Beowulf

                        ... no weapons, therefore,

for either this night: unarmed he shall face me

if face me he dares. And may the Divine Lord

in His wisdom grant the Glory of Victory

to whichever side He sees fit.






From "Beowulf", (Lines  683 - 687)
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc
Beowulf
Translation  Seamus Heaney  (1939 - 2013)

Clave de Sol

<> Photography 

Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321) : "The Divine Comedy"

     

      My will on will to climb above was such

that at each step I took I felt the force

within my wings was growing for the flight.

      When all the staircase lay beneath us and 

we'd reached the highest step, then Virgil set

his eyes insistently on me and said:

      "My son, you've seen the temporary fire

and the eternal fire; you have reached

the place past which my powers cannot see.

      I've brought you here through intellect and art;

from now on, let your pleasure be your guide;

you're past the steep and past the narrow paths.   

      Look at the sun that shines upon your brow;

look at the grasses, flowers, and the shrubs

born here, spontaneously, of the earth.

      Among them, you can rest or walk until

the coming of the glad and lovely eyes -

those eyes that, weeping, sent me to your side.

      Await no further word or sign from me:

your will is free, erect, and whole - to act

against that will would be to err: therefore

      I crown and miter you over yourself."

From "The Divine Comedy"

Purgatory, Canto XXVII
Everyman's Library
The Divine Comedy

Translation Allen Mandelbaum (1926 - 2011)

Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321) : "The Divine Comedy"

                                                        
                                                         
                                                         all these

     would seem nothing if set beside the godly

beauty that shone upon me when I turned

to see the smiling face of Beatrice.

     The powers that her gaze now granted me

drew me out of the lovely nest of Leda

and thrust me into heaven's swiftest sphere.

     Its parts were so equally alive

and excellent, that I cannot say which

place Beatrice selected for my entry.

     But she , who saw what my desire was -

her smile had so much gladness that within

her face there seemed to be God's joy - began:

    "The nature of the universe, which holds

the center still and moves all else around it,

begins here as if from its turning-post.

     This heaven has no other where than this:

the mind of God, in which are kindled both

the love that turns it and the force it rains.

     As in a circle, light and love enclose it,

as it surrounds the rest - and that enclosing,

only He who encloses understands. 

     No other heaven measures this sphere's motion,

but it serves as the measure of the rest,

even as half and fifth determine ten;

     and now it can be evident to you

how time has roots within this vessel and,  

within the other vessels, has its leaves.

                   white skin turns black when it is struck 

by direct light - the lovely daughter of

the one who brings us dawn and leaves us evening.

     That you not be amazed at what I say,

consider this: on earth no king holds sway;

therefore, the family of humans strays.

     But well before nine thousand years have passed

(and January is unwintered by

day's hundredth part, which they neglect below),

     this high sphere shall shine so, that Providence,

long waited for, will turn the sterns to where

the prows now are, so that the fleet runs straight;

     and then fine fruit shall follow on the flower."

From "The Divine Comedy"

Paradiso, Canto XXVII

Everyman's Library
The Divine Comedy

Translation Allen Mandelbaum (1926 - 2011)

Blade of Light

The sun has drawn a fine-tempered blade

  of  light. We may as well surrender.

Verse from "RUMI - Bridge to The Soul"

Edited and Translated Coleman Barks 2007

Harper Collins Publishers 

RUMI - Bridge to The Soul

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Anna de Noailles (1876-1933) : "L' offrande à la nature"

Nature au coeur profond sur qui les cieux reposent,
Nul n’aura comme moi si chaudement aimé
La lumière des jours et la douceur des choses,
L’eau luisante et la terre où la vie a germé.

La forêt, les étangs et les plaines fécondes
Ont plus touché mes yeux que les regards humains.
Je me suis appuyée à la beauté du monde
Et j’ai tenu l’odeur des saisons dans mes mains.

J’ai porté vos soleils ainsi qu’une couronne
Sur mon front plein d’orgueil et de simplicité,
Mes jeux ont égalé les travaux de l’automne
Et j’ai pleuré d’amour aux bras de vos étés.

Je suis venue à vous sans peur et sans prudence
Vous donnant ma raison pour le bien et le mal,
Ayant pour toute joie et toute connaissance
Votre âme impétueuse aux ruses d’animal.

Comme une fleur ouverte où logent des abeilles
Ma vie a répandu des parfums et des chants,
Et mon coeur matineux est comme une corbeille
Qui vous offre du lierre et des rameaux penchants.

