Tag: Poetry

Thinking about Hope with Victoria Safford

On By MaryIn hope, poetryLeave a comment

In these days after celebrating Thanksgiving, I find myself thinking about hope. Whenever hope comes across my awareness, I remember the old proverb, “Hope is a good breakfast, but a bad supper.” I take that as an admonition that it is a good thing to start with hope, but don’t end there. By the time we get to supper, we should have moved at least a few steps in the direction of building something that alleviates some of the suffering in the world, something that resembles a more merciful and just world, community, family, neighborhood, or household. Well, that’s the dream, anyway. Here’s a poem on hope to inspire your dreaming . . . 

Hope  

by Victoria Safford

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope—
Not the prudent gates of Optimism,
Which are somewhat narrower.
Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness,
Which creak on shrill and angry hinges
Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of
“Everything is gonna’ be all right.”
But a different, sometimes lonely place,
The place of truth-telling,
About your own soul first of all and its condition.
The place of resistance and defiance,

The piece of ground from which you see the world
Both as it is and as it could be
As it will be;
The place from which you glimpse not only struggle,
But the joy of the struggle.
And we stand there, all of us, beckoning and calling,
Telling people what we are seeing
Asking people what they see.

Reflections on What the Living Do by Marie Howe

On By MaryIn Awareness, Awe, Gratitude, In-spiration, poetryLeave a comment

I came across a reference to Marie Howe’s poem “What the Living Do,” in Suleika Jaouad’s, The Book of Alchemy: A creative Practice for in Inspired Life. Jaouad quotes the last few lines, and I was so taken with them I had to search out the full poem.

The lines she quotes are

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.

Clearly the poem speaks to heart rending loss, breath suspending loss. And that’s not where I am these days. The poem is set in the dry, icy chill of winter. And that’s not where I am these days (it’s summer and the humidity has been hovering around 80%, the kind of humidity that makes breathing a conscious, effort filled activity). And yet, there is something about those lines, those words—a cherishing so deep—of simple things that constitute the dailiness of living, the simple things we rarely notice, but that make life—not just worth living, but that literally make our life. And the aha line—I’m Speechless: I am living. How mundane. How taken for granted. How perfectly breathtakingly, awe inspiring. I am living. And so are you. And I am grateful.

What the Living Do

Marie Howe

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.

From What the Living Do, copyright © 1998 by Marie Howe. 

Go To The Limits Of Your Longing

On By MaryIn poetry, random thoughtsLeave a comment

Go To The Limits Of Your Longing

Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Joanna Macy + Anita Barrows

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.

Book of Hours, I 59

I kind of love this poem. Every time I read it, a different line resonates with me. Sometimes it’s the title: “go to the limits of your longing.” And I find myself thinking about, wondering about, what is my longing? Not just my longing of the moment (that’s usually pizza or a hot fudge sunday.) But what is my real longing, the longing of my heart, of my soul? That’s a whole other order of longing. And what am I willing to do to move one step closer to fulfilling that longing?

Other times, like today, it’s the lines: “flare up like a flame, and make big shadows I can move in.” Really, both of those lines raise the same kinds of questions. How might I flare up like a flame? Where/what is my passion?

It used to be social justice. Then it was human rights (similar, but a step more practical). For a moment, I was taken with practicing random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. That came to feel a bit shallow. Important, but not enough, maybe.

More to the moment, if I had to say, I would say love. But love as an active verb, as doing. Love in relationship with others, with our world in an ecologically responsible kind of way of being. I remember a course I took with Father Jim Finnegan. I taught us that love means to see the goodness in someone, and to will and act to enable that goodness to grow, for their sake. That kind of love is what I would go to the limits of my longing for. That kind of love flare up like a flame for.  … what about you? What would you go to the limits of your longing for? What lines from the poem most resonate with you?

A Myth-Smithed version of the Huron Earth Diver Story

On By MaryIn cosmogony, cosmology, Earth Diver, persistenceLeave a comment

(Smith: to work with something by heating, hammering, and forging. Myth-Smith: to work with myths by combining, revising, and reshaping.)

Once, before the world as we know it, there was water, wide, deep and vast. The water was populated with fish that swam in its depths, and foul birds that danced on its surface. While the fish swam and the birds flew about and danced on the water, a woman fell through a rift in the sky, tumbling down from the upper world.

