THE WiSDOM OF CROWS

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I.     A black crow with a brown hangover sat on the side of a blue highway in silver rain. Don't fret it, he said to me as I drove by. I, of course, had no idea what the black crow with the brown hangover sitting on the side of the blue highway in silver rain could mean. That is until twenty minutes later I found myself lost and completely off course of the direction I thought myself to be traveling. Don't fret it, the crow had said. And so after a while I quit complaining and enjoyed the fog licking at the side of the mountains. II.     I heard cawing outside my bathroom window. There, in the dogwood tree, sat a huge shining crow. She flew to a taller tree to encounter a mockingbird trying to discourage her from landing. But the crow refused to leave until she had left her message for me. Three caws, then four, then three more. Louder and louder and louder. There are many memories coming. Explore them. I looked away, contemplating her message. When I finally understood I looked again and she was gone. III.     This morning a crow said, All I ever needed was for you to listen.                  MariJo  Moore ....

heart to heart

Love, let us live as we have lived, nor lose
 The little names that were the first night's grace,
 And never come the day that sees us old,
I still your lad, and you my little lass.
Let me be older than old Nestor's years,
And you the Sibyl, if we heed it not.
What should we know, we two, of ripe old age?
We'll have its richness, and the years forgot.


                               Ausonius  (  5th century convert )

not too much to wish

LAST WALK THROUGH THE CITY                                    





(to be read most perfectly aloud to bold rhythm jazz)

Before I die I want to stroll through the city one last time
let this be my last humble wish
to walk on my feet through my city
through the city of Copenhagen
as I’ve done so many times before
and I’ll know this is the last time
and I’ll choose my route with care

and I’ll walk down Isted Street or West Bridge Street
and walk down all the narrow sunless side streets with all their shutdown shops
and I’ll look at all the junk-shop displays of yellowed curtains and greasy gas rings
and I’ll rummage in the book boxes and I’ll buy nothing
and not because it’s the last time
but because I never rummage in the book boxes to buy anything
but to rummage in them and think how short and strange life is
and I’ll look at children playing in the small square stony windblown courtyards
and I’ll listen to them shouting to and at each other
and I’ll see their mothers lean out of kitchen windows
and call them in when dinner is ready
and out the windows clotheslines will hang with the family’s underwear
and it will flap in the wind

and I’ll walk through West Bridge’s poets quarter in the gloaming I’ll stroll along Saxo Street Oehlenschläger Street Kingo Street and I’ll stop in someplace in one of the serving houses maybe Café Golden Rain and savor a bitter and nothing else and then out and on I’ll wear my soles thin this last stroll in Copenhagen

I will say farewell to my city and I’ll walk on from West Bridge I’ll go in over the Central Station I’ll pass it in grey light and it will be lightly veiled it will as always resemble an old tear-streaked film and it will stab my heart as it always does

the usual alkies will sit there waiting for nothing
the young hitchhikers will stand with their backpacks and their cartons of milk
hurried and harried people will wait for their connections
families will come with suitcases and baby carriages to take a weekend with the family

in the country

and I’ll stand in a corner and be overwhelmed
and not be able to do anything about it and not want to either
just be overwhelmed by all that life and all that swarm
wet eyes without clear reason
and very very distant

and when I have pulled myself together I’ll shake the shoulders of my coat
shake the Central Station off as a dog shakes his wet fur
or as when you leave a theater after a movie
I’ll light a cigarette and go down West Bridge Street to the Town Hall Square
where everyone flutters around between buses and movie houses
and again I’ll just lean up against a poster-plastered pillar
and I’ll know that here somewhere on these stones lie my whole life and all my dreams
just like so many others’ lives and dreams

everything is so swift and fleeting
like your last stroll through the city
and I’ll walk down the Pedestrian Street like a shadow
and all the way down I’ll be accompanied by all my friends
and they will all be ghosts
and no one but me will see they are there but they are
and we say goodbye to everything and each other
and we are not sentimental
but the air is full of something no one knows what it’s called or is
and we walk there in silent conversation
and somewhere towards New Square they are gone again
and I myself fade out a little further down

My last stroll through the city is done
and a single shadow less frequents the street—


                            Dan Turell  - Danish poet

                     trans.  Thomas E. Kennedy










......this was a sort of a strange heist




....

no room for dualism

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both.
We are the sweet, cold water and the jar that pours.

                                                    Rumi

.






..

....in the dark pine wood

In the dark pine-wood
I would we lay,
In deep cool shadow
At noon of day.


How sweet to lie there,
Sweet to kiss,
Where the great pine-forest
Enaisled is!

Thy kiss descending
Sweeter were
With a soft tumult
Of thy hair.


O unto the pine-wood
At noon of day
Come with me now,
Sweet love, away.


          James Joyce




.....






...

lyrical truth

 

 

 

 

Things   of  Intrinsic  Worth                                    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember that sandrock on Emmells Crick
Where Dad carved his name in 'thirteen?
It's been blasted down into rubble
And interred by their dragline machine.
Where Fadhls lived, at the old Milar Place,
Where us kids stole melons at night?
They 'dozed it up in a funeral pyre
Then torched it. It's gone alright.
The "C" on the hill, and the water tanks
Are now classified, "reclaimed land."
They're thinking of building a golf course
Out there, so I understand.
The old Egan Homestead's an ash pond
That they say is eighty feet deep.
The branding corral at the Douglas Camp
Is underneath a spoil heap.
And across the crick is a tipple, now,
Where they load coal onto a train,
The Mae West Rock on Hay Coulee?
Just black and white snapshots remain.
There's a railroad loop and a coal storage shed
Where the bison kill site used to be.
The Guy Place is gone; Ambrose's too.
Beulah Farley's a ranch refugee.

But things are booming. We've got this new school
That's envied across the whole state.
When folks up and ask, "How's things goin' down there?"
I grin like a fool and say, "Great!"
Great God, how we're doin'! We're rollin'in dough,
As they tear and they ravage The Earth.
And nobody knows...or nobody cares...
About things of intrinsic worth.

                             Wallace McRae









......

thinking of a friend

At the still point of the turning world. 
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; 
 at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. 
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. 
 Except for the point,  the still point,
There would be no dance, 
and there is only the dance.


                                                 Thomas Stearns Eliot

                                               (from:   Burnt Norton -the 4 quartets)







...