unask

 

this world did drop away

It was a quiet way --
He asked if I was his --
I made no answer of the Tongue
But answer of the Eyes --
And then He bore me on
Before this mortal noise
With swiftness, as of Chariots
And distance, as of Wheels.

This World did drop away
As Acres from the feet
Of one that leaneth from Balloon
Upon an Ether street.
The Gulf behind was not,
The Continents were new --
Eternity it was before
Eternity was due.

No Seasons were to us --
It was not Night nor Morn --
But Sunrise stopped upon the place
And fastened it in Dawn.

Emily Dickinson

 

 

 

machines of loving grace

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

Richard Brautigan

 

 

 

some new alphabet

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain.

And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf—
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Conrad Potter Aitken

 

 

bricks

Bricks of the wall,
so much older than the house -
taken I think from a farm pulled down
when the street was built -
narrow bricks of another century.

I discovered
the colors in the wall that woke
when spray from the hose
played on its pocks and warts -

a hazy red, a
grain gold, a mauve
of small shadows, sprung
from the quiet dry brown -
archetype
of the world always a step
beyond the world, that can't
be looked for, only
as the eye wanders,
found.

Denise Levertov

 

 

smile

I dwell in Possibility -
A fairer House than Prose -
More numerous of Windows -
Superior - for Doors.

Emily Dickinson

 

 

four suggestions

1.
Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2.
Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3.
Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.

 

Richard Brautigan

 

 

Liberté

On my school notebooks
On my desk and on the trees
On the snow sands
I write your name

On the pages I have read
On all the white pages
Stone, blood, paper, ash
I write your name

On the harmony of the flesh
On the faces of my friends
On each outstretched hand
I write your name

 

Sur mes cahiers d’écolier
Sur mon pupitre et les arbres
Sur le sable de neige
J’écris ton nom

Sur les pages lues
Sur toutes les pages blanches
Pierre sang papier ou cendre
J’écris ton nom

Sur toute chair accordée
Sur le front de mes amis
Sur chaque main qui se tend
J’écris ton nom

Paul Eluard (1942)
tr. Tom Davis