Self-Portrait

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned,
if you can know despair or see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes,
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living,
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

- David Whyte, From River Flow, New and Selected Poems,  Many Rivers Press

Hardness of Heart

Guernica by Picasso 

In the first watch no death but made us mourn;
Now tearless eyes run down the daily roll,
Whose names are written in the book of death;
For sealed are now the springs of tears, as when
The tropic sun makes dry the torrent's course
After the rains. They are too many now
For mortal eyes to weep, and none can see
But God alone the Thing itself and live.
We look to seaward, and behold a cry!
To skyward, and they fall as stricken birds
On autumn fields; and earth cries out its toll,
From the Great River to the world's end--toll
Of dead, and maimed and lost; we dare not stay;
Tears are not endless and we have no more.

- Edward Shillito

Decade

Self portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil 

When you came, you were like red wine and honey,
And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.
Now you are like morning bread,
Smooth and pleasant.
I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour,
But I am completely nourished.

- Amy Lowell

Prometheus Unbound

Dancing Woman by Rabindranath Tagore

     This is the day which down the void abysm
     At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,
       And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep;
     Love, from its awful throne of patient power
     In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
       Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
     And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs
     And folds over the world its healing wings.

     Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance--
     These are the seals of that most firm assurance
       Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
     And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
     Mother of many acts and hours, should free
       The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
     These are the spells by which to reassume
     An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

     To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
     To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
       To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
     To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
     From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
       Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
     This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
     Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
     This is alone Life; Joy, Empire, and Victory!

      - From Prometheus Unbound, Percy Bysshe Shelley

How To Be a Poet (to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

- Wendell Berry

Embody

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.

-- Rilke - Book of Hours, I 59

Threshold

Passage by Neha

[We know that we must at last forsake the world, and we are accustomed in moments of weariness or exaltation to consider a voluntary forsaking; but how can we, who have read so much poetry, seen so many paintings, listened to so much music, where the cry of the flesh and the cry of the soul seems one, forsake it harshly and rudely? - W.B. Yeats, September 1912, Introduction to Gitanjali]

I was not aware of the moment when I first crossed the threshold of this life. What was the power that made me open out into this vast mystery like a bud in the forest at midnight? When in the morning I looked upon the light I felt in a moment that I was no stranger in this world, that the inscrutable without name and form had taken me in its arms in the form of my own mother. Even so, in death the same unknown will appear as ever known to me. And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when from the right breast the mother takes it away to find in the very next moment its consolation in the left one.

- Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

One

We are all the more one because we are many,
For we have made ample room for love in the gap where we are sundered.
Our unlikeness reveals its breadth of beauty radiant with one common life,
Like mountain peaks in the morning sun.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Illusions

Last night I dreamed - blessed illusion -
that I had a beehive here
in my heart
and that
the golden bees were making
white combs and sweet honey
from my old failures.

- Antonio Machado ( Thanks C)

The Peace of Wild Things

The Passage by Neha

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


- Wendell Berry

The Impossible Dream

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go.

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star.

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far.

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march
Into hell for a heavenly cause.

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
when I'm laid to my rest.

And the world will be better for this
that one man scorned and covered with scars
still strove with his last ounce of courage
To fight the unbeatable foe
To reach the unreachable star.

- Joe Darion

Tell me not here

Tell me not here, it needs not saying,
  What tune the enchantress plays
In aftermaths of soft September
  Or under blanching mays,
For she and I were long acquainted
  And I knew all her ways.

On russet floors, by waters idle,
  The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
  In leafy dells alone;
And traveller's joy beguiles in autumn
  Hearts that have lost their own.

On acres of the seeded grasses
  The changing burnish heaves;
Or marshalled under moons of harvest
  Stand still all night the sheaves;
Or beeches strip in storms for winter
  And stain the wind with leaves.

Possess, as I possessed a season,
  The countries I resign,
Where over elmy plains the highway
  Would mount the hills and shine,
And full of shade the pillared forest
  Would murmur and be mine.

