Nostalgia and Inspiration

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are tasting the taste this minute

of eternity.  We are pain

and what cures pain.  We are

the sweet, cold water and the jar that pours.

 

———-

 

I want to hold you close like a lute

so  we can cry out with loving.

 

You would rather throw stones at a mirror?

I am your mirror, and here are the stones.

 

———

 

I saw you last night in the gathering,

but I could not take you openly in my arms,

so I put my lips next to your cheek,

pretending to talk privately.

 

——–

 

Friend, our closeness is this:

anywhere you put your foot, feel me

in the firmness under you.

 

How is it with this love,

I see your world and not you?

 

——–

 

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter

I become a torture to those I’m with.

 

If you’re not here, nothing grows.

I lack clarity. My words

tangle and knot up.

 

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.

How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

 

When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,

dig a way out through the bottom

to the ocean.  There is a secret medicine

given only to those who hurt so hard

they can’t hope.

 

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

 

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,

no matter whether that friend is moving away from you,

or coming back toward you.

 

————

 

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,

if this is the time.

Do it gently with a touch of the hand, or a look.

Every morning I wait at dawn.  That’s when

it’s happened before.  Or do it suddenly

like and execution.  How else

can I get ready for death?

 

You breathe without a body like a spark.

You grieve, and i begin to feel lighter.

You keep me away with your arm,

but the keeping away is pulling me in.

 

————

 

Pale sunlight,

pale the wall.

 

Love moves away.

The light changes.

 

I need more grace

than I thought.

 

————-

 

Rumi (1207-1273)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Church Going

                 Philip Larkin  (1922-1985)

 

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
“Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation ?marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these ?for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round 

 

(1922-1985)

“Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.”

“The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life’s joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life. That is the cardinal initiation of every heroic adventure — fearlessness and achievement.”

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987)

 

“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”

-Lao Tzu

“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
-T. Roosevelt

“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.”
-George Bernard Shaw