Posts Tagged ‘Poetry’
“6th August: A Wind From The East” please see the page of this performance piece I have just put up. (I put it as a page, rather than a post as it’s a bit lengthy and needs its own space
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, bomb, great experiment, Hiroshima, in memory of, Nagasaki, performance, Poetry, pouty, remembrance on August 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Fluid cool
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged as it is, green world, landscape, Poetry, summer on July 30, 2012| 1 Comment »
My mind is clouds
Shades of grey
Shades of light
Pellucid smoke
Moving to a breeze of birdsong
A dream of seafoam
A warmth
A honeyed breath.
Discard perfection
Disregard the starch ,
The po-faced judgement
Of those who weigh
Degrees of holiness,
Degrees of failure,
The world is
What the world is.
This river,
Not the water,
Not the valley,
Not the sound
Not the blackbird’s cool….
Transit of Venus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged astrological events, Events, omens, paying attention, Poetry, rain, signs, silence, summer, the insignificant, the unseen, transit of Venus on June 7, 2012| 4 Comments »
TRANSIT OF VENUS
( the dead pass by
The living pass by).
On long, rainy days
As summer floods in,
If only we could remain
Silent and listening
Hands still, ears open.
Not desiring anything –
The water-drop’s song
The grey and green light.
Remaining breathing
No wishes, no impatience.
Then we would not miss
The transits of bliss,
The constant reverberation
Of the invisible,
The passage of time,
The dance of space
Between one breath
And the next.
I wrote this on the day of the Transit of Venus, an event much heralded by some, invisible here because of steady rain clouds. It follows a lunar eclipse, much heralded by some, invisible because of rain clouds. This, together with complaints about our traditional weather (rain in summer), drew my attention to the yearning for the calendrical, anniversarial (?), momentous, special, ” once in a lifetime”, events. What do we strain to see? What do we let slip by unnoticed? The value of the unseen…..
Maybe The Moon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alchemy, anahata, May, moon, perigee, Poetry, resonance, unstuck on May 6, 2012| 3 Comments »
Round
resounding
visible or not
night time or day light
the silver
shimmering
gong
of the moon.
Anahata.
Throb and thring
of the unstuck.
Tongue cleaves
to silence.
Inner doors
open outwards.
Drinking the revolution
of the planets,
the resonance
of Time.
Visit the interior of the Earth:
there shall you discover
the Stone of the Philosophers,
the moon of your deserted dream,
the sun of the golden day,
the river that whispers with the voices
of all possible gods….
ICE, EYES, LAND, TIME….
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aurora, horizon, Iceland, light, Poetry, raven, snow, Solstice, time, Winter on April 25, 2012| 3 Comments »
First few notes and ideas from a trip to Iceland last December. Another piece disappeared soon after writing – joys of instant technology – perhaps the giants of the aurora prefer to remain hidden, together with the dragons of the ice….
I
A slight
Misinterpretation…
It was not
“Nevermore”
The raven cried
But
“endless”
Or “forever”…..
That timeless view
only one who sees
The whole horizon
Can utter.
II
The weight of white, cutting wind
Relentless,
Borne over the miles of ice,
Raising ghosts that smoke and snake
Across the black remnant of ice-free ground….
III
At first,
Day on day of snowfields
Aches eye and brain.
Tired of colourless, outstretched miles,
We long for a taste of colour,
A clash of the familiar….
But with the continuing cold
Comes acquiescence:
No longer is this a world you know,
No longer parameters judiciously to be weighed.
IV
The weight of gravity,
Settling white,
remorseless accumulations
Of slow curves.
“We do not care
For your insistent heartbeat.
A fist
Thrown against forever,
A line of footprints smoothed and vanishing…..”
V
“Nevermore”
Was not the raven’s cry-
That
Was a mistranslation.
Understandable, though,
The tones of black
Require a certain bleak vision
Mixed with cold humour:
A perspective of wan horizons,
Endless fields of snow
Punctuated by moments
Of death….
The word
On every raven’s call
Is
“Forever”.
Maybe
It was a gloomy
New England Protestantism,
(Baldur dead forever),
Maybe
A seer’s view….
Try as you like,
Small human,
Whatever weavings and turnings,
Clever, fast, considered,
All shall return to forever,
The dust in my voice,
The iris of this instant.
