unask

poems and photographs 57

(photographs: Tom Davis)

Saturday, June 13, 2009

 

 

 

to the snake   Green Snake, when I hung you round my neck and stroked your cold, pulsing throat as you hissed to me, glinting arrowy gold scales, and I felt the weight of you on my shoulders, and the whispering silver of your dryness sounded close at my ears -- Green Snake--I swore to my companions that certainly you were harmless! But truly I had no certainty, and no hope, only desiring to hold you, for that joy, which left a long wake of pleasure, as the leaves moved and you faded into the pattern of grass and shadows, and I returned smiling and haunted, to a dark morning.   Denise Levertov

 

 

Friday, June 12, 2009

 

 

 

flowers   now then for my journey to the nether world I'll wear a gown of flowers   Setsudo, d. 1776; this is his death poem. The flower gown, hanagoromo, was traditionally worn at cherry blossom viewing time. Setsudo died in springtime.

 

 

Thursday, June 11, 2009

 

 

 

cage   My mother holding me, looking down at me, sometimes, smiling, she would weep. Now, I know why. Love is strong, so strong that it can break the cage, and for one holy moment she disappeared from everything. All that we do comes from that, that taste of flying. The possibility of being free is what moves the body, and each cell of the body. I wasn't able to live on earth, so I went out alone, into the sky. I write of that journey of becoming as free as God. Don't forget love. It will bring all of the madness that you need to unroll the whole of yourself across the sky.   Mirabai, transl. Tom Davis Mirabai was a Hindu singer, mystic, and saint; she lived c.1498-c.1547.

 

 

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

 

 

 

beach   The shadows of the ships Rock on the crest In the low blue lustre Of the tardy and the soft inrolling tide. A long brown bar at the dip of the sky Puts an arm of sand in the span of salt. The lucid and endless wrinkles Draw in, lapse and withdraw. Wavelets crumble and white spent bubbles Wash on the floor of the beach. Rocking on the crest In the low blue lustre Are the shadows of the ships.   Carl Sandburg, Sketch

 

 

Monday, June 8, 2009

 

This bowl was made by Tracey Potts

 

bowl   This little bowl is like a mossy pool In a Spring wood, where dogtooth violets grow Nodding in chequered sunshine of the trees; A quiet place, still, with the sound of birds, Where, though unseen, is heard the endless song And murmur of the never resting sea.   Amy Lowell.

 

 

Sunday, June 7, 2009

 

 

 

Dante's Paradise   O splendour of what is, by which I saw the high delight, the true communion: please show me how to say all I could see. Up there there is a light. The light is God. Creation contemplates its own creator, and only in that seeing is there peace. It stretches in a circle shape so great, that its circumference can so much more than wrap around the sun. From top to bottom, that enormous light collected, complex, is each single one of all the gathered petals of a rose; and all of it, each quality, the size, the height, so big, so intricate, and yet one flower, I saw: the whole, at once. The joy.   from Dante, Paradiso, canto xxx, transl. Tom Davis   O isplendor di Dio, per cu’ io vidi l’alto trïunfo del regno verace, dammi virtù a dir com’ ïo il vidi! Lume è là sù che visibile face lo creatore a quella creatura che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace. E’ si distende in circular figura, in tanto che la sua circunferenza sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura. ... E se l’infimo grado in sé raccoglie sì grande lume, quanta è la larghezza di questa rosa ne l’estreme foglie! La vista mia ne l’ampio e ne l’altezza non si smarriva, ma tutto prendeva il quanto e ’l quale di quella allegrezza.

 

 

earlier ~ site map ~ strange shadows