As two loons were flying over the waters, they happened to look up and noticed her falling. The loons decided that they could not let her drown, and so they flew beneath her and linked their wings together to form a cushion for her to rest on. While they held her, the loons yodeled and hooted, calling the other animals to aid in their rescue of the woman. All the sea creatures gathered together in response, but it was the great tortoise who consented to relieve the loons of their burden. The loons gently deposited the woman on the back of the tortoise, and the tortoise pledged to care for the woman.

A council of all the sea creatures was called to decide how best to care for the woman, and they decided that she should have earth to live on. The beaver was the first to dive to the bottom of the sea to bring up some earth, but he failed. Musk-rats were the next to dive, but stayed under water so long that when they rose to the surface of the water, they were dead. Each time the tortoise searched their mouths for bits of earth, but she could find none. Many other animals tried to gather a bit of earth for the woman to live on, but all to no avail. Finally, a toad went down to the bottom of the sea. The toad dove so deeply that when she rose, she was nearly dead. But on searching her mouth, the tortoise found a few grains of earth. She gave those to the woman, who took them and placed them carefully around the edge of the tortoise’s shell, and that became the beginning of dry land. The woman then walked from the center of the tortoise’s shell to the east and as she walked, the earth stretched in front of her. She walked to the west, and the earth stretched in front of her. She walked to the north and to the south, and as she walked the earth grew and extended, forming a vast land rich in vegetation and all forms of life. All of this was sustained by the tortoise, who still supports the earth.

This version of the earth diver creation story highlights primordial waters as the source of creation and life—life, which is protected and nurtured through the collaborative and cooperative community. It is also worth noting that not all attempts at finding grains of earth, the substance necessary for sustenance, are successful. Indeed, unsuccessful efforts result in death. This reminds me of the Jewish saying, “You are not required to finish the work, but neither are you permitted to desist from it.” Effort and responsibility are the cost of membership in an interdependent community. And, like planting the seeds of trees, the fruits of our efforts take time to grow and ripen.

I arise, facing East by Mary Austin

On By MaryIn authenticity, Awe, generosity, Gratitude, happiness, poetryLeave a comment

 It IS Spring time! Time to celebrate new beginning, new births, new hope. Spring and mourning feel to me like they have a lot in common – the new beginnings, births and hope stuff. So I often find myself taken with poems, prayers and parables that celebrate mornings.

Having written that, and it is deeply heartfelt as I write it, but, none-the-less it is kind of odd, because I am just not a morning person. It takes me a good hour and a cup of coffee before I can pretend to be civil. But, I do love this poem/prayer. . . Hope you do to!

 

I arise, facing East by Mary Austin

I arise, facing East,

I am asking toward the light;

I am asking that the day

Shall be beautiful with light.

I am asking that the place

Where my feet are shall be bright,

That as far as I can see

I shall follow it aright.

I am asking for the courage

To go forward through the shadow,

I am asking toward the light!

Like this Together by Adrienne Rich

On By MaryIn Awareness, poetryLeave a comment

I’m kind of obsessing on Adrienne Rich these days. She was important to me once when I was much younger. I read her as a spokesperson for the moment. She somehow seemed to have the words to help me think about what I was reckoning with when I was wordless. Now I find myself drawn to her again, in another moment when I am wordless, albeit for very different reasons.

Here’s the poem fragment that caught my heart today

Like this Together

Adrienne Rich

Wind rocks the car.

We sit parked by the river,

Silence between our teeth.

Birds scatter across the island

Of broken ice. Another time

I’d have said: “Canada geese,”

Knowing you love them.

A year, ten years from now

I’ll remember this—

This sitting like drugged birds

In a glass case—

Not why, only that we

Were here like this together.

From Necessities of Life. 1966.

Let this Darkness be a Bell Tower

On By MaryIn alchemy, Choices we make, existential angst, poetryLeave a comment

We live in interesting times, maybe a bit too interesting for my taste. But I’m working on accepting reality as it is, even as I work as best I can for a better tomorrow. After all, what choice do we have? Accept the moment, or bang our heads against the wall and give ourselves a case of anxiety and a concussion.