Soumise ainsi que l’onde où l’arbre se reflète,
J’ai connu les désirs qui brûlent dans vos soirs
Et qui font naître au coeur des hommes et des bêtes
La belle impatience et le divin vouloir.

Je vous tiens toute vive entre mes bras, Nature!
Ah! faut-il que mes yeux s’emplissent d’ombre un jour,
Et que j’aille au pays sans vent et sans verdure
Que ne visitent pas la lumière et l’amour…




From "Le Coeur Innombrable" (1901)
Les Grands Classiques

Alfred Noyes (1880-1958) : "The Strong City"

...

And, when it was darkest, I came to a strong city, 
           No earthly tongue can tell how I journeyed there,
Deaf to this world's compassion, 
          Blind to its pity,
With a heart wrung empty, even to its dumb prayer.

I had left the clattering throngs in the night behind me, 
         And stumbled into a desert that had no name.
Torn, bleeding of foot,
        Through cactus and thorn I stumbled,
And, when it was darkest, to that strongly city I came.

Gate there was none, nor window. It towered above me
        Like a vest fortress into the midnight sky.
And I beat on the granite walls,
        But I found no entry,
And the blood ran over my wrists, but I heard no reply.

I groped around them; I groped around them;
       Stared up at their cold eyes and found them stone;
And crowled on, on,
      Till  I overtook strange footprints
going my way, and knew them for my own,

Strange footprints, clotted with blood, in the sand before me,
     Trailing the hopeless way I had trailed before;
For in that night,
     I girdled the whole dark city,
Feeling each adamant inch, and found no door.

I fell on my face in the rank salt of the desert
     Slow, hot like blood, out of my hopeless eyes,
The salt tears bled.
     The salt of the desert drank them, 
And I cried, once, to God, as a child cries.

Then, then, I cannot tell
      What strange thing happened,
Only, as at a breath of the midnight air,
      These eyes, like two staunched wounds, had ceased their bleeding
And my despair had ended my despair.
  



From "The Last Voyage" - Alfred Noyes

Lauro de Bosis (1901-1931)

Lauro de Bosis, "Icaro"

Silver Olympic Medal

Arts, Dramatics Works

Amsterdam 1928

Translation Ruth Draper

Oxford University Press

London: Humphrey Milford 1933

Icaro

Art Competitions at the Olympic Games

Rumi (1207-1273) : "Outdoors and The Passion of The Grass"

From now on the nightingales
will sing of us sitting here outdoors,
where wind lifts the hair of the willow
and starts her dancing.
God knows what they say 
to each other then.


The plane tree holds out
its broad hands in praise of the meadow,
understanding just a little 
of the passion of the grass.


I ask a rose, Where did you get such skin?
She laughs. How could she answer?


She is drunk, but not enough 
to say secrets, not so dissolute as I am.


Wander with drunks if you want to know
what they have been hiding.


They will open the purse-mouth
and spill the lavishness.


There is a wine fermenting 
in the breast of a mystic,
and a voice there inviting
you to a banquet.


A human breast can give milk,
but also wine, and also
there is a flowing there
that tells stories.


Listen as you take in the milk,
then the wine, and then the stories.


Lay down your cap and your cloak.
Start talking from the majesty itself.


And now be quiet.
Very few will hear.


Most copper does not change to gold
for any philosopher's stone.


Bring your words to Shams.
Let sunlight mix with language
and be the world.

From "RUMI - Bridge to The Soul"

Edited and Translated Coleman Barks 2007

Harper Collins Publishers 

RUMI - Bridge to The Soul

Ludovico Einaudi : "Divenire"

Catullus (84 - 54 B.C.)

My little volume is complete,

With all the care and polish neat

       That make it fair to see:

To whom shall I then, to whose praise,

Inscribe my lively graceful lays?

      Cornelius, friend, to thee.


Thou only of th' Italian race

Hast dared in three small books to trace

     All time's remotest flight:

Oh Jove, how labour'd, learn'd and wise!

Yet still thou ne'er wouldst quite despise

     The trifles that I write.


Then take the book I now address,

Though small its size, its merits less,

    'Tis all thy friend can give;

And let me, guardian Muse, implore

That when at least, one age is o'er,

    This volume yet may live.





Dedication of The Poems
to Cornelius Nepos
The Poems of Catullus
Translation by The Hon. George Lamb

Unknown Poet (S XIV) : "Sir Gawain and The Green Knight" excerpt

Rain falls clear in warm showers, 

And the flat earth opens into flowers

And fields and plains grow thick and green,

Birds start their nests and sing like angels

For love of soft summer, creeping across

                                                            The Slopes;

                And hedgerows swell tall,

                And blossoms blow open,

                And glorious woods are all

                Echoing joy and hope.

