweetest stalk.

When a voice was heard crying in the wilderness,

when God spoke
from the burning bush,

the camel was the only animal
to answer back.

Dune on stilts,
it leans into the long horizon,
bloodhounding

the secret caches of watermelon

brought forth like manna
from the sand.

It will bear no false gods
before it:
not the trader
who cinches its hump
with rope,
nor the tourist.

It has a clear sense of its place in the world:

after water and watermelon,
heat and light,
silence and science,

it is the last great hope.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska
translated by Joanna Trzeciak

that is special

[Michael]

beautiful and thought provoking poems - thanks v.

[nichi]

Spring
   
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
 
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
 
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
 
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
 
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
 
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
 
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,
 
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
 
all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
 

~ Mary Oliver ~

[nichi]

THE SACRAMENTS
 
I once spoke to my friend, an old squirrel, about the Sacraments –
he got so excited
 
and ran into a hollow in his tree and came
back holding some acorns, an owl feather,
and a ribbon he had found.
 
And I just smiled and said, “Yes, dear,
you understand:
 
everything imparts
His grace.”
 
~ Saint Francis of Assisi
 

Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky

[nichi]

LOVE DOES THAT
 
All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.
 
And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.
 
Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,
 
he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears
 
and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,
 
because love does
that.
 
Love Frees.
 
~ Meister Eckhart ~
 
 
 
Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky

[daphne]

Now isn't she a cutie!! You can see she knows something!!   

I am very much enjoying the poems you post, V! Thanks!

[nichi]

Now isn't she a cutie!! You can see she knows something!!   

She does, she does!

[nichi]

Tree
 

It is foolish

to let a young redwood

grow next to a house.

 

Even in this

one lifetime,

you will have to choose.

 

That great calm being,

this clutter of soup pots and books --

 

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.


 
~ Jane Hirshfield ~

[nichi]

The Task

It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.
We wake into it daily - open eyes, braid hair -
a robe unfurled
in rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.

And yes, it is a simple enough task
we've taken on,
though also vast:
from dusk to dawn,

from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not
be blinded by the praising.
To lie like a cat in hot
sun, fur fully blazing,

and dream the mouse;
and to keep too the mouse's patient, waking watch
within the deep rooms of the house,
where the leaf-flocked

sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms.


Jane Hirshfield

[nichi]

The Deer

You never know.
The body of night opens
like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,

like so many wrappings of mist.
And on the hillside two deer are walking along
just as though this wasn't

the owned, tilled earth of today
but the past.
I did not see them the next day, or the next,

but in my mind's eye -
there they are, in the long grass,
like two sisters.

This is the earnest work.  Each of us is given
only so many mornings to do it -
to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,
the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.
Days I don't do this

I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn't just an idea.

When we die the body breaks open
like a river;
the old body goes on, climbing the hill.



~ Mary Oliver ~