The Inner Valley

Hui Tzu said to Chuang, "I have a big tree, the kind they call a "stinktree." The trunk is so distorted, so full of knots, no one can get a straight plank out of it. The branches are so crooked you cannot cut them up in any way that makes sense." "There it stands beside the road. No carpenter will even look at it. Such is your teaching - big and useless." Chuang Tzu replied, "Have you ever watched the wildcat crouching, watching his prey. The prey leaps this way, and that way, high and low, and at last lands in the trap. And have you seen the Yak? Great as a thundercloud, he stands in his might. Big? Sure, but he can't catch mice!" "So for your big tree, no use? Then plant it in the wasteland, in emptiness. Walk idly around it, rest under its shadow. No axe or bill prepares its end. No one will ever cut it down." "Useless? You should worry!" ******* Thomas Merton  (Prades, France, January 31, 1915 ~ Bangkok, Thaila

The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships over all the seas, But now it will not relieve any besieged city, It will not enter into any alliance, Because its cities are empty, its population dispersed, Its land once bringing harvest is overgrown with thistles, Its mission forgotten, its language lost, The dialect of a village high upon inaccessible mountains. ******* Czesław  Miłosz  (Szetejnie, Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire, 30 June 1911~ Kraków, Poland, 14 August 2004).   ◙ Artwork:  Louis Édouard Fournier  

“Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and equinox! This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table." ******* D.H.Lawrence (Eastwood, Nottinghampshire, England,  11 September 1885 ~ Vence, France, 2 March 1930). ◙ Artwork: Elliott Daingerfield

I am promised I have taken the veil I have made my obeisance I have walked on words of nails to knock on silences I have tokened the veil to my face mouth covered with symbol I have punctured my finger nails to fill one thimble with blood for consecration in a nunnery I have found each station of the cross and to each place have verbs tossed free, to compass the bitter male in this changed chancellery and I have paced four walls for the word, and I have heard curiously, I have heard the tallest of mouths call down behind my veil to limit or enlargen me as I or it prevails. ******* Phyllis Webb   (Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 8 April 1927). ◙ Artwork: Odilon Redon

Half my friends are dead. I will make you new ones, said earth. No, give me them back, as they were, instead, with faults and all, I cried. Tonight I can snatch their talk from the faint surf's drone through the canes, but I cannot walk on the moonlit leaves of ocean down that white road alone, or float with the dreaming motion of owls leaving earth's load. O earth, the number of friends you keep exceeds those left to be loved. The sea canes by the cliff flash green and silver; they were the seraph lances of my faith, but out of what is lost grows something stronger that has the rational radiance of stone, enduring moonlight, further than despair, strong as the wind, that through dividing canes brings those we love before us, as they were, with faults and all, not nobler, just there. ******* ✍  Derek Walcott (Castries, Saint Lucia, 23 January 1930 ~ Cap Estate, Gros-Islet,  Saint Lucia, 17 March 2017). 

The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage you stand in the centre of your room, house, half-acre, square mile, island, country, knowing at last how you got there, and say, I own this, is the same moment when the trees unloose their soft arms from around you, the birds take back their language, the cliffs fissure and collapse, the air moves back from you like a wave and you can't breathe. No, they whisper. You own nothing. You were a visitor, time after time climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming. We never belonged to you. You never found us. It was always the other way round. ******* ✍ Margaret Atwood (Ottawa, Canada, 18 November 1939). ◙ Artwork:  John Atkinson Grimshaw

"There could be nothing more paradoxical in historical terms than this change: man, at the beginning of the industrial age, when in reality he did not posses the means for a world in which the table was set for all who wanted to eat, when he lived in a world in which there were economic reasons for slavery, war, and exploitation, in which man only sensed the possibilities of his new science and of its application to technique and to production - nevertheless man at the beginning of modern development was full of hope. Four hundred year later, when all these hopes are realizable, when man can produce enough for everybody, when war has become unnecessary because technical progress can give any country more wealth than can territorial conquest, when this globe is in the process of becoming as unified as a continent was four hundred years ago, at the very moment when man is on the verge of realizing his hope, he begins to lose it." ******* Erich Fromm (Frankfurt am Mai

When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free .  ****** * ✎ W endell Berry (Henry County, Kentucky, United States, born 5 August 1934) ◙ Artwork:  Henri-Joseph Harpignies

Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them–will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms. The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way. Who are not, but could be. Who don’t speak languages, but dialects. Who don’t have religions, but superstitions. Who don’t create art, but handicrafts. Who don’t have culture, but folklore. Who are not human beings, but human resources. Who do not have faces, but arms. Who do not have names, but numbers. Who do not appear in the history of the world,

“Beauty is no material thing. Beauty cannot be copied. Beauty is the sensation of pleasure on the mind of the seer. No thing is beautiful. But all things await the sensitive and imaginative mind that may be aroused to pleasurable emotion at sight of them. This is beauty.” ******* ✍ Robert Henri (Cincinnati, Ohio, 24 June 1865 ~ New York City, 12 July, 1929). ◙ Artwork: 'Laughing Gypsy Girl' (1915), Robert Henri.

