lola and i went for a walk today in the woods down by the river. we walked a path which once was the main road to the next town over. you can still find the remains of cellar holes, flower beds, day lilies. while we walked it rained and then it rained harder. it's been raining here for days and won't let up till friday. but the wet forest and the path were beautiful.
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i am reading poems by wendell berry right now.
SOWING
In the stilled place that once was a road going down
from the town to the river, and where the lives of marriages grew
a house, a cistern and barn, flowers, the tilted stone of borders,
and the deeds of their lives ran to neglect, and honeysuckle
and then the fire overgrew it all. I walk heavy
with seed, spreading on the cleared hill the beginnings
of green, clover and grass to be pasture. Between
history's death upon the place and the trees that would have come
I claim, and act, and am mingled in the fate of the world.
6 comments:
LETTER — FRANZ WRIGHT
January 1998
I am not acquainted with anyone
there, if they spoke to me
I would not know what to do.
But so far nobody has, I know
I certainly wouldn't.
I don't participate, I'm not allowed;
I just listen, and every morning
have a moment of such happiness, I breathe
and breathe until the terror returns. About the time
when they are supposed to greet one another
two people actually look into each other's eyes
and hold hands a moment, but
the church is so big and the few who are there
are seated far apart. So this presents no real problem.
I keep my eyes fixed on the great naked corpse, the vertical
corpse
who is said to be love
and who spoke the world
into being, before coming here
to be tortured and executed by it.
I don't know what I am doing there. I do
notice the more I lose touch
with what I previously saw as my life
the more real my spot in the dark winter pew becomes—
it is infinite. What we experience
as space, the sky
that is, the sun, the stars
is intimate and rather small by comparison.
When I step outside the ugliness is so shattering
it has become dear to me, like a retarded
child, precious to me.
If only I could tell someone.
The humiliation I go through
when I think of my past
can only be described as grace.
We are created by being destroyed.
"....mingled in the fate of the world."
i needed to read that today.
i love the w. berry poem and the letter - franz wright.
i found this today to share-
Love Does That
by Meister Eckhart
All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.
And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.
Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,
he looks into the burro’s eyes and touches her ears
and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,
because love does
that.
Love frees.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem...
Rain...ah. It's just NOW under 90 degrees here in California. I think I need to move near you. Heat is NOT for me!
Your blog is beautiful, takes me to a different world.
Where do you find all these brilliant poems?
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