Sing To Me Softly Of Earth - Part Four

Alice Mourou

Alice Mourou - Unsplash

Authored by A. S. Kline © Copyright 1999 All Rights Reserved.

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Season

Man is the gardener now, in the garden empty of gods,

dreams the cold fountains and the frozen streams,

the stone grass, the ice earth, the statues.

There are figures there, Goya's doll faces,

the blind-man's-buff of movement.

No touch, no taste,

under the crystal, clarion brilliance.

This season now, where we are most at home.


Winter Walk

The gush of air and light in the dark trees

that makes firs sigh greenly together

is like a bent rower with the sky on his back

rowing through the depths of the wood, through time,

is like Gauguin's bareback rider of riversides

who crouches under whiplike branches.

Space roars but we come down to the small meadow's,

sunlit silence. It is like leafing through

Breughel's towers , hells, landscapes, and coming

across the drawing of human figures, on paths

of light, flickering among trees, where at last

individuals, walk, and talk, and the silence waits

for time to flow, for Rembrandt to begin.


Pissarro

The world flickering, is still.

The truly-loved, concentrated on

becomes our own image of our existence.

Place by place remembering what is loved.

The pure technique, in having no observer,

no desire, free of time's claims and its obligation,

speaks in a place beyond that movement teaches,

a place of light, and light's delerium.

Fearful touch, like mouth on mouth, or arm on arm

ensnaring, in the undemanded future.

A space, of something seen by love

its silent eye.

Mind, centrifuge of flame, still circling

the fall of light on walls, the leaves, the roads.

A spring and autumn landscape of the heart.

And colour, like a god, humbly passing.


How To

Time then, and the Earth shifts under our feet.

Terror. Courage is to be our own firmness

a pillar of fire.

In the cage of History, one more or less.

But to be a voice, a mind, a pair of eyes.


Pressure

Stillness behind the moon lifts up the hills.

Tongues press greenly on the word.

White foam in the sea's bowl is the spine

of the silent minotaur's emerging.

In mind is the pressure of the mirror,

the unbreathing night darker than a stone.

What is this beating in the cage of bone ?

O round white mouth forever searching.


The Garden

Respect them,

the animal eyes,

where we are.

See now, there,

the Nothingness flower,

contain us.

Acknowledge

body, mind, process,

discover the sacred.

Examine

how silence, stillness invade

what no-one made.

Consider

the empty garden now.

Attend.