For the Unknown Self

 

So much of what delights and troubles you
Happens on a surface
You take for ground.
Your mind thinks your life alone,
Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,
Yet it seems that a little below your heart
There houses in you an unknown self
Who prefers the patterns of the dark
And is not persuaded by the eye's affection
Or caught by the flash of thought.

 

It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience
With all your unfolding expression,
Is never drawn to break into light
Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness
And misjudge what you do and who you are.

 

It presides within like an evening freedom
That will often see you enchanted by twilight
Without ever recognizing the falling night,
It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
All you do and say and think is fostered
Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay.

 

It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
That is not ruffled by disappointment;
It presides in a deeper current of time
Free from the force of cause and sequence
That otherwise shapes your life.

 

Were it to break forth into day,
Its dark light might quench your mind,
For it knows how your primeval heart
Sisters every cell of your life
To all your known mind would avoid,

 

Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
Offering you only discrete glimpses
Of how you construct your life.

 

At times, it will lead you strangely,
Magnetized by some resonance
That ambushes your vigilance.

 

It works most resolutely at night
As the poet who draws your dreams,
Creating for you many secret doors,
Decorated with pictures of your hunger;

 

It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to wholesome ease.

 

~ John O'Donohue ~

 

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

 

 

 

 

 

Fear Lynne Chandler

Fear 

An unruly voice

Fear: sometimes an

Unruly voice,

If invited to speak

It destroys.

With no respect for a higher vision

It can darken the brightest of days.

Its bitter taste can undermine

The risk of

Hopes and dreams.

Its scent can smother

And choke out courage,

Slamming an open door shut.

But if only acknowledged

And not asked to stay,

This wanderer

Must move on.

When the tangible touch

Of fear starts to fade

The gift of trust can emerge

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Robert Frost 1874–1963 Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.#

 

 

This poem captures a moment that is full of so much meaning

From 99 words for Ellen

You have breath for no more than 99 words .
What would they be ?
Here is a response from Scilla Elworthy peace and human rights trust founder Oxford Research Group and Peace Direct

If I look back I see

that fear lies to me.

"You'll fail," it said to me when I started out on the path.

"Here's how ," painting detailed pictures of pain.

When I was on the way fear scared me again and again .

"Too weak ,too old , turn back."

I did walk on ,encumbered by this load.

It wasn't easy,

but it wasn't what I'd been told.

I didn't fail.

Without the load I might have stumbled less.

The trick is to hear

when it is fear speaking

and hear it fast enough to let it drop. 

News from Paradise---it is soon over

Report To Wordsworth’ by Boey Kim Cheng


You should be here, Nature has need of you.

She has been laid waste. Smothered by the smog,

the flowers are mute, and the birds are few

in a sky slowing like a dying clock.

All hopes of Proteus rising from the sea

have sunk; he is entombed in the waste

we dump. Triton’s notes struggle to be free,

his famous horns are choked, his eyes are dazed,

and Neptune lies helpless as beached as a whale,

while insatiate man moves in for the kill.

Poetry and piety have begun to fail,

As Nature’s mighty heart is lying still.

O see the widening in the sky,

God is labouring to utter his last cry.

from a poem by Ben Okri

Tomorrow's music sleeps
In our fingers,
In our awakening souls,
The blossom of our spirit,
The suggestive buds of our hearts.
Tell everyone the idea
Is to function together,
As good musicians would
In undefined future orchestras.
Let the energy of commerce flow.
Let the vision of art heal.
Technology, provide the tools.
Workers of the world
Re-make the world
Under the guidance of inspiration
And wise laws.
Create the beautiful music
Our innermost happiness suggests.
Delight the future.
Create happy outcomes.
And while Autumn dallies
With the West wind
And the weeping nightingales
And while Winter clears its sonorous throat
At the Antipodean banquets
Preparing for a speech of hoarfrost
And icicles conjured from living breath,
I want you to tell everyone
Through trumpets played with
The fragrance of roses
That a mysterious reason
Has brought us all together,
Here, now, under the all-seeing eye of the sun.

© Ben Okri, December

Happy Anniversary My Love

Meeting
Boris Pasternak

The snow will dust the roadway,
And load the roofs still more.
I'll stretch my legs a little:
You're there outside the door.

Autumn, not winter coat,
Hat-none, galoshes-none.
You struggle with excitement
Out there all on your own.

Far, far into the darkness
Fences and trees withdraw.
You stand there on the corner,
Under the falling snow.

The water trickles down from
The kerchief that you wear
Into your sleeves, while dewdrops
Shine sparkling in your hair.

And now illumined by
A single strand of light
Are features, kerchief, figure
And coat of autumn cut.

There's wet snow on your lashes
And in your eyes, distress,
And your external image
Is all, all of apiece.

As if an iron point
With truly consummate art,
Dipped into antimony,
Had scribed you on my heart.

Those modest, humble features
Are in it now to stay,
And if the world's cruel-hearted,
That's merely by the way.

And therefore it is doubled,
All this night in snow;
To draw frontiers between us
Is more than I can do.

But who are we and whence,
If, of those years gone by,
Scandal alone remains
And we have ceased to be.

1949