Poem

Ithaka C.P. Cavafy, translated by Edmund Keeley As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfume of every kind— as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean. 伊萨卡岛 【希腊】卡瓦菲 当你启程前往伊萨卡， 愿你的道路漫长， 充满奇迹，充满发现。 吃人的巨人，独眼的巨人， 愤怒的波塞冬海神——不要怕他们， 你的路上不会有怪物， 只要你心气高扬， 只要那宝贵的兴奋， 在你的身心中翻涌。 吃人的巨人，独眼的巨人， 狂暴的波塞冬海神——你将无缘遇见， 除非你在灵魂中滋养它们， 除非你的灵魂让他们立在面前。 愿你的道路漫漫， 愿夏日的清晨常驻当你 带着欢乐，带着欣喜， 进入初次相见的海港。 愿你在腓尼基人的集市停留， 购买精美的物件， 珠母和珊瑚，琥珀和黑檀， 迷人的香水，各种各样， 迷人的香水，尽情挑选。 愿你拜访埃及众城， 一一请教先贤。 让伊萨卡常在你心间， 那里是你注定的终点。 但别急着匆忙赶路， 最好让旅程持续多年。 而你登岛时已然苍老， 带着一路所得的财富， 对伊萨卡已无期盼。 伊萨卡曾赐予你神奇的旅行， 没有她你不会扬起风帆， 而今，她没有什么再可给你。 若你发现她贫瘠，她从未曾骗你， 当饱经风霜，领悟睿智， 你就会明白伊萨卡人的真意。

As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love. Words and eggs must be handled with care. Once broken they are impossible things to repair.

Separation W.S.Merwin Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle Everything i do is stitched with its color Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet. -- Bob Marley

For Jessica, My Daughter Mark Strand (1934-2014) Tonight I walked, lost in my own meditation, and was afraid, not of the labyrinth that I have made of love and self but of the dark and faraway. I walked, hearing the wind in the trees, feeling the cold against my skin, but what I dwelled on were the stars blazing in the immense arc of sky. Jessica, it is so much easier to think of our lives, as we move under the brief luster of leaves, loving what we have, than to think of how it is such small beings as we travel in the dark with no visible way or end in sight. Yet there were times I remember under the same sky when the body's bones became light and the wound of the skull opened to receive the cold rays of the cosmos, and were, for an instant, themselves the cosmos, there were times when I could believe we were the children of stars and our words were made of the same dust that flames in space, times when I could feel in the lightness of breath the weight of a whole day come to rest. But tonight it is different. Afraid of the dark in which we drift or vanish altogether, I imagine a light that would not let us stray too far apart, a secret moon or mirror, a sheet of paper, something you could carry in the dark when I am away.

John O’Donohue Fluent I would love to live Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.

Telescope Telescope Louise Glück There is a moment after you move your eye away
when you forget where you are
because you’ve been living, it seems,
somewhere else, in the silence of the night sky. You’ve stopped being here in the world.
You’re in a different place,
a place where human life has no meaning. You’re not a creature in body.
You exist as the stars exist,
participating in their stillness, their immensity. Then you’re in the world again.
At night, on the cold hill,
taking the telescope apart. You realize afterward
not that the image is false
but the relation is false. You see again how far away
every thing is from every other thing. It is such a beautiful peom. ...

What We Are What we are? We say we want to become what we are or what we have an intent to be. We read the possibilities, or try. We get to some. We think we know how to read. We recognize a word, here and there, a syllable: male, it says perhaps, or female, talent - look what you could do - or love, it says, love is what we mean. Being at any cost: in the end, the cost is terrible but so is the lure to us. We see it move and shine and swallow it. We say we are and this is what we are as to say we should be and this is what to be and this is how. But, oh, it isn't so. Metonymy As An Approach To A Real World Whether what we sense of this world is the what of this world only, or the what of which of several possible worlds - which what?- something of what we sense may be true, may be the world, what it is, what we sense. For the rest, a truce is possible, the tolerance of travelers, eating foreign foods, trying words that twist the tongue, to feel that time and place, not thinking that this is the real world. Conceded, that all the clocks tell local time; conceded, that 'here' is anywhere we bound and fill a space; conceded, we make a world: is something caught there, contained there, something real, something which we can sense? Once in a city blocked and filled, I saw the light lie in the deep chasm of a street, palpable and blue, as though it had drifted in from say, the sea, a purity of space. The Holding Of lovers, one senses how, coupled, their joy is to think their singleness, together, to find themselves; how, holding each other, they think to hold as well as themselves, the truth, reality. We honor their wanting; what better could we want than that? Or, more than honor, we feel what they feel. If not for another sense, then this were all: we sense that what they hold is not the truth. The World I thought you were an anchor in the drift of the world; but no: there isn’t an anchor anywhere. There isn’t an anchor in the drift of the world. Oh no. I thought you were. Oh no. The drift of the world.

German Die das Fleisch wegnehmen vom Tisch Lehren Zufriedenheit. Die, für die die Gabe bestimmt ist Verlangen Opfermut. Die Sattgefressenen sprechen zu den Hungernden Von den grossen Zeiten, die kommen werden. Die das Reich in den Abgrund führen Nennen das Regieren zu schwer Für den einfachen Mann. English Translation: Those Who Take the Meat from the Table Teach Contentment. Those for whom the taxes are destined Demand sacrifice. Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry Of wonderful times to come. Those who lead the country into the abyss Call ruling too difficult For ordinary men. Another poem: ...

子曰：“笃信好学，守死善道。危邦不入，乱邦不居。天下有道则见，无道则隐。邦有道，贫且贱焉，耻也；邦无道，富且贵焉，耻也。” 半轮秋月挂山崖，孤鸟悲鸣为有家。一己哀愁随落叶，百年世事入残霞。2022.10.2.

Shoveling Snow With Buddha Billy Collins In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok you would never see him doing such a thing, tossing the dry snow over a mountain of his bare, round shoulder, his hair tied in a knot, a model of concentration. Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word for what he does, or does not do. Even the season is wrong for him. In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid? Is this not implied by his serene expression, that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe? ...