Anagrammer

ANAGRAMMER

by Peter Pereira from What's Written on the Body (Copper Canyon Press)

 

If you believe in the magic of language,

then Elvis really Lives

and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.

 

If you believe the letters themselves

contain a power within them,

then you understand

what makes outside tedious,

how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

 

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,

and treason to become atoners.

 

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,

and an admirer is also married.

 

That if you could just rearrange things the right way

you’d find your true life,

the right path, the answer to your questions:

you’d understand how the Titanic

turns into that ice tin,

and debit card becomes bad credit.

 

How listen is the same as silent,

and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

 

    I do believe in the magic of words, especially when those words are strung together to create a poem or woven together to tell a story.  If I didn't believe in this magic, I wouldn't be sitting at my computer early on a Saturday morning typing this . . . I'd still be in bed, or drinking a cup of coffee listening to the birds sing, or getting dressed to head to the farmer's market. 

 

    You'd think believing the power of words would cause me to choose my words carefully.  And while sometimes I do, more often I do not.  I too often speak without thinking, spit out the first words that fall onto my tongue rather than swallowing them to remain silent or holding onto them until they melt into softer utterances.  Maybe the problem is I don't believe strongly enough in the magic of ordinary words spoken in the course of my daily life. 

 

    Again, I am reminded of the words of John of the Cross as translated by Daniel Ladinsky, "They can be like a sun, words.  They can do for the heart what light can for a field."

 

    Today I will look for ways my words can be light.  I invite you to do the same.

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

Ode

ODE

by Arthur O'Shaughnessy from Music and Moonlight 

 [Video:  Music Makers by Edgar Elgar, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir]

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;—
World-losers and world-forsakers, 
  On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,    
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure  
  Can trample a kingdom down.
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;    
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
A breath of our inspiration    
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming—
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,    
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.
They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing    
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.    
And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,  
  Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.
But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!    
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,  
  A little apart from ye.
For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry—    
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
Great hail! we cry to the comers  
  From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:    
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.

For those who have watched "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" as many times as I have (is at least once a year for the past 20 plus years too often?  I think not . . . ), you'll probably recognize the first two lines of today's poem.  The rest of the text is just as lyrical, although not as whimsical, as the familar opening words; thus, I offer it as today's poem, along with a version of the text set to music by English composer Edward Elgar. 

There is so much I could write about this poem . . . why I've come to love all its lines, not just the first two,  and why I chose it for today (Good Friday on the western church calendar and, after sun down, the beginning of Passover). 

But I won't. 

I think it's a day to let the words of O'Shaughnessy and the music of Elgar speak to you, in the way that many participating in the rituals of their respective traditions this day will let the poetry and music speak to them-- without interpretation. 

But if you'd care to share your interpretation or experiences, I'd love to read them . . .

Bees

BEES

by Jane Hirshfield from The Lives of the Heart (Harper Perennial)

In every instant, two gates.
One opens to fragrant paradise, one to hell.
Mostly we go through neither.

Mostly we nod to our neighbor,
lean down to pick up the paper,
go back into the house.

But the faint cries—ecstasy? horror?
Or did you think it the sound
of distant bees,
making only the thick honey of this good life?

I'm not quite sure why I picked this poem for today, other than today seems to be a day where I am thinking about the next few days (Good Friday and Easter in particular) and how I feel called to mark those days in a way that feels meaningful and authentic to my experience while at the same time remembering and respecting the tradition in which I was raised. 

Maybe it's because Good Friday and Easter have come to symbolize horror and ecstasy, hell and paradise, death and life, that I turned to this poem today.  And maybe it's because I don't feel like going through either gate this year.  I just want to be open to the holy moment that comes from hearing the bees and tasting the thick honey of this good life.

What are the faint cries you're hearing and where are they leading you?

David Whyte Wednesday - Everything is Waiting for You

EVERYTHING IS WAITING FOR YOU
by David Whyte from Everything is Waiting for You (Many Rivers Press)

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.


"Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity."  I love that line.  The invitation to pay attention to the ordinary things of our lives, and see in them invitation, wisdom, joy, the extraordinary. . . all those things that exist in each of us as well.

How will you ease into the conversation today?  Be alert to the familiar?

A Prayer in My Boot

A PRAYER IN MY BOOT
by Naomi Shihab Nye from 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (Harper Collins)

For the wind no one expected

For the boy who does not know the answer

For the graceful handle I found in a field
attached to nothing
pray it is universally applicable

For our tracks which disappear
the moment we leave them

For the face peering through the cafe window
as we sip our soup

For cheerful American classrooms sparkling
with crisp colored alphabets
happy cat posters
the cage of the guinea pig
the dog with division flying out of his tail
and the classrooms of our cousins
on the other side of the earth
how solemn they are
how gray or green or plain
how there is nothing dangling
nothing striped or polka-dotted or cheery
no self-portraits or visions of cupids
and in these rooms the students raise their hands
and learn the stories of the world

For library books in alphabetical order
and family businesses that failed
and the house with the boarded windows
and the gap in the middle of a sentence
and the envelope we keep mailing ourselves

For every hopeful morning given and given
and every future rough edge
and every afternoon
turning over in its sleep


Yesterday I confessed to not being able to live in the moment lately.  Naomi Shihab Nye offers a good remedy for that.  By carrying a prayer in my boot (or, ballet flat as is more often the case), ordinary encounters become opportunities to pause for a moment of mindfulness, gratitude, grace . . .

For what are you carrying a prayer in your boot today?

Mary Oliver Monday - Morning Poem

MORNING POEM
by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One  (Beacon Press)

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


I'm usually one of those people who, as Mary Oliver describes in this poem, happily swims through the day.  Lately, however, I feel like I've been trudging, stumbling, lumbering along the path.  My imagination isn't flitting around from idea to idea like a sprightly sparrow or curious magpie; it's either pulling apart the past or looming over the future like a bird of prey. 

I try to remind myself to listen for what the beast inside me is shouting it wants and needs, to look for the prayers heard and answered.  The world isn't just created every morning, it's created every minute. 


How are you daring to be happy?  Daring to pray? 

Billy Collins Sunday - This Little Piggy Went to Market

THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MARKET      
by Billy Collins from Ballistics (Random House)

is the usual thing to say when you begin
pulling on the toes of a small child,
and I have never had a problem with that.
I could easily picture the piggy with his basket
and his trotters kicking up the dust on an imaginary road.

What always stopped me in my tracks was
the middle toe -- this little piggy ate roast beef.
I mean I enjoy a roast beef sandwich
with lettuce and tomato and a dollop of horseradish,
but I cannot see a pig ordering that in a delicatessen.

I am probably being too literal-minded here --
I am even wondering why it's called "horseradish."
I should just go along with the beautiful nonsense
of the nursery, float downstream on its waters.
After all, Little Jack Horner speaks to me deeply.

I don't want to be the one to ruin the children's party
by asking unnecessary questions about Puss in Boots
or, again, the implications of a pig eating beef.
By the way, I am completely down with going
"Wee wee wee" all the way home,
having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels.

When I woke up this morning and realized that April Fool's Day coincided with Billy Collins Sunday, I decided it was the perfect day for  a poem that contains the phrase "beautiful nonsense."
Although some nursery rhymes are thinly veiled political jibes or lessons in history, This Little Piggy is purely a nonsense rhyme written to delight children. 

Allowing ourselves to be delighted, to revel in beauty and nonsense, to put aside our critical thinking caps that  make us wonder why a pig would eat roast beef (and the one who didn't have any?  was it by choice?  was she a vegetarian sow?,  to be in the moment so we can be present and grateful for the things that make us go, "wee!"-- good aspirations for this April Fool's Sunday.