voices in the night

(Greece, 05-08-2009)

I am the Raven
con of the world
spirit of blood and mire;
signal to the death,
the awakening before the coming.

I am the Owl
a reincarnation of a fed Rat
a wise soul searching – loving;
I find youth during their revelation,
and then take the responsibility,
of explaining away the exodus.

And I, I am the Hawk
guardian of the son
I bring the eye to battle;
searching wanting – warning,
the families of Lightning and of the Bear.

We shall be there when both Demons
and Angels together come to earth
do battle with man.

I am the Sparrow
the breath of heaven
I bring the desires of our Mother
and ask for you; to take care
of her belongings, her creatures.

I am the Bear from the family, before man
I will crush mans enemies
then selectively bind those
who would change the world;
to the ways of the White Witch.

And I, I am Lightning
I will strike down the madness
destroy the enemies of the Bear;
I am the weapon, of the most secure
Angel of our Lord.

We shall be here when both Demons
and Angels together come to do battle
with man.

And I am the Eye,
knowing of what must be done
to save man from destroying;
the faith of his One God.

Together we take the hour
of silence, form our armies.
Karma leading the way;
we reach out to the night.

Changing mans destiny,
crushing the selfishness
of blinded destruction;
Working the sphere of time; Risking all.

It is our destiny to be here
when both Demons and Angels
come together to do battle with Man.

Hear our voices; listen to our words,
the songs of her love.
In the breath of the world.

The Voices In The Night.

~ Joseph Mayo Wristen ~

animal[s] in pain

(Bulgaria, 04-08-2009)

The wind drew off
Like hungry dogs
Defeated of a bone --
Through fissures in
Volcanic cloud
The yellow lightning shone --
The trees held up
Their mangled limbs
Like animals in pain --

[...]

~ Emily Dickinson ~

rush [expanding]

(Romania, 03-08-2009)

The universe expands and contracts like a great heart.
It is expanding, the farthest nebulae
Rush with the speed of light into empty space.
It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies,
dust clouds and nebulae
Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one
harbor, they stick in one lump
And then explode it, nothing can hold them down; there is no
way to express that explosion; all that exists
Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each
other into all the sky, new universes
Jewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae
like charging spearmen again
Invade emptiness.
No wonder we are so fascinated with
fireworks
And our huge bombs: it is a kind of homesickness perhaps for
the howling fireblast that we were born from.

But the whole sum of the energies
That made and contain the giant atom survives. It will
gather again and pile up, the power and the glory --
And no doubt it will burst again; diastole and systole: the
whole universe beats like a heart.
Peace in our time was never one of God's promises; but back
and forth, live and die, burn and be damned,
The great heart beating, pumping into our arteries His
terrible life.
He is beautiful beyond belief.
And we, God's apes -- or tragic children -- share in the beauty.
We see it above our torment, that's what life's for.
He is no God of love, no justice of a little city like Dante's
Florence, no anthropoid God
Making commandments,: this is the God who does not care
and will never cease. Look at the seas there
Flashing against this rock in the darkness -- look at the
tide-stream stars -- and the fall of nations -- and dawn
Wandering with wet white feet down the Caramel Valley to
meet the sea. These are real and we see their beauty.
The great explosion is probably only a metaphor -- I know not
-- of faceless violence, the root of all things.

~ Robinson Jeffers ~

summer #1

(Hungary, 03-08-2009)

Remember the days of our first happiness,
how strong we were, how dazed by passion,
lying all day, then all night in the narrow bed,
sleeping there, eating there too: it was summer,
it seemed everything had ripened
at once. And so hot we lay completely uncovered.
Sometimes the wind rose; a willow brushed the window.

But we were lost in a way, didn't you feel that?
The bed was like a raft; I felt us drifting
far from our natures, toward a place where we'd discover nothing.
First the sun, then the moon, in fragments,
stone through the willow.
Things anyone could see.

Then the circles closed. Slowly the nights grew cool;
the pendant leaves of the willow
yellowed and fell. And in each of us began
a deep isolation, though we never spoke of this,
of the absence of regret.
We were artists again, my husband.
We could resume the journey.

