Guhatthaka-suttaniddeso: Upon the Tip of a Needle translated from the Pali by Andrew Olendzki

  

Life, personhood, pleasure and pain — This is all that's bound together In a single mental event — A moment that quickly takes place. Even the spirits who endure For eighty-four thousand aeons — Even these do not live the same For any two moments of mind. What ceases for one who is dead, Or for one who's still standing here, Are all just the same aggregates — Gone, never to connect again. The states which are vanishing now, And those which will vanish some day, Have characteristics no different Than those which have vanished before. With no production there's no birth; With becoming present, one lives. When grasped with the highest meaning, The world is dead when the mind stops. There's no hoarding what has vanished, No piling up for the future; Those who have been born are standing Like a seed upon a needle. The vanishing of all these states That have become is not welcome, Though dissolving phenomena stand Uncombined from primordial time. From the unseen, [states] come and go, Glimpsed only as they're passing by; Like lightning flashing in the sky — They arise and then pass away

On Being Asked For A War Poem by William Butler Yeats

  

On Being Asked For A War Poem

by William Butler Yeats

I think it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of medding who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter's night.

Nullo

 

The Sun Used to Shine BY EDWARD THOMAS

  The Sun Used to Shine

BY EDWARD THOMAS

The sun used to shine while we two walked

Slowly together, paused and started

Again, and sometimes mused, sometimes talked

As either pleased, and cheerfully parted

 

Each night. We never disagreed

Which gate to rest on. The to be

And the late past we gave small heed.

We turned from men or poetry

 

To rumours of the war remote

Only till both stood disinclined

For aught but the yellow flavorous coat

Of an apple wasps had undermined;

 

Or a sentry of dark betonies,

The stateliest of small flowers on earth,

At the forest verge; or crocuses

Pale purple as if they had their birth

 

In sunless Hades fields. The war

Came back to mind with the moonrise

Which soldiers in the east afar

Beheld then. Nevertheless, our eyes

 

Could as well imagine the Crusades

Or Caesar's battles. Everything

To faintness like those rumours fade—

Like the brook's water glittering

 

Under the moonlight—like those walks

Now—like us two that took them, and

The fallen apples, all the talks

And silence—like memory's sand

 

When the tide covers it late or soon,

And other men through other flowers

In those fields under the same moon

Go talking and have easy hours.

!There was another time

There was another time When our hands met and the clocks st And we lived on the point of a needle

 

My life is but a weaving between my God and me

 My life is but a weaving between my God and me,

I do not choose the colors, He works so steadily,
Oft times He weaves in sorrow, and I in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper, and I the underside.

Not till the loom is silent, and the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful in the Weaver’s skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned

We Lived Happily During the War BY ILYA KAMINSKY

 We Lived Happily During the War

BY ILYA KAMINSKY

And when they bombed other people’s houses, we

 

protested

but not enough, we opposed them but not

 

enough. I was

in my bed, around my bed America

 

was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.

 

I took a chair outside and watched the sun.

 

In the sixth month

of a disastrous reign in the house of money

 

in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,

our great country of money, we (forgive us)

 

lived happily during the war.

the point of the needle by Dana Levin

  

The Point of the Needle

• 
• 
• 
• 

Dana Levin

Since you got to behead
each
              hollyhock crown

              with your round
              guillotine

              of a mouth―

I hope you get to spin inside your
               paper house.

              Emerge Noctuidae,
              owlet moth, 

              laying your eggs in leaves at night.
    
That you might finish your stitch―

Replicate yourself in time so you are
              always present―

              each egg a deposit―

              an echo-pearl of “you” along time’s string―

That my soul might be allowed
              to flourish―

Make a success
              of threading flesh, to participate 

              again in time, on 

              long arcs between sets of plunge, even though
                            it hurt―

                            to be born and die―

                            it loved to ride
                                          the point

                                          of the needle―