We can't complain. We're not out of work. We don't go hungry. We eat. The grass grows, the social product, the fingernail, the past. The streets are empty. The deals are closed. The sirens are silent. All that will pass. The dead have made their wills. The rain's become a drizzle. The war's not yet been declared. There's no hurry for that. We eat the grass. We eat the social product. We eat the fingernails. We eat the past. We have nothing to conceal. We have nothing to miss. We have nothing to say. We have. The watch has been wound up. The bills have been paid. The washing-up has been done. The last bus is passing by. It is empty. We aren't complaining. What are we waiting for? ******* Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Kaufbeuren,Germany, 11 November 1929). ◙ Artwork: Pierre Bonnard

The wind is a horse: hear how it runs through the sea, through the sky. It wants to carry me: listen how it roves around the world to take me far away. Hide me in your arms just for this night, while the rain breaks its innumerable beak on the earth and the sea.   Hear how the wind comes galloping, calling to take me far away. With your forehead upon my forehead, with your mouth upon my mouth, our bodies bound by the love that burns us, let the wind pas s by without taking me away. Let the wind rush in crowned with foam, let it call me and seek me galloping through the shadows, while I, sunk into your immense eyes, just for this night, I shall rest, my love. ******* ✍ Pablo Neruda ( Parral, Chile, 12 July 1904 ~ Santiago, Chile, 23 September 1973). ◙ Artwork: Frederick Varley

We make our meek adjustments, Contented with such random consolations As the wind deposits In slithered and too ample pockets. For we can still love the world, who find A famished kitten on the step, and know Recesses for it from the fury of the street, Or warm torn elbow coverts. We will sidestep, and to the final smirk Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us, Facing the dull squint with what innocence And what surprise! And yet these fine collapses are not lies More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane; Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise. We can evade you, and all else but the heart: What blame to us if the heart live on. The game enforces smirks; but we have seen The moon in lonely alleys make A grail of laughter of an empty ash can, And through all sound of gaiety and quest Have heard a kitten in the wilderness. ******* ✍ Hart Crane (Garret tsville, Ohio, United

Go  and open the door. Maybe outside there’s a tree, or a wood, a garden, or a magic city. Go and open the door. Maybe a dog’s rummaging. Maybe you’ll see a face, or an eye, or the picture of a picture. Go and open the door. If there’s a fog it will clear. Go and open the door. Even if there’s only the darkness ticking, even if there’s only the hollow wind, even if nothing is there, go and open the door. At least there’ll be a draught. *******  ✍ Miroslav Holub ( Plzeň, Czech Republic, 13 September 1923 ~ Prague, Czech Republic, 14 July 1998). ◙ Artwork: Andrew Wyeth

an ant dies, and no one mourns a bird dies, and no one mourns if it isn’t a crested ibis a monkey dies, and monkeys mourn a monkey dies, and people pry open its skull a shark dies, and another shark keeps swimming a tiger dies, and some people mourning are mourning themselves a person dies, and some people mourn and some people don’t a person dies, and some people mourn and some even applaud a generation dies, and the next generation doesn’t really mourn a country dies, most of the time just leaving apocrypha a country that doesn’t leave apocrypha wasn’t a real country if it wasn’t a real country, when it dies no one mourns no one mourns, and the wind blows in vain rivers flow in vain, washing over rocks in vain glistening in vain, making vain ripples the river dies, and it’s not for man to mourn the wind dies, and it’s not for man to mourn the river and wind make their way to the sea, the sea as vast as in Zhuangzi the vast sea dies, and you will have to die the dragon king dies

Once on a time, the ancient legends tell, Truth, rising from the bottom of her well, Looked on the world, but, hearing how it lied, Returned to her seclusion horrified. There she abode, so conscious of her worth, Not even Pilate's Question called her forth, Nor Galileo, kneeling to deny The Laws that hold our Planet 'neath the sky. Meantime, her kindlier sister, whom men call Fiction, did all her work and more than all, With so much zeal, devotion, tact, and care, That no one noticed Truth was otherwhere. ******* ✍ Rudyard Kipling (Bombay, India, 30 December 1865 ~ London, England, 18 January 1936). ◙ Artwork: Jean-Léon Gérôme. ' Truth Rising from her Well (to Shame Mankind)' (1896).