And in that room…

 The poems below are excerpted from Poems From the Sanskrit translated by John Brough, ©1968.

My copy is yellowed and the pages are brittle.  I'm sure the pages are on the verge of falling out, and when that happens I'll have to put a rubber band around it.  It's long out of print, so I can't just buy a new one.

It's formatted very strangely, so it's not always clear who the poet is being translated.  They've all been gone for several centuries, so I suppose it's not crucial.  I did my best to credit them, just the same.

26
No, but look here now, this is just absurd,
The way our famous poets talk of girls
As weak and winsome.  Weak?  Is this a word
To use of those who, with a shake of curls
And with the triumph of a modest glance,
Can lead the very gods a merry dance?
     ~Bhartyhari

54
Those whom the gods would keep
In safety, they protect,
Not as a shepherd guards his sheep,
But by the gift of a wise intellect.

Nor do the gods appear
In warrior's armour clad
To strike down with sword or spear.
Those whom they would destroy, they
                                              first make mad.
     ~Bhartyhari

79
Although I conquer all the earth,
Yet for me there is only one city.
In that city there is for me only one house;
And in that house, one room only;
And in that room, a bed.
And one woman sleeps there,
The shining joy and jewel of all my kingdom.
     ~Śūdraka

87
Dearest, if you will love me true,
What use are joys of heaven to me?
But if you will not love me true,
What use are joys of heaven to me?
     ~Śūdraka

114
My best respect to Poverty,
The master who has set me free:
For I can look at all the world,
and no-one looks at me.
     ~Harşa

but I can see

Star Hole
by Richard Brautigan
 
I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,
 
watching light
pour itself toward
  me.
 
The light pours
itself through  
a small hole
in the sky.
 
I'm not very happy,
but I can see
how things are
  faraway.

()

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
by Richard Brautigan
 
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
 
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
 
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

 

It's an interesting poem, but I think it would have been better if he had just omitted the parts in parenthesis.

I could be wrong-- I don't know what he was going for there-- but it feels like he was attempting to mimic e.e. cummings' style. It's a bit distracting.

 

And They Said

By Becky Hemsley @beckyhemsleypoetry (via):

She sat at the back and they said she was shy,
She led from the front and they hated her pride,
They asked her advice and then questioned her guidance,
They branded her loud, then were shocked by her silence,
When she shared no ambition they said it was sad,
So she told them her dreams and they said she was mad,
They told her they’d listen, then covered their ears,
And gave her a hug while they laughed at her fears,
And she listened to all of it thinking she should,
Be the girl they told her to be best as she could,
But one day she asked what was best for herself,
Instead of trying to please everyone else,
So she walked to the forest and stood with the trees,
She heard the wind whisper and dance with the leaves,
She spoke to the willow, the elm and the pine,
And she told them what she’d been told time after time,
She told them she felt she was never enough,
She was either too little or far far too much,
Too loud or too quiet, too fierce or too weak,
Too wise or too foolish, too bold or too meek,
Then she found a small clearing surrounded by firs,
And she stopped…and she heard what the trees said to her,
And she sat there for hours not wanting to leave,
For the forest said nothing, it just let her breathe.

And that reminded me of this; similar words, totally different tone:

Full lyrics HERE.

 

Rumi²

The two poems below, written by Persian mystic Rumi 800 years ago, seem to transcend Islam and speak to a more universal religion.  In particular, the last four lines of "Flood Residue" and the opening of "As Ripeness Comes" sound quite a bit like Hinduism:

 

Flood Residue
from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks ©2004
 
The taste of today is not that of yesterday.
A pot boils over.
 
A watchman calls down the ladder,
Did you hear the commotion last night
from the seventh level?
 
Saturn turns to Venus and tells her
to play the strings more gently.
Taurus milk runs red.  Leo slinks from the sky.
 
Strange signs, because of a word
that comes from the soul
to help us escape speaking and concepts.
 
I answer the nightwatchman,
You will have to assign meaning
For these ominous events.
 
I have been set free from the hunt,
the catching and being caught,
to rest in these dregs
of flood residue, pure and empty.

As Ripeness Comes
from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks ©2004

What souls desire arrives.
We are standing up to our necks
in the sacred pool.  Majesty is here.

The grains of the earth take in something
they do not understand.

Where did this come from?
It comes from where your longing comes.

From which direction?
As ripeness comes to fruit.

This answer lights a candle
in the chest of anyone who hears.

Most people only look for the way when they hurt.
Pain is a fine path to the unknowable.

But today is different.
Today the quality we call splendor
puts on human clothes, walks through the door,
closes it behind, and sits down with us
in this companionship.

Wraps-Blunts-Cuts

by artist/poet Alec Finlay

…with nothing in their hands.

Sweet Talked Into Connection
from The Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks ©2004

Stay with your family.
Do not wander away.

If you are an arc of the moon,
live the full circle.

Why should a part be coy with the whole?
Do you want compliments?
Do you want to be lied to?

As a genus branches and becomes a species,
so the unseen reaches here.

It's a constant natural process,
but you want to be sweet-talked
into connection.

It would be better
if a spirit-king slapped you awake.

Don't avoid discipline.
You have learned ways to make a living
for your body.  Now learn to support
your soul.  You wear fine clothing.
How do you dress your spirit?

