Signposts

The world is more like a poem than a syllogism.

— Martin Cothran, “How Literature Solves the Problem of Evil”  <link>

What we choose to fight is so tiny…
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from the poem “The Watching Man”  <link>

A Moment’s Halt—a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste—
And Lo!—the phantom Caravan has reach’d
The Nothing it set out from—Oh, make haste!

— Omar Khayyam, from The Rubaiyat, XLVIII, tr. Edward Fitzgerald  <link>

The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.

— Adrienne Rich  <link>

that there is no finality of vision,
that I have perceived nothing completely,
that tomorrow a new walk is a new walk.

— A.R. Ammons, ending to the poem, “Corsons Inlet”  <link>

So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,
one of which was you.

— Mary Oliver, poem from Red Bird  <link>

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
What a task
to ask
of anything, or anyone,
yet it is ours,
and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

— Mary Oliver, from “Snow Geese”, Why I Wake Early (via)  <link>

Valentine

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or a kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding-ring,
if you like.

Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

— Carol Ann Duffy (via)  <link>

The flame of love
grows as it is divided
it increases by being shared
from one, then two, then three
and darkness is transformed into glory
and the walls reflect its light
Share your flame!
Share your flame!

— St. John of the Cross  <link>

All my life false and real, right and wrong tangled.
Playing with the moon, ridiculing the wind, listening to the birds…
Many years wasted seeing the mountain covered with snow.
This winter I suddenly realize snow makes a mountain.

— Dogen  <link>

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

— E.E. Cummings  <link>

Seek Love in the pity of others’ woe,
In the gentle relief of another’s care,
In the darkness of night and the winter’s snow,
In the naked and outcast, seek Love there!

— William Blake  <link>