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.
—–
simonhlilly 
Conversations with Invisible Friends 3
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blogs, comments, existence, Haiku, mirrors, plum sake, Poetry, rain, robin, silence, storm, words, worms on July 6, 2013| 3 Comments »
Another selection of comments and pieces inspired by other’s blog posts or blog comments. (We orchestrate…..)
NOISE
Prayer,
confessional,
creed.
God or Godless,
we ramble to ourselves
within our own bone cathedrals,
echoing with sighs and curses.
There is a completely soundproofed room
in some MidWest University.
No one had yet managed
to spend more than 45 minutes there.
Hullucinations after a few minutes.
We are not designed for silence or darkness.
We bleat and howl in our own jungles,
bleat and howl….
—
GIFT
This body,
This world:
A gift from a million suns.
—
NIGHT RAIN
A rain of words
puddle the page,
tongue-mind umbrella unfurls,
tastes flicker neon image,
dream world,
dream world.
—
MIRRORED
To see ourself reflected in the smile of our love
Is the only mirror should be allowed
Not the rotated smudge of silver window
Nor frozen shadows unbemused, inanimate.
—-
SQUALL
Whose soft words
Sweeping through
My mind’s cool edge,
I wonder?
Sound of distant rain.
Sound of distant rain.
Something seems forgotten:
Cool emptiness,
A taste of sorrow.
A taste of sorrow
For no reason
That I know.
Mantra of compassion.
Mantra of compassion.
Wind and rain
Blowing away
Ephemeral things.
—-
A CAST FOR WORMS
Well better and betterer.
Words for worms!
( Diet of Worms?).
Worm world.
Worm holes.
Cast about, Charles Darwin
( worms, his first love).
Lumbricus terrestris.
The name itself
Segmented, wriggling.
Beneath us all.
We, at last,
Their own dinner.
Earth to earth,
Tasting earth,
Making earth,
Loving earth.
Our Masters,
Squirmy worms,
Fast food,
Slow food,
Love food.
—–
ART OF POETRY
This hybrid birth,
a form of archaeology,
digging as science,
the science of digging,
the art of concealing and revealing,
building and collapsing, that is ,
constructing,
hybrid construction,
a constriction of possibilities,
a constraining of maps,
quantum thisness and thatness,
leaving more out than in,
making a point,
missing any other view,
poetry: the straining for meaning
without even pretending success,
e.e.cummins and e.e. goins,
a vowel,
a vapour,
a string of pearls,
words making doors,
doors opening,
sutras,
stitches,
hints for hunters…..
—
ROBIN
Looking back:
The world-
Bright, cocked eye
—-
GRACE
A small thing
Is not the same
As an inconsequential thing.
A loud voice
Is not the same as
A voice to be followed.
In one second,
In less, even,
The world can be born
Or can disappear
In front of our eyes.
Each person made afresh
Each to see what can be seen
What can be sung.
No wrong notes
If we do not know the tune.
We shall diminish and wither away
Jumping to conclusions.
Falling skillfuly
Is called flying.
Stumbling elegantly
Is called dancing.
Moving gracefully
Is called living.
—–
PERCEPT
Plum saké.
Too much
Slurs the mind
—-
METRE
It has presence and voidness.
It has frozen processes,
exited time,
become apt, concrete,
paradoxically gone.
Here
and both there and elsewhere,
but only inside
does it play a tune.
Lithophone,
bone music,
skeleton key.
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