For nature, heartless, witless nature,
  Will neither care nor know
What stranger's feet may find the meadow
  And trespass there and go,
Nor ask amid the dews of morning
  If they are mine or no.

- A.E. Housman

Sabbaths - 1993, I

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

- Wendell Berry

Rivers Run Through Me

Rivers run through me
mountains bore into my body
and the geography of this country
begins forming in me
turning me into lakes, chasms, ravines,
earth for sowing love
opening like a furrow
filling me with a longing to live
to see it full, beautiful,
full of smiles.

I want to explode with love...

-Gioconda Belli, Nicaraguan poet

The Jaguar Smile

There was a young girl of Nic’ragua
Who smiled as she rode on a jaguar
They returned from the ride
with the young girl inside
And the smile on the face of the jaguar

-Anon [The Jaguar Smile, Salman Rushdie]

Love Calls Us to the Things of This World

The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
                     Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
Now they are rising together in calm swells
Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;

    Now they are flying in place, conveying
The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
That nobody seems to be there.
                                             The soul shrinks

    From all that it is about to remember,
From the punctual rape of every blessèd day,
And cries,
               “Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,  
Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.”

    Yet, as the sun acknowledges
With a warm look the world’s hunks and colors,  
The soul descends once more in bitter love  
To accept the waking body, saying now
In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,  
    “Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;  
Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,  
And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating  
Of dark habits,  
                   keeping their difficult balance."

- Richard Wilbur

Landscape

Moss of ages by Neha

Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.

- Mary Oliver

The Unicorn in Captivity

Here sits the Unicorn
In captivity;
His bright invulnerability
Captive at last;
The Chase long past,
Winded and spent,
By the king's spears rent;
Collared and tied
To a pomegranate tree--
Here sits the Unicorn
In captivity,
Yet free.

Here sits the Unicorn;
His over-takelessness
Bound by a circle small
As a maid's embrace;
Ringed by a round corral;
Pinioned in place
By a fence of scarlet rail,

Fragile as a king's crown,
Delicately laid down
Over horn, hoofs, and tail,
As a butterfly net
Is lightly set.

He could leap the corral,
If he rose
To his full height;
He could splinter the fencing light,
With three blows
Of his porcelain hoofs in flight--
If he chose.
He could shatter his prison wall,
Could escape them all--
If he rose,
If he chose.

Here sits the Unicorn;
The wounds in his side
Still bleed
From the huntsmen's spears,
Yet he takes no heed
Of the blood-red tears
On his milk-white hide,
That spring unsealed,
Like flowers that rise
From the velvet field
In which he lies.
Dream wounds, dream ties
Do not bind him there
In a kingdom where
He is unaware
Of his wounds, of his snare.

Here sits the Unicorn;
Head in collar cased,
Like a girdle laced
Round a maiden's waist,
Broidered and buckled wide,
Carelessly tied.
He could slip his head
From the jewelled noose
So lightly tied--
If he tried,
As a maid could loose
The belt from her side;
He could slip the bond
So lightly tied--
If he tried.

Here sits the Unicorn;
Leashed by a chain of gold
To the pomegranate tree.
So light a chain to hold
So fierce a beast;
Delicate as a cross at rest
On a maiden's breast.
He could snap the golden chain
With one toss of his mane,
If he chose to move,
If he chose to prove
His liberty.
But he does not choose
What choice would lose.
He stays, the Unicorn,
In captivity.

In captivity,
Flank, hoofs, and mane--
Yet look again--
His horn is free,
Rising above chain, fence, and tree,
Free hymn of love; His horn
Bursts from his tranquil brow
Like a comet born;
Cleaves like a galley's prow
Into seas untorn;
Springs like a lily, white
From the Earth below;
Spirals, a bird in flight
To a longed-for height;
Or a fountain bright,
Spurting to light
Of early morn--
O luminous horn!

