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Ethiopian Prayer

7/7/2019

 
Picture
​May you be for us a moon of joy and happiness.
Let the young become strong
and the grown man maintain his strength,
the pregnant woman be delivered
and the woman who has given birth suckle her child.
Let the stranger come to the end of his journey
and those who remain at home dwell safely in their houses.
Let the flocks that go to feed in the pastures return happily.
May you be a moon of harvest and of calves.
May you be a moon of restoration and of good health.
 
Ethiopian Prayer

Tourist of Pilgrim? by Macrina Wiederkehr

10/4/2018

 
Picture

 
I stand on the edge of myself and wonder where is home?
Oh, where is the place where beauty will last?
When will I be safe?  And where?
 
My tourist heart is wearing me out.
I am so tired of seeking for treasures that tarnish.
How much longer, Lord?
Oh, which way is home?
M luggage is heavy.  It is weighing me down.
I am hungry for the holy ground of home.
 
Then suddenly, overpowering me with the truth,
A voice within me gentles me, and says:
 
There is a power in you, a truth in you
That has not yet been tapped.
You are blinded with a blindness that is deep
For you’ve not loved the pilgrim in you yet.
 
There is a road that runs straight through your heart.
Walk on it.
 
To be a pilgrim means to be on the move, slowly,
To notice your luggage becoming lighter
To be seeking for treasures that do not rust
To be comfortable with your heart’s questions
To be moving toward the holy ground of home
With empty hands and bare feet.
 
And yet, you cannot reach that home
Until you’ve loved the pilgrim in you.
One must be comfortable with pilgrimhood
Before one’s feet can touch the homeland.
 
Do you want to go home?
There’s a road that runs straight through your heart.
Walk on it.
                                                                        Macrina Wiederkehr

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota, by James Wright

7/12/2018

 
Picture
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   
Down the ravine behind the empty house,   
The cowbells follow one another   
Into the distances of the afternoon.   
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,   
The droppings of last year’s horses   
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
 

Love after Love, by Derek Walcott

7/5/2018

 
Picture
Love after Love, by Derek Walcott (in ivan@poetry-chaikhana.com)
   
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, 
in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread.  
Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

The Way It Is, by William Stafford

8/11/2017

 
Picture
The Way It Is
 
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
 
William Stafford (1914-1993)

The Beauty of the Trees, by Dan George

7/28/2017

 
Picture

 
The beauty of the trees
The softness of the air
The fragrance of the grass
Speaks to me.
 
The summit of the mountain
The thunder of the sky
The rhythm of the sea
Speaks to me
And my heart soars.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning

5/4/2016

 
Picture
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
and every common bush afire with God;
but only he who sees takes off his shoes,
the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Credentials, by Daniel Berrigan

5/4/2016

 
Picture
I would it were possible to state in so

few words my errand in the world: quite simply

forestalling all inquiry, the oak offers his leaves

largehandedly. And in winter his integral magnificent order

decrees, says solemnly who he is

in the great thrusting limbs that are all finally

one: a return, a permanent river and sea.


 
So the rose is its own credential, a certain

unattainable effortless form: wearing its heart

visibly, it gives us heart too: bud, fullness and fall.
Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016)
Offered in Poetry Chaikhana <ivan@poetry-chaikhana.com>
 


A Portrait,  Maurice Nicoll

2/27/2016

 
Picture
A Portrait,  Maurice Nicoll
 
In the dead of night,
In the dark of the Moon
I beheld Thy Might
And craved a boon.
Not in thunder nor in storm-wind
Did'st Thou answer
But in the stillness of pure meaning.
Then I knew if the boon were granted
I would die comfortably
The most terrible death of all
Which is spiritual death.
Like a single chord of vast music
Containing all inexpressible divine truth
It entered the limitations of my language.
It became words -- as once before:
'My grace is sufficient for thee
Because my strength is made perfect in thy weakness.'
So I understand that when a man can do nothing
And when he comes to that far knowledge
Only then is Thy divine power recognized
And his soul freed to turn to Thee.


Morning Poem, by Mary Oliver

9/18/2015

 
Picture

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches--
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead--
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging--

there is stil
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted--

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


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    Contents


    Let Evening Come, by Jane Kenyon
    And What is so Rare as a Day in June, by James Russell Lowell
    Love after Love, by Derek Walcott
    Elizabeth Barrett Browning
    Credentials, by Daniel Berrigan
    Morning Poem, by Mary Oliver
    A Secret Life, by Stephen
        Dunn
    Tread in Solitude, by V.
        Schoffel

    Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann
    Beannacht
    , by John
        O'Donohue

    The house was quiet and the world was calm, by Wallace
        Stevens
    A Garden Beyond Paradise, by
        Rumi
    We remember them, from a
        Jewish Book of Prayer

    The Summer Day, by Mary
        Oliver

    An African Elegy, by Ben Okri
    Variation on a Theme by Rilke,
        by Denise Levertov
    Love of the World, Charlotte
        Tall Mountain

    The Poet's Obligation, Pablo
        Neruda
    All True Vows, David Whyte
    Sea Fever, John Masefield
    The Shortest Day, Jan Sutch
        Pickard

    Song for the Open Road,  Walt
        Whitman
    Keep Walking, Rumi
    Fog in the Valley, Paul Zimmer
    Bandito, Eleanor Lerman
    The Peace of Wild Things,
       Wendell Berry
    But the silence in the mind
, 
        R.S. Thomas
    I Wandered Lonely as a
      Cloud, William Wordsworth
    A Cloth of Fine Gold,
        Dorothy Walters
    Weather, Fleur Adcock
    The Blind Old Man, Robert
           Bly
    The Three Goals, David
           Budbill
    All Roads Lead to Me, 
           Anonymous
    With that Moon Language,
         Hafiz
    The River and Its Waves are
         One Surf, Kabir
    What to Remember When
          Waking, David Whyte
    Love after Love, Derek
       Wolcott
    Last Night As I Was  
        Sleeping, Antonio
        Machado (version by
         Robert Bly
    where we are, Gerald
        Locklin
    Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
    Why I Wake Early, Mary
        Oliver
    I heard a bird sing, Oliver    
         Hereford
    I have a house where I go, 
         A.A. Milne
    Going to Walden, Mary
         Oliver

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