Sterne

für Christian

Überfliessende Himmel verschwendeter Sterne
prachten über der Kümmernis. Statt in die Kissen,
weine hinauf. Hier, an dem weinenden schon,
an dem endenden Antlitz,
um sich greifend, beginnt der hin-
reissende Weltraum. Wer unterbricht,
wenn du dort hin drängst,
die Strömung? Keiner. Es sei denn,
dass du plötzlich ringst mit der gewaltigen Richtung
jener Gestirne nach dir. Atme.
Atme das Dunkel der Erde und wieder
aufschau! Wieder. Leicht und gesichtlos
lehnt sich von oben Tiefe dir an. Das gelöste
nachtenthaltne Gesicht gibt dem deinigen Raum.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

snowdrops

Jo: my prayers and my best wishes are with you...

Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.

I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me. I didn't expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring --

afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy

in the raw wind of the new world.

~ Louise Gluck ~

Pour que tu m'aimes encore...

J'ai compris tous les mots, j'ai bien compris, merci
Raisonnable et nouveau, c'est ainsi par ici
Que les choses ont changé, que les fleurs ont fané
Que le temps d'avant, c'était le temps d'avant
Que si tout zappe et lasse, les amours aussi passent

Il faut que tu saches:

J'irai chercher ton coeur si tu l'emportes ailleurs
Même si dans tes danses d'autres dansent tes heures
J'irai chercher ton âme dans les froids dans les flammes
Je te jetterai des sorts pour que tu m'aimes encore

Fallait pas commencer m'attirer me toucher
Fallait pas tant donner moi je sais pas jouer
On me dit qu'aujourd'hui, on me dit que les autres font ainsi
Je ne suis pas les autres
Avant que l'on s'attache, avant que l'on se gâche

Je veux que tu saches:

J'irai chercher ton coeur si tu l'emportes ailleurs
Même si dans tes danses d'autres dansent tes heures
J'irai chercher ton âme dans les froids dans les flammes
Je te jetterai des sorts pour que tu m'aimes encore

Je trouverai des langages pour chanter tes louanges
Je ferai nos bagages pour d'infinies vendanges
Les formules magiques des marabouts d'Afrique
J'les dirai sans remords pour que tu m'aimes encore

Je m'inventerai reine pour que tu me retiennes
Je me ferai nouvelle pour que le feu reprenne
Je deviendrai ces autres qui te donnent du plaisir
Vos jeux seront les nôtres si tel est ton désir
Plus brillante plus belle pour une autre étincelle
Je me changerai en or pour que tu m'aimes encore

Pour que tu m'aimes encore...

~ Céline Dion ~

fate

dedicated to Jo

Signs and messages... I guess you will find what you are looking for...


... and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand and laid longside another thread and is held and supported by a hundred others.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

Creativity & Solitude

dedicated to Jo


In order to be open to creativity,
one must have the capcity
for contructive use of solitude.

One must overcome the fear of being alone.

~ Rollo May ~

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light

dedicated to Jo


Always we are following a light,
Always the light recedes; with groping hands
We stretch toward this glory, while the lands
We journey through are hidden from our sight
Dim and mysterious, folded deep in night,
We care not, all our utmost need demands
Is but the light, the light! So still it stands
Surely our own if we exert our might.
Fool! Never can'st thou grasp this fleeting gleam,
Its glowing flame would die if it were caught,
Its value is that it doth always seem
But just a little farther on. Distraught,
But lighted ever onward, we are brought
Upon our way unknowing, in a dream.

~ Amy Lowell ~

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Lucy #3 [To a Mouse]

A feast for the little Risky-Mouse...


Wee, sleekit, cowran, tim'rous beastie,
O, what panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
Wi' murd'ring pattle!

I'm truly sorry Man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
An' justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle,
At me, thy poor, earth-born companion,
An' fellow-mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen-icker in a thrave 'S a sma' request:
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
An' never miss't!

