A friend sent me this passage. At the time I did not realise that it was Wordsworth…

This spiritual Love acts not nor can exist
Without Imagination, which, in truth,
Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.
This faculty hath been the feeding source
Of our long labour: we have traced the stream
From the blind cavern whence is faintly heard
Its natal murmur; followed it to light
And open day; accompanied its course
Among the ways of Nature, for a time
Lost sight of it bewildered and engulfed;
Then given it greeting as it rose once more
In strength, reflecting from its placid breast
The works of man and face of human life;
And lastly,from its progress have we drawn
Faith in life endless, the sustaining thought
Of human Being, Eternity, and God”.

and I wrote this response….

“Faith in life endless”, such sustaining thought
Has crept upon us from a source unseen yet
By no means unknown for, though ceaselessly sought,
It concedes nothing to those who would get
Some low or high advantage from its sport,
But rather, as fair and true ancestors beget
Their offspring by all most hidden comport,
It too will only yield its mystery secret
To those whose faith o’erwhelms all rational report
And to those graced few that it did so vet
It shows a way where’s needless to labour or court
The fates with own amplitudes one must trumpet
For in its unstinting love there is no “ought”
Or progress by compunction, merely a long set
Gaze of unremitting cherishment unsought
Wherein we may find Being, Eternity and, yes, God, even yet.

I hear your secret calling
In the bidding night
When regrets become most galling
And the lashes from each mauling
Plight my silence to your light

I hear your strident calling
In the urgent morn
As if the catawaling
Of the city traffic stalling
Might cause me to be born

I hear your soothing calling
In the high noon hour
As the shade shrinking
And the thirsty drinking
Mark the ebb of human power.

I hear your raucus calling
In the far gone dusk
As if revellers a-brawling
Or broken hearts a-squalling
Might wrest me from my husk

I hear you always calling
In the hale and the diseased
As the clatter of my falling
As a hurt child bawling
Sends me whither all is eased.

Written December 2006

Darkness in our hearts
Like the chill of a winter night
We tell our stories
Huddled around Amida’s fireside
In our togetherness
We suddenly remember:
Spring daffodils will come
In their own good time.

Written in northern France
while thinking of wars
past and present there
and in the Lebanon.

Sylvan soldiers stand
A poplar guard of honour
‘Cross Picardy’s land
Their crests bob faint bows toward
The becalmed dead ‘neath their sand.

Elsewhere the world burns
With flames of hate rekindled
Across other sands
Where cedars famed of old
No longer now bear witness

All the world’s on fire
With the fire of greed, say I,
With the fire of hate
Who will to nirvana go?
Who will bury all this woe?

The corn is golden
The woodlands are all at peace
In Picardy now
Poplars continue to bow
To those interred at their feet.

A tanka (Japanese 5-7-5-7-7  verse)

Two grey heron fish
By the bridge at Valigny,
Likewise two grey men;
Atop the water haze hangs
Like frosted passion waiting

board for a tray
cloth for a bunk
strolling the way
gathering junk

living on nuts
sleeping on hay
build little huts
watch them decay

weeds grow over
get fat get thin
daisies and clover
on the plate in the bin

they spread and they pass
the frown and the smile
along the old worn way
…..walk in style.

The cousin of a new friend passed away
To another realm and although
He’s been gone a mere day
Or two so that the glow
Of the parting continues to play
In the life of my new friend who only just said hello
I ponder what can one say
When the acquaintanceship has only just begun to flow
Not to be fay
Or false or a bringer of more woe
But just trying to be OK -
To speed love’s arrow from one’s bow
Remembering in the right way
And cherishing the ones we know
Whether the dying are they
Or we or so and so

Oh to not break any thing -
Then would birds sing!
But then would there be no room,
No womb
From which birds spring.

To and fro they bring
The balm and the sting -
The tomb
Is the womb
To which the hurt cling.

Ding a ling! ding a ling!
What have you got, what do you bring?
What comes from your catacomb,
Oh loom
Of Spring?

I am the broken thing
That won’t ring
Yet will loom
With an unsounded boom
Until we take wing.

Caressing a tatami mat
Roughness as smooth
As a lover’s tumble
Or a silent moment
When the past blossoms
In tears for a beloved
And sharply blissful
Fruit of experience
Fall into my endlessly woven
Basket.

This poem also appears at http://dharmainafrica.blogspot.com/

The spirit of sublime compassion,
White, winsome, splendid, all adorned,
Appears a sudden there before me,
“Do not fear for you will be free
From the pain of things you mourned
From the taint of ancient passion.”

Awash in singing the beloved,
Calling out the fervent name,
This angel came unbidden, gifted,
Just so that my spirit lifted,
Washing off all doubt and blame,
Soothing with a love unsaid.

Red the disc that hangs before me
Vestibule to the calling land;
Dark clouds soft turn ‘fore that hue,
As soft our sins in those eyes too;
How clement comes the kindly hand
To peel the scales that we might see.

