October 24th, 2008 — poem-
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
- By: Pablo Neruda
October 23rd, 2008 — poem-
Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,
Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.
Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.
- Emily Dickinson
October 22nd, 2008 — poem-
Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost
thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors
all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where
the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in
shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put of thy holy
mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master
himself has joyfully taken upon him the bonds of creation; he is
bound with us all for ever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and
incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and
stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy
brow.
By: RABINDRANATH TAGORE
From: GITANJALI – “Song Offerings”
October 21st, 2008 — poem-
Utopia
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immermorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzling staight and simple.
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life.
Wislawa Szymborska
October 20th, 2008 — poem-
Limbo
Fishermen at Ballyshannon
Netted an infant last night
Along with the salmon.
An illegitimate spawning,
A small one thrown back
To the waters. But I’m sure
As she stood in the shallows
Ducking him tenderly
Till the frozen knobs of her wrists
Were dead as the gravel,
He was a minnow with hooks
Tearing her open.
She waded in under
The sign of the cross.
He was hauled in with the fish.
Now limbo will be
A cold glitter of souls
Through some far briny zone.
Even Christ’s palms, unhealed,
Smart and cannot fish there.
- Seamus Heaney
October 19th, 2008 — poem-
An intellectual is all the time showing off.
Lovers dissolve and become bewildered.
Intellectuals try not to drown,
while the whole purpose of loves
is drowning.
Intellectual invent
ways to rest, and then lie down~
in those beds.
Lovers feel ashamed
of comforting ideas.
You’ve seen a glob
of oil on water? That’s how a lover
sits with intellectuals, there, but alone
in a circle of himself.
Some intellectual
tries to give sound advice to a lover.
All he hears back is, I love you.
I love you.
Love is musk. Don’t deny it
when you smell the scent!
Love is a tree.
Lovers, the shade of the long branches.
To the intellectual mind, a child must learn
to grow up and be adult.
In the station of love,
you see old men getting younger and younger.
Shams chose to live low in the roots
for you. So now, he soars in the air
as you sublimely articulating love!
- Rumi
Version by: Coleman Barks
October 16th, 2008 — poem-
THE trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty Swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water,
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
- William Butler Yeats
October 3rd, 2008 — emily-dickinson-
I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.
Nor had I time to love, but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.
By: Emily Dickinson
October 2nd, 2008 — poem-
What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.
I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover’s
warm gaze.
We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither
like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.
From “Love Poems From God” by Daniel Ladinsky.
Copyright © 1999 by Daniel Ladinsky.
October 1st, 2008 — poem-
It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.
The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.
Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft
stillness and satisfaction of autumn.
And a girl should say:
It must be wonderful to live and grow old.
Look at my mother, how rich and still she is! -
And a young man should think: By Jove
my father has faced all weathers, but it’s been a life!
- D.H.Lawrence
