drawer of water

 

 .

The reflection cast from good friends is needed

until you become, without the aid of any reflector,

a drawer of water from the Sea.

Know that the reflection is at first just imitation,

but when it continues to recur,

it turns into direct realization of truth.

Until it has become direct realization,

don't part from the friends who guide you—

don't break away from the shell

if the raindrop hasn't yet become a pearl.

—Rumi

Mathnawi II: 566-568

Helminski version

.

boiling water

 

.

A serious moment for the water is 

when it boils

And though one usually regards it

merely as a convenience

To have the boiling water

available for bath or table

Occasionally there is someone

around who understands

The importance of this moment

for the water—maybe a saint,

Maybe a poet, maybe a crazy 

man, or just someone

temporarily disturbed

With his mind "floating"in a

sense, away from his deepest

Personal concerns to more

"unreal" things...

A serious moment for the island 
is when its trees
Begin to give it shade, and
another is when the ocean
washes
Big heavy things against its side.


One walks around and looks at
the island
But not really at it, at what is on
it, and one thinks,


It must be serious, even, to be this 
island, at all, here.

Since it is lying here exposed to 
the whole sea. All its


Moments might be serious. It is
serious, in such windy weather,
to be a sail
Or an open window, or a feather
flying in the street...

Seriousness, how often I have
thought of seriousness
And how little I have understood
it, except this: serious is urgent


And it has to do with change. You
say to the water,
It's not necessary to boil now,
and you turn it off. It stops


Fidgeting. And starts to cool. You
put your hand in it
And say, The water isn't serious
any more. It has the potential,


However—that urgency to give
off bubbles, to
Change itself to steam. And the
wind,


When it becomes part of a
hurricane, blowing up the 
beach
And the sand dunes can't keep it 

away.

Fainting is one sign of 
seriousness, crying is another.
Shuddering all over is another
one.

A serious moment for the
telephone is when it rings.
And a person answers, it is
Angelica, or is it you.

A serious moment for the fly is
when its wings
Are moving, and a serious
moment for the duck
Is when it swims, when it first
touches water, then spreads
Its smile upon the water...

A serious moment for the match 
is when it burst into flame... 
Serious for me that I met you, and
serious for you
That you met me, and that we do
not know


If we will ever be close to anyone
again. Serious the recognition
of the probability
That we will, although time
stretches terribly in
between... 

—Kenneth Koch

.

inform)ation

 

.

All fluid activities are in resonance. 

They mutualize and inform each other. 

The fluid inside this biosphere called Earth and the fluids of our bodies are in constant rapport. 

—Emilie Conrad

.

the woman who was water

 

.

The woman who was water
lived on the edges of rooms,
knew when to withdraw.

The woman who was water

came to Brooklyn,

and filled every basement.

The woman who was water

left all her lovers

clean.

The woman who was water

insisted no one understood her,

saw herself gentle as mist,

a rain-pearly morning, a sweet lilac fog. 

So when she battered at shingles, 

gnawed through foundations,

burst out of pipes,

she was offering love.

Why didn't people want it?

The woman who was water

was not analytical.

She knew three things:

They couldn't pass laws against her.

They couldn't declare her harmless.

They couldn't exist without her.

The woman who was water

could power a city,

or drown it.

—Enid Dame

.

phantom

 

.

Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? 
 

Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? 
 

Surely all this is not without meaning. 
 

And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, 
who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. 
 

But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans.
 

It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; 
and this is the key to it all.

—Herman Melville
Moby-Dick, 1851

.

Water has a perfect memory, and is forever trying to get back to where it was. —Toni Morrison

 

.

We are made of contracted water, earth, light and air - not merely prior to the recognition or representation of these, but prior to their being sensed. Every organism, in its receptive and perceptual elements, but also in its viscera, is a sum of contractions, of retentions and expectations. At the level of this primary vital sensibility, the lived present constitutes a past and a future in time.
 

—Gilles Deleuze
Difference and Repetition

.

the root of the wind

 

 

 

.

I think that the Root of the Wind is Water --

It would not sound so deep

Were it a Firmamental Product --

Airs no Oceans keep --


Mediterranean intonations --

To a Current's Ear --

There is a maritime conviction

In the Atmosphere -- 


—Emily Dickinson

.

 

 

i am

 

 .

 

I am dotted silver threads dropped from heaven 
By the gods. Nature then takes me, to adorn 
Her fields and valleys. 

