The End

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Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he's held by the sea's roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he'll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he'll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.
 

–Mark Strand
The Continuous Life
in memory of the man who fell to earth

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AJHarrison
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when I die

 

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When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
- And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?
- Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.


–Czesław Miłosz

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whiskeyriver
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fork in the road

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The experience of the gap between the cessation of one moment and the arising of the next is nothing less than the “moment of truth” that will determine our direction and shape our future experience.

In Tibetan, we say that in each moment we are at a fork in the road.

Whichever fork or direction we take, it is important to realize that all appearances are, ultimately speaking, aspects of the nature of our own mind. They do not exist in a manner that is independent of our minds.


—Dzogchen Ponlop

Mind Beyond Death

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johnsparker
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I am involved

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No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
 
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
 
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
 
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
 
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.


–John Donne

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Robert Mapplethorpe
Waves (Left, Center, Right) 1980
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It Was Like This: You Were Happy

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It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness—
between you, there is nothing to forgive—
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.


–Jane Hirshfield
for J.S.

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words

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Pantheist, excerpt

 

 

 

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Yea, I am one with all I see,

With wind and wave, with pine and palm;

Their very elements in me

Are fused to make me what I am.

Through me their common life-stream flows,

And when I yield this human breath,

In leaf and blossom, bud and rose,

Live on I will….

There is no Death.


–Robert Service

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your homecoming will be my homecoming

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your homecoming will be my homecoming-
my selves go with you,only i remain;
a shadow phantom effigy or seeming
(an almost someone always who’s noone)
a noone who,till their and your returning,
spends the forever of his loneliness
dreaming their eyes have opened to your mourning

feeling their stars have risen through your skies:
so,in how merciful love’s own name,linger
no more than selfless i can quite endure
the absence of that moment when a stranger
takes in his arms my very lifes who’s you
-when all fears hopes beliefs doubts disappear.
Everywhere and joy’s perfect wholeness we’re.


–E. E. Cummings

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transformed into arrows

 

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Transformed into arrows
let's all go, body and soul!
Piercing the air
let's go, body and soul,
with no way of return,
transfixed there,
rotting with the pain of striking home,
never to return.

One last breath! Now, let's quit the string,
throwing away like rags
all we've had for decades
all we've enjoyed for decades
all we've piled up for decades,
happiness,
the lot.
Transformed into arrows
let's all go, body and soul!

The air is shouting! Piercing the air
let's go, body, and soul!
In dark daylight the target is rushing towards us.
Finally, as the target topples
in a shower of blood,
let's all just once as arrows
bleed.

Never to return!
Never to return!

Hail, arrows, our nation's arrows!
Hail, Warriors! Spirits of the fallen!


–Ko Un
Brother Anthony translation

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rip my heart out ...

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stand with your lover on the ending earth-

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stand with your lover on the ending earth-

and while a (huge by which huger than
huge) whoing sea leaps to greenly hurl snow,

suppose we could not love, dear; imagine

ourselves like living neither nor dead these
(or many thousands hearts which don't and dream
or many million minds which sleep and move)
blind sand, at pitiless the mercy of

time time time time time

how fortunate are you and I, whose home
is timelessness: we who have wandered down
from fragrant mountains of eternal now

to frolic in such mysteries as birth
and death a day (or maybe even less)

 
–E. E. Cummings

 

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in time of daffodils(who know

 

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in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remembering how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of walking is to dream
remembering so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remembering yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)
 
and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me, remember me

 
–E. E. Cummings
from Selected Poems

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Now i lay(with everywhere around)me

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Now i lay(with everywhere around)me
(the great dim deep sound
of rain;and of always and of nowhere)and
what a gently welcoming darkestness--

now i lay me down(in a most steep
more than music)feeling that sunlight is
(life and day are)only loaned:whereas
night is given(night and death and the rain 

are given;and given is how beautifully snow) 

now i lay me down to dream of(nothing
i or any somebody or you
can begin to begin to imagine) 

something which nobody may keep.
now i lay me down to dream of Spring


–E. E. Cummings 

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Death don’t have no mercy in this land…

 

 

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Death don’t have no mercy in this land
Death don’t have no mercy in this land
He’ll come to your house and he won’t stay long
You look in bed the morning and somebody will be gone.

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buffleheadcabin
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look

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With all its eyes, the natural world looks out into the Open. 
Only our eyes are turned backward, and surround plant, animal, child like traps, as they emerge into their freedom.

