the remains

  

 .

 

I empty myself of the names of others. I empty my pockets.
I empty my shoes and leave them beside the road
At night I turn back the clocks;
I open the family album and look at myself as a boy. 

What good does it do? The hours have done their job.
I say my own name. I say goodbye.
The words follow each other downwind.
I love my wife but send her away. 

My parents rise out of their thrones
into the milky rooms of clouds. How can I sing?
Time tells me what I am. I change and I am the same.
I empty myself of my life and my life remains.


—Mark Strand  (1934-2014)

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piece of the storm

. 

From the shadow of domes in the city of domes,
A snowflake, a blizzard of one, weightless, entered your room
And made its way to the arm of the chair where you, looking up
From your book, saw it the moment it landed.
That's all There was to it. No more than a solemn waking
To brevity, to the lifting and falling away of attention, swiftly,
A time between times, a flowerless funeral. No more than that
Except for the feeling that this piece of the storm,
Which turned into nothing before your eyes, would come back,
That someone years hence, sitting as you are now, might say:

'It's time. The air is ready. The sky has an opening.'


—Mark Strand

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keeping things whole

 

.

When the soul leaves the body, it is no longer under the burden 
and control of space and time. The soul is free; 
distance and separation hinder it no more.  

The dead are our nearest neighbors; they are all around us. 
Meister Eckhart was once asked, Where does the soul of a person go
when the person dies? He said, no place. Where else would the soul be going?
Where else is the eternal world? It can be nowhere other than here. 

We have falsely spatialized the eternal world. We have driven the eternal 
out into some kind of distant galaxy. Yet the eternal world 
does not seem to be a place but rather a different state of being.  

The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. 
This suggests that the dead are here with us, in the air that we are
moving through all the time.  

The only difference between us and the dead
is that they are now in an invisible form. You cannot see them 
with the human eye. But you can sense the presence of those you love
who have died. With the refinement of your soul, 
you can sense them. You feel that they are near.


—John O'Donohue
from Anam Cara

. . .

 

In a field
I am the absence
of field.

This is
always the case.

Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.

I move
to keep things whole.


—Mark Strand

.

From the beginning the flying birds have left no footprints on the blue sky 


—Miso Soseki
W.S. Merwin translation

.

The End

.

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

.
AJHarrison
.

My Life, 25 - 28

.

I grow into my death.
My life is small
and getting smaller. The world is green.
Nothing is all.

–Mark Strand

.
wait - what?
.

The End

  

.

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

.
whiskeyriver
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