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Poems
riverflow
Veteran
Unless there is already a thread and I missed it, how about a thread to share poems (Buddhist or otherwise)? From sonnets to haiku, originals or just personal favourites, just give credit where it is due.
Anyone?
Anyone?
2
Comments
Look at the flowers, so faithful to what is earthly,
to whom we lend fate from the very border of fate.
And if they are sad about how they must wither and die,
perhaps it is our vocation to be their regret.
All Things want to fly. Only we are weighed down by desire,
caught in ourselves and enthralled with our heaviness.
Oh what consuming, negative teachers we are
for them, while eternal childhood fills them with grace.
If someone were to fall into intimate slumber, and slept
deeply with Things—: how easily he would come
to a different day, out of the mutual depth.
Or perhaps he would stay there; and they would blossom and praise
their newest convert, who now is like one of them,
all those silent companions in the wind of the meadows.
~Rainer Maria Rilke
from Sonnets to Orpheus
(translated by Stephen Mitchell)
1
2
Another poet I like is Jorge Luis Borges.
A History of the Night
translated by Alastair Reid
Through the course of generations
men brought the night into being.
In the beginning were blindness and dream
and thorns which gash the bare foot
and fear of wolves.
We shall never know who fashioned the word
for the interval of darkness
which divides the two twilights.
We shall never know in what century it stood
for the starry spaces.
Others began the myth.
They made night mother of the tranquil Fates
who weave all destiny
and sacrificed black sheep to her
and the rooster which announced her end.
The Chaldeans gave her twelve houses;
infinite worlds, the Stoic Portico.
Latin hexameters molded her,
and Pascal’s dread.
Luis de León saw in her the homeland
of his shivering soul.
Now we feel her inexhaustible
as an old wine
and no one can think of her without vertigo,
and time has charged her with eternity.
And to think that night would not exist
without those tenuous instruments, the eyes.
But our unfurnished eyes—
~ Emily Dickinson
FIRST DAY
among these pines
arching toward a crystal sun
each a solid pillar of light each
an ancient syllable resounding
through melanous earth a language
no one will ever know
finding no entrance no windows
the temple is everywhere
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
~Margaret Atwood
Here's an epigram by Edwin Markham about his response to sectarians and those who would ostracize:
"Outwitted"
He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
the earth too’s an ephemerid; the stars—
Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula
and dry in their summer, they spiral
Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future;
nothing lives long, the whole sky’s
Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages
of the gulf before birth, and the gulf
After death is like dated: to labor eighty years in a notch
of eternity is nothing too tiresome,
Enormous repose after, enormous repose before,
the flash of activity.
Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths
were prologue and epilogue merely
To the surface play of the sun, the instant of life,
what is called life? I fancy
That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it;
interjection, a jump of the breath at that silence;
Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe: as a man
finding treasure says “Ah!” but the treasure’s the essence;
Before the man spoke it was there, and after he has spoken
he gathers it, inexhaustible treasure.
~Robinson Jeffers
[I'm afraid the line formatting won't come through on the forum - Jeffers, like Whitman, likes his lines super-sized!]
Since the bamboo strip was weakening, about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!"
- poem by Chiyono, the nun, commemorating the moment upon which she attained enlightenment when her wood bucket collapsed and the water splashed onto the floor.
Do not utter a single word,
unless it has good meaning,
for idle words, they do not serve,
they are only self defeating.
1. 2. 3. 4.
INTIMATIONS
I am blind to faith
in any eternity
other than this moment:
the river rushes past
ephemeral hands.
After all, a life can only
bear so much world,
and its myriad sorrows,
and its myriad beauties,
before ripening and falling
into its own shadow:
it is enough to know
it is enough.
Long after I am dead,
long after you are dead,
long after the wake
of our history submerges
into an ocean
with no shore in sight,
while the wingless soul,
flimsy as it is, flickers
before the vast All,
only this unsung song,
our simple love,
endures
beyond the frailty.
~Joshua Sellers
APOLOGY
Holy being! I’ve often disturbed
Your divine and golden repose;
And you’ve heard much of life’s
Deeper, more secret pains from me.
