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A Secret Life, by Stephen Dunn

9/11/2015

A Secret Life
By Stephen Dunn

Why you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don't say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby.
Or, you've just made love
and feel you'd rather have been
in a dark booth where your partner
was nodding, whispering yes, yes,
you're brilliant. The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that's unpopular
in you, all that you know
a Baptist, say, or some other
accountant would object to.
It becomes what you'd most protect
if the government said you can protect
one thing, all else is ours.
When you write last night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get close to it.
It's why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who'll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.

Tread in Solitude, from the German of V. Schoffel

9/7/2015

Tread in solitude your pathway,
Quiet heart and undismayed.
You will know things strange, mysterious,
Which to you no voice has said.

Wile the crowd of petty hustlers
Grasps at vain and meager things,
You will see a great world rising
Where soft sacred music rings.

Leave the dusty road to others,
Spotless keep your soul and bright,
As the radiant ocean’s surface
When the sun is taking flight.

-from the German of V. Schoffel

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann~

2/17/2014

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
No less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

 Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952

Beannacht (Irish Blessing), by John O'Donohue

1/2/2014

Beannacht (Irish Blessing)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

Beannacht

The house was quiet and the world was calm, by Wallace Stevens

7/29/2013

The house was quiet and the world was calm

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
                                                                 The access of perfection to the page.

                                                                 And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
                                                                 In which there is no other meaning, itself

                                                                 Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
                                                                 Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

                                                                 By Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955)

                                                            Posted 7/29/13 on Poetry Chaikhana <ivan@poetry-chaikhana.com>

A Garden Beyond Paradise, by Rumi

7/1/2013

A Garden Beyond Paradise

by Rumi

Everything you see has its roots
in the unseen world.
The forms may change,
yet the essence remains the same.

Every wondrous sight will vanish,
every sweet word will fade.
But do not be disheartened,
The Source they come from is eternal--
growing, branching out,
giving new life and new joy.

Why do you weep?--
That Source is within you,
and this whole world
is springing up from it.

The Source is full,
its waters are ever-flowing;
Do not grieve,
drink your fill!
Don't think it will ever run dry--
This is the endless Ocean!

From the moment you came into this world,
a ladder was placed in front of you
that you might transcend it.

From earth, you became plant,
from plant you became animal.
Afterwards you became a human being,
endowed with knowledge, intellect and faith.

Behold the body, born of dust--
how perfect it has become!

Why should you fear its end?
When were you ever made less by dying?

When you pass beyond this human form,
no doubt you will become an angel
and soar through the heavens!

But don't stop there.
Even heavenly bodies grow old.

Pass again from the heavenly realm
and plunge into the ocean of Consciousness.
Let the drop of water that is you
become a hundred mighty seas.

But do not think that the drop alone
becomes the Ocean--
the Ocean, too, becomes the drop!

We Remember Them

12/21/2012

We Remember Them

In the rising of the sun and its going down,
We Remember Them.
In the bowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
We Remember Them.
In the opening of the buds and in the rebirth of spring.
We Remember Them.
In the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer,
We Remember Them.
In the rustling of the leaves and in the beauty of autumn.
We Remember Them.
In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
We Remember Them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
We Remember Them.
When we are lost and sick of heart,
We Remember Them.
When we have joys and special celebrations we yearn to share,
We Remember Them.
Sp long as we live, they too shall live, for they are part of us.
We Remember Them.

~From the Jewish Book Of Prayer~

Mary Oliver

8/31/2012

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Ben Okri

7/13/2012

An African Elegy

We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
We are precious.
And one day our suffering
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.

There are things that burn me now
Which turn golden when I am happy.
Do you see the mystery of our pain?
That we bear the poverty
And are able to sing and dream sweet things.

And that we never curse the air when it is warm
Or the fruit when it tastes so good
Or the lights that bounce gently on the waters?
We bless the things even in our pain.
We bless them in silence.

That is why our music is so sweet.
It makes the air remember.
There are secret miracles at work
That only Time will bring forth.
I too have heard the dead singing.

And they tell me that
This life is good
They tell me to live it gently
With fire, and always with hope.
There is wonder here

And there is surprise
In everything the unseen moves.
The ocean is full of songs.
The sky is not an enemy.
Destiny is our friend.

~ Ben Okri ~

Denise levertov

5/30/2012

Variation on a Theme by Rilke

A certain day became a presence to me; 
there it was, confronting me -- a sky, air, light: 
a being. And before it started to descend 
from the height of noon, it leaned over 
and struck my shoulder as if with 
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow 
rang out, metallic -- or it was I, a bell awakened, 
and what I heard was my whole self 
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)  

By Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

<<Previous

Forward>>

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