Thursday, March 7, 2013

Eight in One

Excerpts from eight poems by eight poets mixed. 

The wind blows with the great desert's cold.
The eastward-flowing water is immense,
All the ten thousand things billow.
The white sun's passing brightness fades,
Floating clouds seem to have no end.
Swallows and sparrows nest in the wutong tree,
All things become islands before my senses,
which accept them as a matter of course: a murmur of silence.
All things in this darkness. I can know all of them,
just as I know that blood flows in my veins.
The plain is a great flowing of water through plants,
a supper of all things. Each plant, and each stone,
lives motionlessly. I hear my food feeding my veins
with each living thing that this plain provides.
Swims in him swallowed dolphins without fear,
and feel no sides, as if his vast wound were
some inland sea, and ever as he went
he spouted rivers up, as if he meant
to join our seas, with seas above the firmament.
The flesh is sad, alas! and all the books are read.
Flight, only flight! I feel that birds are wild to tread
The floor of unknown foam, and to attain the skies!
Another day. I follow another path,
Enter the leafing woodland, visit the spring
Or the rocks where the roses bloom
Or search from a look-out, but nowhere
Love are you to be seen in the light of day
I have seen music, heard
Grave and windless bells; mine air
Hath verities of vernal leaf and bird.
Ah, let this fade: it doth and must; nor grieve,
Dream ever, though; she ever young and fair.
I have committed the worst sin of all
That a man can commit. I have not been
Happy. Let the glaciers of oblivion
Drag me and mercilessly let me fall.
My parents bred and bore me for a higher
Faith in the human game of nights and days;
For earth, for air, for water, and for fire.
I let them down. I wasn’t happy.
Yes, tid. There's where. First. We pass through grass behush the bush to. Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the—riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Ibn Arabi

Listen, O dearly beloved What follows is not a poem in the Arabic, but part of a chapter from the Kitab al-Tajalliyat. However, since it was translated in the form of a poem by Henry Corbin in Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi, it has become deservedly famous. Listen, O dearly beloved! I am the reality of the world, the centre of the circumference, I am the parts and the whole. I am the will established between Heaven and Earth, I have created perception in you only in order to be the object of my perception. If then you perceive me, you perceive yourself. But you cannot perceive me through yourself, It is through my eyes that you see me and see yourself, Through your eyes you cannot see me. Dearly beloved! I have called you so often and you have not heard me I have shown myself to you so often and you have not seen me. I have made myself fragrance so often, and you have not smelled me. Savorous food, and you have not tasted me. Why can you not reach me through the object you touch Or breathe me through sweet perfumes? Why do you not see me? Why do you not hear me? Why? Why? Why?

Friday, September 14, 2012