My name is Horizon.
“Nevermore”
Is the cry of one
Who can never look over the world’s edge,
Never see the sun under the earth,
Night fuse,
Egg of light……
FreeFall
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged distance, earth's core, falling, horizon, Poetry, radius on April 15, 2012| 8 Comments »
FALLING, FALLING
(Opening)
Just a crack,
Just a sliver of light
And the words pour through….
A flock of birds
Noisy, impossible to number,
Impossible to fix the eye
On just one……
A sudden rush,
A pattern, a form
Turning in the clear sky,
Then gone
To the fine horizon…..
——-
(Dream)
It would take (about)
Twenty minutes
To fall to earth
From the furthest, quietest, coldest
Edge of atmosphere,
Where air wisps into void.
Those who know
Say, once acceleration becomes steady
It feels like motionless floating
Watching the round world
In peace,
Glorious and free
Until the horizon begins to close,
To contract,
To speed, simultanteously,
Inwards and outwards
And gravity once more
Becomes velocity….
But if we were not to collide,
If, somehow, on our frozen descent
Matter, mind, breath
Attenuated,
If translucence of the air,
(Somehow),
Replaced the bounded blood,
The nestled organs,
The pumping familiarity,
The jealous identity of flesh…
And we passed through,
Still falling,
Still joyously falling,
The first jolt
Of rock and dirt…
Down in warming,
Dark silence,
New worlds –
Not death-dulled dust,
But a new, rich, atmosphere,
Savoured.
Layers of dance,
Dreams of fire taking form,
Vast equators,
Equations, interactions,
Slidings, scales tipped,
Scales iridescent,
Lands, oceans, airs,
A transparency.
Falling,
Still falling,
As if floating,
As if free,
Then,
(and this is the wonder),
Then it would be,
Give or take,
Two more days,
Two more full days
Of falling
Down towards the heart pull,
(Core and cord),
Of the planet
Before the centre were reached
Before the golden,
Singing, spinning hub,
Before the ringing small sun,
The raison d’etre,
The opening question,
( little human),
Galahad before the Graal, perhaps,
Or simply
A coming home,
An end of falling,
A stillness,
Enfolded,
Matter to matter,
The round simplicity
Of the sound ‘home’.
——
(End Matter)
——-
Word Jam, (pentatonic minor)
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged early spring, emptiness and waiting, holding light, japan, Poetry, remembrance, rice fields, sunset, the dead on April 1, 2012| 2 Comments »
Word Jam
Words in progress, tasting memories. When it comes to writing down the symphony of chord-thoughts it is easy to get lost, carried away by one small melody. These are probably not finished pieces, but sketches, scribblings, jottings, notes that revolve around one small observation, one image whilst recently travelling through Japan.
Japan has two moods: flat and vertical. The flat plains are in the minority ( only 25 percent of land surface). The rest of the country ascends to the sky as quickly as is possible in dense forested mountains. Outside of the vast cities the countryside is small fields and scattered villages and farms. On the outskirts of these one can see small, tightly packed cemetaries filled with similar- looking monuments of highly polished grey stone, rectangular columns on deeply moulded bases. They are in the midst of the rice fields, embedded in the land, a ploughing back of the past into the future fertility….
I
Swinging north
Along an arc of coast.
A sinking sun sinking into red
Darkening the fields.
Speeding north:
Glints of gold
In the deserted fields –
The last light reflected
From the mirror-polished memorials
Of the dead.
Close-packed, stacked, huddled,
Names deep-carved,
A gathering of grandmothers,
Nibbling o-sembe,
Comparing grandchildren,
Chiding daughters,
Measuring last year’s yield.
II
Belonging
Is the best
We can ever achieve.
Beyond the translucent
Sliding screen
That is the present moment
One koto finds notes –
A pentatonic rise and fall
The hunt for a jewelled memory,
An old nostalgia,
A song from the field.
III
The shrine room
Of memory
Gradually becoming cluttered,
Dusty:
An acquiescence
Of empty pain
Absorbed, overlain,
Unresolved.
IV
As if gathered
For the last spark of daylight:
The memorials of the dead,
Mirror-bright,
Precisely named,
Watching the rice fields
Sodden with snow-melt.
