Only Candles Only Stars
Let there be lights (מארת) in the vault of the heavens … and they shall be lights (מאורת) in the vault of the heavens (Genesis 1:14-16)
All of the lights
On the candles, trees, houses
Beneficial artifice
The best we can do.
Even the stars
Awakening guiding
Are incomplete.
The light that eludes
In the dark cold of winter
Hiding in plain sight.
Constellator (Starry Nights)
To the uninitiate
The stars are arrayed
Points of white
That delight
But mean nothing.
The constellator sees old pictures.
The artist connects them anew.
The astronomer investigates
Each by each.
On cold nights
Of black sky
I see connect investigate
Unsure which I am
While the stars
Patiently wait.
I just checked to see how many posts I’ve published about or mentioning Syria. Twenty in the last four years.
Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, it does. When you think that nobody has “the answer” you are proven right. Again.
The oldest of the posts is Can Israel Stop the Syrian Genocide? (“Can Israel stop the Syrian genocide? On its face, the question seems practically preposterous and crazy….But in a world and region that continues to exhibit madness, maybe moments of crazy wisdom are what we need to break through. Because whatever we are doing isn’t working.”)
Of course, Israel wasn’t about to stop the Syrian madness, and hasn’t. Neither have we or any other nation, and neither are we or any other nation sure what to do—not only to stop the madness but to relieve the ongoing dismal and heartbreaking aftermath.
So we watch. It’s not the first time in our lifetimes, or in history, that good people have stood by uncertainly at the sight of spiraling tragedy and could not act or figure out what to do.
William Butler Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1919, as the madness of World War I was just ended and the madness of the Irish War of Independence was just beginning. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” As Yeats saw it, one cycle was ending in utter darkness, but there was the possibility of light appearing again in history, as it had before.
This is a season of light for many people, but in Syria it is getting darker every day. We will do what we can, but if we and our leaders can do nothing, we can at least keep Syria in our hearts, right next to a burning light.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Air and Water
Standing in the air
We forget it is there.
That what touches us
Touches all.
The ocean is a lesson
We cannot ignore.
This water is
That water.
Float and sink
Wide and deep
Our reach
And their reach
Are boundless.
Back on dry land
What have we learned?
Talk
Breathe
While you talk
And every word
Is silent.
Good Fortunes
A mountain of fortune cookies
For a feast.
Cracking one then another
All good.
One then another
All bad.
You have missed
The real meal.
First Light
Night
Weightless or heavy
With dreams.
First light
First word
First wordless thought.
Sinking
Lifting
Waking
No thought at all.
November 14, 2016, 6:49am
Supermoon
The moon looks bigger
Than the sun.
Do you see
What we know?
The thunder rises in the east
The lake sets in the west.
Miles and eons between
Originating in thunder
Maturing on an island in the lake.
All along
Sublime, smooth
Favorable, steadfast.
Follow when the time is right
Follow when the time has come.
“According to King Wen’s arrangement of the eight primary gua (trigrams of the I Ching), Thunder symbolizes the sun rising in the east, and Lake the sun setting in the west. ‘Thunder in the midst of Lake’ symbolizes that sunrise will surely follow sunset, that time continues in the proper order.
“This gua (hexagram) is very special, for it possesses the four virtues, as do the first and the second gua: yuan, heng, li, zhen….the four attributes of Heaven, symbolizing the virtues of an emperor, a leader, or a superior person. Yuan means sublime and initiative. Heng means prosperous and smooth. Li means favorable and beneficial. Zhen means steadfast and upright. Throughout the I Ching you will find these four phrases attributed to certain gua, though few are so auspicious as to have all four. These four Chinese characters also indicate the functions of the four seasons of a year: originating, developing, maturing, and declining, referring to spring, summer, autumn, and winter.” (Alfred Huang)
Not Adrift
Not adrift
Because the sails are down
The engine cut.
Every ocean
Every sea
Every drop
Is new.
A changing mirror
Of the sun and moon.
An expanse darker
Than a starless sky.
This
Is what I learn.
Bob Schwartz 