I am beautiful pearls, plucked from the 
Crown of Ishtar by the daughter of Dawn 
To embellish the gardens. 

When I cry the hills laugh; 
When I humble myself the flowers rejoice; 
When I bow, all things are elated. 

The field and the cloud are lovers 
And between them I am a messenger of mercy.  
I quench the thirst of one; 
I cure the ailment of the other. 

The voice of thunder declares my arrival; 
The rainbow announces my departure. 

I am like earthly life, which begins at 
The feet of the mad elements and ends 
Under the upraised wings of death. 

I emerge from the heard of the sea 
Soar with the breeze. When I see a field in 
Need, I descend and embrace the flowers and 
The trees in a million little ways. 

I touch gently at the windows with my 
Soft fingers, and my announcement is a 
Welcome song. All can hear, but only 
The sensitive can understand. 

The heat in the air gives birth to me, 
But in turn I kill it, 
As woman overcomes man with 
The strength she takes from him. 

I am the sigh of the sea; 
The laughter of the field; 
The tears of heaven. 

So with love - 
Sighs from the deep sea of affection; 
Laughter from the colorful field of the spirit; 
Tears from the endless heaven of memories.


—Kahlil Gibran

 

 

. 

 

 

wrinkle of water descending

 

.

Two are together, I tell you,

A slope of a vowel, are a corner;

Grass short as a garden,

Bracken

Uncoiling,

Foxgloves, water

Descending,

Quartz in a stone.

This corner:

Mountain-ash (ferns

Up in air).

Then over an edge

This single

Blue wedge of a mountain;

This comfort, you tell me,

Contentment,

Compassion.

This wild-mint-scented scene

And wild roses

And wrinkle of water descending

Tending to laughter;

Together, then

After.

—Geoffrey Grigson

.

thing of beauty

 

.

Everywhere water is a thing of beauty,
gleaming in the dewdrops;  
singing in the summer rain;  
shining in the ice-gems till the leaves all seem 
to turn to living jewels;  
spreading a golden veil over the setting sun;  
or a white gauze around the midnight moon.
 

—John Ballantine Gough

A Glass of Water

.

blood of the earth

 

 .

  

The seas are the heart's blood of the earth.   
Plucked up and kneaded by the sun and the moon, 
the tides are the systole and diastole of earth's veins.  

The rhythm of waves beats in the sea like a pulse in living flesh. 

It is pure force, forever embodying itself in a succession of watery shapes which vanish in its passing. 

—Henry Beston
The Outermost House

.

water, wind and stone

 

.

The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.
 

The wind sculpted the stone, 
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
 
Stone and wind and water.
The wind sings in its turnings, 
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.
 

One is the other and is neither: 
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind. 
 

—Octavio Paz 
Translated by Mark Strand

.

the law that marries things

 

.

 

1.

The cloud is free only

to go with the wind.

The rain is free

only in falling.

The water is free only

in its gathering together,

in its downward courses,

in its rising into the air.

2.

In law is rest

if you love the law,

if you enter, singing, into it

as water in its descent.

3.

Or song is truest law,

and you must enter singing;

it has no other entrance.

It is the great chorus

of parts. The only outlawry

is in division.

4.

Whatever is singing

is found, awaiting the return

of whatever is lost.

5.

Meet us in the air

over the water,

sing the swallows.

Meet me, meet me,

the redbird sings,

here here here here.

—Wendell Berry

 

 

.

 

 

a fluid situation

.

 

When oxygen and hydrogen find one another,
their joining produces fiery passion.

Out of this fire, water is born.

Quaint Victorian chemistry gives us an image of
one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms in a fixed molecule that bounces around from place to place.

The reality of water is not so orderly.
The hydrogen atoms are not owned by any oxygen atom.

Water is a substance very much in love with itself, and the atoms connect in webs and clusters where oxygen shares around the hydrogen atoms freely,
a fluid situation indeed.


—Ian D. Anderson, Ian Lurking Bear

.

The Immortals (excerpt)

.

The waist is not a rose.
Not a bird. Not feathers.

The waist is the rain, Fragility, a moan
Giving itself to you. Use
your mortal arm to hug
fresh water, a love complaint.
Embrace, embrace it!

The entire rain looks like
a single reed. How it wavers
if there is a wind, if your mortal arm
is there, yes, today, you who love it!


