Gary Snyder (b.1930)

Axe Handles    

By Gary Snyder

 

One afternoon the last week in April

Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet

One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.

He recalls the hatchet-head

Without a handle, in the shop

And go gets it, and wants it for his own.

A broken-off axe handle behind the door

Is long enough for a hatchet,

We cut it to length and take it

With the hatchet head

And working hatchet, to the wood block.

There I begin to shape the old handle

With the hatchet, and the phrase

First learned from Ezra Pound

Rings in my ears!

"When making an axe handle

                 the pattern is not far off."

And I say this to Kai

"Look: We'll shape the handle

By checking the handle

Of the axe we cut with—"

And he sees. And I hear it again:

It's in Lu Ji's Wên Fu, fourth century

A.D. "Essay on Literature"-—in the

Preface: "In making the handle

Of an axe

By cutting wood with an axe

The model is indeed near at hand."

My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen

Translated that and taught it years ago

And I see: Pound was an axe,

Chen was an axe, I am an axe

And my son a handle, soon

To be shaping again, model

And tool, craft of culture,

How we go on.

Ram Dass (b.1931)

A Journey

The journey is on, on and on..
The Journey is on...alone in the way,
From clowdy days to a brigher world,
From bitter reality to a dream world...

This is a journey of dreams,
Besides the frozen lake and violet fowers,
Above the blue mountains and white snow,
Which I dreamed in my childhood...

This is a journey of memories,
Those cashew nut trees and the sizzling wind..
Those violet flowers and the lonely huge rock
Where I used sit alone on my evenings...

This a journey of Struggle,
Which i have to complete  alone,
With a big hope, 
That a better day waits for me..

This is a journey of life, 
A journey of bonds and not bondages, 
Even if the bonds becomes bondages, 
The journey has to be on, on and on...its life...

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997)

Song

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.

Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human--
looks out of the heart
burning with purity--
for the burden of life
is love,

but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.

No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love--
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
--cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:

the weight is too heavy

--must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.

The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye--

yes, yes,
that's what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.

 

Allen Ginsberg :

Wendell Berry

A Meeting In A Part

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."

 

Wendell Berry :

Ally Malinenko

The Eight of Cups by Ally Malinenko

Posted in Ally Malinenko, tagged poetry on December 17, 2009          

I always thought I should have been a Pisces, a water sign
but I am horribly earthbound.
Behind me, I can hear the static hum of last year
and tonight, I search through my little archives
trying to grasp all the symbols,
because I only have so much time
before I’m back at the original question.

This is winter so the ocean is getting restless.
Back when Erika told my fortune
it was spring, nearly summer and
we were just stupid kids
I got the Eight of Cups
upright
which she told me meant that I was wishing things
would have been different
and I wondered,
who wasn’t? How could anyone put any stock in that nonsense?

Ten years later, I am sitting
on the floor with my journals thrown about
trying to find some kind of meaning in the choices I didn’t make.
Some repetition in the pattern, some kind of icon that makes sense.
Wondering, in fact why things hadn’t been different.
Each tattered book, is opened, the scrawled ink leering at me, offering stoic silence
and in my hand I have found the only letter of yours that I kept.
Over the years, no matter what paper I pick up,
eventually it turns into your letter
almost, naturally

Like the tea growing cold at my side,
the purring cats,
the wine bottles that have been emptied,
the things that come about naturally
unlike your death
which was so horribly unnatural.
At first, your body was so dense, all that thick black hair
until you started to dry out,
evaporate and shred apart, paper-thin.

Your ghost, oh Christ,
it won’t stop showing up
no matter how many tattoos I get
no matter how many poems I write over the years
no matter how many nights I piece together the
broken necklace. The one you gave me
a thousand Christmas’ ago, with a wink
like you knew how it was going to end.
It’s that time I’m trying to get back to now,
Sleepwalking down to the water, to hear the waves,
with a letter
and a tarot card
and a coiled snake of silver,
buried in my pocket.
I’m trapped inside this wheel
the moments soaking together, blurring the ink.
Nothing has changed, and blindly, I’m still wishing things were different.
This time, like all the others, I don’t have any answers,
I just want to say I’m sorry.

Irving Layton (1912-2006)

Divinity

Were I a clumsy poet
I'd compare you to Helen;
Ransack the mythologies
Greek, Chinese and Persian

For a goddess vehement
And slim: one with form as fair.
Yet find none. O,love, you are
Lithe as a Jew peddler

And full of grace. Such lightness
Is in your step, instruments
I keep for the beholder
To prove you walk, not dance.

Merely to touch you is fire
In my head; my hair becomes
A burning bush. When you speak,
Like Moses I am dumb

With marvelling, or like him
I stutter with pride and fear:
I hold, Love, divinity
In my changed face and hair.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Bowery Blues

The story of man
Makes me sick
Inside, outside,
I don't know why
Something so conditional
And all talk
Should hurt me so.

I am hurt
I am scared
I want to live
I want to die
I don't know
Where to turn
In the Void
And when
To cut
Out

For no Church told me
No Guru holds me
No advice
Just stone
Of New York
And on the cafeteria
We hear
The saxophone
O dead Ruby
Died of Shot
In Thirty Two,
Sounding like old times
And de bombed
Empty decapitated
Murder by the clock.

And I see Shadows
Dancing into Doom
In love, holding
TIght the lovely asses
Of the little girls
In love with sex
Showing themselves
In white undergarments
At elevated windows
Hoping for the Worst.

I can't take it
Anymore
If I can't hold
My little behind
To me in my room

Then it's goodbye
Sangsara
For me
Besides
Girls aren't as good
As they look
And Samadhi
Is better
Than you think
When it starts in
Hitting your head
In with Buzz
Of glittergold
Heaven's Angels
Wailing

Saying

We've been waiting for you
Since Morning, Jack
Why were you so long
Dallying in the sooty room?
This transcendental Brilliance
Is the better part
(of Nothingness
I sing)

Okay.
Quit.
Mad.
Stop.

 

Jack Kerouac :