Contemplative poetry | Contemplative Inquiry

POEM: BRIEF REFLECTION ON CATS GROWING ON TREES

When moles still had their annual general meetings

and when they still had better eyesight it befell

that they expressed a wish to discover what

was above.

So they elected a commission to ascertain what was above. The commission despatched a sharp-sighted fleet-footed

mole. He, having left his native mother earth,

caught sight of a tree with a bird on it.

Thus a story was put forward that up above

birds grew on trees. However,

some moles thought that this was

too simple. So they dispatched another

mole to ascertain if birds did grow on trees.

By then it was evening and on the tree

some cats were mewing. Mewing cats,

the second mole announced, grew on the tree.

Thus an alternative theory emerged about cats.

The two conflicting theories bothered an elderly

neurotic member of the commission. And he

climbed up to see for himself.

By then it was night and all was pitch-black.

Both schools are mistaken, the venerable mole declared.

birds and cats are optical illusions produced

by the refraction of light. In fact, things above

Were the same as below, only the clay was less dense and

the upper roots of the trees were whispering something,

but only a little.

And that was that.

Ever since then moles have remained below ground:

they do not set up commissions

or presuppose the existence of cats.

Or if so only a little.

In On the Contrary and Other Poems by Miroslav Holub (Newcastle-on-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1984 – translated from Czech by Ewald Osers)

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POEM: DEMETER

Where I lived – winter and hard earth.

I sat in my cold stone room

choosing tough words, granite, flint,

to break the ice. My broken heart –

I tried that, but it skimmed,

flat, over the frozen lake.

She came from a long, long way,

but I saw her at last, walking,

my daughter, my girl, across the fields,

in bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers

to her mother’s house. I swear

the air softened and warmed as she moved,

the blue sky smiling, none too soon,

with the small shy mouth of a new moon.

In The world’s wife: poems by Carol Ann Duffy (London: Picador, 1999)

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I read the songs of Kabir, partly for their power and beauty, partly for their touching humanity and partly to learn something as a contemplative practitioner. The songs themselves, according to John Stratton Hawley, have survived in late manuscripts from different parts of India, modified over time by the region, religion and caste position of their listeners. When it comes to translation, Hawley notes that Robert Bly presents a Kabir who stands for self-reliance (like Emerson), principled disobedience (like Thoreau) “and a set of practices that honors the meeting of mind and body and celebrates the intense emotions that connect them (like Bly himself?)”

So I feel I’m in good company when putting two songs together in a way that makes the second answer the first, in the pursuit of my own inquiry. It’s about this: how do I avoid the trap of working on my small personal narcissism only to embed a larger spiritual narcissism?

Here is the first, scene-setting song.

Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world

I hold to, and keep spinning out!

I gave up sewn clothes, and wore a robe,

But I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.

So I bought some burlap, but I still

Throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.

I pulled back my sexual longings,

And now discover that I’m angry a lot.

I gave up rage, and now I notice

That I am greedy all day.

I worked hard at dissolving the greed

And now I am proud of myself.

When the mind wants to break its link to the world

It still holds on to one thing.

Kabir says: Listen my friend,

There are very few that find the path.

Here, in the second poem, I find a way through – by not going anywhere. I read the “wanting-creature” below to be bound up in ‘Spiritual’ wanting, rather than the average sensual kind.

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:

What is this river you want to cross?

There are no travellers on the river-road, and no road.

Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or resting?

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.

There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.

There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!

Do you believe that there is some place that will make the soul less thirsty?

In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;

There you have a solid place for your feet.

Think about it carefully!

Don’t go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things,

And stand firm in that which you are.

Kabir Ecstatic poems Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1992 (The English translations are free enough for Robert Bly to call them ‘versions by Robert Bly’. There is an earlier set of translations published by MacMillan in New York in 1915 by Rabindranath Tagore assisted by Evelyn Underhill under the title Songs of Kabir. Whilst I don’t follow Bly in calling the English of the earlier work “useless”, I do find that Bly’s interpretation has more passion and power. The Bly work includes an insightful afterword Kabir and the transcendental Bly by John Stratton Hawley).

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January 9, 2015

POEM: STOLEN SECONDS

Romany Rivers is my sixth and final poet from the collection ‘Moon Poets: Six Pagan poets’ published by Moon Books and edited by Trevor Greenfield. This poem concerns the struggle of a mother to find space for her own personhood. She is “a British born Witch, Reiki Master and Artist living in Canada, exploring a life of personal passion, spirituality and creativity … When not writing, creating or running around after two energetic children, Romany turns her hand to individual healing sessions and community projects that provide family support”. The collection as a whole also includes work by Beverley Price, Martin Pallot, Tiffany Chaney, Lorna Smithers, and Robin Herne.

