The world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. 

The silence of the sphere is the music of a wedding feast. 

The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomenon of life, 

the more we analyze them out into the strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, 

the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. 

But it does not matter much, 

because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, 

or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. 

Indeed we are in the midst of it, 

and it is in the midst of us, 

for it beats in our very blood, 

wether we want it or not. 

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, 

cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance. 

-Thomas Merton

“Would you hear of an old time sea-fight? 

Would you learn who won by the light of the moon and the stars? 

List to the yarn, as my grandmother’s father the sailor told it to me.

….. 

Serene stands the little captain, 

He is not hurried, his voice is neither high nor low, 

His eyes give more light to us than our battle-lanterns.”

- Walt Whitman

Song of Myself, 35. 

Morning Prayer

Here is a little tip, 

your daily dose of unsolicited advice. 

I find it’s worth trying this if you can squeeze yourself from sleep. 

Wake up in the morning just after a good night of rest, 

not one of those where you’re running on fumes. 

Pull back the shades of your eyes just before those first few sunbeams come tracing through your blinds, etching a new design on the sky. 

Lay safely there in the arms of your duvet and 

set aside a good half an hour; I found 38 minutes to be the perfect portion, 

and consider, as I did this morning, 

the terrifying and freeing fact that we have no idea what this day will be or what 

our week will bring. 

I didn’t plan to spend half my day on the phone with customer service.  

But what was is and what will be is on her way.  

In the morning I’m not encumbered with phone calls. 

In that still unknowing I would ask God, or the universe (if that’s your thing), 

or maybe your dear old deceased Aunt Marge 

to show you who you are- what your name is- who you’re marked out to 

be in that sunbeam that’s come drifting through your curtains. 

Ask to find out what you’re made of and if there’s more than just carbon,

but a will that transcends desire

and rises on the spirit of something holy. 

Maybe it’ll stay quiet. 

Maybe you’ll get a response. 

You’ll never know until you ask. 

And maybe the answer will bear her way out down the sidewalk 

as you move from work to the gym to the corner shop to buy

a zucchini, an egg plant, some mushrooms. 

Maybe. By this time your 38 minutes of warm sanctuary will have expired, 

and that’s okay. Rise up and feel the carpet on your bare feet and 

wander-wonder- out into that sun pulling herself across the eastern sky, a little 

crack of gold and honey that fills your room 

and shows you the steam floating off your cup of coffee.  

The First Night, by Billy Collins

“The worst thing about death must be the first night.”
—Juan Ramón Jiménez

Before I opened you, Jiménez,
it never occurred to me that day and night
would continue to circle each other in the ring of death,

but now you have me wondering
if there will also be a sun and a moon
and will the dead gather to watch them rise and set

then repair, each soul alone,
to some ghastly equivalent of a bed.
Or will the first night be the only night,

a darkness for which we have no other name?
How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death,
How impossible to write it down.

This is where language will stop,
the horse we have ridden all our lives
rearing up at the edge of a dizzying cliff.

The word that was in the beginning
and the word that was made flesh—
those and all the other words will cease.

Even now, reading you on this trellised porch,
how can I describe a sun that will shine after death?
But it is enough to frighten me

into paying more attention to the world’s day-moon,
to sunlight bright on water
or fragmented in a grove of trees,

and to look more closely here at these small leaves,
these sentinel thorns,
whose employment it is to guard the rose.

the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Song of Myself

Walt Whitman

2 

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with 
perfumes, 
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, 
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it. 

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the 
distillation, it is odorless, 
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, 
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, 
I am mad for it to be in contact with me. 

The smoke of my own breath, 
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, 
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing 
of blood and air through my lungs, 
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and 
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, 

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of 
the wind, 
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, 
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, 
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields 
and hill-sides, 
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising 
from bed and meeting the sun. 

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? 
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? 
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems? 

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of 
all poems, 
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions 
of suns left,) 
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through 
the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, 
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, 
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self. 

