Cold flame
Crisping leaves:
Autumn stars’
Distant roaring.
Time,
Weightless,
Escapes
Into the endless
Night.
Adrift,
We revolve slowly,
Catching sight
Ocassionally
Of where we
Have been….
Posts Tagged ‘time’
Cold Flame
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Autumn, change, cold, cosmos, dissolution, leaf fall, night, November, Poetry, space, stars, time, Winter on November 5, 2012| 1 Comment »
Rescued Words of Late Summer
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn almost, clarity, Haiku, India, memories, notes to self, perfection, Poetry, reflections, sunlight, time on October 10, 2012| 2 Comments »
———
Distant forest
Wakes and roars.
Oncoming storm.
——–
Savouring every leaf
Delighting in every edge:
Sunlit autumn breeze.
——–
The only vaccine
For prejudice
Is clarity:
Self
As ephemeral fragment,
A wonder of wonders,
A blossom
Of unique possibility,
Never
To be repeated –
Melody in a dream
Forgotten
On waking.
——–
The universe is not interested in perfection.
Perfection is a dead end,
An eternal equilibrium of boredom,
Of self-congratulation
(the faint whiff of decay).
The religion of bigots,
The philosophy of the small-minded.
Perfection is cessation,
Utter self-containment,
A view too large to begin to encompass,
A beginning before a beginning,
An ending after an ending.
——-
Serene cloud worlds, unconcerned,
Grow and dissipate.
A dance of vapours: light and water
Built high in air.
Foundationless, they thrive.
Rootless sky trees swept on.
It is the
Fragile violence,
Remorseless distance,
That we long for:
An existence without finality,
Careless,
Law-abiding,
Supported,
Free.
—–
In Timeless Time.
In great India
By the slow,
green stream
of the goddess river
In the weight
Of sunlight:
Falling dust.
Time here
Does not pass by,
It does not vanish
Nor fly.
It cannot be wasted.
Time
Accumulates
In golden layers.
Passing
Through a door
Back ten thousand years,
Back to mythic daylight.
Passing
Through another:
Forward ten thousand years
To the gold, smoking, warm night.
Slaked
With time,
Drunk and full up,
The land vibrates:
Chant of cell song,
Golden chant of suns,
Whispered chant of universes.
Settling bliss,
The chant of golden light.
The outer forms:
Poverty, pain, old age, death,
The crumbling
Slow and mighty;
The smell of decay,
Green insidious damp,
Importunate smirk.
All
Barely able
To hold back
The bliss of light
Radiant
Within
The centuries of Time,
One on another,
Piled in corners,
Smiling.
——-
Six Haiku For Gentle Night
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku, moon, night, Poetry, seasons, time on August 30, 2012| 2 Comments »
*
But for the shape
You could well mistake it
For a summer cloud –
The moon this evening.
*
Losing their place
They hesitate
Then start again –
Cicadas counting stars.
*
As if climbing this hill
Had made them mine
– the moon, the city.
*
Sapped of its colour
Beneath the streetlamps:
The flowering cherry.
*
Warm wind all night long
Rushing to heaven,
Kindling the stars, even.
*
In my dream
I named them all –
The birds of dawn.
Six Haiku For Timeless Days
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Haiku, nature, Poetry, seasons, senses, time, timeless, words are pictures, year's passing on August 29, 2012| 2 Comments »
Six Haiku for Timeless Days
——–
Cloud upon cloud
Over the still water
A cuckoo’s voice.
———
The wind
Is the ladder on the horizon
That those tall clouds climb.
———–
The thunderstorm.
In this deserted garden
Only you and I,
Little frog.
———–
Rain running off
A horse’s flanks.
The longest day.
———
Stone, standing
In an empty field.
Waiting, maybe.
———-
My old home
– memories
Where I left them.
———–
Light of Lammas
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged festival, grain, harvest, lammas, light, quern, seed, time on August 1, 2012| 1 Comment »
Light of Lammas.
Dew-drunk and tipsy with Time,
Skewed, slewed, slaughtered.
The slow, steady sun fires the cloudbanks,
Silver, silver, the grinding stones spill silver.