—Vicente Aleixandre
translated from the Spanish by
Willis Barnstone and David Garrison

.

i want

 

.



I want to be like water. 

I want to slip through fingers, 
but hold up a ship.

—Michelle Williams

.

 

water is its own self

  

.

There is no water in oxygen, no water in hydrogen: 
it comes bubbling fresh from the imagination of the living God, 
rushing from under the great white throne of the glacier. 

The very thought of it makes one gasp with an elemental 
joy no metaphysician can analyse. 

The water itself, that dances, and sings, and slakes 
the wonderful thirst--

symbol and picture of that draught for
which the woman of Samaria made her prayer to Jesus--
 

this lovely thing itself, whose very wetness 
is a delight to every inch of the human body in its embrace--  
this live thing which, if I might, I would have running through 
my room, yea, babbling along my table--
 

this water is its own self, its own truth, 
and is therein a truth of God.
 

—George Macdonald (1824-1905)
Unspoken Sermons, Third Series

.

water is another matter

 

.

.

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble

pricked and the green thread

nibbled away, the petal fell, falling

until the only flower was the falling itself.

Water is another matter,

has no direction but its own bright grace,

runs through all imaginable colors,

takes limpid lessons

from stone,

and in those functionings plays out

the unrealized ambitions of the foam. 

 

—Pablo Neruda

. 

  

The Gift of Water

  .

Someone who doesn't know the Tigris River exists
brings the caliph who lives near the river
a jar of fresh water. The caliph accepts, thanks him,
and gives in return a jar filled with gold coins.

"Since this man has come through desert,
he should return by water." Taken out by another door,
the man steps into a waiting boat
and sees the wide freshwater of the Tigris.
He bows his head, "What wonderful kindness
that he took my gift."

Every object and being in the universe is
a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty,
a drop of the Tigris that cannot be contained
by any skin. Every jarful spills and makes the earth
more shining, as though covered in satin.
If the man had seen even a tributary
of the great river, he wouldn't have brought
the innocence of his gift.

Those that stay and live by the Tigris
grow so ecstatic that they throw rocks at jugs,
and the jugs become perfect!

They shatter.
The pieces dance, and water...

Do you see?
Neither jar, nor water, nor stone,
nothing.

You knock at the door of reality,
shake your thought-wings, loosen
your shoulders,
and open.


—Rumi
Mathnavi 1: 2850-70
Version by Coleman Barks

.

finding a teacher

.

In the woods I came on an old friend fishing

and I asked him a question
and he said Wait

fish were rising in the deep stream 
but his line was not stirring 
but I waited 
it was a question about the sun 

about my two eyes 
my ears my mouth 
my heart the earth with its four seasons 
my feet where I was standing 
where I was going 

it slipped through my hands 
as though it were water 
into the river 
it flowed under the trees 
it sank under hulls far away 
and was gone without me 
then where I stood night fell 

I no longer knew what to ask 
I could tell that his line had no hook 
I understood that I was to stay and eat with him 


—W.S. Merwin

.

Linn Park

.

water(falls

   

.

The water which sees the air through broken veins of the high mountain summits is suddenly abandoned by the power which brought it there, and escaping from these forces resumes its natural course in liberty. 

Likewise the water that rises from the low roots of the vine to its lofty head falls through the cut branches upon the roots and mounts anew to the place whence it fell. 

—Leonardo da Vinci

.

carrying water

 

 
.

  

Near Ekuvukeni, 
in Natal, South Africa,
a woman carries water on her head.
After a year of drought,
when one child in three is at risk of death,
she returns from a distant well,
carrying water on her head.

The pumpkins are gone,
the tomatoes withered,
yet the woman carries water on her head.
The cattle kraals are empty,
the goats gaunt-
no milk now for children,
but she is carrying water on her head.
 

The engineers have reversed the river:
those with power can keep their power,
but one woman is carrying water on her head.
In the homelands, where the dusty crowds
watch the empty roads for water trucks,
one woman trusts herself with treasure,
and carries water on her head.
 

The sun does not dissuade her,
not the dried earth that blows against her,
as she carries the water on her head.
In a huge and dirty pail,
with an idle handle,
resting on a narrow can,
this woman is carrying water on her head.
 

This woman, who girds her neck
with safety pins, this one
who carries water on her head,
trusts her own head to bring to her people
what they need now
between life and death:
She is carrying them water on her head. 

—Joan Murray

.