Week V:  Text-only version

"Every leaf a miracle."           Walt Whitman

"When the cup is broke
and no more use, where
does the circle go?"

V (6) Rilke: Death Experience

But when you left, a strip of reality broke
upon the stage...


V (7) Neon Graffiti: Four Easy Steps

Four easy steps
to a radically new
popular music: (1)...


V (8) Of Birds and Trees

Birds don't stay long in one place. Or
is this just the way of birds and
trees?

Walking the World: On Freedom and Water
in Flowing Movement

(1) In limit, there is freedom; in freedom, there is limit.
Even the wildest of rivers creates itself the boundaries
of the bed that order its flow.   


(2) New meaning necessitates new form. After drinking from
the source of a hundred mountain streams, even the finest of wine
glasses may no longer suffice.


(3) The spring gives freely of its water, but
only in freedom can we drink.


(4) The simplest and most powerful of all possible freedoms
is the freedom to stop doing, regardless of the short-term
consequences and difficulties thus encountered, that which is
inherently contradictory or wrong.



(5) A free economy is a strictly limited one. Even the busiest
of thoroughfares still retains a thin white line, protecting the rights
of those of us who prefer to walk.

Leaves

Perhaps leaves fall simply
to carry away all that we
thought we needed to say.

And perhaps trees in this
way purify themselves each
year, knowing that there is

no thought so large that it
cannot be written on
the smooth, plain surface
of but a single

leaf.

On Paths

(0)

The pass is clearly
in view,

but the way—
how impossibly confused.


(1) Getting Ready

Getting ready, sorting gear,
trying to prepare myself
for every eventuality,

as the day of departure
recedes further and further
into the distance


(2) Difficulties

On the way, it's
very difficult not to lose things,

but even harder not to
pick up more than you need.


(3) Pilgrims

Not yet far from home
the full bus
drives right across    

   the spring

with healing waters
without a name.

(4) Graffiti

On the wall—
no more space.

(5) A Village Cafe

Sitting at a table
sharing stories in a
small cafe,

round ripples of laughter
resonate in the wine,    

  four glasses—    

one movement.


(6) The Toad

A little toad,
not more than
half a thumb big, goes      

   hop-_hop, hop-_hop.

Our ways cross—
same path.

First/Last

(1)

Each day the first, new
shapes grow out of the disappearing
darkness, the colors of damp leaves

and pine. Trees

standing firm, giving
back our movement, your voice, first light.


(2)

This patience of trees,
an unmoveable trust of the earth
upon which they stand, nets weav-

ing themselves

into the light, the
dark, growing in a l l  directions.


(3)

Walking out into
the growing darkness, events of
the day dropping like leaves after

the first freeze

of fall. Windless days
not returning, each night the last.

from Fireweed Poems: Songs of Love and Loss
Departure Tree

"Music is continuous.
It is only we who turn away."

Henry David Thoreau
(frequently quoted by John Cage)

(1)

The sound of a farmer knocking on the wood
of his kitchen table—  you can hear
the fact that the truth of love
is never lost.

     Physical things,
     some precious,
     some more like habit, come
     and go,

but the sound of knuckles on worn wood
somehow remains the same. His grandfather
made it, his father made it, and, knowing
full well his wife no longer
hears it, and that the neighbors in houses
standing in fields they once farmed
together do not care to hear it,
he makes it now alone, then stops, listening,
looking down into his morning coffee.

His father used to tell him the story
of how, when the settlers first
came here to clear and plough the land,
what enchanted the natives most
was the taste of their sugar.

     As a boy, he always
     wondered by what sound,
     by what word, they would
     have called it?


The sound of voices—
Thank god for radio. The price
of soybeans and corn.

White oak. The straight, tight
grain of long, dry summers. Black
worm holes that a man of words might
ponder. All the polish of work
that breathes,

folding into the rich fields
of the present moment.

He touches the wood,
still hearing his grandfather's voice
preaching to his father,

    "Even God's gotta have a stick with two sides."

They were talking about the government,
then. War. Freedom. Money.

Some things are always the same.

Taking the metal cup off
the cooking stove, spirits
rising with the smell of boiling
black coffee, he shakes his head
and asks out loud of himself,

     "When the cup is broke
     and no more use, where
     does the circle go?"

He can still hear them laugh—

That's how they talked.

     "Sweets are always the first thing missed
     and the last to be forgotten."

Rilke: Death Experience

We know nothing of this going away, that
shares nothing with us. We have no reason,
whether astonishment and love or hate,
to display Death, whom a fantastic mask

of tragic lament astonishingly disfigures.
Now the world is still full of roles which we play
as long as we make sure, that, like it or not,
Death plays, too, although he does not please us.

But when you left, a strip of reality broke
upon the stage through the very opening
through which you vanished: Green, true green,
true sunshine, true forest.

We continue our play. Picking up gestures
now and then, and anxiously reciting
that which was difficult to learn; but your far away,
removed out of our performance existence,

sometimes overcomes us, as an awareness
descending upon us of this very reality,
so that for a while we play Life
rapturously, not thinking of any applause.

                    Rainer Maria Rilke
                      (tr. Cliff Crego)

(For more Rilke poems in translation, go to
The Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke )

Neon Graffiti:
Four Easy Steps

Four easy steps
to a radically new
popular music:

(1) don't play 4/4;

(2) don't say 'love';

(3) don't say 'baby';

 (4) pull out the plug.

Of Birds and Trees

Strong chinook winds have driven me
inside. From my window, I see
a young male blackbird, its eye rings
still dark, perched on a mountain ash.
The tree, also young, is leafless,
but bright red clusters of berries
grace its bare limbs like ripe ornaments
for a festival of fall.

The tree, the bird, swing back and forth
to the wind's irregular rhythm.
The bird's neck extends and shortens,
easily keeping his balance.
Eyes so alert, the head bends down,
first slowly, then quickly snatching
a little fruit, swallowing it
whole. Then he's off, another tree.

Birds don't stay long in one place. Or
is this just the way of birds and
trees? One must do the work of
staying put, roots firmly grounded
in rocky soil, new fruit each year;
while the other, flying freely
to unknown places, carries with
him the seeds of falls yet to come.