Flying at night, above the clouds, all earthmarks spurned,
lost in Heaven, where peaceful entry must be earned,
I have no pleasure here, nothing to desire.
And then I see one light below there like a star.
Month: May 2016
The Plan by Wendell Berry
My old friend, the owner
of a new boat, stops by
to ask me to fish with him,
and I say I will–both of us
knowing that we may never
get around to it, it may be
years before we’re both
idle again on the same day.
But we make a plan, anyhow,
in honor of friendship
and the fine spring weather
and the new boat
and our sudden thought
of the water shining
under the morning fog.
A Meeting by Wendell Berry
In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: “How you been?”
He grins and looks at me.
“I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees.”
Breaking by Wendell Berry
Did I believe I had a clear mind?
It was like the water of a river
flowing shallow over the ice. And now
that the rising water has broken
the ice, I see that what I thought
was the light is part of the dark.
from The Book of Songs No. 122
How few of us are left, how few!
Why do we not go back?
Were it not for our prince and his concerns,
What should we be doing here in the dew?
How few of us are left, how few!
Why do we not go back?
Were it not for our prince’s own concerns,
What should we be doing here in the mud?
translated by Arthur Waley
on war and its aftermath on this Memorial Day weekend
the waste
in lives
in homeland
the displaced
forever adrift
mourn the dead
the crippled
and damn
the greed
of politicians
and corporations
that profit
from all the misery
from Going After Cacciato (2) by Tim O’Brien
They did not know even the simple things: a sense of victory, or satisfaction, or neccesary sacrifice. They did not know the feeling of taking a place and keeping it, securing a village and then raising the flag and calling it a victory. No sense of order or momentum. No front, no rear, no trenches laid out in neat parallels. No Patton rushing for the Rhine, no beachheads to storm and win and hold for the duration. They did not have targets. They did not have a cause. They did not know if it was a war of ideology or economics or hegemony or spite. On a given day, they did not know where they were in Quang Ngai, or how being there might influence larger outcomes. They did not know the names of most villages. They did not know which villages were crucial. They did not know strategies. They…
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DPF / Amichai — Daily Poetry Fragments
For graduation season, and for our niece, who graduated from nursing school yesterday, from poetryfoundation.org. This is a repeated poem, but it bears re-visiting. from The School Where I Studied / by Yehuda Amichai, translated by Chana Bloch The windows of a classroom always open to the future
from Seven Sorrows by Wang Ts’an
I can’t sleep at night alone
but get up, put on a robe, and play the lute;
strings and paulownia wood know how I feel;
for me they make a sorrowful sound.
On a journey that has no end
dark thoughts are powerful and hard to bear!
translated by Burton Watson
from the Book of Songs (Odes): 91
Blue blue your collar,
sad sad my heart:
though I do not go to you,
why don’t you send word?
Blue blue your belt-stone,
sad sad my thoughts:
though I do not go to you,
why don’t you come?
Restless, heedless,
I walk the gate tower.
One day not seeing you
is three months long.
translated by Burton Watson
Leonard Durso 