Jane Kenyon: Depression in Winter

[silent-claws.livejournal.com]

There comes a little space between the south
side of a boulder
and the snow that fills the woods around it.
Sun heats the stone, reveals
a crescent of bare ground: brown ferns,
and tufts of needles like red hair,
acorns, a patch of moss, bright green....

I sank with every step up to my knees,
throwing myself forward with a violence
of effort, greedy for unhappiness--
until by accident I found the stone,
with its secret porch of heat and light,
where something small could luxuriate, then
turned back down my path, chastened and calm.

Rumi

[superjill.livejournal.com]

What's your favourite Rumi poem?

Foiled Sleep

[musickal.livejournal.com]

Ah me! I cannot sleep at night;
And when I shut my eyes, forsooth,
I cannot banish from my sight
The vision of her slender youth.

She stands before me lover-wise,
Her naked beauty fair and slim,
She smiles upon me, and her eyes
With over fierce desire grow dim.

Slowly she leans to me. I meet
The passion of her gaze anew,
And then her laughter, clear and sweet,
Thrills all the hollow silence through.

O, siren, with the mocking tongue!
O beauty, lily-sweet and white!
I see her, slim and fair and young.
And ah! I cannot sleep tonight.

* Marie-Madeleine (Baroness von Puttkamer)

Kazim Ali

[spiritualorchid.livejournal.com]

Dear Rumi



you’ve forgotten the other life
in which he threw your books into the fountain


and the ink, unrecognizable at last
reached for you with dissipating lust


now you know the sun—Shams—in the sky
is not the one you orbit around

nor the one who went out the back door into night
and never returned


that day in the marketplace street you, estranged and weeping,
realized the true Shams was within—stopped looking—and said:

I am Shams-u-Tabriz...estranged in the street
and aren’t you also that street?


went up the mountain at the break of dawn and still met
people coming down from an earlier pilgrimage

aren’t you that mountain?

in the dawn at the tomb of not-Shams
you prayed and prayed to be not-found

who is the sun inside you?
who was it who left me then? are you that?


and the prayer condensed against the familiar sounds
his chair scraping against the floor

and the pure dread you felt as he walked out the back door—
knowing he would never return, that you would go mad,

spend years looking for him…that you would never find him...
so what do you say about it?


somewhere in the world now
at every moment

Shams is dropping behind the mountains
into the night—


at the fountain in the village square
the books are still weeping, asking to be rescued—


even the mountains are bending down
to try to help them—



dear I do not mourn:





you Are

(no subject)

[trinity-93.livejournal.com]

the only animal | franz wright


The only animal that commits suicide
went for a walk in the park,
basked on a hard bench
in the first star,
traveled to the edge of space
in an armchair
while company quietly
talked, and abruptly
returned,
the room empty

The only animal that cries,
that takes off its clothes
and reports to the mirror, the one
and only animal
that brushes its own teeth?

( Read more... )

(no subject)

[little-lady-d.livejournal.com]

sappho (trans. my mary barnard) - “afraid of losing you”

Afraid of losing you

I ran fluttering
like a little girl
after her mother.

A Display of Mackerel // Mark Doty

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

Partially to fulfill a recent request, and partially because it's a beautiful poem that hasn't been posted since 2006, according to the memories. Note: I'm aware that it exceeds 30 lines but couldn't figure out where to LJ-cut it. If it's a problem, let me know and I'll put it under a cut.

A Display of Mackerel

They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections

like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor,
and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other
---nothing about them
of individuality. Instead

they're all exact expressions
of the one soul,
each a perfect fulfillment

of heaven's template,
mackerel essence. As if
after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler's
made uncountable examples,
each as intricate

in its oily fabulation
as the one before.
Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves
entirely in the universe
of shimmer---would you want

to be yourself only
unduplicatable, doomed
to be lost? They'd prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,
multitudinous. Even now
they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.
They don't care they're dead
and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,
they didn't care that they were living:
all, all for all,

the rainbowed school
and its acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem
even on ice, to be together, selfless,
which is the price of gleaming.

The Bait by John Donne

[a-healing-mind.livejournal.com]

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove,
Of golden sands and crystal brooks,
With silken lines and silver hooks.

There will the river whispering run,
Warmed by thine eyes more than the sun,
And there the enamored fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt swim in that live bath,
Each fish, which every channel hath,
Will amorously to thee swim,
Gladder to catch thee, than thou him.

If thou, to be so seen, beest loath,
By sun or moon, thou darkenest both;
And if myself have leave to see,
I need not their light, having thee.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset
With strangling snare or windowy net.

Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest
The bedded fish in banks outwrest,
Or curious traitors, sleave-silk flies,
Bewitch poor fishes' wandering eyes.

For thee, thou need'st no such deceit,
For thou thyself art thine own bait;
That fish that is not catched thereby,
Alas, is wiser far than I.