Stolen Seconds

Sometimes I steal into the garden

And stand by the washing line

Laundry forgotten in my hands as my eyes search the skies

Looking for something

Seeing everything

Noticing nothing

I breathe deeply

And release one long shuddering sigh

A breath held without conscious thought

Waiting for just a few minutes peace to fly free from the constricted chest

I look down

At my trembling hands

Clutching my clothes

Representations of the miniature people

Who take up enormous space within my daily life

Leaving little room for me as I shrink and shrivel to give them more room

I let go

Of the laundry

Of the breath

Of the stress

Of the tiredness

Of the constant needing, feeding, reading, singing, sighing, playing and praying for peace

I let go

And close my eyes

Wondering if tears will kiss my cheeks in gratitude

For the silent still moments

Stolen swiftly

Beside the washing line.

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January 5, 2015

POEM: WINTER IS …

Beverley Price is my fifth poet from the collection ‘Moon Poets: Six Pagan poets’ published by Moon Books and edited by Trevor Greenfield, and she continues a northern winter theme. Beverley “is a weaver of dark prose and poetry, dreamer of Gothic imagery, cat lover and nature worshipper. Her work deals with the bitter fact that love is not always chocolate boxes and roses mixed in with the imagery of her pagan roots and love of mythology”. The collection as a whole also includes work by Martin Pallot, Tiffany Chaney, Lorna Smithers, Robin Herne and Romany Rivers.

Winter Is …

Winter, the trees stand bare.

Snow covers the ground.

A secret message, just for me to share.

It died on the breeze, not making a sound.

Blunted by the whitewash.

Reinforcing my desire.

Whisper leaves, the story told.

The urge to feel and enquire.

The winter wolves are coming.

I would love to be there.

And round about, the waste of time.

This winter is usual and rare.

Now, winter time is full of light.

Winter had become my lover.

Hot with your love, and summer to discover.

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January 1, 2015

POEM: WOLF VOICE

Happy New Year to all readers of this post! My very best wishes for 2015. I offer a poem by Martin Pallot, a wolf’s life-world in the northern winter.

Martin is my fourth poet from the collection ‘Moon Poets: Six Pagan poets’ published by Moon Books and edited by Trevor Greenfield. Martin has been writing poetry since the early 1980s, mainly inspired by Nature and his pagan beliefs. He admires the early poets and story tellers and the way they engaged the ear, as well as the mind of their audience, and encourages people to say his poetry as well as just reading it. The collection as a whole also includes work by Tiffany Chaney, Lorna Smithers, Robin Herne, Romany Rivers and Beverley Price.

Wolf Voice

Wolf, howling to the moon,

The wind hears your words,

The earth feels your voice,

Sending out your spirit sound,

Calling to the great She wolf

Who shakes the stars from her fur.

Loping in the light of her one great eye,

Silver, shadowing the pack path,

Snow, scented by the passing prey,

Guides you on your killing way.

The trackless whiteness,

Sculpted by spirits of the air,

Into shape of deer and bison.

These insubstantial ghosts,

A pulsating presence in your

Preternatural eye.

When the kill is made,

The pack song rises,

To thank the She Wolf

For her gift of life,

To the den of generations.

And the moon,

Resting on a bed

Of winter branches,

Smiles, to hear

The voice of Wolf.

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December 24, 2014

POEM: CIRCLE OF THE SOUL

A third poet from the collection ‘Moon Poets: Six Pagan poets’ published by Moon Books and edited by Trevor Greenfield. Tiffany Chaney is a poet and artist residing in North Carolina. Her poetry collection Between Blue and Grey won the 2013 Mother Vine Festival Award for Best in poetry. Tiffany can be found on http://www.tiffanychaney.com/

The collection as a whole also includes work by Lorna Smithers, Robin Herne, Romany Rivers, Martin Pallot and Beverley Price.

Circle of the Soul

Wake,

wake the witness,

silent Sulis

of the pond.

Pretend the nameless

are named.

Pretend the formless

are framed.

Wake,

wake the witness.

Wait,

until it is your turn

of the wheel.

Satiate

the self with

the making of souls,

until having played

pretend you can fall

asleep again.

Wake, and witness,

so we may recall.

