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Posts Tagged ‘art’

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DHRUPAD 14 (sky wedded)

seen
see now the sky now
wedded the sky wedded the sky
to silence, silent pool, sun sliding,
sun slides slips bright morning, citrus sharp and thin morning.
still, sharp morning.
Fennel, collecting
collecting fennel seeds so fragrant on my fingers,
green and full and cool and and.
It lies so still so still and cold now
still and cold the slipping sun the slipping sun low and citrus bright
delicate as fennel seed the pink cloud light puffed pink cloud morning, rimmed cold rimmed bright the slipping sun
and the apples falling now out of sight but falling
the leaves crisp and dry giving colour away
giving gold and green and all their days away to watch open-eyed open skied and breathing slow the silence grow
the silent singing silence the singing sky the slipping sun
and the moon still,
the moon still half gone
rolling bright dreaming dreaming of the last night gone,
night dark with stars
and now so clear and still there
there now there now settled bedded laid in silence
the slow dark and light the dancing shade the cool and citrus shadows the glaze colour gazing morning gesture clouding flow
small bright flicker shading clouds now shading sliding sun and riding moon higher still that that
higher than that cool cool riding the day wave bright and glorious cool sky sky wedded it is now.
World sky wedded

—

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DHRUPAD 13 (emptying out)

The skies are empty now empty of whistling wheeling swallows.
A quiet white
blanket of satisfaction mists the land
the ashes peel curl and fade, the hazels crisp.
Veils thin and mysterious return.

the slow dead
and the quick dead
turn and rise to see the returning tides of winter.

But it is still peace today sunlight floating down
the world slowed but still growing.

Searching for the right words, is it?

Like the swallows
sweeping crying have gone have gone but
for one or two flitting and diving
and getting
their last supper
for a good long while a good while
on the winds to the warm lands,
the sun warming wings and the rising air wriggling with life.

Distance distance words wheel enough enough corner of the eye corner of the mind distance empty.

Searching for the right words,
like counting ripples as rain fills the puddles
and mud coloured is the earth
and mud coloured is the sky and
mud coloured is the day filled with muddy thought
and tongues still as the still hills
and mind as fast as streams and as easy to understand.
The wheeze of swallows fills space leaves space empty space gone gone gone

for rain here cools and day shrinks and the long night the long night dreams dreams and whimpers a new tune
a new song the right words
the right words ice sharp and curled clear and ice bright

and here now here clear and calling and big as hills

and a throat of bursting rivers
and a sleep of dark moments
and shadows longer longer
reaching to horizons and the bell of the star sky ringing ringing and the shiver of distance opening
up and a deep, round silence
an empty skull dome silence
a cave drip drop dark silence a
story
silence where footsteps walk
and branches swish back
and in the corner of the eye the corner of the eye
change
wings
low
and sleek and loping through the drying soughing

a language change a sloping change of light
turn out turn in turn around empty skies

wind empty cloud empty star empty word empty.

—

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LOCATION OF THE HERMIT

not far from Despair
and Melancholy,
chapels of cloud
established on the edges.
slow, fast days of lightness
rounded out with vowels of woe.

no doors are visible
yet doors there are,
and signs and portents:
ruins and skulls bleached,
and soughing winds
through sighing grasses.

wan, wan, wan
is the long mile.
wan the height,
dark the cliff
smoked in mist.

where the raven wheels,
some little shelter.

to be in, and of, the world,
and so apart!

—

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Our Geography –
Nant Crysan

The rowan reddening,
No drop of sunlight wasted;
And the dried grasses to feast on
For finch and siskin.
The blue forest, floating on heat and haze,
Is cool still, the sound of trickling water,
And a breeze far off
On the slopes of Esgair Fwyog.

A row of hills weighs again its thoughts,
The horizon still no nearer.
There, by Spite Inn, the buzzard
Peers from its high post:
Something will stir and food will come.
The world wastes nothing,
Passing on one to another.

The road turns because it must,
Rises because it must,
Falls because it must,
No god complaining.

The rivers of old walls,
The lines of fields left fallow.
And the old names:
The ridge of the runaway,
Haunted still ( the cry of hounds and the drip of fear);
the ridge of the tumbling waters,
Haunted by another sound – of
Gathered ravens and ripped, uprooted, roaring torrents.

This rise and dip of this land
Draped between named places
Always slows and deepens my breath:
The way the hills fold up to the sky,
The way the forests have been patted
Into neat lines at field’s edge,
The way the water of Nant Crysan moves slow
And hidden in the sedge-rippled meadows
Where the black cattle come and go,
The way the fences fall into their own calligraphy
And the gates open always,
always to empty, sighing sky.

—

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Our Geography (1)

Our geography is mellow and tear-washed,
meandering and mud-stained.
It dreams through mist and slanting rains,
bites its lip and grasps the rooted valley sides.
It sends out messengers and bards
on posts and cries their hovered song.
It wears its history against a fickle, fast future;
views as unbecoming the speed of our own descent.
Though welcomes us back always
to its folded silences.

