unask

 

joy

 

Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring,
one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.

In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one
spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.

 

Rabindranath Tagore, The garden

 

 

lips parted

 

This form, this face, this life
Living to live in a world of time beyond me; let me
Resign my life for this life, my speech for that unspoken,
The awakened, lips parted, the hope, the new ships.

 

From T.S. Eliot, Marina

 

 

be free

 

In the end you disappeared, gone beyond sight
Strange, the path you took, leaving this world
Strange how the beat of your wings destroyed the cage
And you flew to the world of the soul.

You were a nightingale, drunk amidst the owl music
Drunk with the music of joy
When the scent of the rose garden reached you
You were gone.

Now that you are the sun, what good is a crown?
And how do you tie your belt
Now that your body is air?
You were rain from heaven
That fell on this dry earth.

Be silent. Be free
Of all the pain of speech
Now, now you can rest
In the arms of the Beloved.

 

Rumi, transl. Tom Davis

 

 

 

scamel

there is a new entry in our scamel blog.

 

 

 

two teachers

 

in the privacy of my head
I talk to two teachers
god and dog

my god teacher
teaches me how to
lead and guide

my dog teacher
teaches me how to
follow and serve

both my teachers
are very
patient

 

Tom Davis, after Sri Chinmoy

 

 

 

 

sleep

 

If I am tired I call on these to help me
To dream- and dawn-lit skies,
Lemon and pink, or faintest, coolest lilac,
Float on my soothed eyes.

 

From Dorothea Mackellar, Colour

 

 

sleep

 

I would like to watch you,
sleeping

to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun & three moons

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you.

 

From Margaret Atwood, Variations on the word Sleep

 

 

good

 

The old man comes out on the hill
and looks down to recall earlier days
in the valley. He sees the stream shine,
the church stand, hears the litter of
children's voices. A chill in the flesh
tells him that death is not far off
now: it is the shadow under the great boughs
of life. His garden has herbs growing.
The kestrel goes by with fresh prey
in its claws. The wind scatters the scent
of wild beans. The tractor operates
on the earth's body. His grandson is there
ploughing; his young wife fetches him
cakes and tea and a dark smile. It is well.

 

R. S. Thomas