After a little break, I’ve decided that this will be the next poem that I memorize.  The lengthiest of yet. Maybe next we’ll tackle Paradise Lost. 

… No we won’t. 

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T.S. Eliot 

 Let us go then, you and I, 

When the evening is spread out against the sky 
Like a patient etherized upon a table; 
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, 
The muttering retreats 
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: 
Streets that follow like a tedious argument 
Of insidious intent 
To lead you to an overwhelming question…                               10 
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” 
Let us go and make our visit. 

  In the room the women come and go 
Talking of Michelangelo. 

  The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes 
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes 
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening 
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, 
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,                               20 
And seeing that it was a soft October night 
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. 

  And indeed there will be time 
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, 
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 
There will be time, there will be time 
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; 
There will be time to murder and create, 
And time for all the works and days of hands 
That lift and drop a question on your plate;                                30 
Time for you and time for me, 
And time yet for a hundred indecisions 
And for a hundred visions and revisions 
Before the taking of a toast and tea. 

  In the room the women come and go 
Talking of Michelangelo. 

  And indeed there will be time 
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” 
Time to turn back and descend the stair, 
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—                               40 
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”] 
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, 
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— 
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”] 
Do I dare 
Disturb the universe? 
In a minute there is time 
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. 

  For I have known them all already, known them all; 
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,                       50 
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; 
I know the voices dying with a dying fall 
Beneath the music from a farther room. 
  So how should I presume? 

  And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, 
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, 
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, 
Then how should I begin 
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?                    60 
  And how should I presume? 

  And I have known the arms already, known them all— 
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare 
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!] 
Is it perfume from a dress 
That makes me so digress? 
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. 
  And should I then presume? 
  And how should I begin?
        .     .     .     .     .

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets              70 
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes 
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? … 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws 
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
        .     .     .     .     .

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 
Smoothed by long fingers, 
Asleep … tired … or it malingers, 
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. 
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, 
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?                  80 
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, 
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, 
I am no prophet–and here’s no great matter; 
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, 
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 
And in short, I was afraid. 

  And would it have been worth it, after all, 
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, 
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, 
Would it have been worth while,                                             90 
To have bitten off the matter with a smile, 
To have squeezed the universe into a ball 
To roll it toward some overwhelming question, 
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead, 
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all” 
If one, settling a pillow by her head, 
  Should say, “That is not what I meant at all. 
  That is not it, at all.” 

  And would it have been worth it, after all, 
Would it have been worth while,                                           100 
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, 
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— 
And this, and so much more?— 
It is impossible to say just what I mean! 
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 
Would it have been worth while 
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, 
And turning toward the window, should say: 
  “That is not it at all, 
  That is not what I meant, at all.”                                          110
        .     .     .     .     .

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; 
Am an attendant lord, one that will do 
To swell a progress, start a scene or two 
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, 
Deferential, glad to be of use, 
Politic, cautious, and meticulous; 
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; 
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— 
Almost, at times, the Fool. 

  I grow old … I grow old …                                              120 
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. 

  Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? 
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. 
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. 

  I do not think they will sing to me. 

  I have seen them riding seaward on the waves 
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back 
When the wind blows the water white and black. 

  We have lingered in the chambers of the sea 
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown               130 
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

White Eyes

By Mary Oliver

In winter
   all the singing is in
      the tops of the trees
         where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
   shoves and pushes
      among the branches.
         Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
   but he’s restless—
      he has an idea,
         and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
   as long as he stays awake
      But his big, round music, after all,
         is too breathy to last.

So, it’s over.
   In the pine-crown
      he makes his nest,
         he’s done all he can.

I don’t know the name of this bird,
   I only imagine his glittering beak
         while the clouds—

which he has summoned
   from the north—
      which he has taught
         to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
   into the world below
      like stars, or the feathers
         of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
   that is asleep now, and silent—
      that has turned itself
         into snow.

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

-Pablo Neruda