—

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YIDAM YEW

As though through the bark
The tree remembers
every storm
Every wild sunset.
every dream of fleeting light captured, savoured.
Every rip tide and cloud race, every
Second’s shade and bright reveal.
A mad visionary truth,
The taste of an ultimate, near ultimate, real,
Stretching and scattering certainty of form and view.
—
At its heart is a red darkness,
a blue darkness,
a glow of orange sunrise and sunsets,
a weight of waiting
and a weight of watching.
–
It will see you looking at it
through your own eyes.
It will measure the coming and going of your breath,
and know that it is dreaming.
–
Those who name it,
do not know its name,
which began at the beginning of things
And will continue beyond their ending,
and then will not be completed, even then.
–
Though there is a snake hiss silence,
though the spine fills and hollows with dust,
though one moment shatters in black light,
though there is a taste of pollen and old books,
though there is a stutter thought,
though there is a window or a mirror.
–
A perfect dance of stillness,
a perfect song of silence,
a filled void that drowns and opens out.
A cease and a spinning.
Location lost.
A reorientation in a million shards of shadow shimmer.
Wordless is the wisdom of compassionate beasts.
–
Whetever form it takes,
it is light and time and endless mind
Stretched out in sunlight, flowing as wind and rain,
A map of constancy, road to all things.
–

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‘Yidam’ is the Tibetan word for ‘meditational deity’. It has energetic presence that encourages awakening and is dressed in a form and metaphor that excites attention. Like all deities/spirits/thought forms, it is paradoxically illusory and of an independant existence more real than the individual personality could ever be. ‘Wrathful’ deities have the appearance of dynamic, fear-provoking, fiery forms that destroy illusion and false concepts.

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DHRUPAD 11 (august night)

The hollow hills resounding.
The resounding hollow hills,
Knee-deep in starlight,
Knee-deep in patient oaks,
And the white cries of the fox
And the stretched white cries of owls
And our sleeping souls rising like smoke
Through open windows on this warm night,
Weightless, free of thought now,
Flicking through centuries
As the ashes’ fingers fall and drift
And the berries ripen, sun-polished.
And the dead (who are always with us)
Watch and ripen, remembering old hymns
In an old language, and the music of quiet gossip
And the food of woodsmoke and pipe tobacco
And the too short, long evenings
And the too short, oblivious nights.
Carded and spun these days of commotion,
Made a single yarn end to end,
A story with familiar patterns,
With certain purpose, worthwhile
And righteous, worthy of some eternal reward,
Surely, surely.

—

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BARDIC REPLY

Our art is not about sanity.
You, who have learned neither name nor edge,
Who insist there is one word, one view, one meaning.
You can know nothing of this glory, this defeat, this wonder.
Whose life must be pleasant above all things,
despite death and all its monsters, despite the shadows, the whispers.
Trained neither to remember nor forget, muddling through.
Oh the mirrors are sharp and they are fine, but they lie.
That is never your face that looks out -just a trick we
Have become accustomed to, knowing no better.
Staring into dark pools hypnotised, dissassociated, becoming
Numb, drained of decisions, drained of moments,
the buzzing of summer flies, the click of electrical circuits.

—

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TERRACOTTA ARMY
( for kenza)

Who would not smile, immortal now and beside comrades?
(We are all clay, for the most part unfired, liable to dissolution, unremembered.)
In silent order, under cool earth, set to wait, bellies full, what could be better?
Dreaming of heaven is, perhaps, as close as one can get, without a girl.
The way of Tao is a mystery of dust and the sound of distant waters.
The whispers of the tourists, the cicada click of camera shutters,
The passage of sun and moon like the passing of emperors and empires.
Not quite outside of time, we count our ranks like the monks, mantras.
No need of other weapons: all die before us, our far off stares, our calm smiles.

—

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DHRUPAD 5 (bluebells)

Shimmers so
there,
unlikely unsky
sky,
woven down by green air
in the water washed wood
and the cherry sound
of chiffchaff chiffchaff,
chaffinch, twig twitter song.
Glory, glory, the deepest blue but not,
but violet but not,
but smudged heaven taste beyond eyes,
cell washed deep sound,
a sound even lying on it all,
lying across it all.
A sky blanket sun dipped.
Kingfisher blue, as if,
sudden flash blue, as if,
floating violet pink haze blue.
There
not there.
In passing flicker flicker from
a deep seen somewhere else,
from a silent safe mind springing up
with smiles.
Language unwrapped,
unfolded, spread open,
smoothed
there now, there now,
sun at last
sun at last,
sun, at last!
we shall push on push up
take colour become
come ring sound
and swing down singing
down the slopes,
a tumble bells sighing sound,
swaying dance a deeper dance,
down down the deeper sky,
sunless starless moonless,
a sea sky
footsteps
footsteps
the wooded
wooded
bluebell
way.

—

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