What we want is never simple.
We move among the things we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--now they want us.
But what we want appears in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past, holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.


Linda Pastan

ja23



If You Forget Me

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.


P.Neruda

j44




Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there;
if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,”
even the night shall be light about me;
yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day:
the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.




Psalm 139

j21


Kuan Yin


Of the many buddhas
I love best the girl
who will not leave the cycle of pain before anyone else.
It is not the captain declining to be saved on the sinking ship,
who may just want to ride shame out of sight.
She is at the brink of never being hurt again
but pauses to say, All of us. Every blade of grass.
She chooses to live in the tumble of souls through time.
Perhaps she sees spring in every country,
talks quietly with farm women while helping to lay seed.
Our hearts are a storm she trembles at.
I picture her leaning on a tree or humming or
joining a volleyball game on Santa Monica beach.
Her skin shines with sweat.
The others may not know how to notice what she does to them.
She is not a fish or a bee;
it is not pity or thirst;
she could go, but here she is.




---Laura Fargas

These guardians were placed at the entrance

to a tomb in China, around 700 AD,

to terrify any

undesirable visitors.

d10


The Promise

Mysteriously they entered, those few minutes.
Mysteriously, they left.
As if the great dog of confusion guarding my heart,
who is always sleepless, suddenly slept.
It was not any awakening of the large, not so much as that,
only a stepping back from the petty.
I gazed at the range of blue mountains,
I drank from the stream. Tossed in a small stone from the bank,
whatever direction the fates of my life might travel, I trusted.
Even the greedy direction, even the grieving, trusted.
There was nothing left to be saved from, bliss nor danger.
The dog’s tail wagged a little in his dream.


Jane Hirschfield

s19



My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted tree,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.




R.Frost

a small part of a Tibetan painting from 1700:
to an angry deity, I offer my skull, fill with my senses,
represented by
eyes, ears, tongue, nose.

b27

a17

v6

j55

j54

w21

a14

r1

o10

d5

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
and look for what had made me stall,
there sure enough was an apple tree
that had eased itself of its summer load,
and of all but its trivial foliage free,
now breathed as light as a lady's fan.
For there there had been an apple fall
as complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

May something go always unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
apples or something forgotten and left,
so smelling their sweetness would be no theft.


R.Frost

u5


The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh,
leaping upon the mountains,
skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like a roe or a young deer:
Beh0ld, he standeth behind our wall,
he looketh in at the windows,
he showeth himself through the lattice.
My beloved spoke, and said unto me,
"Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds has come,
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in the land;
the fig tree ripeneth her green figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth their fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock,
in the covert of the steep place,
let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice;
for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely."



The Song of Songs

b3




By nature, my old friend on East Mountain
treasures the beauty of hills and valleys.
Spring now green, you lie
in empty woods still sound asleep under a midday sun,
your robe growing lucid in pine winds,
rocky streams rinsing ear and heart clean.

No noise, no confusion—
all I want is this life pillowed high in emerald mist.

Li Po

b5


Milton, on his blindness:

When I consider how my light is spent, ere half my days,

in this dark world and wide,

and that one talent which is death to hide, lodged with me useless,

though my soul more bent to serve therewith my Maker,

and present my true account, lest He returning chide:

“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?” I fondly ask;

but patience to prevent that murmur, soon replies:

“God doth not need either man’s works or His own gifts;

who best bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best;

His state is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed

and post over land and ocean without rest:

they also serve who only stand and wait.”



zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

ja9



Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness:
Come before his presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord he is God:
It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves;
We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving,
And into his courts with praise:
Be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting;
And his truth endureth to all generations.

j67




Napped half the day—
no one
punished me.



Issa

c17



But because truly being here is so much;
because everything here apparently needs us,
this fleeting world,
which in some strange way keeps calling to us.
Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing.
Just once; no more.
And we too, just once, completely, even if only once:
to have been at one with the earth,
seems beyond undoing.

RMRilke