Forget it, forgive me! Like the clouds drifting
By the peaceful moon, I too pass away,
And you rest, radiant once more
In all your beauty, O sweet sweet light!
~Friedrich Hölderlin
To the mountains,
To the sky:
The Heart Sutra.
~Santoka
A poor box;
four or five pennies,
evening rain.
~Issa
Lighting the light,—
The shadows of the dolls,
One for each.
~Shiki
cold moon
the gateless temple's
endless sky
~Buson
the sea grows dark
a wild duck call
faint white
~Basho
One part in particular means a lot to me. My grandfather used to recite this verse in particular very frequently:
"I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever."
Just to give some examples:
Spring: Summer: Autumn: Winter:
We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.
And though you probe and pry
With analytic eye,
And eavesdrop all our talk
With an amused look,
You cannot find the centre
Where we dance, where we play,
Where life is still asleep
Under the closed flower,
Under the smooth shell
Of eggs in the cupped nest
That mock the faded blue
Of your remoter heaven.
~R.S. Thomas
out of spring mist
black branches
& peach blossoms
gathered on the tip
of each pine needle
spring dew
You 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.
~Mary Oliver
A god often rescued me
From the shouts and rods of men
And I played among trees and flowers,
Secure in their kindness,
And the breezes of heaven
Were playing there too.
And as you delight
The hearts of plants
When they stretch toward you
With little strength,
So you delighted the heart in me,
Father Helios, and like Endymion
I was your favourite,
Moon. Oh, all
You friendly
And faithful gods
I wish you could know
How my soul has loved you.
Even though when I called to you then,
It was not yet with names, and you
Never named me as people do
As though they knew one another.
I knew you better
Than I have ever known them.
I understood the stillness above the sky
But never the words of men.
Trees were my teachers,
Melodious trees,
And I learned to love
Among flowers.
I grew up in the arms of the gods.
~ Friedrich Hölderlin
More than a man, less than a genie
He didn’t eat meat
Sat still on his seat
"There's more to life than a martini"
CANTUS FIRMUS
An eternity before the rose and curious hands,
Rain and ocean’s myriad rhythms, words and words,
The silence of mountains, the astonished eye—
An eternity after parched earth and parched breath,
The sun’s final brilliance and decay into shadow,
The forever unknown losses:
The choir of stars hum the one undying song,
An eternity heard once only—on the shore of whose ear?
And the night breeze brushed against my face.
~Joshua Sellers
we will find ourselves surrounded
by our kind all of them now
wearing the eyes they had
only imagined possible
and they will reproach us
with those eyes
in a language more actual
than speech
asking why we allowed this
to happen asking why
for the love of God
we did this to ourselves
and we will answer
in our feeble voices because
because because
~ Lucille Clifton
What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can’t
turn in any direction
but it’s there. I don’t mean
the leaves’ grip and shine or even the thrush’s
silk song, but the far-off
fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven’s slowly turning
theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;
or time that’s always rushing forward,
or standing still
in the same—what shall I say—
moment.
What I know
I could put into a pack
as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,
important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained
and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly
to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.
But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing
in and out. Life so far doesn’t have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.
If there’s a temple, I haven’t found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass and the weeds.
~ Mary Oliver
…We 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, remembered 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 flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
the cold night
a strand of her hair
on my pillow
for Angie
Christchurch
(5 May 2007)
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
~William Stafford
If your heart is pure, then all things in the world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the Way.
~Ryokan
(translated by John Stevens)
Come over, come over the deepening river,
Come over again the dark torrent of years,
Come over, come back where the green leaves quiver,
And the lilac still blooms and the grey sky clears.
Come, come back to the everlasting garden,
To that green heaven, and the blue heaven above.
Come back to the time when time brought no burden
And love was unconscious, knowing not love.
~ John Freeman
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.
Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
For Angie
The weight of water hurls itself against rock,
retreats, re-gathers its strength, the sun shattered
into innumerable shards the eye cannot follow.
Stranded on an elusive shore, half-remembered,
I climb with you into sunlight, up a narrow path,
overlooking the ocean on a late summer day.
