unask

 

rehearsal

 

I took my failure-life
As my secret rehearsal.

I take my success-life
As my open and free performance.

 

Sri Chinmoy

 

 

sunlight

 

'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'

'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enters a dark room.
Windows don't just happen.'

So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.

 

From R. S. Thomas, Poetry for supper

 

 

the scarlet sky

 

when a child leaves the breast
for solid food
it does not look back
it grows

the seed is nourished by earth
then spreads towards the sun

so: taste the scarlet sky
open towards wisdom
hide no longer in yourself

you came here like a star
that had no name
enter the night sky
be one again with all
the nameless galaxies

 

Tom Davis, after Rumi, A star without a name

 

 

 

scamel

there is a new entry in our scamel blog.

 

 

 

fire

 

As on all its sides a kitchen-match darts white
flickering tongues before it bursts into flame:
with the audience around her, quickened, hot,
her dance begins to flicker in the dark room.

And all at once it is completely fire.

 

From Rilke, Spanish dancer.

 

 

 

 

shovelling snow with the Buddha

 

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

 

Billy Collins

 

 

your choice

 

be drunk. always.
that's it, right there:
the only answer.
don't feel
the terrible weight
of time on your back
bending you down, bending you down.
drunk on what?
do you have to you ask?
wine! poetry! goodness! your choice!
just hang one on.
and if some time
in a stately home
or on the hillside grass
or moping in your room
you sober up
and lose the high
then: ask the wind
the waves
the stars
a bird
a clock
anything that runs
or rolls
or sings
or speaks
just ask: what time is it?
and the wind
the waves
the stars
the bird
the clock
will say to you
it's time to get drunk, fool!
do you want to be time's drudge?
get drunk
non-stop
on wine, poems, goodness--
your choice.

 

Beaudelaire, Enivrez-vous, transl. Tom Davis

 

 

like the water

 

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy.

 

Wendell Berry