A god can do it. But will you tell me how a man can penetrate through the lyre’s strings? Our mind is split. And at the shadowed crossing of heart-roads there is no temple for Apollo. Song, as you have taught it, is not desire, not wooing any grace that can be achieved; song is reality. Simple, for a god. But when can we be real? When does he pour the earth, the stars, into us? Young …
Poetry
Unidentifying the Day
It is late November, Thanksgiving, and the slow rain falls as all day it has fallen. The mists drift in the treetops along Camp Branch. The ewe flock grazes the green slope as in a dream of a painting by Samuel Palmer. There is no wind. It is completely quiet. From the distance comes only the sound of the branch flowing in its wooded hollow, old, old, and new, unidentifying the day and …
The Cave
Here's a poem which, it would seem, is playing off of Plato's allegory of the cave. I find the final stanza quite provocative, and will return to in a future post ... The Cave Someone standing at the mouth had the idea to enter. To go further than light or language could go. As they followed the idea, light and language followed like two wolves—panting, hearing themselves panting. …
Equestrian
Shiva's the horse and Vishnu's at the saddle, Brahma's cheering at the stirrup. Only the yogi, artful in breath and posture, can say which god shall mount and ride this horse. He who strikes the Unstruck Sound, calls space his body and emptiness his home, who has neither name nor colour nor family nor form, who, meditating on Himself, is both Source and Sound, is the god who shall mount …
A Lover Muses
Lines to a Nasturtium (A Lover Muses) Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa, I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar, Into your flaming heart; Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter As the furies after tore him apart? A bird, next, small and humming, Looked into your startled depths and fled . . . Surely, some dread sight, and dafter Than human eyes as mine can see, Set the stricken …
The Total Night In Myself
Love Song Like the hills under dusk you fall away from the light: you deepen: the green light darkens and you are nearly lost: only so much light as stars keep manifests your face: I feel the total night in myself rave for the light along your lips. Love Song (2) Rings of birch bark stand in the woods still circling the nearly vanished log: after we are …