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#4048 - Monday, October 18, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee  

The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights  

Incomparable Verse Valley    

The sounds of the stream
     splash out
          the Buddha's sermon
Don't say
     that the deepest meaning
          comes only from one's mouth
Day and night
     eighty thousand poems
          arise one after the other
and in fact
     not a single word
          has ever been spoken

by Muso Soseki
(1275 - 1351) Timeline

English version by
W. S. Merwin

Original Language
Japanese

from Sun at Midnight: Muso Soseki - Poems and Sermons, Translated by W. S. Merwin / Translated by Soiku Shigematsu

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/S/SosekiMuso/Incomparable.htm

  In the school of mind you    

In the school of mind you
learn a lot, and become
a true scholar for many to look up to.
In the school of Love, you become
a child to learn again.

by Abu-Said Abil-Kheir
(967 - 1049) Timeline

English version by
Vraje Abramian

Original Language
Persian/Farsi

http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/A/AbilKheirAbu/Inschoolofmi.htm

Love Should Grow Up Like a Wild Iris in the Fields  

Love should grow up like a wild iris in the fields,
unexpected, after a terrible storm, opening a purple
mouth to the rain, with not a thought to the future,
ignorant of the grass and the graveyard of leaves
around, forgetting its own beginning.
Love should grow like a wild iris
but does not.
Love more often is to be found in kitchens at the dinner hour,
tired out and hungry, lingers over tables in houses where
the walls record movements, while the cook is probably angry,
and the ingredients of the meal are budgeted, while
a child cries feed me now and her mother not quite
hysterical says over and over, wait just a bit, just a bit,
love should grow up in the fields like a wild iris
but never does
really startle anyone, was to be expected, was to be
predicted, is almost absurd, goes on from day to day, not quite
blindly, gets taken to the cleaners every fall, sings old
songs over and over, and falls on the same piece of rug that
never gets tacked down, gives up, wants to hide, is not
brave, knows too much, is not like an
iris growing wild but more like
staring into space
in the street
not quite sure
which door it was, annoyed about the sidewalk being
slippery, trying all the doors, thinking
if love wished the world to be well, it would be well.
Love should
grow up like a wild iris, but doesn't, it comes from
the midst of everything else, sees like the iris
of an eye, when the light is right,
feels in blindness and when there is nothing else is
tender, blinks, and opens
face up to the skies.   ~ Susan Griffin ~
  (Like the Iris of an Eye)  
Web version: www.panhala.net/Archive/Love_Should_Grow.html    

Beginners

Dedicated to the memory of Karen Silkwood and Eliot Gralla

"From too much love of living,
Hope and desire set free,
Even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea--"


But we have only begun
To love the earth.

We have only begun
To imagine the fullness of life.

How could we tire of hope?
-- so much is in bud.

How can desire fail?
-- we have only begun

to imagine justice and mercy,
only begun to envision

how it might be
to live as siblings with beast and flower,
not as oppressors.

Surely our river
cannot already be hastening
into the sea of nonbeing?

Surely it cannot
drag, in the silt,
all that is innocent?

Not yet, not yet--
there is too much broken
that must be mended,

too much hurt we have done to each other
that cannot yet be forgiven.

We have only begun to know
the power that is in us if we would join
our solitudes in the communion of struggle.

So much is unfolding that must
complete its gesture,

so much is in bud.

By Denise Levertov
(1923 - 1997)

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