Here sits the Unicorn--
In captivity?
In repose.
Forgotten now the blows
When the huntsmen rose
With their spears; dread sounds
Of the baying hounds,
With their cry for blood;
And the answering flood
In his veins for strife,
Of his rage for life,
In hoofs that plunged,
In horn that lunged.
Forgotten the strife;
Now the need to kill
Has died like fire,
And the need to love
Has replaced desire;
Forgotten now the pain
Of the wounds, the fence, the chain--
Where he sits so still,
Where he waits Thy will.

Quiet, the Unicorn,
In contemplation stilled,
With acceptance filled;
Quiet, save for his horn;
Alive in his horn;
Horizontally,
In captivity;
Perpendicularly,
Free.
As prisoners might,
Looking on a high at night,
From day-close discipline
Of walls and bars,
To night-free infinity
Of sky and stars
Find here felicity;
So is he free--
The Unicorn.
What is liberty?
Here lives the Unicorn,
In captivity,
Free.
The Unicorn in Captivity.

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The World Is Too Much With Us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

- William Wordsworth.

Vigil

Whom should I turn to, 
if not the one whose darkness 
is darker than night, the only one 
who keeps vigil with no candle, 
and is not afraid—
the deep one, whose being I trust, 
for it breaks through the earth into trees, 
and rises, when I bow my head, 
faint as a fragrance from the soil.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Loving Stars

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

- W.H.Auden 

A thousand roses, a little water

“People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they don't find what they're looking for...

They don't find it," I answered.

And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..."

Of course," I answered.

And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Fireflies

When death comes and whispers to me,
“Thy days are ended,”
let me say to him, “I have lived in love
and not in mere time.
…He will ask, “Will thy songs remain?”
I shall say, “I know not, but this I know
that often when I sang I found my eternity.

- Rabindranath Tagore

To Tea Cups

Petal by petal by Neha

The first cup moistens my lips and throat,
The second cup breaks my loneliness,
The third cup searches my barren entrails but to ,
find therein some five thousand volumes of odd ideographs.
The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration, - all
the wrong of life passes away through my pores.
At the fifth cup I am purified, the sixth cup calls me
to the realms of immortals.
The seventh cup-ah, but I could take no more! I only
feel the breath of cool wind that rises in my sleeves.
Where is Foraosan? Let me ride on this sweet breeze
and waft away thither.

- Lo Tung, Tang Dynasty

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler’s wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
— your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers…

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner’s daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler’s wife. Smell me.

- Michael Ondaatje

Journey

Chasing the light by Neha

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.

- Mary Oliver

Waterlily Fire

Flowers of Fire by Georgia O'Keeffe

….Whatever can happen to anyone can happen to me.

Fire striking its word among us, waterlilies
Reaching from darkness upward to a sun
Of rebirth, the implacable. And in our myth
The Changing Woman who is still and who offers.

Eyes drinking light, transforming light, this day
That struggles with itself, brings itself to birth.
In ways of being, through silence, sources of light
Arriving behind my eye, a dialogue of light.

And everything a witness of the buried life.
This moment flowing across the sun, this force
Of flowers and voices body in body through space.
The city of endless cycles of the sun.

I speak to you You speak to me

- Muriel Rukeyser

Symbols

“The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.”

—John Steinbeck

Dim

   

Senecio by Paul Klee

   dim
i
nu
tiv
e this park is e
mpty(everyb
ody’s elsewher
e except me 6e 

nglish sparrow
s) au
tumn & t
he rai

n
th
e raintherain

- e e cummings 

Start Close In

Lavender Iris by Georgia O'Keeffe (1951)

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

Start with
the ground
you know,
the pale ground
beneath your feet,
your own
way to begin
the conversation.

Start with your own
question,
give up on other
people’s questions,
don’t let them
smother something
simple.

To hear
another’s voice,
follow
your own voice,
wait until
that voice

becomes an
intimate
private ear
that can
really listen
to another.

Start right now
take a small step
you can call your own
don’t follow
someone else’s
heroics, be humble
and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake
that other
for your own.

Start close in,
don’t take
the second step
or the third,
start with the first
thing
close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.

- David Whyte

The Revolutionists Stop for Orangeade

Red Balloon by Paul Klee 

Capitan profundo, capitan geloso,
Ask us not to sing standing in the sun,
Hairy-backed and hump-armed,
Flat-ribbed and big-bagged.
There is no pith in music
Except in something false.

Bellissimo, pomposo,
Sing a song of serpent-kin,
Necks among the thousand leaves,
Tongues around the fruit.
Sing in clownish boots
Strapped and buckled bright.

Wear the breeches of a mask,
Coat half-flare and half galloon;
Wear a helmet without reason,
Tufted, tilted, twirled, and twisted.
Start the singing in a voice
Rougher than a grinding shale.

Hang a feather by your eye,
Nod and look a little sly.
This must be the vent of pity,
Deeper than a truer ditty
Of the real that wrenches,
Of the quick that's wry.

- Wallace Stevens 

Duino Elegies

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic
Orders? And even if one were to suddenly
take me to its heart, I would vanish into its
stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but
the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,
and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.
And so I hold myself back and swallow the cry
of a darkened sobbing. Ah, who then can
we make use of? Not Angels: not men,
and the resourceful creatures see clearly
that we are not really at home
in the interpreted world. Perhaps there remains
some tree on a slope, that we can see
again each day: there remains to us yesterday’s street,
and the thinned-out loyalty of a habit
that liked us, and so stayed, and never departed.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of space
wears out our faces – whom would she not stay for,
the longed-for, gentle, disappointing one, whom the solitary heart
with difficulty stands before. Is she less heavy for lovers?
Ah, they only hide their fate between themselves.
Do you not know yet? Throw the emptiness out of your arms
to add to the spaces we breathe; maybe the birds
will feel the expansion of air, in more intimate flight.

Yes, the Spring-times needed you deeply. Many a star
must have been there for you so you might feel it. A wave
lifted towards you out of the past, or, as you walked
past an open window, a violin
gave of itself. All this was their mission.
But could you handle it? Were you not always,
still, distracted by expectation, as if all you experienced,
like a Beloved, came near to you? (Where could you contain her,
with all the vast strange thoughts in you
going in and out, and often staying the night.)

- Duino Elegies, The First Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke

Lightly

A Pair of Leather Clogs by Vincent van Gogh

Lightly child, lightly. 
Learn to do everything lightly. 
Even though you're feeling deeply, 
lightly 
let things happen, and 
lightly 
cope with them on tiptoes 
and with no luggage, 
not even a sponge bag, 
completely 
unencumbered.
Lightly my darling...

- Aldous Huxley, Island 

What Survives

Blue III by Joan Miro

Who says that all must vanish?
Who knows, perhaps the flight
of the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survive
caresses in us, in their ground.

It isn't the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor --from breast to knees--
and the battle was so pure
an angel wears it after you.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Koi paar nadi ke gata

bhang nishaa ki neeravta kar
(Breaking the silence of the night)
is dehaati gaane ka swar
(this rural/folk song's notes)
kakdi ke kheto se uthkar, aata jamuna par leharaata
(rising from cucumber's field, wish it came in waves on the river Jamuna)
koi paar nadi ke gaata
(wish someone sang across the river)

honge bhai bandhu nikat hi
(there could be relatives/friends nearby)
kabhi sochte honge ye bhi
(who may also be thinking sometimes)
is tat par bhi koi, uski tano se sukh pata
(somebody on this river bank may also seek solace / happiness from his song/raaga )
koi paar nadi ke gaata
(wish someone sang across the river)

aaj na jaane kyun hota mann
(Don't know why today this mind )
sun kar ye ekaaki gaayan
(after listening to the lonesome song)
sadaa ise main sunta rehta, sadaa ise ye gaata jaata
(always wants to listen to it, always wants to sing it)
koi paar nadi ke gaata
(wish someone sang across the river)

- Harivansh Rai Bachchan

Creation of a Pot

Rabindranath Tagore, Untitled (Striding Bird), 1928.