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
O' foggage green!
An' bleak December's winds ensuin,
Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' wast,
An' weary Winter comin fast,
An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter past
Out thro' thy cell.

That wee-bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
Now thou's turn'd out, for a' thy trouble,
But house or hald.
To thole the Winter's sleety dribble,
An' cranreuch cauld!

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

~ Robert Burns ~

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Lucy #2

And, of course, she also needs a nip of water after a tasty breakfast...

Lucy #1

She comes every morning in order to collect Nereida's breakfast leftovers...

my little black rose

dedicated to Jo

You know? I prepared this weeks ago and wasn't in the mood to post it -- till I read your qoute of the Little Prince. The one I chose is a sequel to yours, in a way.


"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me -- like that -- in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . ."

The next day the little prince came back.

[...]

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important," said the fox.

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose --" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince ~

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balanced diet

Nereida, nine weeks; she started to seriously eat greens at the age of eight weeks (and had a clear preference for thistly stuff); additional milk was needed until the age of about 16 to 20 weeks.

evolution

Nereida, nine weeks; the horn cups got visible, and I was still waiting for the upper incisors to break through... vainly, as I learnd some time later: goats don't develop any upper incisiors. ;-)

magic to change the world

LOVE

there is enough magic here
inside this one word
to change our world forever

mountain snow lying
across life’s pasture a
shadow reflected over
stone moss forest dream
man’s ability to under
stand nature’s living need

green comet seen in the sky
time’s gift, another
universe visiting our earth

rested bow spirit fly
into night’s seamless
ocean bring sea jewel
to land’s line touching
justice’s shore, man’s
ability to know freedom

green comet seen in the sky
time’s gift, another
universe visiting our earth

bridge between heavens’s
storm and fern field
pathway to a pollen canyon
mixed outside God’s vision,
our destiny painted in key ink
sand the touch of a woman

there is enough magic here
inside this one word
to change our world forever

LOVE

~ Joseph Mayo Wristen ~

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What do animals dream?

Do they dream of past lives and unlived dreams
unspeakably human or unimaginably bestial?

Do they struggle to catch in their slumber
what is too slippery for the fingers of day?

Are there subtle nocturnal intimations
to illuminate their undreaming hours?

Are they haunted by specters of regret
do they visit their dead in drowsy gratitude?

Or are they revisited by their crimes
transcribed in tantalizing hieroglyphs?

Do they retrace the outline of their wounds
or dream of transformation, instead?

Do they tug at obstinate knots
inassimilable longings and thwarted strivings?

Are there agitations, upheavals or mutinies
against their perceived selves or fate?

Are they free of strengths and weaknesses peculiar
to horse, deer, bird, goat, snake, lamb or lion?

Are they ever neither animal nor human
but creature and Being?

Do they have holy moments of understanding
deep in the seat of their entity?

Do they experience their existence more fully
relieved of the burden of wakefulness?

Do they suspect, with poets, that all we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream?

Or is it merely a small dying
a little taste of nothingness that gathers in their mouths?

~ Yahia Lababidi ~

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tender beauty

Nereida, eight weeks.

sweet little hartbreaker

Nereida, eight weeks.

chummy

Nereida, eight weeks, and me, enjoying the late afternoon sun.

recollection

Nereida, seven weeks. After her first instensive period of independence and rambling through the hills among her fellows, she returned to the habit of spending her days close to the mobile home.

humble & green [Ithaca or the Promised Land]

dedicated to Zé
(and I still carry your heart with me...)


To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadnesssuch is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

~ Jorge Luis Borges ~
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little sweet glutton

Nereida, barely seven weeks. Born in the last days of February, she was one of the earliest goatlings on the island, and during the first weeks cow milk only was available; in the middle of April, I finally could get goat milk from the sheep- and goatherds, and Nereida coped very well with the change; at that age, she still drank three to five bottles (2.5 dl) per day.