Infinity Now

Detail from Hollow Brook Gardens

The world this morning is all quiet and post-rain glistening... which somehow brought to mind William Blake's Auguries of Innocence:

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

Alrightey, onwards to start the working day!

Got kin?

Curled up with little black cat, idling through poems by Hafiz this morning:

I Got Kin

Plant
So that your own heart
Will grow.

Love
So God will think,

"Ahhhh,
I got kin in that body!
I should start inviting that soul over
For coffee and
Rolls."

Sing
Because this is a food
Our starving world
Needs.

Laugh
Because that is the purest
Sound.

--Hafiz

Course, I am now contemplating how mightily tasty a freshly-baked cinnamon twirly roll would be right now...

Redefining

Here is the time for telling. Here is its home.
Speak and make known: More and more
the things we could experience
are lost to us, banished by our failure
to imagine them.
Old definitions, which once
set limits to our living,
break apart like dried crusts
--Rilke

Have a lovely weekend, all X

Everyday Play

When I finally downloaded my photos, I had oodles of shots of this year's cherry blossoms (which I've typed twice now as 'cheery blossoms', perhaps with good cause). Trees that I pass on the walk to work, on the way to visit friends or family, on little meandering walks; blossoms blossoms everywhere.

Before the last one gives up its petals to this blustery weather, I thought I'd mark this fleeting, Pablo Neruda time of year:

"I want to do with you what Spring does with the cherry trees."

Quite sublime. From Neruda's Every Day You Play.

Time to surrender

A busy start to the week: we're moving offices, which involves bursts of packing/unpacking, bursts of 'regular' work, and bursts of extreme flumpiness which only caffeine and sugar seem to mitigate.

Currently, our lovely new sunshiney office is at the phase where it looks worse before it looks better. Baby steps :-)

Anyhoo, I'm taking a moment out to be quietly inspired by the beauty of 14th-century Persian poet/mystic/seer Hafiz:

I wish I could speak like music.
I wish I could put the swaying splendor

of the fields into words,
So that you could hold Truth
against your body

and dance.
I am trying the best I can

with this crude brush,
the tongue,

to cover you with light.
I wish I could speak like divine music.
I want to give you the sublime rhythms

of this earth and the sky's limbs
as they joyously spin and surrender,
Surrender

Against God's luminous breath.
Hafiz wants you to hold me

Against your precious Body

And dance,
Dance.

♥

Threshold of Spring

by R M Rilke

Harshness gone. All at once caring spreads over

the naked grey of the meadows.

Tiny rivulets sing in different voices.

A softness, as if from everywhere,

is touching the earth.

Paths appear across the land and beckon.

Surprised once again, you sense

its coming in the empty tree.





And in belated, blog-catching-up kinda news:

Ruminations

Overcast, blustery day here. I was dipping into various collections of poems this afternoon, and went back to Rumi's The Guest House. I like its take on non-discrimination between 'good' and 'bad' feelings, that the human, in acceptance and laughter, is somehow more than all of those transitory emotions. One that leaves me happily pondering...

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Rumi

Have a lovely weekend, folks. And for those whose birthday parties I'm missing, we shall catch up before too long X

London Calling...

So far so fabulous!

Before anything else, know this: Sara is a patient, generous, wonderful host.

Okay, I was a smidge exhausted for a few days: 'normal' until an attack of the Flumps would have me napping on the sofa quicker than you could say 'beer o'clock'. But mojo was gradually restored. Treaty food; beers out (peroni and staropramen on tap - luxury!); much catch-up. On Saturday, after lunch and a farmer's-in-bunny-ears [= "farmer's"] market, where we finished with a rum punch [note to the folk at Casey's :-)] we meandered on to the V&A to visit Grace Kelly's purdy dresses and unfurl some stories of the quilted kind. And there were fairies, yes indeedey. Even a West Cork varietal.

Flash back to Ferry Night: I had bought a book for the crossing - The Sun-Fish by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. (In college, Eiléan was my lecturer, then colleague and internal examiner for my PhD.) I was curled up, shattered; feeling... at sea, quite frankly. And I read the first poem in her collection, which was about setting out: 'Leave behind the places that you knew: All that you leave behind you will find once more...'

There's a storytelling cat in the poem (naturally). The final stanza is:

The story the cat does not know is the Book of Ruth
And I have no time to tell you how she fared
When she went out at night and was afraid,
In the beginning of the barley harvest,
Or how she trusted to strangers and stood by her word:

You will have to trust me, she lived happily ever after.

Obviously, I read the words like they were written just for me. If Eiléan had appeared and repeated these words in person - direct, half-smiling - they couldn't have felt more personal.

It was always going to be a leap of faith :-)

Surviving the Fall

Among the myriad weekend activities, I was practicing some calligraphy, and wrote this poem out a few times. And each time, I liked it even more. Slow burn :-)

Falling Stars

Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes--do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

R M Rilke

RS Thomas

I was meandering online through some poems by RS Thomas - looking for one about a daffodil (at least, the poem reminds me of a daffodil).

And though I didn't find the daffodilly poem, I did find this:

A Blackbird Singing
by R. S. Thomas

It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes'
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.

You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.

A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history's overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.