Within this earthen vessel are
bowers and groves, and with
it is the creator:
Within this vessel are the seven oceans
and the unnumbered stars.
The touchstone and the jewel
appraiser
are within;
and within is the eternal soundeth, and
the spring wells up
Kabi says: "Listen to me, my friend!
My beloved lord is within."

- Songs of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore

Sobremesa

Hesitantly, surrounded
by the mist that falls from days long gone,
we once more sit down to talk
and can't see each other.
Hesitantly, cut off in the depths of the mist.

On the table the breeze stirs slowly,
As we dream those who are absent draw close.
Leaves where bleak moss has passed long winters
now waken on the table-cloth.

Steam from the coffee cups drifts around us
and in the aroma we see old faces,
once more alive, float past
clouding the mirrors.

Empty chairs set straight
wait for those who, from far off,
will return later on.
We start talking
without seeing each other, without thought of time.

Hesitantly, in the mist
that grows and surrounds us,
we talk for hours without knowing
who is still alive and who is dead.

- Eugenio Montejo, Muerte y Memoria (1972), A Bright Moon For Fools

Another Sky

From Earth to Sky by Joan Miro

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

- Emily Dickinson

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Dream of a Politically Incorrect Artist by A. Ramchandran 

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
     went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

- Langston Hughes

The flowering of the rod

Frida Kahlo (self portrait)

I go where I love and where I am loved,
into the snow;

I go to the things I love
with no thought of duty or pity;

I go where I belong, inexorably,
as the rain that has lain long

in the furrow; I have given
or would have given

life to the grain;
but if it will not grow or ripen

with the rain of beauty,
the rain will return to the cloud;

the harvester sharpens his steel on the stone;
but this is not our field,

we have not sown this;
pitiless, pitiless, let us leave

The-place-of-a-skull
to those who have fashioned it.

-  The Flowering of the Rod, H.D.

What the living do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss--we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

- Marie Howe

Source: The Atlantic, Learn more at: NPR 

Now I Become Myself

Amrita Shergill at Bonhams

Now I become myself. It's taken
Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people's faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
"Hurry, you will be dead before--"
(What? Before you reach the morning?
Or the end of the poem is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
The black shadow on the paper
Is my hand; the shadow of a word
As thought shapes the shaper
Falls heavy on the page, is heard.
All fuses now, falls into place
From wish to action, word to silence,
My work, my love, my time, my face
Gathered into one intense
Gesture of growing like a plant.
As slowly as the ripening fruit
Fertile, detached, and always spent,
Falls but does not exhaust the root,
So all the poem is, can give,
Grows in me to become the song,
Made so and rooted by love.
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move.
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the sun!

-  May Sarton ( Thanks Luzette!)

Marte hain aarzoo mein

Ahalya by A.Ramachandran 

koi umeed bar nahin aati

koi soorat nazar nahin aati

maut ka ek din mu'ayyan hai

neend kyun raat bhar nahi aati

aage aati thi haal-e-dil pe hasee

aab kisi baat par nahi aati

jaanta hoon sawaab-e-taa'at-o-zahad

par tabiyat idhar nahin aati

hai kuch aisee hi baat jo chup hoon

warna kya baat kar nahin aati?

kyon na cheekhon ki yaad karate hain

mere awaaz gar nahin aati

daag-e-dil gar nazar nahin aata

boo bhi aye chaaraagar! nahin aati

hum wahan hain jahaan se humko bhi

kuch humari khabar nahin aati

marte hain aarzoo mein marne ki

maut aati hai par nahin aati

kaaba'a kis munh se jaaoge 'ghalib'

sharm tumko magar nahin aati 

- Mirza Ghalib 

Ishq mastana

Rituals of lal dhaga by A. Ramachandran 

Haman hai ishq mastana,
Haman ko hoshiyari kya?
Rahe azad ya jag mein,
Haman duniya se yaari kya?