Seed nods, falls gold, is gathered in.
The scorched path, the well-worn path,
The weave of light that webs the world.
Morning my breakfast, twilight my supper.
This spirit-filled world exactly like no other.
Burn the seeds of concept
In the furnace of the dawn.
Dreaming is the clue
To the nature of things,
Laying light upon Lammas morn.
“Light of Lammas” an original print by Simon H Lilly
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……
April notes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged green, lost in musing, Poetry, seasons, Sping, time on April 26, 2011| 2 Comments »
April notes.
I
Leaves,
Tongues,
Unfurl to taste
The spring air.
A thousand dialects of green
Singing in the sunlight,
Floating on the breeze.
Whispering,
Rising,
Rustling.
II
Summer settles in.
Hedgerows all green at last:
Elm and ash awake, unfurl.
The first, fierce flash of flowering
Subdued and melted,
Satisfied and seeded;
Dandelions exhale upon
The warmed air.
Skylarks dissolve
Into the high blue,
Swallows sift
The thickening air.
Days
Expand and relax,
Warmth radiates
Into the evenings.
Spring saunters away,
Humming,
Stopping to smell
The blossoms of May –
Creamy tide of spice,
Her footsteps
Fast covered
And
Fading.
Great Time and the spinning of form
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, goddess, kali, mahakali, maharatri, mahavidyas, metaphysics, Poetry, reality, space, tantra, time, transcendence on April 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »
The Ten Mahavidyas
The mahavidyas, or “great wisdoms”, “wisdom goddesses”, or “Ten objects of Transcendent Wisdom” is a medieval Indian system of metaphysical thought that brings together aspects of goddess energy in a powerful and evocative manner. In certain aspects it falls outside the more familiar Hindu orthodoxy, whilst deepening and adding commentary to the esoteric traditions of the Himalayan region.
I first came across the Mahavidyas in my fourth year at the University of Edinburgh and was drawn to the powerful imagery- especially as presented in Alain Danielou’s “Hindu Polytheism”- so that I incorporated elements of symbolism in my sculpture projects. At the time I was using the image of the bowl a lot in my work and it seemed an ideal form to express the numinous within the familiar. A container of space, requiring emptiness to define itself, the bowl has often been employed as a metaphor for the polarity of existence.
Much more recently I was asked to make images representing each Mahavidya in the same way that I found symbolic forms for tree energies. It took a while to consider. It is one thing tuning into a tree energy and seeing how to visually freeze that unique energy dance, it is a different matter of scale to do the same to a powerful universal energy presence. Resolution came when I acknowledged that the Mahavidya energy patterns are transgender, transhuman, transspatial, transtemporal, transcultural entities. In other words, it was not necessary to get “permission” or authentication to begin this work. They do not belong to any one species or gender or time or theology, though their symbolic references will be culturally specific. I am possessed wholly by these energies as I am with the frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum. I do not need to achieve knowledge or understanding outside of myself. In fact they have a more permanent existence than what I consider to be my own personal reality.
MAHAKALI
Great Time
Time accumulating,
Licking
Laughing.
Disintegrates
your considerate sciences,
Your careful measured certainty.
Unfettered
Definitions cease.
Knowing Her
There is nothing else to know.
Beyond subatomic passion,
Endless rest, but awake.
Scurrilous,
Untramelled Reality,
Radiant darkness
Embedded, entangled,
Woven into solidity
Solid time
Still time
Waiting time.
Ungraspable, unavoidable
Warm red tongue
Licking your soul.
Warm lips clasping.
Atrocious vastness,
Contigious unity,
Invisible light
Revealed.
Exploding souls
Supernovae.
The image above is one of a series of prints I made of the Mahavidyas and related energies. This one is Kali, the Great Night of Time, Deathless Silence, Perfect Bright Darkness. Kali means ‘time’.
Though these energies are personified and worshipped as deities, they transcend all human categorisation and all cultural niceties. They are raw reality, which is why they are so scary! Any image is Mahakali, every concept is Mahakali. This image I have made is therefore perfectly MahaKali, though not exclusively so!!
If you are interested inseeing the other images or purchasing a few(!!) please go to click here
simonhlilly 