From time to time a poem

"Cold cliffs, more beautiful the deeper you enter--
Yet no one travels this road.
White clouds idle about tall crags;
On the green peak a single monkey wails.
What other companions do I need?
I grow old doing as I please.
Though face and form alter with the years,
I hold fast to the pearl of the mind."

Hanshan
Translated by Burton Watson

This reminded me of tzb's service last year about death: http://www.templeofthejediorder.org/sermons/2139-death

"A telling analogy for life and death:
Compare the two of them to water and ice.
Water draws together to become ice,
And ice disperses again to become water.
Whatever has died is sure to be born again;
Whatever is born comes round again to dying.
As ice and water do one another no harm,
So life and death, the two of them, are fine."

Hanshan
Translated by Peter Harris

The conditions of a solitary bird are five:
the first; that it flies to the highest point;
the second: that it does not suffer for company; even of its own kind;
the third: that it aims its beak to the skies;
the fourth: that it has no definite color;
the fith: that it sings very softly


San Juan de la Cruz
"Dichos de Luz y Amor
Sayings of Light and Love"

Love, I have wounds,
Only you can mend,
You can mend.
I guess that's love,
I can't pretend,
I Can't pretend.

Feel, my skin is rough,
But it can be cleansed,
It Can be cleansed.
And my arms are tough,
But they can be bent,
Can be bent.

And I wanna fight,
But I can't contend.
I guess that's love,
I can't pretend,
I Can't pretend.

Oh feel our bodies grow,
And our souls they blend.
Yeah love I hope you know,
How much my heart depends.

But I guess that's love I can't pretend,
I guess that's love I can't pretend.

Oh feel our bodies grow,
and our souls they blend.
Yeah love I hope you know,
how much my heart depends.

I guess that's love I can't pretend,
I guess that's love I can't pretend.

- Tom Odell (Can't Pretend)

Riverbend

From damask clouds it came
Soon flooding, single filed
Breaking through the hollow night

Serene, the lamplight moon
A citrine gaze now scattered
Across onyx turbulence

Between the creeping trees
Delirious in silence
A hush-blown, fervent whisper

Submerging landscapes of
Dark plants and fish and snails
Dead stones and toothless jawbones

Until the twist! the flip!
Coiling backwards, wrenched aside
Collapse – a cataclysm –

Then water roaring on
In lost unseen contortions,
And endless, ceaseless motion
to the sea.

Broken hearts and bottles,
lay thrown about the floor,
because there's no rule of thumb,
in love and life and war,

Sometimes at night,
the thoughts of what have been,
come flooding through the window,
in the veil of a dream,

better loved and lost,
than never loved at all,
yet i sit and wait,
for my lost love to call.

All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the sun that shone,
We must speak of other matters,
You can be me when I'm gone.

Flowers gathered in the morning,
Afternoon they blossom on,
Still are withered in the evening,
You can be me when I'm gone.

Neil Gaiman (From Sandman Volume 9)

Whisper Lake

A narrow stroke of land
Frames Whisper Lake
Flat between low clouds
Dredging old white shadows
Through the waiting pool

And fog which narrows, thins
Conceals, distorts
In silence, drifting
Across silver barked birch
And grey, muddy grass

Their ghosts are drowning still
In the vacance
Whisper Lake is mute
And even wind won’t stir
Breath enough to raise

the fabled whisper.

It started waAay back in twenty twelve
When I got butt naked and took the delve
Off into the Mysteries
Now ain't nothing unknown
That ain't known to me


:evil: