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2016-04-16

"every morning"



"Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.
We cannot avoid
Using power,
Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world,
So let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction,
Love powerfully."

― Martin Buber, Power and Love (1926)

2016-04-12

Stained Glass



"The Thou encounters me by grace — it cannot be found by seeking. 
But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed."

― Martin Buber

2016-04-10

Spring in the city

in-verted
upside-down s/tree/t
an ominous sky gripped
in the barest
arms of a tree

vert-tical cliffs
dust glass steel
three subterranean limbs
webbing in
a piece of heaven?

that, too
is not what it seems
but a palimpsest of spring
in an intro-vert self-
absorbed city

I cross blindfolded





_ _ _

"To speak is to not see. 
So all speech is to some extend blind."

― Jacques Derrida

2016-04-03

The Starry Sky . . . (Lars Gustafsson)

The starred sky, the fixed stare of the galaxies.
The universe stubbornly upholding enormous distances
against our just-as-eager strivings to see the world as small,
possible to survey, trafficable for signals and observations.
Quantum logic in physics and chemistry.
The same thing: matter's obstinate refusal to be 
       anything but probabilities,
shadows that sweep over distant cliffs at sunset,
sudden gusts that run through a single aspen in the grove
   and leave it almost still.
And our stubborn eager battle for a substance,
for particles, individualities, things that refuse to 
        exist in the physical world.
This world of distances and shadows
and random leaps between the spectral lines,
this frighteningly still dance
is what I mean
by the world's stillness before Bach.

― Lars Gustafsson, from The Stillness of the World Before Bach
(1936 - 2016)

_ _ _ 

Sunday sermon

2016-04-02

Bare tree

In the bare limbs of a tree
there is certain irrefutable
[and deceptive] clarity ―
the eye piercing the stark
crisp-clear scenery
supposedly defeating blindness
believing in seizing the s/tree/t view
in its entirety ― free
of the exuberant burst of spring
lush blossoms, birds and bees
the idle chatter of summer leaves
eager butterfly wings
ripeness that swell
bejewelling the branches in gold,
soon to be stripped down
by the first frost, vanish in a blast
of a sudden winter squall, as if
nothing . ever . existed ―
if not for this inseparable
frame-sequence along the blue 
string of seasons ―
[incessant ancient love]
by which we live


upside-down s/tree/t (2)