Cave of The Storm Nymphs

Edward Poynter, 1903

On The Sea
by John Keats
It keeps eternal whisperings around
    Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
    Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,
    That scarcely will the very smallest shell
    Be moved for days from where it sometime fell.
When last the winds of Heaven were unbound.
Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
    Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
        Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude,
    Or fed too much with cloying melody---
        Sit ye near some old Cavern's Mouth and brood,
Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!

 

Selected Works by Eihei Dogen

Ching-ch'ing's Raindrop Sound
Because the mind is free -
Listening to the rain
Dripping from the eaves,
The drops become
One with me.

In The Stream
In the stream,
Rushing past
To the dusty world,
My fleeting form
Casts no reflection.

One of six verses composed in An'yoin Temple in Fukakusa, 1230:
Drifting pitifully in the whirlwind of birth and death,
As if wandering in a dream,
In the midst of illusion I awaken to the true path;
There is one more matter I must not neglect,
But I need not bother now,
As I listen to the sound of the evening rain
Falling on the roof of my temple retreat
In the deep grass of Fukakusa.

Coming or Going
 The migrating bird
leaves no trace behind
and does not need a guide.

Worship
A white heron
Hiding itself
In the snowy field,
Where even the winter grass
Cannot be seen.

Zazen
The moon reflected
In a mind clear
As still water:
Even the waves, breaking,
Are reflecting its light.

Impermanence
To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops,
Shaken from a crane's bill.

 

Kenneth Rexroth: Your Birthday in the California Mountains

A broken moon on the cold water,
And wild geese crying high overhead,
The smoke of the campfire rises
Toward the geometry of heaven -
Points of light in the infinite blackness.
I watch across the narrow inlet
Your dark figure comes and goes before the fire.
A loon cries out on the night bound lake.
Then all the world is silent with the
Silence of autumn waiting for
The coming of winter. I enter
The ring of firelight, bringing to you
A string of trout for our dinner.
As we eat by the whispering lake,
I say, “Many years from now we will
Remember this night and talk of it.”
Many years have gone by since then, and
Many years again. I remember
That night as though it was last night,
But you have been dead for thirty years.

Thanks, Lumpy Pudding!

The House Of Dust: Part 01: 03: One, where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand - Conrad Aiken

One, where the pale sea foamed at the yellow sand,
With wave upon slowly shattering wave,
Turned to the city of towers as evening fell;
And slowly walked by the darkening road toward it;
And saw how the towers darkened against the sky;
And across the distance heard the toll of a bell.

Along the darkening road he hurried alone,
With his eyes cast down,
And thought how the streets were hoarse with a tide of people,
With clamor of voices, and numberless faces . . .
And it seemed to him, of a sudden, that he would drown
Here in the quiet of evening air,
These empty and voiceless places . . .
And he hurried towards the city, to enter there.

Along the darkening road, between tall trees
That made a sinister whisper, loudly he walked.
Behind him, sea-gulls dipped over long grey seas.
Before him, numberless lovers smiled and talked.
And death was observed with sudden cries,
And birth with laughter and pain.
And the trees grew taller and blacker against the skies
And night came down again.

Unknown Beauty

I don't know who painted this, but it's lovely. If you are, or know, the artist please let me know.
I found it here and it put me in mind of the poem below.

UNKNOWN BEAUTY

She is sweet like my heart,
She is fragrant like my soul,
As sparkling as my eyes,
Tender and gentle
And lush like my sweet dreams;
As intense as my desires
She seizes my deep Self
In flames of pleasing pains,
In glows of unfulfilled desires
And I shudder within in poetic riots.

She is noble within like gold
And dazzles like diamond
In smooth black exterior;
She is all smiles like flowers,
All tender moods like full-moon
And inviting charm inside;
She rouses soul from deep slumber
To streaks of fresh light
That seeks to stream from far horizons;
New worlds open up
Where blend desires in mad dance
And hearts sing heart to heart.

Though unknown beauty,
I know her in every single fibre,
All inside and outside like my Self
As she indeed knows me;
I feel her entreaties from her eyes,
I hear her desires from her heart;
She speaks in silence and calls in shyness
And rouses sharp pangs of sweet desires.

She is an angel in her shyness,
She is an angel in her silence,
She is an angel in her desires
And an angel in her feminine softness
And liquid young fragrance
That visit my soul in joyous dreams;
She melts in my eyes
And streams to my heart
And seizes my soul,
She speaks from a pleasing halo
Where like a living sacred deity,
She spreads her charms deep to my Self.

