The Beauty of Death as Part of Life, J. Krishnamurti

.

sorrow

 

 

Live with the beetle, and the wind

 

 .

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider

the orderliness of the world.
Notice something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket

whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,

shaking the water-sparks from its wings.

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or not.

Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,

like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world

and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.

Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.

And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Live with the beetle, and the wind.

–Mary Oliver

(excerpt from The Leaf and the Cloud: A Poem)

.

Photographer’s Note

It must first be said that this shot was taken at the Sydney biennale, an art festival held yearly. One of the works of art was this one from the Artist Antony Gormley (antonygormley.com) It is called Asien fields and was made by 500 Assitants in the Xianxian village, Guangzhou in January 2003. 

It consists of 125tonnes of gritty black clay.It was one of the most astounding sights I have ever seen. The top floor was filled with these small hand made figures, all of which only spanned 20cm in height. I know it seems strange but I felt as if the figures saw some major fault in all of us that stood there... and they sympathized.
 

It was a great work and I wanted to share it with you.
Hope you enjoy:)

Cato

.



 

death as a form of creation

.

.

Visiting the Graveyard

When I think of death
it is a bright enough city,
and every year more faces there
are familiar

but not a single one
notices me,
though I long for it,
and when they talk together,

which they do
very quietly,
it's in an unknowable language -
I can catch the tone

but understand not a single word -
and when I open my eyes
there's the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.
There are the stones.


- Mary Oliver
Red Bird 


via  whisky river



image

.

Heron Rises

 .

So heavy

is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,

always it is a surprise

when her smoke-colored wings

open

and she turns

from the thick water,

from the black sticks

of the summer pond,

and slowly

rises into the air

and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,

I take the deep breath

of happiness, and I think

how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,

how improbable

that ascension is not possible,

though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself--

the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,

the turtle,

the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful

that the summers are long

and the ponds so dark and so many,

and therefore it isn't a miracle

but the common thing,

this decision,

this trailing of the long legs in the water,

this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden

gray-blue sheets of her wings

strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing

takes her in.


–Mary Oliver

.

 

Moonlight: Chickens On The Road

Called out of dream by the pitch and screech,   

I awoke to see my mother’s hair

set free of its pincurls, springing out

into the still and hurtling air

above the front seat and just as suddenly gone.   

The space around us twisted,

and in the instant before the crash

I heard the bubbling of the chickens,

the homely racket they make at all speeds,   

signifying calm, resignation, oblivion.

And I listened. All through the slash

and clatter, the rake of steel, shatter of glass,   

I listened, and what came

was a blizzard moan in the wind, a wail   

of wreckage, severed hoses and lives,

a storm of loose feathers, and in the final   

whirl approximating calm, the cluck   

and fracas of the birds. I crawled

on hands and knees where a window should   

have been and rose uneven

in November dusk. Wind blew

a snow of down, and rows of it quivered along   

the shoulder. One thin stream of blood

oozed, flocked in feathers.

This was in the Ozarks, on a road curving miles   

around Missouri, and as far as I could

see, no light flickered through the timber,   

no mail box leaned the flag

of itself toward pavement, no cars

seemed ever likely to come along.

So I walked, circled the darkening disaster   

my life had come to, and cried.

I cried for my family there,

knotted in the snarl of metal and glass;   

for the farmer, looking dead, half in

and half out of his windshield; and for myself,   

ambling barefoot through the jeweled debris,   

glass slitting little blood-stars in my soles,   

my arm hung loose at the elbow

and whispering its prophecies of pain.

Around and around the tilted car

and the steaming truck, around the heap

of exploded crates, the smears and small hunks   

of chicken and straw. Through

an hour of loneliness and fear

I walked, in the almost black of Ozark night,   

the moon just now burning into Missouri. Behind me,   

the chickens followed my lead,

some fully upright, pecking

the dim pavement for suet or seed,

some half-hobbled by their wounds, worthless wings   

fluttering in the effort. The faintest

light turned their feathers phosphorescent,

and as I watched they came on, as though they believed   

me some savior, some highwayman

or commando come to save them the last night   

of their clucking lives. This, they must have

believed, was the end they’d always heard of,

this the rendering more efficient than the axe,

the execution more anonymous than

a wringing arm. I walked on, no longer crying,

and soon the amiable and distracted chattering came   

again, a sound like chuckling, or the backward suck   

of hard laughter. And we walked   

to the cadence their clucking called,   

a small boy towing a cloud around a scene   

of death, coming round and round   

like a dream, or a mountain road,   

like a pincurl, like pulse, like life.


~ Robert Wrigley


.

 

Hay for the Horses

 

 


 .

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
 

With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
 

At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
---The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds---
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
 

I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."


–Gary Snyder

.

Father

 

 

.

Today you would be ninety-seven

if you had lived, and we would all be

miserable, you and your children,

driving from clinic to clinic,

an ancient fearful hypochondriac

and his fretful son and daughter,

asking directions, trying to read 

the complicated, fading map of cures.

But with your dignity intact

you have been gone for twenty years,

and I am glad for all of us, although

I miss you every day—the heartbeat

under your necktie, the hand cupped

on the back of my neck, Old Spice

in the air, your voice delighted with stories.

On this day each year you loved to relate

that the moment of your birth

your mother glanced out the window

and saw lilacs in bloom. Well, today

lilacs are blooming in side yards 

all over Iowa, still welcoming you.

 

—Ted Kooser

 .

 

mercy

.

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.

There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save

anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,

they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.

If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come

so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard

your helplessness."

Where lowland is,

that's where water goes. All medicine wants

is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.

Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.

Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton

of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.

Blow the phlegm from your nose,

and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.

Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.

Take the cure for impotence,

that your manhood may shoot forth,

and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot

of your soul, and let it race around the track

in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed

so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness

to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.

A nursing mother, all she does

is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,

and she's there.

God created the child, that is your wanting,

so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent

with your pain. Lament! And let the milk

of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind

are ways the cloud has

to take care of us.

Be patient.

Respond to every call

that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful

and sad, that degrade you

back toward disease and death. 

–Rumi

.

Untitled

.

"think of it: not so long ago
    this was a village"
"yes; i know"

"of human beings who prayed and sang,
    or am i wrong?"
"no, you're not wrong"

"and worked like hell six days out of seven"
"to die as they lived: in the hope of heaven"

"didn't two roads meet here?"
    "they did;
and over yonder a schoolhouse stood"

"do i remember a girl with blue-
    sky eyes and sun-yellow hair?"
"do you?"

        "absolutely"
     "that's very odd,
for i've never forgotten one frecklefaced lad'

"what could have happened to her and him?"
"maybe they walked and called it a dream"

"in this dream were there green and gold
    meadows?"
"through which a lazy brook strolled"

"wonder if clover still smells that way;
    up in the mow"
"full of newmown hay"

"and the shadows and sounds and silences"
"Yes, a barn could be a magical place"

"nothing's the same, is it?"
    "something still
remains, my friend, and always will"

        "namely?"
    "if any woman knows,
one man in a million ought to guess"

"what of the dreams that never die?"
"turn to your left at the end of the sky"

"where are the girls whose breasts begin?"
"under the boys who fish with a pin"

–E. E. Cummings

. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Separation

.

 Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

–W. S. Merwin




.

What Came to Me

.


I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.

It was your gravy boat,
with a hard, brown
drop of gravy still
on the porcelain lip.

I grieved for you then
as I never had before.


–Jane Kenyon


.