We set the pace,
But this press of time –
take it as a little thing
next to what endures.
All this hurrying
soon will be over
Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy.
Young ones,
don’t waste your courage
racing so fast
flying so high.
See how all things are at rest –
darkness and morning light
blossom and book.
(this poem was written by Stanley Kunitz when he was in his 70′s)
I have walked through many lives, some of them my own,
and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides,
from which I struggle not to stray.
When I look behind, as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?
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.
I am not done with my changes
The bud
Stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing
though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on the brow of the flower and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow,
and told her in words and in touch
blessings of the earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
throught the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart . . .
the long, perfect loveliness of sow
Has my heart gone to sleep?
Have the beehives of my dreams stopped working, the waterwheel
of the mind run dry, scoops turning empty,
only shadow inside? [Read more...]
—Hafiz