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December 16, 2014

POEM: WEPWAWET

Another poem from the collection ‘Moon Poets: Six Pagan poets’ published by Moon Books and edited by Trevor Greenfield. This one is by Robin Herne, “educator, poet, storyteller, artist, dog-owner and Druid”, whose passion for mythologies extends beyond the Celtic world to the ancient Greek and (as in this poem) Egyptian cultures. Robert’s public blog can be found at http://roundtheherne.blogspot.co.uk/

The collection as a whole also includes work by Lorna Smithers, Tiffany Chaney, Romany Rivers, Martin Pallot and Beverley Price.

Wepwawet

Awaken in peace

Beloved of the sun.

Awaken in peace

Follower of the moon.

Desert wanderer

Maker of tracks

In the pathless wastes

Grey light in a red land.

The door is bolted to me

Confined within my mind.

Opener of the ways,

Unlock what I cannot.

Let me ride besides you

In the barque of Re,

Worlds open before us.

Danger abounds, my soul yearns!

Howling in the darkness,

I shiver to your hot breath.

Let me be open, let me be open

And live, let me not sleep.

Robin Herne writes: “the Egyptian deity Wepwawet is known as the Opener of the Ways, and stands at the head of the sun god’s ship unlocking the doors that lead into Dwat, the Underworld, as the sun goes down in the west, and opening the doors back into the land of the living as the sun rises in the East. Establishing Egyptian metre is difficult owing to the uncertainty over precisely how words should be pronounced. However, surviving examples of poetry make use of frequently repeated phrases, much like musical refrains.”

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December 15, 2014

THE MYSTIC SENSE

In his book on Zen Paganism (1), Tom Swiss has a chapter called The Mystic Sense. He includes Mystic, a poem by D.H. Lawrence.

They call all experiences of the

senses mystic, when the

experience is considered.

So an apple becomes mystic

when I taste in it

the summer and the snows, the

wild welter of earth

and the insistence of the sun.

Swiss notes, “one specific, wonderful deep type of beauty comes … from the perception of a relationship between our immediate subjective experience and the broader world”. He adds that depending on our social conditioning and religious training we may come to conceptualise this in terms like ‘cosmic consciousness’, ‘the presence of the divine’, ‘the perception of emptiness’, a feeling of ‘oneness with the universe’, or of ‘sacredness’ or an experience of ‘no-mind’. They are all expressions of the mystical sense, and we have entered a period in which we can let go of any residual belief that this sense is a rare possession, or the exclusive province of a few spiritual specialists and champions.

The way we make meaning and find a language for such experiences may still be heavily conditioned by culture and still be used to justify the truth of dogmas that have in reality “only provided a filter” and “determined what color glasses” we are wearing when we “behold the Clear Light”. But behold it we do, in many different ways, and “with practice we can develop this sense”. Indeed we can “even manage to perceive the mystical experience from multiple perspectives, to swap the glasses for a couple of different colors”. In this context, Swiss reminds us that “this is one of the goals of ceremonial magic, as practised by occultists and Pagans” and not at all confined to still, meditative states.

Swiss, Tom (2013) Why Buddha touched the earth: Zen Paganism for the 21^st. century Stafford, UK: Megalithica books

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December 4, 2014

TREE AT MY WINDOW

Last Saturday I went with my partner Elaine to an art trail in Bristol – a weekend event in which artists open their homes to the public to look at their work, and special street maps are made to help us find our way around. In one of life’s small magic moments, Elaine discovered a tea cup whose imagery really drew her, by a ceramicist (also sculptor and painter) we were visiting, and I bought it for her. It illustrates a poem by Robert Frost – Tree at My Window.

Tree at my window, window tree,

My sash is lowered when night comes on;

But never let there be curtain drawn

Between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,

And thing next most diffuse to cloud,

Not all of your light tongues talking aloud

Could be profound.

But, tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,

And if you have seen me when I slept,

You have seen me when I was taken and swept

And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,

Fate had her imagination about her,

Your head so much concerned with outer,

Mine with inner, weather.

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Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Contemplative poetry

January 30, 2015

POEM: BRIEF REFLECTION ON CATS GROWING ON TREES

January 22, 2015

POEM: DEMETER

January 15, 2015

GROUNDED WISDOM FROM KABIR

January 9, 2015

POEM: STOLEN SECONDS

January 5, 2015

POEM: WINTER IS …

January 1, 2015

POEM: WOLF VOICE

December 24, 2014

POEM: CIRCLE OF THE SOUL

December 16, 2014

POEM: WEPWAWET

December 15, 2014

THE MYSTIC SENSE

December 4, 2014

TREE AT MY WINDOW