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.