~ Louise Gluck ~

in-between

(Croatia, 01-08-2009)

What instinct forces man to journey on,
Urged by a longing blind but dominant!
Nothing he sees can hold him, nothing daunt
His never failing eagerness. The sun
Setting in splendour every night has won
His vassalage; those towers flamboyant
Of airy cloudland palaces now haunt
His daylight wanderings. Forever done
With simple joys and quiet happiness
He guards the vision of the sunset sky;
Though faint with weariness he must possess
Some fragment of the sunset's majesty;
He spurns life's human friendships to profess
Life's loneliness of dreaming ecstasy.

~ Amy Lowell ~

Nothing [poetry in motion]

(Italy, 30-07-2009)

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.

~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

once

(Italy, 29-07-2009)

Once, I knew a fine song,
-- It is true, believe me --
It was all of birds,
And I held them in a basket;
When I opened the wicket,
Heavens! They all flew away.
I cried, "Come back, little thoughts!"
But they only laughed.
They flew on
Until they were as sand
Thrown between me and the sky.

~ Stephen Crane ~

traces of life

(Italy, 29-07-2009)

Each life spreads its wings
To touch us with a magic
That stays throughout time

Leaving traces of itself
To memorize in our hearts
The beauty of its tenderness

These crimson threads flow
Through to souls blessed
With hope for futures held

A river that nurtures our spirit
Guides our feet on its path
As our fingers trail across lives

~ Fiona Davidson ~

The Untrustworthy Speaker [self-reflexion]

(Italy, 27-07-2009)

Don't listen to me; my heart's been broken.
I don't see anything objectively.

I know myself; I've learned to hear like a psychiatrist.
When I speak passionately,
That's when I'm least to be trusted.

It's very sad, really: all my life I've been praised
For my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight –
In the end they're wasted –

I never see myself.
Standing on the front steps. Holding my sisters hand.
That's why I can't account
For the bruises on her arm where the sleeve ends...

In my own mind, I'm invisible: that's why I'm dangerous.
People like me, who seem selfless.
We're the cripples, the liars:
We're the ones who should be factored out
In the interest of truth.

When I'm quiet, that's when the truth emerges.
A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.
Underneath, a little gray house. The azaleas
Red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself
To the older sister, block her out:
When a living thing is hurt like that
In its deepest workings,
All function is altered.

That's why I'm not to be trusted.
Because a wound to the heart
Is also a wound to the mind.

~ Louise Gluck ~

Circe's Torment

(Italy, 27-07-2009)

I regret bitterly
The years of loving you in both
Your presence and absence, regret
The law, the vocation
That forbid me to keep you, the sea
A sheet of glass, the sun-bleached
Beauty of the Greek ships: how
Could I have power if
I had no wish
To transform you: as
You loved my body,
As you found there
Passion we held above
All other gifts, in that single moment
Over honor and hope, over
Loyalty, in the name of that bond
I refuse you
Such feeling for your wife
As will let you
Rest with her, I refuse you
Sleep again
If I cannot have you.

~ Louise Gluck ~

journey

(Italy, 26-07-2009)

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

~ Wendell Berry ~

the rainbow bridge

(Switzerland, 25-07-2009)

Don't forget that I belong to solitude, that I must not need anyone, that all my strength is born from this detachment.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

Sojourns in the Parallel World

(17-08-2009)

We live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension – though affected,
certainly, by our actions. A world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.
Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal – then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
No one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
– but we have changed, a little.

~ Denise Levertov ~

be free, my bird, be free!

On me to rest, my bird, my bird:
The swaying branches of my heart
Are blown by every wind toward
The home whereto their wings depart.

Build not your nest, my bird, on me;
I know no peace but ever sway:
O lovely bird, be free, be free,
On the wild music of the day.

But sometimes when your wings would rest,
And winds are laid on quiet eves:
Come, I will bear you breast to breast,
And lap you close with loving leaves.

~ George William Russell ~