This world is a playground
where children pretend to have shops.

Sometimes when they wrestle,
it may look like sex,
but none of it's real.

They exchange imaginary money.
Night comes, and they go home tired
with nothing in their hands.

3

 I like to have three books going at once: one challenging, one light, and one book of poems.

I've started on the novels of Jean Rhys, and that's my challenging one-- not in the sense that she's hard to understand, but that her topics are serious. I'm just beginning, but my first impression is that her style is similar to J.D. Salinger's. I love her use of repetition.

My light one is Dewey by Vicki Myron, the story of a library cat and the woman who cares for him. It's not overly sentimental, but there are a lot of Awww… moments.

And my book of poetry is a rereading of The Essential Rumi translated by Coleman Barks. Rumi is remarkably accessible, considering he lived in Persia 800 years ago.

It's a good idea to read poems at different times in your life. The poem you loved as a teenager and the poem that strikes you as an adult are seldom the same.

Hokku

 

Not grown to a butterfly
this late in autumn
a caterpillar

~Bashō

I Remember

This was an experiment that really paid off:  silky smooth soul blended with spoken word.

She Cannot Win

He Tells Her
by Wendy Cope

He tells her that the earth is flat--
He knows the facts, and that is that.

In altercations fierce and long
She tries her best to prove him wrong.

But he has learned to argue well.
He calls her arguments unsound
And often asks her not to yell.
She cannot win.  He stands his ground.

The planet goes on being round.

The End and the Beginning

The End and the Beginning
by Wislawa Szymborska
from The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry, 1996
translation: Stanislaw Baranczak & Clare Cavanaugh

After every war
someone’s got to tidy up.
Things won’t pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone’s got to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Someone’s got to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone’s got to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone’s got to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirt sleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens nodding
his unshattered head.
But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who’ll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less
than nothing.

Someone’s got to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.

I Wish You

Está vez no voy a desearte feliz
año nuevo .
Eso ya lo hace todo el mundo ,
(incluído yo) .
Hoy te deseo muchas otras cosas
Te deseo coraje para decir basta ,
Te deseo que olvides a quién se olvidó de ti ,
Te deseo que puedas cerrar puertas
y abrir ventanas ,
Te deseo que no te conformes que no te quedes con la culpa ,
Te deseo que te atrevas ,
Te deseo ojeras y risas ,
Te deseo locura y magia ,
También te deseo errores para aprender ,
Te deseo viento , para dejarte llevar ,
Te deseo chispa en la mirada ,
Colores para los días grises ,
Paraguas y refugio para las tormentas , lluvia para calarte
Y sol para calentarte ,
Te deseo muchos te echo de menos ,
Te deseo abrazos de los que duran … .

✩✩✩

This time I'm not going to wish you happy
new Year .
Everyone already does that,
(included me) .
Today I wish you many other things
I wish you the courage to say enough is enough,
I wish you to forget who forgot you,
I wish you that you can close doors
and open windows,
I wish you that you do not settle, that you do not stay with the guilt,
I wish you to dare,
I wish you dark circles and laughter,
I wish you madness and magic,
I also wish you mistakes to learn,
I wish you wind, to let you go,
I wish you a spark in your eyes,
Colors for gray days,
Umbrella and shelter for storms, rain to soak you
And sun to warm you,
I wish you many, "I miss yous,"
I wish you hugs that last...

~Joaquín Sabina

Leave Out

 Poet/Artist Erika Landström has a web page HERE.

Welcome

Will you start a fire?
I'll show you something nice:
a giant snowball
~Bashō

And that reminded me of this:

The Pasture
By Robert Frost

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.

I'm re-reading Bashō and His Interpreters:  Selected Hokku with Commentary by Makoto Ueda, ©1992, and I recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in Asian poetry.

It's very accessible.  Each page has a haiku (or one of its myriad variations) followed by the original Japanese, a paragraph explaining the background of the poem, and five or six bite-sized critical analysis by experts.

The analysis is the fun part.  The "experts" quite often have wildly differing interpretations, which shows you how subjective literature is— but also gives you different angles of looking at the same words, yourself.

It Doesn't Matter

Where Everything Is Music
by Rumi

Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

Memory

Memory
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich

My mind lets go a thousand things
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings,
And yet recalls the very hour--
'T was noon by yonder village tower,
And on the last blue noon in May--
The wind came briskly up this way,
Crisping the brook beside the road;
Then, pausing here, set down its load
Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly
Two petals from that wild-rose tree.

Triumph

Failing and Flying
by Jack Gilbert
from Open Field-Poems from Group 18
Open Field Press, Northampton Ma. 2011

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stoney field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage had failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Leaves Takes

Cada persona que pasa por nuestra
vida es única.
Siempre deja un poco de si y se lleva
un poco de nosotros,
Habra los que se llevan mucho,
Pero no habrá de los que no nos dejaran nada…

~Jorge Luis Borges

 ❇

Every person who passes through our
life is unique.
He always leaves a little of himself and takes
a little of us,
There will be those who take a lot,
But there won't be those who won't leave us anything…

~Jorge Luis Borges

Some waif swoops just in time

Acceptance
by Robert Frost

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.'