When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

WBerry

p3



Pears


Some say
it was a pear
Eve ate.
Why else the shape
of the womb,
or of the cello
whose single song is grief
for the parent tree?
Why else the fruit itself
tawny and sweet
which your lover
over breakfast
lets go your pear-shaped breast
to reach for?



L. Pastan

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