The Inner Valley

"The poem is not a slogan. It cannot advertise you. It cannot promote your reputation for sensitivity. You are not a stud. You are not a killer lady. All this junk about the gangsters of love. You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition. The poem is nothing but information. It is the Constitution of the inner country. If you declaim it and blow it up with noble intentions then you are no better than the politicians whom you despise. You are just someone waving a flag and making the cheapest kind of appeal to a kind of emotional patriotism. Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report. " ******* ✎   Leonard Cohen (Westmount, Quebec, Canada, 21 September 1934 ~ Los Angeles, California, 7 November 2016 ).

Zengetsu, a Chinese master of the T'ang dynasty, wrote the following advice for his pupils: Living in the world yet not forming attachments to the dust of the world is the way of a true Zen student. When witnessing the good action of another encourage yourself to follow his example. Hearing of the mistaken action of another, advise yourself not to emulate it. Even though alone in a dark room, be as if you were facing a noble guest. Express your feelings, but become no more expressive than your true nature. Poverty is your treasure. Never exchange it for an easy life. A person may appear a fool and yet not be one. He may only be guarding his wisdom carefully. Virtues are the fruit of self-discipline and do not drop from heaven of themselves as does rain or snow. Modesty is the foundation of all virtues. Let your neighbors discover you before you make yourself known to them. A noble heart never forces itself forward. Its words are as rare gems, seldom displayed and of great value. To...

Something is being told in the woods: aisles of shadow lead away; a branch waves; a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its path. A withheld presence almost speaks, but then retreats, rustles a patch of brush. You can feel the centuries ripple generations of wandering, discovering, being lost and found, eating, dying, being born. A walk through the forest strokes your fur, the fur you no longer have. And your gaze down a forest aisle is a strange, long plunge, dark eyes looking for home. For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers wider than your mind, away out over everything.    ******* ✎ William Edgar Stafford (Hutchinson, Kansas, 17 January 1914 – Lake Oswego, Oregon, 28 August 1993). ◙ Artwork: Iván Ivánovich Shishkin.

The washing never gets done. The furnace never gets heated. Books never get read. Life is never completed. Life is like a ball which one must continually catch and hit so it won't fall. When the fence is repaired at one end, it collapses on the other. The roof leaks, the kitchen door won't close, there are cracks in the foundation, the torn knees of children's pants … One can't keep everything in mind. The wonder is that beside all this one can notice the spring which is so full of everything continuing in all directions - into the evening clouds, into the redwing's song and into every drop of dew on every blade of grass in the meadow, as far as the eye can see, into the dusk . ******* ✎   Jaan Kaplinski  (Tartu, Estonia, born 22 January 194 1). ◙ Artwork: Richard Diebenkorn

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep, He hath awakened from the dream of life; 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings. -We decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. ******* ✎  Percy Bysshe Shelley  (Horsham, Sussex, England, 4 August 1792 ~ Gulf of  La Spezia, Kingdom of Sardinia, 8 July 1822). ◙ Artwork: William Blake.

"Just as I do not exist without the world, I am not myself without transcendence. … I stand before transcendence, which does not occur to me as existing in the world of phenomenal things but speaks to me as possible – speaks to me in the voice of whatever exists, and most decidedly in that of my self-being. The transcendence before which I stand is the measure of my own depth." ******* ✎ Karl Jaspers (Oldenburg, German Empire, 23 February 1883 - Basel, Switzerland, 26 February 1969) ◙ Artwork: Caspar David Friedrich

I t’s distance that makes mountains mountains. Looked at closely, they start to resemble me. Vast panoramas stop people in their tracks and make them conscious of the engulfing distances. Those very distances make people the people they are. Yet people can also contain distances inside themselves, which is why they go on yearning… They soon find they’re just places violated by distances, and no longer observed. They have then become scenery. ******* ✎ Shuntaro  Tanikawa (Tokyo, Japan, 15 December 1931) ◙  Artwork: Daniel O'Neill

  "I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is still another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary: The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use, and meaning. Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit of the times, I long sought to hold that other spirit away from me. But I did not consider that the spirit of the depths from time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations. The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let devotion to the ideals of this time die out in me. He forced me down to the last...

