Category Archives: poetry

Moon Over Mountain Pass

mountains, poetry, , , ,

MOON OVER MOUNTAIN PASS

The birds have vanished into the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

-Li Po (701 – 762) China

High Mountains Clear Autumn 1, by Terasaki Kogyo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The poem as translated above I found in Czeslaw Milosz’s collection, Luminous Things, but there is at least one more translation, which goes like this:

MOON OVER MOUNTAIN PASS

All the birds have flown up and gone;
A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.
We never tire of looking at each other –
Only the mountain and I.

-Li Po

Which do you like better?

High Mountains Clear Autumn 2, by Terasaki Kogyo

 

If you have the courage.

humanity, poetry, , ,

To my granddaughters who visited the Holocaust Museum
on the day of the burial of Yitzak Rabin, November 6th 1995.

Now you know the worst
we humans have to know
about ourselves, and I am sorry,

for I know you will be afraid.
To those of our bodies given
without pity to be burned, I know

there is no answer
but loving one another
even our enemies, and this is hard.

But remember:
when a man of war becomes a man of peace,
he gives a light, divine

though it is also human.
When a man of peace is killed
by a man of war, he gives a light.

You do not have to walk in darkness.
If you have the courage for love,
you may walk in light. It will be

the light of those who have suffered
for peace. It will be
your light.

-Wendell Berry

Autumn gropes for us.

poetry, smells, , , ,

SONG AT THE BEGINNING OF AUTUMN

Now watch this autumn that arrives
In smells. All looks like summer still;
Colours are quite unchanged, the air
On green and white serenely thrives.
Heavy the trees with growth and full
The fields. Flowers flourish everywhere.

Proust who collected time within
A child’s cake would understand
The ambiguity of this —
Summer still raging while a thin
Column of smoke stirs from the land
Proving that autumn gropes for us.

But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia. We give names —
Autumn and summer, winter, spring —
As though to unfasten from the mind
Our moods and give them outward forms.
We want the certain, solid thing.

But I am carried back against
My will into a childhood where
Autumn is bonfires, marbles, smoke;
I lean against my window fenced
From evocations in the air.
When I said autumn, autumn broke.

-Elizabeth Jennings

Pippin Photo – her dahlia “Nicholas,” 2023

 

The huge summer has gone by.

poetry, ,

AUTUMN DAY

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Sundial Calendar – Mesopotamia