By Wallace Stevens
This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care.
You can find this poem in The Collected Poems.
I’ve been a bit scattered with posting the past few weeks–thanks for understanding! Although I’m a few hours late tonight, I thought this poem beautiful and unusual and I look forward to reading more by this poet.
By Octavio Paz
Translated By Eliot Weinberger
for Roger Caillois
Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.
Wind carves stone,
stone’s a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
Stone, wind, water.
Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Wind, water, stone.
Each is another and no other:
crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:
water, stone, wind.
You can find this in The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz.
F. S. Flint – 1885-1960
London, my beautiful,
it is not the sunset
nor the pale green sky
shimmering through the curtain
of the silver birch,
nor the quietness;
it is not the hopping
of birds
upon the lawn,
nor the darkness
stealing over all things
that moves me.
But as the moon creeps slowly
over the tree-tops
among the stars,
I think of her
and the glow her passing
sheds on the men.
London, my beautiful,
I will climb
into the branches
to the moonlit tree-tops,
that my blood may be cooled
by the wind.
This poem is in the public domain.
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
You can find this poem in She Had Some Horses.
by John O’ Donohue
Blessed be the longing that brought you here
And quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to listen to the voice of
desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.
May you have the wisdom to enter generously into
your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants
you to take.
May the forms of your belonging–in love, creativity,
and friendship–
Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your own soul.
May the one you long for long for you.
May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of
your desire.
May a secret Providence guide your thought and
nurture you’re feeling.
May your mind inhabit your life with the sureness
with which your body inhabits the world.
May your heart never be haunted by ghost-
structures of old damage.
May you come to accept your longing as divine
urgency.
May you know the urgency with which God longs
for you.
You can find this in the collection To Bless the Space Between Us.
by Emily Dickinson
A sloop of amber slips away
Upon an ether sea,
And wrecks in peace a purple tar,
The son of ecstasy.
You can find this poem in Hope is the Thing as Feathers.
You can find this in The Book of a Monastic Life in Rilke’s Book of Hours.
by Rainer Maria Rilke
You, God, who live next door–
If at times, through the long night, I trouble you
with my urgent knocking–
this is why: I hear you breathe so seldom.
I know you’re all alone in that room.
If you should be thirsty, there’s no one
to get you a glass of water.
I wait listening, always. Just give me a sign!
I’m right here.
As it happens, the wall between us
is very thin. Why couldn’t a cry
from one of us
break it down? It would crumble
easily.
it would barely make a sound.
by Rumi
Stay together, friends,
Don’t scatter and sleep,
Our friendship is made
of being awake.
The waterwheel accepts water
and turns and gives it away,
weeping.
That way it stays in the garden,
whereas another roundness rolls
through a dry riverbed looking
for what it thinks it wants.
Stay here, quivering with each moment
like a drop of mercury.
You can find this in the collection The Essential Rumi.
by May Sarton
In the dark theatre lovers sit
Watching the supple dancers weave
A fugue, motion and music melded.
There on the stage below, brilliantly lit
No dancer stumbles or may grieve;
Their very smiles are disciplined and moulded.
And in the dark old lovers feel dismay
Watching the ardent bodies leap and freeze,
Thinking how age has changed them and has mocked.
Once they were light and bold in lissome play,
Limber as willows that could bend with ease–
But as they watch a vision is unlocked.
Imagination springs the trap of youth.
And in the dark motionless, as they stare,
Old lovers reach new wonders and new answers
As in the mind they leap to catch the truth,
For young the soul was awkward, unaware,
That claps its hands now with the supple dancers.
And in the flesh those dancers cannot spare
What the old lovers have had time to learn,
That the soul is a lithe and serene athlete
That deepens touch upon the darkening air.
It is not energy but light they burn,
The radiant powers of the Paraclete.
You can find this in Collected Poems 1930-1993.
by Emily Dickinson
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port,–
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
You can find this in the collection Hope is the Thing With Feathers.
Life of Kim 