She is calm in the eye of desires’ storm,
She is still while heart shouts for warmth;
Warmth calls warmth and desire meets desire
And we both meet in cool still distance.

The unknown beauty somehow attuned to my self,
I seek her and she me in unknown bond.

Praveen Kumar

John Hoffman - Song of a Wanderer

I am a man who knows
Of sun and moon and star
Of earth and sea and air
And do not tell of them
Because I have no words

More about the author

Alfonsina Storni - Sweet Torture

My melancholy was gold dust in your hands;
On your long hands I scattered my life;
My sweetnesses remained clutched in your hands;
Now I am a vial of perfume, emptied

How much sweet torture quietly suffered,
When, my soul wrested with shadowy sadness,
She who knows the tricks, I passed the days
kissing the two hands that stifled my life

More about the author

Jim Carroll - Valentine

Thanks to Lumpy pudding for this one



















The word

summons

to be bound

to cynicism

or elaborate expressions.

permutation

snakes through our lives

pasted

to seduce

to be

released, appropriately

unrelated

or something

lopsided

so that it can be

hard

and

warm

hope

from

your piece

to

please

to submit

Ralegh’s Prizes - Robert Pinsky

And Summer turns her head with its dark tangle

All the way toward us....

Islands - Yusef Komunyakaa

An island is one great eye

gazing out, a beckoning lighthouse,

searchlight, a wishbone compass,

or counterweight to the stars.

When it comes to outlook & point

of view, a figure stands on a rocky ledge

peering out toward an archipelago

of glass on the mainland, a seagull’s

wings touching the tip of a high wave,

out to where the brain may stumble.

But when a mind climbs down

from its high craggy lookout

we know it is truly a stubborn thing,

& has to leaf through pages of dust

& light, through pre-memory & folklore,

remembering fires roared down there

till they pushed up through the seafloor

& plumes of ash covered the dead

shaken awake worlds away, & silence

filled up with centuries of waiting.

Sea urchin, turtle, & crab

came with earthly know-how,

& one bird arrived with a sprig in its beak,

before everything clouded with cries,

a millennium of small deaths now topsoil

& seasons of blossoms in a single seed.

Light edged along salt-crusted stones,

across a cataract of blue water,

& lost sailors’ parrots spoke of sirens,

the last words of men buried at sea.

Someone could stand here

contemplating the future, leafing

through torn pages of St. Augustine

or the prophecies by fishermen,

translating spore & folly down to taproot.

The dreamy-eyed boy still in the man,

the girl in the woman, a sunny forecast

behind today, but tomorrow’s beyond

words. To behold a body of water

is to know pig iron & mother wit.

Whoever this figure is,

he will soon return to dancing

through the aroma of dagger’s log,

ginger lily, & bougainvillea,

between chants & strings struck

till gourds rally the healing air,

& till the church-steeple birds

fly sweet darkness home.

Whoever this friend or lover is,

he intones redemptive harmonies.

To lie down in remembrance

is to know each of us is a prodigal

son or daughter, looking out beyond land

& sky, the chemical & metaphysical

beyond falling & turning waterwheels

in the colossal brain of damnable gods,

a Eureka held up to the sun’s blinding eye,

born to gaze into fire. After conquering

frontiers, the mind comes back to rest,

stretching out over the white sand.

About the author

Rainer Maria Rilke - You Who Never Arrived

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of
the next moment. All the immense
images in me -- the far-off, deeply-felt
landscape, cities, towers, and bridges, and
unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods--
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house-- , and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and,
startled, gave back my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same
bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening...

Lucian Blaga: The Light

The light I feel
streaming in my breast when I see you,
is that not a drop of the light
created on the first day,
that light which thirsts for life?

Nothingness lay dying,
as the impenetrable one, hovering alone in the dark,
gave a sign:
Let there be light!

An ocean
and a raging storm of light
arose in an instant:
a thirst for sins, desires, longings, passions
a thirst for light and sun.

But where did it go, that blinding
first light – who knows?
The light I feel
streaming in my breast when I see you – wondrous one,
may be the last drop
of the light made on that first day.

Archibald MacLeish - Ars Poetica

A poem should be palpable and mute

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless

As the flight of birds.

*

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time

As the moon climbs.

*

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean

But be.

Langston Hughes - April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you.

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.

The rain makes running pools in the gutter.

The rain plays a little sleep-song on our roof at night—

And I love the rain.