For lost am I in the pall of the past,
Torment a certain destination
Were it not for simply bowing
To the one whose timeless vowing
Raises all of humble station
And raises firstly those who are last.

This poem is in the classic Japanese 5-7-5-7-7 form.

White chrysanthemums
Off set the dark sky above
Yet in his fond dream
It had been her spread white frock
Beneath a sky of azure.

He picked one sweet bloom
And held its fragility
Whispering her name
As if to conjure the dead
For she knows him now no more.

There’s no such thing as a lover’s vow
For passion is wayward and blind
As a barque that sets its handsome prow
With no mind for the current under its bow
Or the storms on the main it will find.

As for feelings high or feelings low
The currents that run through one’s mind
As clouds that form then surprisingly go
Or tempests arising that awkwardly blow
They are paradoxically kind

For we are the beasts that roam and roar
In a passion of fury and sound
That issues from out of a soul that’s sore
Knowing neither whence nor yet wherefore
Lacking even an inch of ground.

So body and mind are not mine to plight
Although I give you my throth
For I am the creature that lost the fight
And fell into eternal night
In the spell of Amida’s oath

This poem also apears at http://dharmainafrica.blogspot.com 

Africa now knows you as a mother knows her own
And as she’s always known you since you went away from home
And there you see her standing - tresses crowned with that red comb
That was given by a lover on one silver afternoon
When the sunset hardly threatened yet the sand already blown
Had brought a haze across the dunes where seed cannot be sown
And your dreams were not yet born then nor yet hatched out from your bone
But their birth pangs had fore-echoes in the redness of her moon
For her lovers they are legion and they are not alone
When they come beneath her shelter and her canopy of stone
Like a womb of light eternal from which kindnesses are grown
At the endtime whose beginning is a gong that’s sounding soon.

This poem also appears at http://dharmainafrica.blogspot.com/

I have never been to Africa
But I have felt its hot red wind
Like the caress of a mother
Whose wrath has been pinned
By the light of the Buddha
Round a child who has sinned

I have never seen the rise
Of the sun on the veldt
But I’ve been in the desert
Where the land has lost its pelt
And the footfall of prophets
On the sand can still be felt

I have never been abandoned
No I’ve never been alone
Since those days when I would ponder
On the meaning of a stone
Through all these days wherein to wander
With You, my Lord without a throne.

No I’ve never been abandoned
And I’ve felt Your hot red breeze
And I’ve known Your hand upon me
Like a voice that says, “At ease”
Or a guarantee of passage
Through a swarm of angry bees.

No I’ve never been to Africa
Nor sat there in that shade
That You’ve set up in the leeside
Of the temple that they made
Where the master sips his tea
And the debt of sin is paid.

But I send there all my loving
And I send there all my care
As we walk upon the dune ridge
With the One who’s always there
And we set the bees a-sleeping
In the comfort of His hair.

Bidden
By a trace
At last
We will
Stroll with you
A moment.
Stroll with us, always,
The whole way,
All ways,
Where
Ways hard to pass
Gather and spread forth
At the crossroads of that seeming chance moment
Where the prophets smile upon us
And Buddhas caress
Away our stress
And press
Blossoms upon the soul;
Oh, such a moment,
Though you are for always
Though you remain,
Our ways,
Seemingly germane,
Craze us away
Into the vast sands
The sand casts
And lost masts
Tips of old buried hauntings that
Live with us always
Glazing over the days.
Oh, gaze past,
Gaze upon the open sands
Beneath the open sky
Where ways appear and disappear
With each shifting blast;
In that searing sun
Is truth one
Or does it shatter
Scatter,
Even matter,
When there’s something to be done
A moment that has come
A moment to set sail
With one
Who has the touch,
To prevail?
Stroll with us
Until
Beneath these sands
We find our place
Hidden

Amidst the shame and stresses
Picking up my dole
From the cloud shadowed recesses
Of the redness of my soul
Beyond your fragile caresses
Will I admit I am not whole
But only straw that one confesses
And then hides dark as coal
Knowing only one who blesses
What I broke and what I stole
From the hoppers and the presses
As I tried to fill my bowl
And with rags and torn off tresses
Made a claim upon parole
For all my many messes
I am an ordinary soul

An hour’s glory sped,

Petals red

Like splashed blood lie

Dashed upon the lawn.

The crashing downpour

Now withdrawn

Leaves our poppies

Unfettled and forelorn.

Flash your eyes for me

Old muni eyes

Ever young and lightning bright

You old lover of love

Flash your eyes

Like you ever did

When I was an old young thing

Of seven going on thousands

Recalling the brightness

Beyond the clouds

Flash your eyes

See this world

See the Other World.

Seeing this from That

This holds no power

As one who sees love

Is unmoved by corruption.

Seeing That from this

Move in accordance

As one led by a star

Follows

Amida is always calling my name.

Only Amida knows my true name.

If I call to You, will you tell me my name?

Provisionally we go by temporary labels.

One day we will meet for real.