An empty day without events.
And that is why
it grew immense
as space. And suddenly
happiness of being
entered me.
I heard
in my heartbeat
the birth of time
and each instant of life
one after the other
came rushing in
like priceless gifts.
Anna Swir (1909-1989). Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan. From The poetry of impermanence, mindfulness and joy edited by John Brem. (Wisdom, Kindle edition, undated.)
I have sat here happy in the gardens,
Watching the still pool and the reeds
And the dark clouds
Which the wind of the upper air
Tore like the green leafy boughs
Of the divers-hued trees of late summer;
But though I greatly delight
In these and the water lilies,
That which sets me nighest to weeping
Is the rose and white colour of the smooth flag-stones
And the pale yellow grasses
Among them.
Richard Aldington in Imagist Poetry edited by Peter Jones London: Penguin, 1972 (Modern Penguin Classics)
The Imagists were a short-lived yet influential movement in early 20th century poetry in the English language. Whilst an organized and at that time mostly young group, they were based in London and included both British and expatriate American members. The Imagist collections of the 1914-17 period include the work of: Ezra Pound; Richard Aldington; H.D. (Hilda Doolittle); Amy Lowell; D.H. Lawrence; William Carlos Williams; Ford Maddox Ford; T.E. Hulme; James Joyce; Marianne Craig Moore; E.E. Cummings; John Gould Fletcher. Years later, T.S. Eliot paid tribute to the Imagists as a formative influence.
The Imagists had three rules, designed to encourage freshness and clarity in observation and precision in expression. For me this gives them contemplative interest. Ezra Pound in particular was fascinated by Chinese and Japanese poetry, then beginning to become available in the West.
In the poem above, I was particularly moved by the way in which freshness, clarity and precision allowed the poet to both feel and contain strong emotion. For me, contemplative spaces embrace such feelings, whilst also providing a clear space around them.
Desolate and lone
All night long on the lake
Where fog trails and mist creeps,
The whistle of a boat
Calls and cries unendingly,
Like some lost child
In tears and trouble
Hunting the harbor’s breast
And the harbor’s eyes.
Carl Sandburg Chicago poems, New York: Dover Publications, 1994. (First published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, in 1916)
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) left school aged 11, working in a variety of jobs such as barbershop porter, milk truck driver, brickyard worker and wheat harvester. He enlisted with the 6th. Illinois Infantry in 1898 and served in the Spanish-American War.
In 1913, he moved to Chicago and became one of a group of writers responsible for the Chicago Renaissance in arts and letters. His work reflects an awareness of the U.S. as an increasingly urban nation, frequently celebrating the drive and energy of the working people of the industrial Midwest. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950.
However, in the poem above, a note of loneliness and alienation is conjured up by the whistle of a boat on Lake Michigan – alienation, yet with some hope, or hint of a hope, of homecoming.
This poem by Mary Oliver is included in the material for my Mindful Self-Compassion course. I wonder how many readers feel some resonance with it.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations……
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
I can wade Grief –
Whole pools of it
–
I’m used to that –
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet
–
And I tip –
drunken
Emily Dickinson
Silently and serenely, one forgets all words,
Clearly and vividly, it appears before you.
When one realizes it, time has no limits.
When experienced, your surroundings come to life.
Singularly illuminating this bright awareness,
Full of wonder is the pure illumination.
The moon’s appearance, a river of stars,
Snow-clad pines, clouds hovering on mountain peaks.
In darkness, they glow with brightness.
In shadows, they shine with a splendid light.
Like the dreaming of a crane flying in empty space,
Like the clear, still water of an autumn pool,
Endless eons dissolve into nothingness,
Each indistinguishable from the other.
Chan Master Sheng-Yen The Poetry of Enlightenment: poems by ancient Chan Masters New York: Dharma Drum Publications, 1987
This is the first section of a longer piece by Hongzhi (in this text transliterated as Hung Chi), who lived in China from 1097-1157. He developed a version of what we now call mindfulness meditation called Silent Illumination.
Young, male and
immortal as I was,
I stopped at the first sight
Of that broken bridge.
The taut cables snapped
and the bridge planks
concertina-ed
into a crazy jumble
over the drop,
four hundred feet
to the craggy
stream.
I sat and watched
the wind shiver on the broken planks,
as if by looking hard
and long enough, the life-line
might spontaneously
repair itself –
but watched in vain.
an hour I sat
in silence,
checking each
involuntary movement
of the body toward
that trembling
bridge
with a fearful mind,
and an emphatic
shake of the head.
Finally, facing defeat
and about to go back
the way I came
to meet the others.
Three days round
by another pass.
Enter the old mountain woman
with her stooped gait,
her dark clothes
and her dung basket
clasped to her back.
Small feet shuffling
for the precious
gold-brown
fuel for cooking food.
Intent on the ground
she glimpsed my feet
and looking up
said “Namaste”
“I greet the God in you”
the last syllable
held like a song.
I inclined my head
and clasped my hands
to reply, but
before I could look up,
she turned her lined face
and went straight across
that shivering chaos
of wood
and broken steel
in one movement.
One day the hero
sits down,
afraid to take
another step,
and the old interior angel
limps slowly in
with her no-nonsense
compassion
and her old secret
and goes ahead.
“Namaste”
you say
and follow.
David Whyte River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007 Langley, Washington: Rivers Press, 2007
That day I saw beneath dark clouds,
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before,
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing,
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
David Whyte River Flow: New & Selected Poems 1984-2007 Langley, Washington: Rivers Press, 2007
How surely gravity’s law
Strong as an ocean current,
Takes hold of even the strongest thing
And pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing – each stone, blossom, child – is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
Push out beyond what we belong to
For some empty freedom.
If we surrendered to Earth’s intelligence
We could rise up, rooted, like trees …
This is what the things can teach us: to fall,
Patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
Before he can fly.
Rainer Maria Rilke Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God New York: Riverhead, 1996 (Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)
When are my travels ever going to end?
My old body has come to this inn again.
The roadside pines and junipers are ten years older,
Once short, but now tall and stately.
The place where I stopped last night is far away;
And tomorrow, tonight will be last night.
In just an instant the present has become the past –
I’d have to be a saint not to drink wine.
From Yang Wan-li Heaven my Blanket: Earth my Pillow: Poems from Sung Dynasty China New York & Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1975 (Translated and introduced by Jonathan Chaves
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