A New Year Note
“I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,
with so many incidents, so many details.
And, for me, the whole of you is transformed into feeling.” – C.P. Cavafy, “In the Same Space”
"The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning.” – Gautama Buddha, Fire Sermon
“Wanderer tritt still herein; Schmerz versteinerte die Schwelle. Da erglänzt in reiner Helle Auf dem Tische Brot und Wein” - Georg Trakl, “Ein Winterabend”*
So much unfinished business that the mind Keeps, running over and over to lick old bones
Seasons roll like lovers over the unnoticing body Rain changes to mist, mist to sun and wind,
All in a winter morning’s hours. Yet we see Very little of these presences, this time
A friend writes, “The taxi on way home, Wendell Berry on the radio, and me bursting into tears”
What we forget to remember always, I suppose, Is this feeling of radiance, which sometimes comes
Unexpectedly in silence, with bread, wine, words, Beyond the great fires, beyond pain’s threshold.
January 2, Dhamma Siri, Kaufman Texas
My Poems
... comment