We know what is really out there only from the animal's gaze; for we take the very young child and force it around, so that it sees objects - not the Open, which is so deep in animals' faces. Free from death.

We, only, can see death; the free animal has its decline in back of it, forever, and God in front, and when it moves, it moves already in eternity, like a fountain.

Never, not for a single day, do we have before us that pure space into which flowers endlessly open. Always there is World and never Nowhere without the No: that pure unseparated element which one breathes without desire and endlessly knows.  

A child may wander there for hours, through the timeless stillness, may get lost in it and be shaken back.  Or someone dies and is it.

For, nearing death, one doesn't see death; but stares beyond, perhaps with an animal's vast gaze.

Lovers, if the beloved were not there blocking the view, are close to it, and marvel...

As if by some mistake, it opens for them behind each other... But neither can move past the other, and it changes back to World. Forever turned toward objects, we see in them the mere reflection of the realm of freedom, which we have dimmed.  

Or when some animal mutely, serenely, looks us through and through. That is what fate means: to be opposite, to be opposite and nothing else, forever.

–Rainer Mara Rilke

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the way I go

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In a mist of light
falling with the rain
I walk this ground
of which dead men
and women I have loved
are part, as they
are part of me. 

In earth,
in blood, in mind,
the dead and living
into each other pass,
as the living pass
in and out of loves
as stepping to a song.

The way I go is
marriage to this place,
grace beyond chance,
love's braided dance
covering the world.


–Wendell Berry
The Wheel

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so not-so

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You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you’ll sweep petals from the floor.

Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say “I’m old,”
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.


–寒山 Han Shan

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loveliest of what I leave

 

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Loveliest of what I leave behind is the sunlight,

And loveliest after that, the shining stars and the moon’s face,

but also cucumbers that are ripe, and pears, and apples.


—Praxilla of Sicyon
5th century B.C.

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crashinglybeautiful

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autumn

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The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,

as if orchards were dying high in space.

Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”

And tonight the heavy earth is falling

away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.

And look at the other one. It’s in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands

are infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.


–Rainer Maria Rilke

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Looking for Mushrooms at Sunrise

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When it is not yet day
I am walking on centuries of dead chestnut leaves
In a place without grief
Though the oriole
Out of another life warns me
That I am awake
In the dark while the rain fell
The gold chanterelles pushed through a sleep that was not mine
Waking me
So that I came up the mountain to find them
Where they appear it seems I have been before
I recognize their haunts as though remembering
Another life
Where else am I walking even now
Looking for me


— W.S. Merwin
The Lice, 1967

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Tickets

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The day I am killed
my killer will find
tickets in my pockets:
One to peace,
one to fields and the rain,
and one
to humanity's conscience.

I beg you--please don't waste them.
I beg you, you who kill me: Go.


–Samih al-Qasim

 

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look

 

 

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The other world is this world, rightly seen.

–Nisargardatta

 

 

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In Heaven It Is Always Autumn –John Donne

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In heaven it is always autumn. The leaves are always near
to falling there but never fall, and pairs of souls out walking
heaven's paths no longer feel the weight of years upon them.
Safe in heaven's calm, they take each other's arm,
the light shining through them, all joy and terror gone.
But we are far from heaven here, in a garden ragged and unkept
as Eden would be with the walls knocked down,
the paths littered
with the unswept leaves of many years, bright keepsakes
for children of the Fall. The light is gold, the sun pulling
the long shadow soul out of each thing, disclosing an outcome.
The last roses of the year nod their frail heads,
like listeners listening to all that's said, to ask,
What brought us here? What seed? What rain? What light?
What forced us upward through dark earth? What made us bloom?
What wind shall take us soon, sweeping the garden bare?
Their voiceless voices hang there, as ours might,
if we were roses, too. Their beds are blanketed with leaves,
tended by an absent gardener whose life is elsewhere.
It is the last of many last days. Is it enough?
To rest in this moment? To turn our faces to the sun?
To watch the lineaments of a world passing?
To feel the metal of a black iron chair, cool and eternal,
press against our skin? To apprehend a chill as clouds
pass overhead, turning us to shivering shade and shadow?
And then to be restored, small miracle, the sun
shining brightly
as before? We go on, you leading the way, a figure
leaning on a cane that leaves its mark on the earth.
My friend, you have led me farther than I have ever been.
To a garden in autumn. To a heaven of impermanence
where the final falling off is slow, a slow and radiant happening.
The light is gold. And while we're here, I think it must
be heaven.


–Elizabeth Spires
from Now the Green Blade Rises

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