poesied prose

It is clear
how animate and inanimate things
subsist with equal dignity,
not one reigns supreme.

Because our globe is transient
and full of darkness
must it be decried
as inferior to the sun?

No!

Are sublunar unities less than those
fixed in the firmament?

Or what of the Spider?
Was he not made
equivalent to a Perch?

Each entity controls
an empire of its own.

 --- Evan S. Connell  (The Alchemyst's Journal)

twelvth canto

The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays--
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.

Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.

Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.

Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.

Speak through my speech, and through my blood.    

          --Pablo Neruda  (trans..???)

May it be Beautiful

                             

                              PRAYER

  Dark young pine, at the center of the earth originating,
I have made your sacrifice.
Whiteshell, turquoise, abalone beautiful,
Jet beautiful, fool's gold beautiful, blue pollen beautiful,
Reed pollen, pollen beautiful, your sacrifice I have made.
This day your child I have become, I say.

Watch over me.
Hold your hand before me in protection.
Stand guard for me, speak in defense of me.
As I speak for you, speak for me.
May it be beautiful before me.
May it be beautiful behind me.
May it be beautiful below me.
May it be beautiful above me.
May it be beautiful all around me.

I am restored in beauty.
I am restored in beauty.
I am restored in beauty.
I am restored in beauty.


           anonymous navajo 19th century

visualpoem

http://www.tfaoi.com/cm/7cm/7cm424.jpg

audacitee' de amour - by- Thomas Aquinas

I said to God, “Let me love you.”

And he replied, “Which part?”

.

“All of you, all of you.” I said.

.

“Dear” God spoke, “You are as a mouse wanting to impregnate

a tiger who is not even in heat. It is a feat way

beyond your courage and strength.

You would run from me

if I removed my

mask.”

.

I said to God again,

.

“Beloved I need to love you – every aspect, every pore.”

.

And this time God said,

.

“There is a hideous blemish on my body,

though it is such an infinitesimal part of my Being-

could you kiss that if it were revealed?”

.

“I will try, Lord, I will try.”

.

And then God said,

“That blemish is all the hatred and

cruelty in this

world.”

Rumi song

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.




   

                                  .trans-  Coleman Barks












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