Reflections of a Man's Heart

When I lean on you with
unfathomably contradictory thoughts,
my longing
inevitably provokes an image:
The transparency of my window!
Day after day
quietly shutting out
time that flows past like water.
Now you link with eternity the fact
that some day all things
must be buried in oblivion's shade,
as if suggesting the reason why we live.
Gateway to mystery: all complex desires
vanish, purified;
you take all this world's trivial daily events
and put them in their proper place.
Then every night unfailingly I
find silence, window, thanks to you
I foster waiting eyes, enduring
on and on, and do not despair.

- Lee Hyong Ki

What is it when the tree withers and the leaves fall?

Body exposed in the golden wind.

- Blue Cliff Record, Case 27

I would retrieve the secret of great combustion and great communications. I would say storm. I would say river. Tornado I would say. I would say leaf. I would say tree. I would be watered by all rains, dampened by all dews. I would rumble onward like frenetic blood on the slow stream of the eye my words like wild horses like radiant children like clots like curfew-bells in temple ruins like precious stones so distant as to discourage miners. He who would not understand me would not understand the roaring of the tiger either. . .

- Aimé Césaire

Tonight, as you touched my face,

I thought of Gregory's death:

how knowing perhaps that it would please you,

though he had not shaved for weeks,

he asked you to shave him that day.

It is a thing, I realize now,

that neither his wife nor daughter could do;

and I imagine your fingers suddenly less sure,

moving in ways known until then

only from within.

But in your hands' slow remembering

you shaved him as your father had once shaved you,

with large-knuckled, inexpressible joy.

One man can give another so little:

not courage, not time.

The weight of his head for those moments

held in your hand, and then not.

The melody that carries a children's rhyme

through centuries, though the meaning of the words is lost.

- Jane Hirshfield, Of Gravity & Angels

This dewdrop world:

it is a dewdrop world. . .

And yet, and yet -

- Issa

Written after the death of his daughter

My mare, when she was in heat,

would travel the fenceline for hours,

wearing the impatience

in her feet into the ground.

Not a stallion for miles, I'd assure her,

give it up.

She'd widen her nostrils,

sieve the wind for news, be moving again,

her underbelly darkening with sweat,

then stop at the gate a moment, wait

to see what I might do.

Oh, I knew

how it was for her, easily

recognized myself in that wide lust:

came to stand in the pasture

just to see it played.

Offered a hand, a bucket of grain -

a minute's distraction from passion

the most I gave.

Then she'd return to what burned her:

the fence, the fence,

so hoping I might see, might let her free.

I'd envy her then,

to be so restlessly sure

of heat, and need, and what it takes

to feed the wanting that we are -

only a  gap to open

the width of a mare,

the rest would take care of itself.

Surely, surely I knew that,

who had the power of bucket

and bridle -

she would beseech me, sidle up,

be gone, as life is short.

But desire, desire is long.

- Jane Hirshfield, Of Gravity & Angels

- Ei Akitsu

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

-Khalil Gibran

Happiness

is

like the

tinge of green

in white wine.

- Meiko Matsudaira

This heart,

longing for you,

breaks

to a thousand pieces -

I wouldn't lose one.

- Izumi Shikibu