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and birds that have wings to uphold them, for heaven’s sakes— the lucky ones: they have such deep natures, they are so happily obedient. While I sit here in a house filled with books, ideas, doubts, hesitations.
Thus the world grows rich, grows wild, and you too, grow rich, grow sweetly wild, as you too were born to be.
And it has stayed with me as a present once given is forever given.
Why, then it was almost morning, and one by one the birds opened their wings and flew.
and one by one the birds opened their wings and flew.
So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing, and put your lips to the world. And live your life.
and the ripeness of the apple is its downfall.
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Two or three times in my life I discovered love. Each time it seemed to solve everything. Each time it solved a great many things but not everything. Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and thoroughly, solved everything.
Their strong, blunt beaks drink the air as they strive melodiously not for your sake and not for mine and not for the sake of winning but for sheer delight and gratitude— believe us, they say, it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.
The way the river water rushes by, never to return. The way the days go by, never to return. The way somebody comes back, but only in a dream.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, “and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine.”
O Lord of melons, of mercy, though I am not ready, nor worthy, I am climbing toward you.
The bees have gone simple, sipping, that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication? They’re small creatures and they are filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not moan in happiness?
The little worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks. Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand that life is a blessing.
It is your life, which is so close to my own that I would not know where to drop the knife of separation.
ah yes, I see him. He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.
What if you finally saw that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day and every day—who knows how, but they do it—were more precious, more meaningful than gold?
Watch, now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
MINDFUL
Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for— to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world—
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole’s tunnel; and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years, will feel themselves being touched.
At my feet the white-petaled daisies display the small suns of their center-piece—their, if you don’t mind my saying so—their hearts. Of course I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know. But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given, to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly; for example—I think this as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the daisies for the field.
THE OLD POETS OF CHINA Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us as with a match which is lit, and bright, but does not hurt in the common way, but delightfully, as if delight were the most serious thing you ever felt.
Maybe I will, someday, somewhere. Maybe I won’t. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that, when I saw them, I saw them as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.
When he is not singing, he is listening.
Will I ever understand him? Certainly he will never understand me, or the world I come from. For he will never sing for the kingdom of dollars. For he will never grow pockets in his gray wings.
I do not close the book. Neither, for a long while, do I read on.
Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I? Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk. Well, I think, I can read books.
And whatever that wild cry was it will always remain a mystery you have to go home now and live with, sometimes with the ease of music, and sometimes in silence, for the rest of your life.
And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening is the real work. Maybe the world, without us, is the real poem.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain.
Here is an amazement—once I was twenty years old and in every motion of my body there was a delicious ease, and in every motion of the green earth there was a hint of paradise, and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.
Most simply lean, exhausted, their thin arms on the sill. They have done all that they could.
After excitement we are so restful. When the thumb of fear lifts, we are so alive.
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
So dazzling she must be— a plump, dark lady wearing a gown of nails—
Wherever it was I was supposed to be this morning— whatever it was I said I would be doing— I was standing at the edge of the field— I was hurrying through my own soul, opening its dark doors— I was leaning out; I was listening.
