The Inner Valley

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs As roots of baobab, as the hearth. The air will not deny you. Like a top Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe That roots the forests plows a path for squirrels. Be ageless as dark peat, but only that rain's Fingers, not the feet of men, may wash you over. Long wear the sun's shadow; run naked to the night. Peppers green and red—child—your tongue arch To scorpion tail, spit straight return to danger's threats Yet coo with the brown pigeon, tendril dew between your lips. Shield you like the flesh of palms, skyward held Cuspids in thorn nesting, in sealed as the heart of kernel— A woman's flesh is oil—child, palm oil on your tongue Is suppleness to life, and wine of this gourd From self-same timeless run of ru...

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; does she hear something? Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence - this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have sprouted from the word "woods." Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away. Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns. They forget that what's here isn't life. Other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I...

He loved her and she loved him. His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to He had no other appetite She bit him she gnawed him she sucked She wanted him complete inside her Safe and sure forever and ever Their little cries fluttered into the curtains Her eyes wanted nothing to get away Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows He gripped her hard so that life Should not drag her from that moment He wanted all future to cease He wanted to topple with his arms round her Off that moment's brink and into nothing Or everlasting or whatever there was    Her embrace was an immense press To print him into her bones His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace Where the real world would never come Her smiles were spider bites So he would lie still till she felt hungry His words were occupying armies Her laughs were an assassin's attempts His looks were bullets daggers of revenge His glances were ghosts in the corner with horribl...

The finger that wrote in my blood and separated my blood from its ink, said that the name of my soul is blood and ink the name of my spirit.   M y soul makes camp in its color before a red mirror, my spirit regards itself in a black mirror.   And in my heart there was a battle between blood, air and ink. Earth , and ink defeated blood and I was happy, but never again will I write in fire with a flame.                                                                       * Abraham Abulafia ******* ✍ 'The Battle' . Juan Gelman (Buenos Aires, 3 May 1930 ~ México D. F., 14 January 2014).  ...

All clocks are clouds. Parts are greater than the whole. A philosopher is starving in a rooming house, while it rains outside. He regards the self as just another sign. Winter roses are invisible. Late ice sometimes sings. A and Not-A are the same. My dog does not know me. Violins, like dreams, are suspect. I come from Kolophon, or perhaps some small island. The strait has frozen, and people are walking—a few skating—across it. On the crescent beach, a drowned deer. A woman with one hand, her thighs around your neck. The world is all that is displaced. Apples in a stall at the streetcorner by the Bahnhof, pale yellow to blackish red. Memory does not speak. Shortness of breath, accompanied by tinnitus. The poet’s stutter and the philosopher’s. The self is assigned to others. A room for which, at all times, the moon remains visible. Leningrad cafe: a man missing the left side of his face. Disappearance of the sun from the sky above Odessa. True descri...

What the mouth sings, the soul must learn to forgive. A rat’s as moral as a monk in the eyes of the real world. Still, the heart is a river pouring from itself, a river that cannot be crossed. It opens on a bay and turns back upon itself as the tide comes in, it carries the cry of the loon and the salts of the unutterably human. A distant eagle enters the mouth of a river salmon no longer run and his wide wings glide upstream until he disappears into the nothing from which he came. Only the thought remains. Lacking the eagle’s cunning or the wisdom of the sparrow, where shall I turn, drowning in sorrow? Who will know what the trees know, the spidery patience of young maple or what the willows confess? Let me be water. The heart pours out in waves. Listen to what the water says. Wind, be a friend. There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive. ******* ✍  Sam Hamill ( 5 September 1943, Utah, United States). ◙ Artwork: Thomas Fearnley

When we wear out our minds, stubbornly clinging to one partial view of things, refusing to see a deeper agreement between this and its complementary opposite, we have what is called " three in the morning." What is this "three in the morning?" A monkey trainer went to his monkeys and told them: "As regards your chestnuts: you are going to have three measures in the morning and four in the afternoon." At this they all became angry. So he said: "All right, in that case I will give you four in the morning and three in the afternoon." This time they were satisfied. The two arrangements were the same in that the number of chestnuts did not change. But in one case the animals were displeased, and in the other they were satisfied. The keeper had been willing to change his personal arrangement in order to meet objective conditions. He lost nothing by itl The truly wise man, considering both sides of the question without partiality, sees them b...

“He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fishermen, those who used buoys as floats for their lines and had motorboats, bought when the shark livers had brought much money, spoke of her as 'el mar' which is masculine.They spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favours, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.” ******* ✍   Ernest Hemingway (Oak Park, Illinois, 21 July 1899 ~ Ketchum, Idaho, 2 July 1961). Excerpt from 'The Old Man and The Sea' .   ◙  Artwork: Nils Jakob Olsson Blommér *******

A soldier named Nobushige came to Hakuin, and asked: "Is there really a paradise and a hell?" "Who are you?" inquired Hakuin. "I am a samurai," the warrior replied. "You, a soldier!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar." Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued: "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head." As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: "Here open the gates of hell!" At these words the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed. "Here open the gates of paradise," said Hakuin. *******    Excerpt from 'Zen Flesh, Zen Bones' by Paul Reps and  Nyogen Senzaki  ◙ Artwork: Utagawa Kunisada *******  Un soldado, de nombre Nobushigé, acudió a Hakuín y le preguntó: -¿Existe realmente un paraíso y un...

A Prince said to a scholar:  'The speech of yonder Sufi is so frivolous and so general that I do not believe that he can be a man of sincerity.' The scholar said:  'O Emir of Sheikhs! Know that there are three forms of deep knowledge:  The Deep Knowledge unknown to any;   The Deep Knowledge given by the results of complex speech;  and the Deep Knowledge conveyed by seemingly frivolous means.  One jest from the lips of that Sufi has made a hundred saints, while other men, of serious mien and threatening talk, have succeeded - in making corpses.' A goblet of the Water of Life was once handed to a man He refused to drink because the container did not please him by its outward shape If you are a man of 'shape', why do you talk about 'depth'? ✍ Idries Shah (Simla, British India, 16 June 1924 - London, United Kingdom, 23 November 1996). ◙ Artwork: John Frederick Lewis

The five colors blind the eye. The five tones deafen the ear. The five flavors stale the palate. The chase for preys deranges the mind, too much treasure impedes one’s growth. The Master acts on what he feels not what he sees, so allows things to come and go. ******* ✍   Lao Tzu . Tao Te Ching ~ Verse 12. ◙ Artwork: Tsuchiya Koitsu

“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace.” ✍ Milan Kundera (Brno, Czechoslovakia, 1 April 1929). ◙ Jean-Léon Gérôme

“Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions sown are directly valid for all mankind." ******* ✍ Joseph Campbell (White Plains, New York, 26 March 1904 ~ Honolulu, Hawaii, 30 October 1987). ◙ Artw ork: Evelyn de Morgan *******  “El sueño es el mito personalizado, el mito es el sueño despersonalizado; tanto el mito como el sueño son simbólicos en el  mismo modo general de la dinámica de la psique. Pero en el sueño las formas son distorsionadas por las dificultades peculiares del que sueña, mientras que en el mito los problemas y las soluciones representadas son directamente válidas para toda la humanidad." *******   ✍ Joseph Campbell   ◙ Artwork: Albert Aublet