V
Away
From the echoing rooms
Of the living
( faint smell of pine and cedar)
Away
From the roaring roads
( the long tunneled miles)
Locked
To the sea horizon
(the dipping sun)
Set to watch
By the presumptuous living
(Seed, chaff, straw)
Woven into the year,
Ploughed back,
Discretely avoided,
Neatly confined,
The ghosts wake and chatter
Unsurprised,
Watching from the field’s edge,
The cry of foxes, the wheeling of kites,
The deep obeisance to snow
Of the bamboo grove.
No longer distraught:
Day after day
Unnamed, unnumbered.
They, too,
Know that
Belonging
Is the best
We can ever achieve….
VI
Observation and memory –
The only defence against
The desolate wastelands of habit,
The ennervating excuse of precedence,
The rigor-mortis of conviction…….
The words of the Buddha
Are the same words
As the foolish man…..
February, a memory
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dream, February, moon, night, Poetry, seasons, silence, words drift away and back on March 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »
February is month of silence, of purification, of beginnings. White days, black nights. A hunger to be started, a hunger to remain at peace……
I
Silver and still.
A geography of birdsong
Shaping the silent air.
Continents of cloud
Laminate the day.
II
PILLOW
The full moon,
Like a gentle rain:
Honey to the soul.
Sweeter still
The sweet music
Playing in that vast silence.
On the tip of the tongue:
How cool the roundness of it.
On the pillow where I rest my eyes,
How fragrant that single flower of jasmine.
III
THE AVENUES OF EVENING
A thousand stars
For each man’s eye.
A thousand stars
From each night’s vigil.
There is fire
At the centre of everything.
Fire beneath
The cool breeze of evening.
Fire in the white cherry’s breath,
Fire in the poet’s head –
The crazed poet lover
Strumming his heart.
In the heart of each man
A thousand stars.
In the heart of the night
A thousand antiphonies.
Mars’s red eye cools:
He drinks
The white cherry avenues
Of Aphrodite.
The world,
The round world
Spins through fragrant air.
Fire in the worm
Fire in the well
Fire in the garden
Fire in the eyes of the cast out.
Looking out-
As if for the first time,
(every time, the first time)….
Fire in the cold woman’s dream
Fire in the forest.
Fire and flood spreads spinning
In the woman’s womb,
In the swan’s rustle
By the water’s edge.
The nipple of Life shoots milk in fire
Through blank blindness.
A thousand stars spread in each drop
Flung free in distance.
Fire that burns
And fire that answers,
Freezing the spaces in between.
Fire that falls on the thumb
Is sucked without thought
Transforming fire to word,
Word to illumination.
Fire running through each beast,
It courses the veins of each child.
Each glance: a thousand stars,
Each familiar in the memories of a million souls.
A thousand stars for each man’s eye
In the cherry’s breath,
In the avenues of evening.
IV
TWO WOMEN
Now they lie, one and two
United in oblivion,
Comforting their powers.
Moth white, moon pale,
Sleep’s hills and valleys
Slightly rising, falling.
They know it and
Do not know it:
Measuring the world,
Wrapping it in movement.
Breath fills the room
And whispers through the house.
The seed falls through its golden cloud.
And now the cat prowls
Where no cat is.
Cat of desire
Purring at the bedhead.
Cat of darkness
Wrapping around its warmth.
The Familiar of the Female
Measuring the world,
Wrapping it in movement.
V
ONCE ONLY
In the grey dawn the honey kiss is hers
That made you shiver.
You do not know her name
You do not know her face,
Coming to your dreaming.
Her scent is summer
Her skirts sounding seas.
But she never waits for you.
But she never waits for you.
She will wait for you but once.
Only once will she wait for you.
Tree Spirit Healing: Spirit of Elm
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chant, clarity, healing, peace, Poetry, protection, shamanism, silence, spirit, tree on January 20, 2012| 1 Comment »
SPIRIT OF ELM
Spirit of elm
Sky- ladder
Cloud-crowned
Abode of wings
Chamber of radiance
The eight winds arise from you
The seven oceans flow through you
Pibroch of intelligence
Silent teacher
Resonant tower
One tree is a forest
Traversing the three worlds
Delineator of starlight
Eloquent shaper
Invisible watcher
Guardian of memory
Lord of words
Wonderful councellor
Showerer of light
Uxlemitanos
High elm
Deep noted
Fountain of stillness
Road to clarity
Discomforter of confusion
Diameter of creation
Upholder
Enfolder
Elucidator
Beyond silence.
