Zen in European & Middle Eastern Poetry

From A book for the Hours of Prayer

19.
Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
trans. Robert Bly

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Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
Into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
And in the ponds broken off from the sky
My feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

Rainer Maria Rilke
trans. Robert Bly

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Buddha in Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet –
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

Rainer Maria Rilke
trans. Stephen Mitchell

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Why Mira Can't Go Back to Her Old House

The colors of the Dark One have penetrated Mira's body; all the
other colors washed out.
Making love with the Dark One and eating little, those are my pearls
and my carnelians.
Meditation beads and the forehead streak, those are my scarves and
my rings.
That's enough feminine wiles for me. My teacher taught me this.
Approve me or disapprove me; I praise the Mountain Energy night
and day.
I take the path that ecstatic human beings have taken for centuries.
I don't steal money, I don't hit anyone. What will you charge me
with?
I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders; and now you want
me to climb on a jackass? Try to be serious.

Mirabai (1498-1565?)
trans. Robert Bly

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From The Keeper of Sheep

39.
The mystery of things – where is it?
Why doesn't it come out
To show us at least that it's mystery?
What do the river and the tree know about it?
And what do I, who am no more than they, know about it?

Whenever I look at things and think about what people think of them,
I laugh like a brook cleanly splashing against a rock.
For the only hidden meaning of things
Is that they have no hidden meaning.
It's the strangest thing of all,
Stranger than all poets' dreams
And all philosophers' thoughts,
That things are really what they seem to be
And there's nothing to understand.

Yes, this is what my senses learned on their own:
Things have no meaning; they exist.
Things are the only hidden meaning of things.

40.
I see a butterfly go by
And for the first time in the universe I notice
That butterflies do not have scent or color.
Color is what has color in the butterfly's wings,
Movement is what moves in the butterfly's movement,
Scent is what has scent in the flower's scent.
The butterfly is just a butterfly
And the flower just a flower.

Alberto Caeiro (Fernando Pessoa 1888-1935)
trans. Richard Zenith

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The Music Without Strings

Have you heard the music that no fingers enter into?
Far inside the house
entangled music –
What is the sense of leaving your house?

Suppose you scrub your ethical skin until it shines,
but inside there is no music,
then what?

Mohammed's son pores over words, and points out this
and that,
but if his chest is not soaked dark with love,
then what?

The Yogi comes along in his famous orange.
But if inside he is colorless, then what?

Kabir says: Every instant that the sun is risen, if I stand in the temple
or on a balcony, in the hot fields, or in a walled garden, my own
Lord is making love with me.

Kabir
trans. Robert Bly

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Untitled

At last free,
at last I am a woman free!
No more tied to the kitchen,
stained amid the stained pots,
no more bound to the husband
who thought me less
than the shade he wove with his hands.
No more anger, no more hunger,
I sit now in the shade of my own tree.
Meditating thus, I am happy, I am serene.

Sumangalamata (6th century B.C.E)
trans. Jane Hirshfield

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I know the truth

I know the truth – give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look – it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)
trans. Elaine Feinstein

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From Moral Proverbs and Folk Songs

1.
The deepest words
of the wise men teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind
when it blows
or the sound of the water when it is
flowing.

2.
Mankind owns four things
that are no good at sea:
rudder, anchor, oars,
and the fear of going down.

3.
Beyond living and dreaming
there is something more important:
waking up.

4.
Pay attention now:
a heart that's all by itself
is not a heart.

Antonio Machado (1875-1939)
trans. Robert Bly

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Two Untitled Poems

God, whose love and joy
are present everywhere
Can't come and visit you
unless you aren't there

                       . . .  

God is a pure no-thing
concealed in now and here
The less you reach for him,
the more he will appear

Angelus Siliseus (1624-1677)
trans. Stephen Mitchell

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Quatrains by Rumi

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.

                        . . .                  

Someone who goes with half a loaf of bread
to a small place that fits like a nest around him,
someone who wants no more, who's not himself
longed for by anyone else,

He is a letter to everyone. You open it.
It says, Live.

                        . . .

Do not sit long with a sad friend.
When you go to a garden,
do you look at thorns or flowers?
Spend more time with roses and jasmine.

Rumi (1207-1273)
trans. John Moyne and Coleman Barks

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Untitled

One went to the door of the Beloved and knocked.
A voice answered, “Who is there?”
He answered, “It is I.”
The voice said, “There is no room for Me and Thee.”
The door was shut.
After a year of solitude and deprivation he returned and knocked.
A voice from within asked, “Who is there?”
The man said, “It is thee.”
The door was opened for him.

Rumi (1207-1273)
trans. John Moyne and Coleman Barks

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The Desert has many Teachings

In the desert,
Turn toward emptiness,
Fleeing the self.

Stand alone,
Ask no one's help,
And your being will quiet,
Free from the bondage of things.

Those who cling to the world,
Endeavor to free them;
Those who are free, praise.

Care for the sick,
But live alone,
Happy to drink from the waters of sorrow,
To kindle Love's fire
With the twigs of a simple life.

Thus you will live in the desert.

Mechtild of Magdeburg (1207?-1282 or 1297?)
trans. Jane Hirshfield

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Three Poems by Hadewijch of Antwerp II

All things
are too small
to hold me,
I am so vast

In the Infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated

I have
touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide

Everything else
is too narrow

You know this well,
you who are also there

     . . .

You who want
knowledge,
seek the Oneness
within

There you
will find
the clear mirror
already waiting

Hadewijch of Antwerp II (13th cen.)
trans. Jane Hirshfield