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Posts Tagged ‘death’

For Seamus

They do not die,
these poets,
they are absorbed,
slowly by the year,
feeding the tongue’s root,
weighing the worth of hearts,
swinging from page to page,
a rustle of birdsong in the morning,
a glimmer of twilit truth,
always gold,
not tarnished,
never fading.

Gone
In days
Muttering of war.
The postures
Of the scrubbed,
Dead eyed ones,
Once more decrying
Alternatives to destruction.
Their squealing slavering
Shall be spittle
In the breeze
On sea cliffs
Where your
Insistent gentle roar
Will bring wheels
Of gulls
And bees to drift
On warming slopes,
The sound of waves,
God breathing
As He too,
Rolls those lines
To and fro.

Once carved
And carried,
A pomander
Of sweet eyed
Clarity, a sword,
A vinegar, to cut
The fickle fat
Of lazy habit.
A new recognition,
A reconstruction
Of heaven
Where we stand.
Perfect
As it is,
Sweet sufferer,
But not of fools.

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jindai treetops2

Here is the final part of this long piece I started on my arrival in Japan last week. It was a lot longer than I expected, but then grief and loss, death and life, love and longing are big subjects.
I have been working from an old notebook so it has taken longer to transcribe and post than usual. Maybe now I will start some slightly more jolly haiku!

JAPANESE SYMPHONY, EIGHTH MOVEMENT, ‘Uguisu’

i do not know ho we can stay.
little bush warbler, i do not know
how it is we can remain.

i am drunk upon your water-clear song.
i am full of white tears for lost worlds.

i do not know how we can remain
so diminished, so lost.

within the song is always silence.
within the sorrow, something else,
something else.

we go, must go,
we cannot stay
forever looking at sunsets and weeping,
in the cool clarity of summer stars.

we are clothed in your song,
little warbler, drunk and raining,
wingless on bare branches.
blades of grass, single petal falling,
we shudder and break
into a thousand pieces.

i do not know how we remain.
we are not who we were,
nor who we are
nor who we could have been,
little bird.

it lies in sorrow, little bird.
it lies forgotten between us, little bird.
it lies between if only and never.

breath comes in and goes out.
joy and sorrow, the flickering breath:
the light and shade of this life.
how can we remain?

song only comes as we expire,
breathe out, let go.
the beautiful voice, little bird,
escaping, gone,
no longer belonged,
no longer belonging.
offered.

memory and forgetting –
the only gifts
we have ever owned.

—–

shady pool1

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JAPANESE SYMPHONY: 7th MOVEMENT, ‘NEVER GONE’

i shall tell you something,
i shall whisper it:

she is not gone.

that echoed voice,
that memory:
her touch still
as it flows by.
that sudden bloom of feeling:
the turn of her love
towards you.

unlocked from time
we inhabit all our moments,
all our dearest places.

free of this small gravity
radiant as sun and moon
unburdened by horizons,
shade or shadow.

ever in each past,
each future, each present.
become bed and mother
of all indwelling,
scented on every breeze,
blossoming and blossoming
and blossoming eternal.

each pulse is hers, each step,
each tear, each smile.

she is not gone.
we are not gone.
closer than heartbeats,
closer than breath,
the air and whisper of existence,
(as we ever were,
as you ever are).

for but a tragic instant
hedged and deluded,
sweet prison of expression:
a whisper before it leaves the mouth,
before it finds a home.

we should sit down
and weep,
speak of nothing else
but silence,
nothing but the moments.

she is returned
blessing all things
with memories,
with joys and pains,
all the sharp is-ness
of bodies.
jewels to pass down,
fuel for futures.

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ONE WISH, ONE BLESSING

If there were one wish offered
Then it would be this,
And if the power I had
To bless were certain,
This would it be also:
To die happy.

A simple thing,
A strange reminding
Of ends and farewells,
But think:

A happy death.
No fear nor overshadowing,
Free from uncertain doubt,
No buried regret, no guilt,
No aching yearning,
Nothing unresolved,
Nothing left undone.
Complete, completed, content.
Relaxed, ready, rested
To stay or move on.

A simple thing
So few have found.
It cannot be taught,
It cannot be contrived,
It cannot be hesitant.
One moment
Never to be missed.
Inevitable, certain,
Nothing more owned,
That fracturing of thought,
That clarity so long put off,
End of all tomorrows.

I would wish you
A happy death.
May we all be blessed
A happy death.

A life filled
And glorious,
Radiant
With all emotion.
Tasted, consumed,
A banquet
Sharp and honey-sweet.
Poised,
Skilled,
Generous and gentle.
Worn well
But lightly,
Not hoarded nor wasted.

Loved, lived, left.
Nothing else
Would so suit
A perfect world,
As this is,
But to do so.
A wish.
A blessing.
Die happy.

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A LOOM, A STITCH LOST

Each time
I read the words
Of Angus
The paths
Of my brain
Meet the dance
Of my tongue
A taste
Of delight,
Sound sculpted
In silence
A dance,
A dance,
An expulsion
Of gestures
A condensation
Of landscapes
A world
Falling
Out of solution
Like diamond
Clear
Crystals.

And my own
Weave
Emerges,
Upon
My own loom,
Shuttles fly:

Today
One more stitch
Lost
From the cloth
Of this life.
One more certainty
Dissolved,
One life
Lost:
Memory only
Clinging on:
Fingers of
What if
Fingers of
Maybe.

With sleep,
Letting go.
The wind outside,
The rain
The hail
Demarcating
In turn
Each four walls
Of this uncertain house,
Home yet
For a while

And then
The journey onward
The journey unknown
Together
Or alone
Drifting
In slow shoals
Forgetting
Our names,
Wind borne
Water borne
Sighing
Starwards.

star lines7

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Dream, Dreamer, Dreaming.

The Master’s Garuda boat
Untouched by the turbulence
Of the rocked earth.

The long, deep lake shudders,
Sweeping away the lost
Into other worlds.

Winding avenues of rock
Rising from the shore,
Steps, tunnels, pathways.
The clustered, caved homes of disciples,
Comfortable, apart, sedate.

Shrines of Herukas,
Whispered shadows.
The First Seventy dissolving, dissipating.
Shallow basins and channels guiding
The flow of gore,
The seepage, the transformation
From flesh to food
For the invisible ones.

On carved, curved walls
The lives recorded,
The passage through hell-worlds,
The First Seventy Disciples return
To dissolve in mantra –
Butter lamps floating
On red globules of spent life
Drifting into sinuous darknesses.

Keeping watch, the New.
Taking turns as long as can be withstood,
In the presence of final collapse.

A chance to overcome despair:
To witness the passage of the Elements
Untouched,
To dance clear of the smoke,
The flame of laughter
Fanned
By True Emptiness.

The horror of Reality –
A flower of great beauty,
But no one name.

On the roaring edge,
The Master asks a simple question.

The Sublime awaits.

There is no answer.

———-

(Imagery from a dream last night, satisfyingly Jungian, dark, bright, strange. A mountain lake, an earth tremor sinking boats, a large prowed boat rides the wave, safe. The main story, a Master with disciples living in the steep rock-cut lakeside mountains. The return of the First Seventy Disciples, old men coming back to their Master to die together. The New disciples, set the task to be continually present during the dissolution of the bodies, encaverned, aware, candle light in small shrines. Hard to bear the horror and glory of the implacable transformation, taking turns, Master watching on, silent, slight smile, compassionate, unforgiving. One opportunity, every opportunity, to break through, to break out……)

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( the diving, swimming, flying man is from an Iron Age Celtic coin of the Bellovaci tribe)

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