"I Saw a Woman Sleeping," Olive Schreiner

                                                                             Paul Kuznetsov

                                       I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life
                                       stood before her, and held in each hand a gift -- in the
                                       one Love, in the other Freedom. And Life said to
                                       the woman, "Choose."

                                      And the woman waited long: and she said, "Freedom!"

                                     And Life said, "Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst
                                     said, 'Love,' I would have given thee that thou didst
                                     ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned
                                     to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall
                                     return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand."

                                     I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.

"Everyone Was in Love," Galway Kinnell

                                                     "Snake Love," Dana Peters

One day, when they were little, Maud and Fergus

appeared in the doorway naked and mirthful,

with a dozen long garter snakes draped over

each of them like brand-new clothes.

Snake tails dangled down their backs,

and snake foreparts in various lengths

fell over their fronts with heads raised and swaying,

alert as cobras. They were writhing their dry skins

upon each other, as snakes like doing

in lovemaking, with the added novelty

of caressing soft, smooth, moist human skin.

Maud and Fergus were deliciously pleased with themselves.

The snakes seemed to be tickled, too.

We were enchanted. Everyone was in love.

Then Maud drew down off Fergus’s shoulder,

as off a tie rack, a peculiarly

lumpy snake and told me to look inside.

Inside the double-hinged jaw, a frog’s green

webbed hind feet were being drawn,

like a diver’s, very slowly as if into deepest waters.

Perhaps thinking I might be considering rescue,

Maud said, “Don’t. Frog is already elsewhere.”

"Siege," Edna St. Vincent Millay

                                                            
                                                          This I do, being mad:
                                                          Gather baubles about me,
                                                          Sit in a circle of toys, and all this time
                                                          Death beating the door in.

                                                          White jade and an orange pitcher,
                                                                   Hindu idol, Chinese god, —
                                                           Maybe next year, when I’m richer—
                                                                   Carved beads and a lotus pod. . . .

                                                           And all this time
                                                           Death beating the door in.

"Oblique Prayers," Denise Levertov

As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit's deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

I perfectly recall the moment at dinner when Karen Joy recited this, and will never be entirely certain if it is the poem itself, the moment, or Karen's own sublimity which brings such joy.

Last verse of "Ash Wednesday," T. S. Eliot

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of

      the garden,

Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood

Teach us to care and not to care

Teach us to sit still

Even among these rocks,

Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks

Sister, mother

And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,

Suffer me not to be separated

                             And let my cry come unto Thee.




This verse has never failed to console me, even though I chafe a bit at the upper case possessive.  The photo is of a Japanese woodblock from 1916, titled "Spirit of the Sea." 

James Baldwin

Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden,

I don't know;

But they have scarcely seen their garden

before they see the flaming sword.

    Then perhaps, life only offers the choice

    of remembering the garden or forgetting it.

Either or, it takes strength to remember,

it takes another kind of strength to forget, it

takes a hero to do both.

People who remember court madness through pain,

the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence.

People who forget court another kind of madness,

the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence.

And the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember,

and madmen who forget.

Heroes are rare.

The Hindoo Skeptic

THE HINDOO SKEPTIC

I think till I'm weary of thinking,

   Said the sad-eyed Hindoo king,

And I see but shadows around me,

   Illusion in everything.

How knowest thou aught of God,

   Of His favor, or His wrath?

Can the little fish tell what the lion thinks,

   Or map out the eagle's path?

Can the finite the infinite search?

   Did the blind discover the stars?

Is the thought that I think a thought,

   Or the throb of the brain in its bars?

For aught that my eye can discern,

   Your God is what you think good,

Yourself flashed back from the glass

   When the light pours on it in flood.

You preach to me to be just,

   And this is His realm, you say;

Yet the good are dying of hunger,

   And the bad gorge everyday.

You say that He loveth mercy,

   And the famine is not yet gone;

That He hateth the shedder of blood,

   Yet He slayeth us, every one.

You say that my soul shall live,

   That the spirit can never die --

If he were content when I was not,

   Why not when I have passed by?

You say I must have a meaning,

   So must dung, and its meaning is flowers;

What if our lives are but nurture

   For lives that are greater than ours?

When the fish swims out of the water,

   When the birds soar out of the blue,

Man's thoughts may transcend man's knowledge,

   And your God be no reflex of you.

This poem, which I discovered in my teens, was revolutionary for me and remains so.  It was decisive in my rejection of organized religion.  I recall that once Nat, when he was about nine, said that he thought "God" (we didn't promulgate any particular conceptions) was a figure with so many sides that no one could fully see the figure.  Out of the mouths of babes.


The above photograph, by the way, is an authentic  NASA photo depicting the Helix Nebula, described by astronomers as "a trillion-mile-long tunnel of glowing gases," at the center of which is a dying star.  The caption noted, "Our own sun may look like this in several billion years."  Practice dying (one of my favorite injunctions) on the cosmic scale.  I suspect death is every bit as beautiful.