Well we just saw Rowan off at the bus for his 2 weeks at the Oregon Shakespeare Theatre Festival in Ashland. A two week intensive… He was as nervous as a coney when we saw him off. Taking Wing… Taking Wing…
Lee Gilmore and her husband Ron Meiners announced the birth of their son Spencer Daniel Ardery Meiners who arrived a week early on July 21st…. I have known Lee for some 20 years, and I know that of all her adventures, this is the great one. Congratulations!
Off to work soon, we were up at 4:30 getting Rowan ready for the bus. I don’t do early, and I can’t figure out the formula for seeing the world at this time except by staying up all night… I don’t think the farming life is one I was ever destined for… 80) Anyway, life will be a bit off kilter for the next couple of weeks with the Rowan away….
Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:
The Girl Comes Out of Meditation
The Poetry Of Odysseus Elytis
Art: Tadema
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The Girl Comes Out of Meditation
Once upon a time, Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, went to an assemblage of Buddhas. By the time he arrived, all had departed except for the Buddha Sakyamuni and one girl. She was seated in a place of highest honor, deep in meditation. Manjusri asked the Buddha how it was possible for a mere girl to attain a depth of mediation that even he could not attain. The Buddha said, “Bring her out of meditation and ask her yourself.”
So Manjusri walked around the girl three times [a gesture of reverence], then snapped his fingers. She remained deep in meditation. He then tried rousing her by invoking all his magic powers; he even transported her to a high heaven. All was to no avail, so deep was her concentration. But suddenly, up from below the earth sprang Momyo, an unenlightened one. He snapped his fingers once, and the girl came out of her meditation.
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The Poetry Of Odysseus Elytis
MARINA OF THE ROCKS
You have a taste of tempest on your lipsBut where did you wander
All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills
Stripped your longing to the bone
And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera
Spotting memory with foam!
Where is the familiar slope of short September
On the red earth where you played, looking down
At the broad rows of the other girls
The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary.
But where did you wander
All night long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
I told you to count in the naked water its luminous days
On your back to rejoice in the dawn of things
Or again to wander on yellow plains
With a clover of light on you breast, iambic heroine.
You have a taste of tempest on your lips
And a dress red as blood
Deep in the gold of summer
And the perfume of hyacinthsBut where did you wander
Descending toward the shores, the pebbled bays?
There was cold salty seaweed there
But deeper a human feeling that bled
And you opened your arms in astonishment naming it
Climbing lightly to the clearness of the depths
Where your own starfish shone.
Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.
It is not for you, blue to the bone, to think of another summer,
For the rivers to change their bed
And take you back to their mother
For you to kiss other cherry trees
Or ride on the northwest wind.
Propped on the rocks, without yesterday or tomorrow,
Facing the dangers of the rocks with a hurricane hairstyle
You will say farewell to the riddle that is yours.
—–
I LIVED THE BELOVED NAME…
I lived the beloved name
In the shade of the aged olive tree
In the roaring of the lifelong sea
Those who stoned me live no longer
With their stones I built a fountain
To its brink green girls come
Their lips descend from the dawn
Their hair unwinds far into the future
Swallows come, infants of the wind
They drink, they fly, so that life goes on
The threat of the dream becomes a dream
Pain rounds the good cape
No voice is lost in the breast of the sky
O deathless sea, tell what you are whispering
I reach your morning mouth early
On the peak where your love appears
I see the will of the night spilling stars
The will of the day nipping the earths shoots
I saw a thousand wild lilies on the meadows of life
A thousand children in the true wind
Beautiful strong children who breathe out kindness
And know how to gaze at the deep horizons
When music raises the islands
I carved the beloved name
In the shade of the aged olive tree
In the roaring of the lifelong sea.
——
CALENDAR OF AN INVISIBLE APRIL
“The wind was whistling continuously, it was
getting darker, and that distant voice was
incessantly reaching my ears : “an entire life”…
“an entire life”…
On the opposite wall, the shadows of the
trees were playing cinema”
“It seems that somewhere people are celebrating;
although there are no houses or human beings
I can listen to guitars and other laughters which
are not nearby
Maybe far away, within the ashes of heavens
Andromeda, the Bear, or the Virgin…
I wonder; is loneliness the same, all over the
worlds ? “
“Almond-shaped, elongated eyes, lips; perfumes stemming
from a premature sky of great feminine delicacy
and fatal drunkeness.
I leant on my side -almost fell- onto the
hymns to the Virgin and the cold of spacious
gardens.
Prepared for the worst.”
“FRIDAY, 10c
LATE MIDNIGHT my room is moving in the
neighborhood shining like an emerald.
Someone searches it, but truth eludes him
constantly. How to imagine that it is
placed lower
Much lower
That death too, has its own Red sea.”