And after summer's soft winds, Zephyrus

Whistles quietly with seeds and herbs,

Sprouting delightful plants, painted

Wet with dew falling from leaves,

Waiting to be warm in the bright sun.

Then autumn comes rushing, calling the plants

 To watch for winter, to grow while they can;

And he dries the earth and drives dust

Swirling to the sky, and wild winds

Run to wrestle with the sun; leaves

Are thrown from trees and lie dead on the ground,

And green grass withers. And everything

Slender and new ripens and rots,

And a year runs away in passing days,

And winter winds back, as winter must,

                                                      Just so.

                Till the Michaelmas moon

                Promises snow-

                And Gawain soon

                Recalls what he has to do.

But he stays with Arthur till All-Saints Day.  

And the king makes a feast in his honor, the court

And their ladies merry around the Round Table,

Gracious knights and lovely women

Grieving for love of Gawain, but laughing 

and drinking his name, smiling and joking

While their hearts sank gray and cold. And Gawain

Feasts, then sadly approaches his uncle

And speaks of his journey, and bluntly says:

"Lord of my life, I ask your leave.

You know my promise" ...



                                    



From "Sir Gawain and The Green Knight"
Sir Gawain and The Green Knight
Translation by Burton Raffel

Bach: Jesu bleibet meine Freude, BWV 147 - Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Sacred Conversation

Till I resolve some technicalities, please see the videoclip here

Sacred Conversation

The poets and I say Thank You for stopping by  :)

Why do you seek water

when you are the stream?

From "Rumi's"

Part One: Garden of the Soul

Rumi's

Translation Maryam Mafi and Azima Melita Kolin

  from the sparrow's notebook

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) : "The Divine Comedy"

    

       The glory of the One who moves all things

permeates the universe and glows

in one part more and in another less.

       I was within the heaven that receives 

more of His light; and I saw things that he

who from that height descends, forgets or can

       not speak; for nearing its desired end,

our intellect sinks into an abyss

so deep that memory fails to follow it.

       Nevertheless, as much as I, within

my mind, could treasure of the holy kingdom

shall now become the matter of my song.



From "The Divine Comedy"
Paradiso, Canto I
Everyman's Library

The Divine Comedy

Translation Allen Mandelbaum (1926 - 2011)

Woodlands

The poet is right ... if He is fire i must be wood.

Woodlands, cover of the book

  from the sparrow's notebook

Joris Ivens (1898-1989) : "Regen"

Poem on Film format.

Seamus Heaney (1939 - )

                                       
                                                                
                                                                


From "Diary of One Who Vanished"
a new version of "A Song Cycle" by Leos Janacek
of "Poems" by Ozef Kalda
Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 2000
"Diary of One Who Vanished"

William Shakespeare (1564-1616) : "Sonnet XLVII"

Betwixt mine eye and heart a league is took,

And each doth good turns now unto the other:

When that mine eye is famish'd for a look,

Or heart in love with sighs himself doth smother,

With my love's picture then my eye doth feast

And to the painted banquet bids my heart;

Another time mine eye is my heart's guest

And in his thoughts of love doth share a part:

So, either by thy picture or my love,

Thy self away, are present still with me:

For thou not farther than my thoughts canst move,

And I am still with them, and they with thee;

      Or, if they sleep, thy picture in my sight
      
      Awakes my heart to heart's and eye's delight.


From "Sonnets"
Shakespeare's Sonnets



Dedicated to my grandfather Mariano.

W. S. Merwin (1927- ) : "Note"

Remember how the naked soul
comes to language and at once knows
loss and distance and believing

then for a time it will not run
with its old freedom
like a light innocent of measure
but will hearken to how
one story becomes another
and will try to tell where
they have emerged from
and where they are heading
as though they were its own legend
running before the words and beyond them
naked and never looking back

through the noise of questions



From "The Shadow of Sirius"
Copper Canyon Press 2009
The Shadow of Sirius

Rabia of Basra (c.717-801) : "It Acts Like Love"

It acts like love - music -

it reaches toward the face, touches it, and tries to let you know

His promise: that all will be okay.

It acts like love - music and,

tells the feet, "You do not have to be so burdened."

My body is covered with wounds

this world made,

but I still longed to kiss Him, even when God said,

"Could you also kiss the hand that caused

each scar,

for you will not find me until

you do."

It does that - music - help us

to forgive.

From "Love Poems from God"

Edited & Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Penguin Compass 2002

Love Poems from God