Rain on Tin - Rodney Jones

If I ever get over the bodies of women, I am going to think of the rain,
of waiting under the eaves of an old house
at that moment
when it takes a form like fog.
It makes the mountain vanish.
Then the smell of rain, which is the smell of the earth a plow turns up,
only condensed and refined.
Almost fifty years since thunder rolled
and the nerves woke like secret agents under the skin.
Brazil is where I wanted to live.
The border is not far from here.
Lonely and grateful would be my way to end,
and something for the pain please,
a little purity to sand the rough edges,
a slow downpour from the Dark Ages,
a drizzle from the Pleistocene.
As I dream of the rain’s long body,
I will eliminate from mind all the qualities that rain deletes
and then I will be primed to study rain’s power,
the first drops lightly hallowing,
but now and again a great gallop of the horse of rain
or an explosion of orange-green light.
A simple radiance, it requires no discipline.
Before I knew women, I knew the lonely pleasures of rain.
The mist and then the clearing.
I will listen where the lightning thrills the rooster up a willow,
and my whole life flowing
until I have no choice, only the rain,
and I step into it.

Source: Salvation Blues: One Hundred Poems 1985-2005 (Mariner Books, 2007)

César Vallejo: Under the Poplars— for Jose Eulogio Garrido

Like priestly imprisoned poets,
the poplars of blood have fallen asleep.
On the hills, the flocks of Bethlehem
chew arias of grass at sunset.

The ancient shepherd, who shivers
at the last martyrdoms of light,
in his Easter eyes has caught
a purebred flock of stars.

Formed in orphanhood, he goes down
with rumors of burial to the praying field,
and the sheep bells are seasoned with shadow.

It survives, the blue warped
In iron, and on it, pupils shrouded,
A dog etches its pastoral howl.

— from The Black Heralds (2003); Translated By Rebecca Seiferle

Are They Shadows - Samuel Daniel, 1562–1619

Are they shadows that we see?

And can shadows pleasure give?

Pleasures only shadows be

Cast by bodies we conceive

And are made the things we deem

In those figures which they seem.

But these pleasures vanish fast

Which by shadows are expressed;

Pleasures are not, if they last;

In their passing is their best.

Glory is most bright and gay

In a flash, and so away.

Feed apace then, greedy eyes,

On the wonder you behold;

Take it sudden as it flies,

Though you take it not to hold.

When your eyes have done their part,

Thought must length it in the heart.

The author

W. S. Graham - Listen. Put on Morning

Listen. Put on morning.

Waken into falling light.

A man’s imagining

Suddenly may inherit

The handclapping centuries

Of his one minute on earth.

And hear the virgin juries

Talk with his own breath

To the corner boys of his street.

And hear the Black Maria

Searching the town at night.

And hear the playropes caa

The sister Mary in.

And hear Willie and Davie

Among bracken of Narnain

Sing in a mist heavy

With myrtle and listeners.

And hear the higher town

Weep a petition of fears

At the poorhouse close upon

The public heartbeat.

And hear the children tig

And run with my own feet

Into the netting drag

Of a suiciding principle.

Listen. Put on lightbreak.

Waken into miracle.

The audience lies awake

Under the tenements

Under the sugar docks

Under the printed moments.

The centuries turn their locks

And open under the hill

Their inherited books and doors

All gathered to distil

Like happy berry pickers

One voice to talk to us.

Yes listen. It carries away

The second and the years

Till the heart’s in a jacket of snow

And the head’s in a helmet white

And the song sleeps to be wakened

By the morning ear bright.

Listen. Put on morning.

Waken into falling light.

Rabindranath Tagore - (“Sing the song of the moment...”)

VII

Sing the song of the moment in careless carols, in the transient light of the day;

Sing of the fleeting smiles that vanish and never look back;

Sing of the flowers that bloom and fade without regret.

Weave not in memory’s thread the days that would glide into nights.

To the guests that must go bid God-speed, and wipe away all traces of their steps.

Let the moments end in moments with their cargo of fugitive songs.

With both hands snap the fetters you made with your own heart chords;

Take to your breast with a smile what is easy and simple and near.

Today is the festival of phantoms that know not when they die.

Let your laughter flush in meaningless mirth like twinkles of light on the ripples;

Let your life lightly dance on the verge of Time like a dew on the tip of a leaf.

Strike in the chords of your harp the fitful murmurs of moments.

Diane di Prima - Buddhist New Year Song

I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves
seated in front of a fireplace, our house
made somehow more gracious, and you said
“There are stars in your hair”— it was truth I
brought down with me
...

The author's web site