After A Discussion On Vocabulary
Waking up to bird song in the morning,
With a memory of names lost to not
Attending enough to this world that
Is contained in itself, and happens to
Contain him always. Once he was given
Vocabulary to point to creatures
Of leaf and wing, to take them in
Through language, and so accommodate
Himself in a house that is landscape.
So to be rendered homeless again, Or even worse to be exiled is to have lost The language to name the signs that sing: Violet crocuses – first letters of spring, Star magnolias teething white, the blood Of Judas trees awakening, and the wake Of Canada geese honking north to home.
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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
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Another Wedding Of Roses
"Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns" ~ Ingeborg Bachmann
He is wearing a garland of roses And also a crown of memories.
No Romans at his back, and now The only cross he carries is composed
Of clocks' ticking hands. Tonight, There is a hungry feast he is supposed
To be at, but he appears to have lost The invitation. These footprints
In the snow - the shade of roses. Did Orpheus climb out of earth,
Alone with his defeat somewhere here? Dusklight through frost’s glaze rainbows,
And takes him to the cathedral that was Her throat in the middle of a song.
The wolf will rend this memory to pieces, And night will be lit by the thorns,
Wedded to his rose-hued palms.
December 2009, Washington DC
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