unask

 

 

dewdrop

 

A bamboo chill drifts into the bedroom,
And the moon fills every corner of our
Garden. A dewdrop arises, silently.
A few stars suddenly there, and then not.

In the darkness, fireflies flash. Waking
Waterbirds begin calling, one to another.
All things are caught between a moment and a moment,
And, for a moment, the self is empty
And then the clear night ends.

 

Du Fu, 712-770 AD tr. Tom Davis

 

 

 

 

child

 

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate--
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

 

Sylvia Plath

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

scamel

there is a new entry in our scamel blog.

 

 

 

 

daffodils

 

I love daffodils.
I love Narcissus when he bends his head.
I can hardly keep April and spring and Sunday and daffodils
out of my rhyme of song.
do you know anything about the spring
when it comes again?
God knows about it while winter is lasting.
He is sometimes sad and alone
up there in the sky trying to keep his worlds happy.

"God," I say,
"Don't you care!
Nobody must be sad or sorry
in the spring-time of flowers."

 

Hilda Conkling

 

 

 

 

 

in your blue eyes

 

Many birds and the beating of wings
Make a flinging reckless hum
In the early morning at the rocks
Above the blue pool
Where the gray shadows swim lazy.

In your blue eyes, O reckless child,
I saw today many little wild wishes,
Eager as the great morning.

Carl Sandburg, Margaret

 

 

 

 

 

amazement is the thing

 

The point is the seeing, the grace
beyond recognition, the ways
of the bird rising, unnamed, unknown,
beyond the range of language, beyond its noun.
Eyes open on growing, flying, happening,
and go on opening. Manifold, the world
dawns on unrecognizing, realizing eyes.
Amazement is the thing.
Not love, but the astonishment of loving.

From Alastair Reid, Growing, flying, happening

 

 

 

 

 

don't go back to sleep

 

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorstep
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

Rumi