the individual and conditioning..

the individual 

conditioned by what

is believed to have

happened~cannot

find that this

bundled life

unexplainably is

what seems happening

and not happening

Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning..

Sunday Morning

By Wallace Stevens

      I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark

Encroachment of that old catastrophe,

As a calm darkens among water-lights.

The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

Seem things in some procession of the dead,

Winding across wide water, without sound.

The day is like wide water, without sound,

Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet

Over the seas, to silent Palestine,

Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

       II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?

What is divinity if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else

In any balm or beauty of the earth,

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must live within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Elations when the forest blooms; gusty

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch.

These are the measures destined for her soul.

       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.

       IV

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,

Before they fly, test the reality

Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;

But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields

Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”

There is not any haunt of prophecy,

Nor any old chimera of the grave,

Neither the golden underground, nor isle

Melodious, where spirits gat them home,

Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm

Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured

As April’s green endures; or will endure

Like her remembrance of awakened birds,

Or her desire for June and evening, tipped

By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.

       V

She says, “But in contentment I still feel

The need of some imperishable bliss.”

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams

And our desires. Although she strews the leaves

Of sure obliteration on our paths,

The path sick sorrow took, the many paths

Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love

Whispered a little out of tenderness,

She makes the willow shiver in the sun

For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze

Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.

She causes boys to pile new plums and pears

On disregarded plate. The maidens taste

And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

       VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?

Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs

Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,

Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,

With rivers like our own that seek for seas

They never find, the same receding shores

That never touch with inarticulate pang?

Why set the pear upon those river-banks

Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?

Alas, that they should wear our colors there,

The silken weavings of our afternoons,

And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!

Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,

Within whose burning bosom we devise

Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

       VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn

Their boisterous devotion to the sun,

Not as a god, but as a god might be,

Naked among them, like a savage source.

Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,

Out of their blood, returning to the sky;

And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,

The windy lake wherein their lord delights,

The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,

That choir among themselves long afterward.

They shall know well the heavenly fellowship

Of men that perish and of summer morn.

And whence they came and whither they shall go

The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

       VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,

A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine

Is not the porch of spirits lingering.

It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”

We live in an old chaos of the sun,

Or old dependency of day and night,

Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,

Of that wide water, inescapable.

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail

Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;

Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;

And, in the isolation of the sky,

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Notes:

This is the later and more definitive version of “Sunday Morning.” Read the first published version of this poem, which appeared in Poetry magazine, here. In 1915, editor Harriet Monroe asked Stevens to cut several stanzas for Poetry, and Stevens would later restore these cut stanzas when he published the poem in book form in 1923.

Source: The Collected Poems (1954)

the flow

 

the river

seems 

as a flow

a no-return

to what

seems now~

an appearance

of the surmise

of an observer

on the bridge~

the observer

with surmise

not separate

from the

flow of

the river

June Saturday~~

June Saturday

The bridge

a favorite 

and romantic

connecting word

illusioned in

the land of dreams

apparently

Circumstance

a circling

and limiting of

what seems

happening~

a conditioning

habit on stage

among actors!

pomp and

Circumstance

The Journey by Mary Oliver..

 

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

end of the search

 

Looking

for the end

of the search~

and it turns out

the end of 

the search is

already the

Looking

searching for clarity..

 

It's not clear

a story may help

and a better story

will be more help

and this one is it~

it is my story of

what is really

happening

now I know and

my search is over~

such seems a path

of deceptive clarity~

yet "deceptive" may be

a word on fire

The sky

 

The sky's

apparent

infinity 

and emptiness

is interrupted 

by solid ground~

an apparent

empty 

interruption

what seems to be happening

what

seems to be

happening is

unknown 

appearing as

known~

the appearances

are apparently

not satisfying

pushing searches

for what is already

unknown

unquestioned emptiness

 

unquestioned

emptiness

is the end of

a story

of discovering

separation is

already 

unquestioned

emptiness~

astonishing

conditioning writes stories

 

conditioning

is a form maker~

familiarity and

likeness lead to

naming

naming that which

is  always nameless~

conditioning

writes stories

equality

 

equality

never seems 

obvious from

separation's lens~

yet is

always obvious

as an appearance

of nothing

imagining edges

 

imagining

edges

illusionary edges

which seem to

spread into

landscapes and

stories and other

creatures~

inexplicable

creation happening

with no one

imagining

edges

edges the trademark of seeming separation

 

edges

the trademark

of seeming

separation and

although a blur

softens it seems

it recalls the

sharpness and

the impossible

edges show up 

anyway

kings..

 

kings

hierarchies

are the stuff of

stories

of history

of the stage

featuring the 

impossible 

splitting of

simply nothing

suggestions..

 

suggestions

are arisings which

the seeker values

for ending futile

pursuits of earlier

suggestions

freedom 

or security

are offered as

choice in the

relative world~

separation of

these is living in

quiet desperation

simply not two..

 

simply not two

yes but

not appears as two~

if there seems movement..

 

if

there seems 

to be movement

or no movement

it is a story

a dream

without

nothing

there is no

something 

and no

nothing

all is naught~~

 

all is naught

words

perspectives

illusions

all of it

and it~

something appearing and nothing appearing~

something appearing

and nothing appearing~

these seem as the 

perspectives of two

perceivers but there

are not two~

equality meandering..

 

equality

may be a word

undefined and

may appear as

equal or unequal

unexplainably

seeming as 

peace

equality

in relativity

stands along

with inequality

but absolutely

there is no

difference

all word

appearances 

are already

nothing

is the word

nothing overused?

all words including

nothing are empty

so the ease 

of replacement is

any word will do

laws and regulations and such

 

laws

regulations and such

estimations of what

is needed to mitigate

the rough edges of

characters on stage~

and this of course 

stems from a belief

that what seems known

is known

there is no finding of what is not lost

 

there is no finding

of what is not lost~

yet what is not lost

may show up as a 

finding~or not 

"There is nothing to be found and nothing to

lose.  What appears to be happening is naturally 

everything.  That is the joy--a joy that nobody

owns and that is everything at the same time.

That is what these words speak of. And yet 

they add nothing."

~~Andreas Muller

endings in nothing...unfinished

 

being

that word said

no other words

nor that one

can capture

nothing

is everything

a paradox

or a miracle

seemingly dependent

upon

words

are pretenders

until discovered

to be

appearances

what's out there

and in here

appearances of

no explanations for any of this..

 

no separation

not explained

not explainable

can be obvious

dissolving absent

handholds

finding

what is not lost

a seeker's shock

and demise

perhaps

searching

assumes something

to find with no

expectation that

something is 

nothing

conditioning shows up empty

 

presence

seems as lost

as conditioning

captures the child~

conditioning may

initiate a search 

of futility to find

what is not lost

until the search

shows up empty

and already 

presence

add a basement

a longing

for completion~

dissatisfying

separation has

shaded the joy

from our days~

seeking seeks

to quench the

dissatisfaction so

add a basement

gold and charcoal

 

gold

and charcoal

earthly distinctions

light and dark

one and many~

appearances

(nothing appears)

seem for and against

the possibility of

freedom

equality arises seeing..

 

equality

arises seeing 

that nothing

is arising

interweaving

may suggest that

the separation

interwoven

is the immediacy

of a dance step

wood grains

seem as suggestion

of time past ~

a map claimed as

years and seasons

of eternity

emergence

from or into

darkness

is the stuff of

stories

which avoid the

inconvenience of

spontaneity