Jo bichude hain piyare se,
Bhatakte dar badar phirte,
Hamara yaar hai humme,
Haman ko intazaari kya?

Na pal bichude piya hum se,
Na hum bichude piyare se
Unhi se neh laga hai,
Haman ko bekarari kya?

Kabira ishq ka mata,
Dui ko dur kar dil se.
Jo chalna rah nazuk hai,
Haman sar bojh bhari kya?

- Kabir 

जब यार देखा नैन भर

Lány by Amrita Sher-Gil (1936)

जब यार देखा नैन भर दिल की गई चिंता उतर
ऐसा नहीं कोई अजब राखे उसे समझाए कर।

तू तो हमारा यार है, तुझ पर हमारा प्यार है
तुझे दोस्ती बिसियार है एक शब मिलो तुम आय कर।

खुसरो कहै बातें ग़ज़ब, दिल में न लावे कुछ अजब
कुदरत  खुदा की है अजब, जब जिव दिया गुल लाय कर।

- अमीर ख़ुसरौ 

Messenger

Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh 

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

- Mary Oliver (Thanks Margaux)

Ask nothing, refuse nothing

Whatever happens, whatever
What is is, is what
I want. Nothing else. But this.

- R.S. Thomas

The Double Realm

Only he who lifts his lyre
in the Underworld as well
may come back
to praising, endlessly.

Only he who has eaten
the food of the dead
will make music so clear
that even the softest tone is heard.

Though the reflection in the pool
often ripples away,
take the image within you.

Only in the double realm
do our voices carry
all they can say.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Birches

Birch Forest by Gustave Klimt 

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

- Robert Frost

Infinite

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.

- From Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, 1606

Ishrat-e-qatra

- Mirza Ghalib 

Still

Singing lines by K.K. Hebbar 

At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
at the still point, there the dance is…

- T.S.Eliot

Levels

Birth of poetry by K.K Hebbar 

You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed. People may not notice at the time, but that doesn't matter. The world has been changed nonetheless.

- Levels of Life, Julian Barnes

A fairytale

As Spring Passes By by A.Ramachandran 

Alas, mountains of imagination were nothing but a house.
And this grand life of mine was nothing but an excuse.
You've been hearing my story so patiently for a lifetime.
Now hear this … It was nothing but a fairytale.

- Rumi

Leaning Into The Afternoons

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets
towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames,
its arms turning like a drowning man's.

I send out red signals across your absent eyes
that smell like the sea or the beach by a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female,
from your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets
to that sea that is thrashed by your oceanic eyes.

The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare
shedding blue tassels over the land.

- Pablo Neruda

Requiem of Mirrors & Flowers

"Tell me, must I travel ? Did you leave some Thing behind, some place, that cannot bear your absence? Must I set out for a country you never saw, although it was as vividly near to you as your own senses were ? I will sail its rivers, search its valleys, inquire about its oldest customs; I will stand for hours, talking with with women in their doorways and watching, while they call their children home. will see the way they wrap the land around them in their ancient work in field and meadow; will ask to be led before their king; will bribe the priests to take me to their temple, before the most powerful of the statues in their keeping, and to leave me there, shutting the gates behind them. And only then, when I have learned enough, I will go to watch the animals, and let something of their composure slowly glide into my limbs; will see my own existence deep in their eyes, which hold me for awhile and let me go, serenely, without judgment.

I will have the gardeners come to me and recite many flowers, and in their small melodious names I will bring back some remnant of the hundred fragrances. And fruits: I will buy fruits, and in their sweetness that country’s earth and sky will live, again. For that is what you understood: ripe fruits. You set them before the canvas, in white bowls, and weighed out each one’s heaviness with your colors. Women too, you saw, were fruits; and children, molded from inside, into the shapes of their existence. And at last you saw yourself as a fruit, you stepped out of your clothes and brought your naked body before the mirror, you let yourself inside down to your gaze; which stayed in front, immense, and didn’t say: I am that; no: this is. So free of curiosity your gaze had become, so unpossessive, of such true poverty, it had no desire even for yourself; it wanted nothing: holy.

