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| ©m.cassapidis,2014 |
31 December 2014
26 December 2014
Night on the Great River: Meng Hao-jan [three translations]
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| ©m.cassapidis,2014 |
Night on the Great River
Moored in island mist,
as the sun sets, a traveler's grief arises.
Beyond the great plain, the sky closes on trees.
On this gentle river, the moon arrives.
[translated by Sam Hamil]
via
Steering my little boat towards a misty islet,
I watch the sun descend while my sorrows grow:
In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the treetops,
But in the blue lake the moon is coming close.
[translated by William Carlos Williams]
We anchor the boat alongside a hazy island.
As the sun sets I am overwhelmed with nostalgia.
The plain stretches away without limit.
The sky is just above the tree tops.
The river flows quietly by.
The moon comes down amongst men.
[translated by Kenneth Rexroth]
via
4 December 2014
20 September 2014
In what sense I am I
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| ©m.cassapidis,2014 |
As in Giorgione
the suspense
is eternal.
Carl Rakosi, "In What Sense I Am I" from The Collected Poems, published by the National Poetry Foundation.
27 August 2014
21 August 2014
18 May 2014
A note as from a single place...
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| ©m.cassapidis, 2014 |
A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.
Robert Frost
from Going For Water
31 March 2014
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| ©m.cassapidis, 2014 |
Silence II
Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.
Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.
Silence is the mother singing
to her newborn babe.
Silence is the mother crying
for her stillborn babe.
Silence is the life of all
these babes, whose breath
is a breath of God.
Silence is seeing and singing praises.
Silence is the roar of ocean waves.
Silence is the sandpiper dancing
on the shore.
Silence is the vastness of a whale.
Silence is a blade of grass.
Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.
Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.
Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover’s
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.
Silence is God’s beat tapping all hearts.
Silence is the star kissing a flower.
Silence is a word, a hope, a candle
lighting the window of home.
Silence is everything –the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air. It is all
things dissolved into no-thing–Silence
is with you always…..the Presence
of I AM
- Elaine Maria Upton
9 February 2014
2 February 2014
1 February 2014
27 January 2014
13 January 2014
7 January 2014
at the end of the day
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| ©fourteenth |
Ἡ μοίρα μας, χυμένο μολύβι, δὲν μπορεῖ ν᾿ ἀλλάξει.
Ἔχυσαν τὸ μολύβι μέσα στὸ νερὸ κάτω ἀπ' τ᾿ ἀστέρια κι ἂς ἀνάβουν οἱ φωτιές.
Γ. Σεφέρης, Φωτιὲς τοῦ Ἅϊ-Γιάννη
ευχαριστώ Χρήστο
6 January 2014
Jove in the clouds...
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| ©fourteenth |
III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
Wallace Stevens
from Sunday Morning
3 January 2014
Strive to discover the mystery before life is taken from you.
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| ©fourteenth |
Strive to discover the mystery before life is taken from you.
If while living you fail to find yourself, to know yourself,
how will you be able to understand
the secret of your existence when you die?
Farid al-Din 'Attar
from Bird Parliament
Farid al-Din 'Attar was born at Nishapur in northern Persia on November 12, 1119, but sources on his date of death vary from 1193 to 1234. He is one of the most ancient poets of Persia. He has provided the inspiration for Rumi and many other poets. Attar met Rumi at the end of his life when Rumi was only a boy and gave his book Asrarnameh (The Book of secrets) as a present to him. (text from http://allpoetry.com/)
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