Each tree species manifests the unity of Creation in its unique energy dance, maintaining and sustaining the continual weaving of the world. They wait and offer endless paths to the contemplation and realisation of wholeness.
The Elm is particularly tuned to channelling silent clarity and wisdom. Brilliant, resonant silence overwhelms confusion and separation. Elm is an invaluable teacher and a protector of personal integrity at the deepest level.
Tao of Trees.
This world rests on trees: its dream is green.
Wherever we may be, in deserts or on oceans,
We are bathed in the consequence of forests.
We breathe because of trees, we eat through their blessing.
Their shadows fall and cool in every clime.
Their presence is a moderation of hurricanes,
A warming of winter, a shelter and a place of contemplation.
To be able to condense and hold that smooth unity
Is the purpose of Tree Spirit Healing.
It is an empty hand and a quiet voice.
It is hardly anything and yet,
It can make all the difference
Between suffering and joy,
Collapse and integration.
Words for Wolf’s Month
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cold, dark, January, palidrome, Poetry, wolves on January 17, 2012| 2 Comments »
“Dark as the wolf’s month.”
January was known in the past as “Wolf’s Month”, the time when wolves desperate for food would most likely approach human habitations and attack people.
Here are some January words, somewhat dark, but it is the right time to contemplate the dark: on silent, long nights with the slow cold dawn so distant and forlorn…..
The wolf pictures are derived from Celtic Iron Age coin art.
I
Wolf month.
Feasting faded.
Now, waves of biting wind,
Sharp rain.
Through aching twilight,
Tattered roads.
The bright horizon, a promise
That cannot be kept.
Dreams become shredded, screaming,
Hung from cold tree towers.
Ghosts only,
Stare back from the water’s surface,
Gaunt, well- eyed.
Wolf Month:
Hollow,
Grey
And hungry.
II
Cold and fallow,
Muttering, dry dust.
The need to
Feel a delicate thread
That drives down
Into dream.
Needle-sharp,
Sew swiftly
The images that rise
And flitter.
We are nothing but
A flicker of light and shade-
Dust that sings
Dust that sifts through silence…
Drought
Needs root
To break.
Shock,
Hollow hopelessness,
Jagged entropy of rusty planets,
The tiring, desperate wheeze
Of a starter motor
Failing to…..
Wait.
We cannot always be glorious
We cannot always be beautiful
We cannot always be breathing words out
Into the world.
Wait.
Breathe in.
Feel gravity settle and whispers calm.
Down
through the endless compressed strata.
Dreaming of dragons…..
III
I came across an old Latin palindrome, a verbal construction that reads the same whether read forwards or backwards. Most palindromes are verging on nonsensical, but this one has resonance…
Palindrome.
‘In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.’
“We enter the circle after dark and are consumed by fire…. ”
That which we see is a reflection:
Invisible axis throwing back
A memory.
Mica dust
Brushing lips and eyelids
A fall into grace,
A desire for answers
A fibrillation of wings
A gesture of antenna
A coagulation of doubt,
A delineation of vagueness
Distant carillons resound-
Cerebellar starlight flickers
Walking forwards
Eyes in the back of the head
Walking backwards
To get a better view
Counterbalance dreams with …what?
with callibration
With certitude
With fumbling dogma
Go backwards-
Find a beginning.
Go forwards-
Find an ending.
Chiaroscuro.
The demon drunk
Gnashed a brush between his teeth,
The tang of turpentine and linseed.
Delighting, near mad, he moulds
Inpenetrable shadows to our godly form.
Heretical, welding us to darkness.
Creatures of form, no longer of light
But extruding from blackness our passions,
Our writhings towards a vague holiness…
Carravaggio, unkindly revealing
Moth nature,
Called to burn in the flame,
Corruscating, veined…
Like Blake’s daemons
We fall through aeons of void
Melting into gravitational chains,
Bound by chattering certainties
Bound by certain fears..
Into the spotlight,
We must enter the spotlight
Significant and justified…
Worthwhile, loved, approved of…
simonhlilly 