That being the case, I take heart from this poem by Rainer Maria Rilke. It reminds me to inhale, exhale, repeat as necessary. It reminds me of the power and expansiveness of breathing, of beauty rendered from brokenness. It reminds me of the Japanese art of Kintsugi, repairing cracked pottery with gold, by gluing the broken pottery pieces together with a lacquer dusted with gold powder, highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them. Wasn’t it Hemingway who said, “The world will break you. Then you become strong in the broken places.” Well, I’m just sayin’ that after this year, we all are likely to be strong in a whole lot of places…

Let This Darkness Be A Bell Tower

Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Joanna Macy + Anita Barrows

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29

From his last “Sonnet to Orpheus,” Joanna Macy tells us that Rilke has chosen to be with the darkness rather than hide from it. For Macy, that deeply resonates with our relationship to our planet. Yes to that, and I find it also resonates deeply with our current political climate.

Remembering Pauli Murray’s Dark Testament

On By MaryIn poetry, winterLeave a comment

Here we are mid-winter, ensconced in ice and snow and soul chilling cold. It is tomato soup and grilled cheese time. It is hearty beef stew time. It is time to hibernate and hope for spring and the freedom that comes with warmth and the flowing of new life.

Oh, it is all of that, and then I turn on the news, and I’m caught up in the darkness. And then I remembered Pauli Murray’s poem Dark Testament, and its meditations on hope and freedom. Here’s a sample:

Dark Testament. Pauli Murray.

In memory of Stephen Vincent Benét.

Freedom is a dream

Haunting as amber wine

Or worlds remembered out of time.

Not Eden’s gate, but freedom

Lures us down a trail of skulls

Where men forever crush the dreamers—

Never the dream.

VERSE 8

Hope is a crushed stalk

Between clenched fingers

Hope is a bird’s wing

Broken by a stone.

Hope is a word in a tuneless ditty —

A word whispered with the wind,

A dream of forty acres and a mule,

A cabin of one’s own and a moment to rest,

A name and place for one’s children

And children’s children at last . . .

Hope is a song in a weary throat.

Give me a song of hope

And a world where I can sing it.

Give me a song of faith

And a people to believe in it.

Give me a song of kindliness

And a country where I can live it.

Give me a song of hope and love

And a brown girl’s heart to hear it.

Now, by all means, head over to your local independently owned bookstore and find a copy of Pauli Murray’s book: Dark Testament: and Other Poems.

I first came to know Pauli Murray through her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. Mrs. Roosevelt. In an essay published in 1952, Mrs. Roosevelt described Pauli Murray as, “One of my finest young friends is a charming woman lawyer . . . who has been quite a firebrand at times, but of whom I am very fond.” The Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice describes her as:

A twentieth-century human rights activist, legal scholar, feminist, poet, author, Episcopal priest, labor organizer, multiracial Black, LGBTQ+ person from Durham, NC, who lived one of the most remarkable lives of the 20th century. S/he was the first Black person to earn a JSD (Doctor of the Science of Law) degree from Yale Law School, a founder of the National Organization for Women and the first Black person perceived as a woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. 

If you want to know more about her life and her friendship with Mrs. Roosevelt, I highly recommend The Firebrand and the First Lady, by Patricia Bell-Scott.

Poetry, Power and Suheir Hammad’s talisman

On By MaryIn alchemy, poetry, vision and perspectiveLeave a comment

There is a child’s nursery rhyme that is often quoted: sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me.  But, there is another version of that rhyme that says: sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will kill my soul.  … naming is powerful. Words are powerful. Poetry is powerful.

Thomas Merton wrote, “art [poetry] enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” When I read poetry, when I hear it, when I feel its resonance in my heart, in the depth of my being it touches, it changes, it evokes the best in me. Poetry embodies the alchemy of transmogrification to ways of being that celebrate human dignity, that create social structures that embody justice. 

Suheir Hammad writes poems of war, peace, women, power – she claims human dignity and a just world. Her writing is a talisman for me. She wrote a poem that titled talisman … feel its power …

talisman
it is written
the act of writing is
holy words are
sacred and your breath
brings out the
god in them
i write these words
quickly repeat them
softly to myself
this talisman for you
fold this prayer
around your neck fortify
your back with these
whispers
may you walk ever
loved and in love
know the sun
for warmth the moon
for direction
may these words always
remind you your breath
is sacred words
bring out the god
in you

Give a listen to her TED Talk. (If you have not explored the TED web page, really go surf over there. TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design – ideas worth spreading. And it really is a great collection of ideas worth exploring). So, here is the link to Suheir Hammad reading a couple of her poems http://www.ted.com/talks/suheir_hammad_poems_of_war_peace_women_power.html

may you walk ever loved and in love!

may we all know days of warmth

and peace

and love