Between us, the intimate silence we shared,
the purest blue of sea and sky: every step
in the course of time’s unfolding has led to this.
But as two lines fuse together in Euclidean space,
so they also pass and continue, the infinite point
disappearing into the ever-receding distance.
Our ghosts are evoked more imperfectly with each
strain of music, straining for what cannot return.
Was it even a memory we once shared?
You, whom I have lost, have not escaped my hand
to another place, but to another time dissolved
by time, slipping away between numbered
heartbeats, submerged in a ceaseless roar.
You and I are but a blur in this landscape, our shadows
stranded on a elusive shore, beyond salvage,
where the ocean’s perpetuum mobile drowns
a late summer day in a lullaby of forgetting, forgotten.
~Joshua Sellers
HOMAGE TO MY FATHER
My father said:
Fuck Father Farrell,
what does he know, that old bastard!
Study all the religions. Learn Italian.
See Venizia, Firenze, talk
to all kinds of people
and never, never think you know more
than someone else! Unless,
unless they're full of shit.
And if they are, tell them;
and if they still don't get it, fuck it,
there's nothing you can do about it.
Learn how to bake bread.
If you can make pasta and bake bread
you can always feed your family,
you can always get a job.
Keep your house clean
and don't worry what anyone else does.
Cut your grass,
prune your fruit trees
or they'll die on you.
Don't drink too much
but don't always be sober --
it makes you nervous.
A couple glasses of wine,
some anisette now and then,
a cigar never hurt nobody.
Nervous people always got an ache here,
an ache there, they get sick,
they die --
Look at Father Farrell:
he'll be dead in a year.
Fuck him!
splash out
the Buddha’s sermon
Don’t say
that the deepest meaning
comes only from one’s mouth
Day and night
eighty thousand poems
arise one after the other
and in fact
not a single word
has ever been spoken
Muso Soseki (1275-1351)
Translated by W.S. Merwin
and Soiku Shigematsu
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"
He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water
-e.e. cummings
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the doting
fingers of
prurient philosophies pinched
and poked
thee
has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy
knees squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring
~e. e. cummings
"nobody is just one person"
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
~ William Blake
A BREAK FROM THE BUSH
The South China Sea
drives in another herd.
The volleyball's a punching bag:
Clem's already lost a tooth
& Johnny's left eye is swollen shut.
Frozen airlifted steaks burn
on a wire grill, & miles away
machine guns can be heard.
Pretending we're somewhere else,
we play harder.
Lee Otis, the point man,
high on Buddha grass,
buries himself up to his neck
in sand. "Can you see me now?
In this spot they gonna build
a Hilton. Invest in Paradise.
Bang, bozos! You're dead."
Frenchie's cassette player
unravels Hendrix's "Purple Haze."
Snake, 17, from Daytona,
sits at the water's edge,
the ash on his cigarette
pointing to the ground
like a crooked finger. CJ,
who in three days will trip
a fragmentation mine,
runs after the ball
into the whitecaps,
laughing
THANKS
Thanks for the tree
between me & a sniper’s bullet.
I don’t know what made the grass
sway seconds before the Viet Cong
raised his soundless rifle.
Some voice always followed,
telling me which foot
to put down first.
Thanks for deflecting the ricochet
against that anarchy of dusk.
I was back in San Francisco
wrapped up in a woman’s wild colors,
causing some dark bird’s love call
to be shattered by daylight
when my hands reached up
& pulled a branch away
from my face. Thanks
for the vague white flower
that pointed to the gleaming metal
reflecting how it is to be broken
like mist over the grass,
as we played some deadly
game for blind gods.
What made me spot the monarch
writhing on a single thread
tied to a farmer’s gate,
holding the day together
like an unfingered guitar string,
is beyond me. Maybe the hills
grew weary & leaned a little in the heat.
Again, thanks for the dud
hand grenade tossed at my feet
outside Chu Lai. I’m still
falling through its silence.
I don’t know why the intrepid
sun touched the bayonet,
but I know that something
stood among those lost trees
& moved only when I moved.
FACING IT
My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.
each raindrop
touches each leaf
never the same