And that is how I have cherished you -- deep inside the mirror, where you put yourself, far away from all the world. "

- From 'Requiem for a friend', Rainer Maria Rilke's

Love Song

Blue III by Joan Miro

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Into the Twilight

Found by Neha

OUT-WORN heart, in a time out-worn,  
Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;  
Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,  
Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.  
  
Your mother Eire is always young,        
Dew ever shining and twilight gray;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood  
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

- W.B.Yeats, Into the Twilight, The Wind Among the Reeds

Ek na ek shamma

Ek na ek shamma andhere mein jalaye rakhiye

Subah hone ko hai maahawl sajaaye rakhiye

Jinke haathon se hume zakm-e-neha pahunchi hai

Wo bhee kehte hain ke zakhmon ko chupaaye rakhiye

Kaun jaane ke wo kis raah-guzar se guzre

Har guzar raah ko phoolon se sajaaye rakhiye

Daaman-e-yaar ki zeenat na bane har ansoo 

Apni palkon ke liye kuch to bachaaye rakhiye 

- From the album "Unforgettable" by Chitra Singh & Jagjit Singh

Listen on YouTube here. 

Poetry

Window by Henri Matisse

And it was at that age . . . poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, not silence,
but from a street it called me,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among raging fires
or returning alone,
there it was, without a face,
and it touched me.

I didn't know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind.
Something knocked in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first, faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing;
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
the darkness perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire, and flowers,
the overpowering night, the universe.

And I, tiny being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss.
I wheeled with the stars.
My heart broke loose with the wind.

-Pablo Neruda

And because Love battles

Resting Woman Wearing Tiara, 1936,
pen and ink drawing by Henri Matisse

And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.

And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.

But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: “The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she’s light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera”.

And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved.

To bread I do not ask to teach me
but only not to lack during every day of life.
I don’t know anything about light, from where
it comes nor where it goes,
I only want the light to light up,
I do not ask to the night
explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
And so you, bread and light
And shadow are.

You came to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and shadow I expected you,
and Like this I need you,
Like this I love you,
and to those who want to hear tomorrow
that which I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them back off today because it is early
for these arguments.

Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.

- Pablo Neruda

Always

Self Portrait by Amrita Sher-Gil 

I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!

- Pablo Neruda

One Art

Hill Women by Amrita Shergil

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop

Through love

Gopini by Jamini Roy

In the West intellect is the source of life,
In the East love is the basis of life.
Through love intellect gets acquainted with reality
And intellect gives stability to the work of love.
Arise and lay the foundations of a new world
By wedding intellect to love.

-Iqbal

Footfalls

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

- T S Eliot

Phule Phule Dhole Dhole

Phule phule dhole dhole,
Bohey kibaa mridu baay.
Totini hillolo tuley,
Kollole choliya jaay.
Piko kibaa kunje kunje,
Piko kibaa kunje kunje,
Kuhu kuhu kuhu gaay.
Ki jaani kishero laagi,
Praano kore haay-haay.

A touch of sweetness in the breeze that

Softly cradles buds today

A winding stream that gently gurgles

In its happy course at play

The cuckoo sings in trees and gardens

a cuhoo cuhoo cuhoo lay

My absent heart does not know why

It's absolutely borne away

- Rabindranath Tagore, Featured in Satyajit Ray's Charulata 

I love these versions: 

# 1. From Satyajit Ray's 1964 movie "Charulata" based on Rabindranath Tagore's Novel "Nastanirh" 

# 2. This back to back amalgamation with a Scottish song by Robert Burns

# 3. This traditional Rabindra Sangeet version
# 4. This Parineeta song which is inspired by and based on the same tune

Outcast

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn,
For his mourners will be outcast men,
And outcasts always mourn.

-  The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde