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Mayo 24, 2005
A Blessing
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more, they begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
James Wright
Posted by sarita at 3:49 PM
May Morning
Deep into spring, winter is hanging on. Bitter and skillful in his
hopelessness, he stays alive in every shady place, starving along the
Mediterranean: angry to see the glittering sea-pale boulder alive
with lizards green as Judas leaves. Winter is hanging on. He still
believes. He tries to catch a lizard by the shoulder. One olive tree
below Grottaglie welcomes the winter into noontime shade, and
talks as softly as Pythagoras. Be still, be patient, I can hear him say,
cradling in his arms the wounded head, letting the sunlight touch
the savage face.
James Wright
Posted by sarita at 9:27 AM
Mayo 18, 2005
Ours is not the task...
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take "everyone on Earth" to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D
Posted by sarita at 10:54 AM
Mayo 15, 2005
It is impossible to give a clear account of the world...
It is impossible to give a clear account of the world, but art can teach us to reproduce it just as the world reproduces itself in the course of its eternal gyrations. The primordial sea indefatigably repeats the same words and casts up the same astonished beings on the same sea-shore.
Albert Camus
Posted by sarita at 5:01 PM
Mayo 8, 2005
Autumn
(from Amen)
Ah, a sound I recognize – autumn’s rambling gust
Here already; deep inside the forests it breeds thunder
Silently, and cripples overloaded orchards.
A solemn wind that’s like us, speaking our language
Where disaster sings an undertone.
Let us offer him
The roses’ waning, smells by the cartload slowly pouring
Into the valley, and stanzas of birdsong he unravels
In the warmth that cupped our sleep.
This evening’s
Sky long shut within its brightness, expands and breaks away
Dragging the horizon of its slant sail; and the blue
Once our habitual threshold, moves off in long strides
Through the creased vale lying open for the rain to read.
Jacques Réda, translated by Jennie Feldman
Posted by sarita at 1:16 PM
Hotel Continental
(from Recitatif)
Solitude is chill and soft on the tongue that names it
And lifts the soul a little in broken light;
That’s when – out of the desertion, the severing – a figure
Rises and beckons in its turn under wallpaper leaves,
In the wardrobe’s creak and the margins of a book
That can’t be read by the distant gaze turned on us.
But there’s no pronounceable name for this pit that divides
The self in two, and makes of every heartbeat
A marked door slamming when eviction’s done.
Here I am with one more stair to go,
Where a chair’s consoling presence waits
And reassurance murmurs from the basin;
Where even solitude withdraws its hand from mine
And leaves me, like that day after you’d gone,
When standing in the rain I saw a circle of time
Impossible to reckon, and inside it
The little park gate clashing iron on iron.
Jacques Réda, translated by Jennie Feldman
Posted by sarita at 12:01 PM