A nightingale who happened to have no home of his own decided that he would try to settle in certain forest. The birds who were already there, however, had their own ideas about the matter, and soon drove him out.   One day, sitting disconsolately by the dusty road nearby, he was spied by another nightingale, who stopped to ask why   he looked so forlorn.   'I tried', said the first bird, 'to make my home among other birds, but they pecked, and they mobbed me, and they flapped at me until I had to leave yonder forest.'   'Perhaps you were boastful,' said the other nightingale.   'When, in a similar situation, I sought a tree of my own, all the birds first collected and asked me what I was doing, why I was singing.'   'Yes, those birds did the same with me,' said the first   nightingale.   'And what did you say?'   'I said: "I am singing because I simply cannot help it.”   'And then?'   'And ...

"The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their Idealism—and their assumption of Immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he’s reasonably strong -and lucky- he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life’s élan. Both because of and in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile ...

My throat pulsates with pleasure when I see true art I am oligophrenic because I believe in nothing but poetry and oligophrenics are uninhibited and throw themselves into sex ******* ✎ Angela Marinescu (b. Arad, Romania, 8 July 1941). ◙ Artwork: Kees van Dongen

Be nobody’s darling; Be an outcast. Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap around You like a shawl, To parry stones To keep you warm. Watch the people succumb To madness With ample cheer; Let them look askance at you And you askance reply. Be an outcast; Be pleased to walk alone (Uncool) Or line the crowded River beds With other impetuous Fools. Make a merry gathering On the bank Where thousands perished For brave hurt words They said. But be nobody’s darling; Be an outcast. Qualified to live Among your dead. ******* ✎ Alice Walker (b. Eatonton, Georgia, U.S., 9 February 1944).

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. ******* ✍  Robert Lee Frost (San Francisco, California, 26 March 1874 ~ Boston, Massachusetts, 29 January 1963). ◙ Artwork: Odilon Redon

In a pocket of earth  I buried all the accents  of my mother tongue  there they lie like needles of pine  assembled by ants  one day the stumbling cry  of another wanderer may set them alight  then warm and comforted  he will hear all night  the truth as lullaby. ******* ✎ John Berger (Stoke Newington, London, England, 5 November 1926 ~ Paris, France, 2 January 2017). ◙ Artwork: Maurice de Vlaminck

It comes about that the drifting of these curtains Is full of long motions, as the ponderous Deflations of distance; or as clouds Inseparable from their afternoons; Or the changing of light, the dropping Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude Of night, in which all motion Is beyond us, as the firmament, Up-rising and down-falling, bares The last largeness, bold to see. ******* ✎ Wallace Stevens (Reading, Pennsylvania, 2 October 1879 ~ Hartford, Connecticut, 2 August 1955). ◙ Artwork: Andrew Wyeth

"Time passed. But time flows in many streams. Like a river, an inner stream of time will flow rapidly at some places and sluggishly at others, or perhaps even stand hopelessly stagnant. Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way." ******* ✍  Yasunari Kawabata (Osaka, Japan,   11 June 1899 ~ Zushi, Kanagawa, Japan, 16 April 1972.) ◙ Artwork: Marianne von Werefkin.

"It is occasionally possible, just for brief moments, to find the words that will unlock the doors of all those many mansions in the head and express something – perhaps not much, just something – of the crush of information that presses in on us from the way a crow flies over and the way a man walks and the look of a street and from what we did one day a dozen years ago. Words that will express something of the deep complexity that makes us precisely the way we are." ******* ✎ Edward James "Ted" Hughes (Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, England, 17 August 1930 ~ London, England, 28 October 1998). ◙ Artwork: Hughie Lee-Smith.

“My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak, I call you - are you there? I have returned, I am here again. I have shaken the dust of all the lands from my feet, and I have come to you, I am with you. After long years of long wandering, I have come to you again. Should I tell you everything I have seen, experienced, and drunk in? Or do you not want to hear about all the noise of life and the world? But one thing you must know: the one thing I have learned is that one must live this life. Do you still know me? How long the separation lasted! Everything has become so different. And how did I find you? How strange my journey was! What words should I use to tell you on what twisted paths a good star has guided me to you? Give me your hand, my almost forgotten soul. How warm the joy at seeing you again, you long disavowed soul. Life has led me back to you. Let us thank the life I have lived for all the happy and all the sad hours, for every joy, for every sadness. My soul, my journey ...

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