Serenade

Let be the laughter in the hanging gardens
and the dial ablaze, the green man
flourishing his sleeves and up to mischief,

where the cat extends and rolls its silver fur
across a sun-spot, where all points of light
play leap-frog dazzle in a water bowl

and everything is animation, interlace,
the best of being here, a setting-down
on lease from shade and shadow, out

into the primal space, the freely-given
with the cost not counted, where the two of us
lie down together, laughing, and let be.

John Mole, New And Selected Poems, Peterloo Poets 2004

O Me! O Life!

O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;   
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;   
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who  more faithless?)   
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;   
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;          
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;   
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?   
   
                                                        Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;   
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.

- Walt Whitman

The Layers

In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way, 
bitterly stings my face. 
Yet I turn, I turn, 
exulting somewhat, 
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go, 
and every stone on the road 
precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

In the stream

In the stream,
Rushing past
To the dusty world,
My fleeting form
Casts no reflection.


English version by Steven Heine
Original by Eihei Dogen, Language Japanese

Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.

-Robert Pinsky

Haiku: Such utter silence!

Such utter silence!
     even the crickets'
singing...
Muffled by hot rocks


English version by Peter Beilenson
Original Language Japanese, by Matsuo Basho

Elegy in Joy

We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,
or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,
for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,
cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,
all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.

The word of nourishment passes through the women,
soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,
white towers, eyes of children: 
saying in time of war What shall we feed?
I cannot say the end.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed.

This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.
Years over wars and an imagining of peace.  Or the expiation journey
toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,
fierce pure life, the many-living home.
Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all
new techniques for the healing of the wound,
and the unknown world.  One life, or the faring stars.


- Muriel Rukeyser

The Rose

by Ummi Sinan

I dreamt I came to a magnificent city
     whose palace was the rose, rose.
The crown and throne of the great sultan,
     his garden and chambers
          were the rose, rose.

Here they buy and sell but roses
     and the roses are the scales they use,
Weighing roses with more roses,
     the marketplace and bazaar
          are all roses, rose.

English version by Jennifer Ferraro and Latif Bolat
Original Language Turkish

Raindrop Sound

Because the mind is free --
Listening to the rain
Dripping from the eaves,
The drops become
One with me.


English version by Steven Heine
Original by Eihei Dogen, Language: Japanese

October

The leaves fall from my fingers
Cornflowers scattered across the field like stars,
                                                                         like smoke stars,
By the train tracks, the leaves in a drift

Under the slow clouds
                                 and the nine steps to heaven,
The light falling in great sheets through the trees,
Sheets almost tangible.

The transfiguration will start like this, I think,
                                                                     breathless,
Quick blade through the trees,
Something with red colors falling away from my hands,

The air beginning to go cold …
                                                  And when it does
I’ll rise from this tired body, a blood-knot of light,
Ready to take the darkness in.

—Or for the wind to come
And carry me, bone by bone, through the sky,
Its wafer a burn on my tongue,
                                              its wine deep forgetfulness.

—Charles Wright, from The Southern Cross (Random House, 1981)

Form is Certainty

Form is certainty.

All nature knows this, and we have no greater adviser. Clouds have forms, porous and shape-shifting, bumptious, fleecy. They are what clouds need to be, to be clouds. See a flock of them come on, on the sled of the wind, all kneeling above the blue sea.

And in the blue water, see the dolphin built to leap, the sea mouse skittering, see the ropy kelp with its air-filled bladders tugging it upward; see the albatross floating day after day on its three-jointed wings. Each form sets a tone, enables a destiny, strikes a note in the universe unlike any other. How can we ever stop looking? How can we ever turn away?

-Mary Oliver