what the dead can do

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I Want to Say ”…

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Before I’m lost to time and the midwest
I want to say I was here
I loved the half light all winter
I want you to know before I leave
that I liked the towns living along the back of the Mississippi
I loved the large heron filling the sky
the slender white egret at the edge of the shore
I came to love my life here
fell in love with the color grey
the unending turn of seasons

Let me say
I loved Hill City
the bench in front of the tavern
the small hill to the lake
I loved the morning frost on the bell at New Albin
and the money I made as a poet
I was thankful for the white night
the sky of so many wet summers
Before I leave this world of my friends
I want to tell you I loved the rain on large store windows
had more croissants here in Minneapolis
than the French do in Lyons
I read the poets of the midwest
their hard crusts of bread dark goat cheese
and was nourished not hungry where they lived
I ate at the edges of state lines and boundaries
Know I loved the cold tap of bare branches against the windows
know there there will not be your peonies in spring
wherever I go
the electric petunias
and your orange zinnias

—Natalie Goldberg

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wait - what ?

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hope for the guest

 

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Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think… and think… while you are alive.

What you call “salvation" belongs to the time
before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will rejoin with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten—
that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.


—Kabir 
Robert Bly version

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at least

 

 




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If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life.

—Pablo Neruda

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may your heart fly ...

 

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The lily-perfumed wings of love
Will lay the dust of all your grief.
Patience my heart, and struggle on.

For when love binds,

It binds you to the tyranny of a racing steed,

And when love scatters,

It flings the soul-like fragments of the stars

Out of the ambergris scented woods.

Love makes of each moment an eternity

And tends the garden of the heart's desire.

When love mocks, ruby tears fall heavy as pomegranates

And when love looks, it sees your deepest mystery.

Love seeks out the tears of hidden hearts

And turns not from the Lovers of the Dawn.

Is there a remedy for the pain of love?

Or is it too unbearable for thought?

One taste of the medicine

And you will realize just how sick you have been.

Those who plead in the defense of love

In love's judgement shall find grace

And to that court, Hafiz

May your heart fly...


—Hafiz

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from Gravity's Rainbow

 

 

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Everything science has taught me— and continues to teach me— strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace.


—Thomas Pynchon

 

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nothing's a gift

 

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Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan.
I'm drowning in debts up to my ears.
I'll have to pay for myself
with my self,
give up my life for my life.

Here's how it's arranged:
The heart can be repossessed,
the liver, too,
and each single finger and toe.

Too late to tear up the terms,
my debts will be repaid,
and I'll be fleeced,
or, more precisely, flayed.

I move about the planet
in a crush of other debtors.
some are saddled with the burden
of paying off their wings.
Others must, willy-nilly,
account for every leaf.

Every tissue in us lies
on the debit side.
Not a tentacle or tendril
is for keeps.

The inventory, infinitely detailed,
implies we'll be left
not just empty-handed
but handless too.

I can't remember
where, when, and why
I let someone open
this account in my name.

We call the protest against this
the soul.
And it's the only item
not included on the list.


—Wislawa Szymborska

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