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Issue #1392 - Friday, April 4, 2003 - Editor: Gloria Lee

I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry.

John Cage

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THE SKY-GOER

HE UNDERSTOOD

what it is that we are trying to work out.
He was very old, & from the secret swing of planets
To the secret decencies in human hearts, he understood.
I used to watch him watering his lawn, scattering food for the woodpecker,
Sweeping the crossing before his house. It was not that there was light
About him, visible to the eye, as in the old paintings.
Rather, an influence came from him in little breaths.
When we were with him we became other.
He saw us all as if we were that which we dreamed ourselves.
He saw the town already clothed on for its Tomorrow,
He saw the world, beating like a heart, beating like a heart.
"How may I, too, know?" I wanted to cry to him. Instead
I only said: "And how is it with you?" But he answered
Both questions by the look in his eyes. For he had come to quietness.
He had come to the place where sun and moon meet
And where the spaces of the heavens open their doors.
He was understanding and love and the silence.
He was the voice of these, as he fed the woodpecker.

Zona Gale

http://www.levity.com/interbeing/gale.html

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Love Poem to God

IF ONLY for once it were still
If the not quite right and the why this
could be muted, and the neighbor's laughter,
and the static my senses make -
If all of it didn't keep me from coming awake -

Then in one vast thousandfold thought
I could think you up to where thinking ends.

I could possess you,
even for the brevity of a smile,
to offer you
to all that lives
in gladness.

Ranier Maria Rilke
from Book of Hours I, 7
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

http://www.levity.com/interbeing/rilke2.html

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Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze decor.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

Wallace Stevens

http://users.crocker.com/~lwm/ofmere.html

______________________________________________________________

Theater takes place all the time
wherever one is & art simply
facilitates persuading one this
is the case.

~~~

We
open our eyes and ears seeing life
each day excellent as it is.
This realization no longer needs art.

John Cage

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On the higher levels of spirituality, heaven and earth are one and the same. For the truly righteous man, a stone is as valuable as a sacred book. There is no distinction between the fruit and the blessing one makes over it. Since God is one, everything is one.

 Isaac Bashevis Singer,
Shadows on the Hudson

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Daily Dharma

"Siddhartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed,
quite empty, taking in everything. He felt that he had now completely
learned the art of listening. He had often heard all this before, all these
numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. He could no
longer distinguish the different voices - the merry voice from the weeping
voice, the childish voice from the manly voice. They all belonged to each
other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the cry of
indignation and the groan of the dying. They were all interwoven and
interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways. And all the voices, all the goals,
all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and
evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the
stream of events, the music of life. When Siddhartha listened attentively to
this river, to this song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the
sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one particular
voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity;
then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om -
perfection."


From the book, "Siddhartha," by Hermann Hesse.  Translated by Hilda Rosner,
published by Bantam Classic.

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