unask
poems and photographs 51
(photographs: Tom Davis)
Saturday, May 2, 2009
the mind
The mind is restless, unsteady
hard to guard, hard to control.
The wise
one makes it straight
as a fletcher straightens an arrow.
How good it is to rein the mind
which is unruly, capricious, rushing wherever it pleases.
The mind, so harnessed, will bring one happiness.
Your worst enemy cannot harm you
as much as your own unguarded thoughts.
A well-directed mind creates more happiness
Than even the loving actions of your parents.
the Buddha
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Friday, May 1, 2009
stretch
To be in love
Is to touch with a lighter hand.
In yourself you stretch, you are well.
You look at things
Through his eyes.
From Gwendolyn Brooks, To be in love
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Thursday, April 30, 2009
purple of the pansy
Have we not seen
Purple of the pansy
out of the mulch
and mold
crawl
into a dusk
of velvet?
blur of yellow?
Almost we thought from nowhere but it was
the silence,
the future,
working.
From Carl Sandburg, The answer
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
petal by petal
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
from e. e. cummings, somewhere i have never travelled.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009
tree
not even for a moment
do things stand still: look at
colour, in the trees
Seiju, his death poem (d. 1776, age 75)
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Monday, April 27, 2009
children
The young child, Christ, is straight and wise
And asks questions of the old men, questions
Found under running water for all children
And found under shadows thrown on still waters
By tall trees looking downward, old and gnarled.
Found to the eyes of children alone, untold,
Singing a low song in the loneliness.
And the young child, Christ, goes on asking
And the old men answer nothing and only know love
For the young child. Christ, straight and wise.
Carl Sandburg, Child
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Sunday, April 26, 2009
on the beach at night
On the beach at night,
Stands a child with her father,
Watching the east, the autumn sky.
From the beach the child holding the hand of her father,
Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all,
Watching, silently weeps.
Weep not, child,
Weep not, my darling,
With these kisses let me remove your tears,
The ravening clouds shall not be long victorious,
They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in
apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine
out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again they endure,
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall
again shine.
Something there is,
(With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,
Longer than sun or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.
From Walt Whitman, On the beach at night
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earlier ~ site map ~ strange shadows
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