seas

 

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I learned the why of misfortune
In the school of water. 

The sea is a wounded planet
And the breaking is its greatness:
This star fell into our hands
From the tower of salt
Scatters its heritage

Of living shadow and furious light. 

It has not married the earth.

We still do not understand it.


—Pablo Neruda
William O’Daly version

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note to self

 

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Mountains are made by the currents of rivers.

Mountains are destroyed by the currents of rivers.

—Leonardo da Vinci

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stream(water

 

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I drink streamwater and the air

and everything I do becomes clearer.

I become a waterwheel,

turning and tasting you, as long

as water moves.

—Rumi

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speech but now words

 

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Being tired of people who come with words, but no speech,

I made my way to the snow-covered island.

The wild does not have words.

The pages free of handwriting stretched out on all sides!

I came upon the tracks of reindeer in the snow.

 Speech but no words.

—Tomas Gösta Tranströmer

Robert Bly version

from The Half-Finished Heaven

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in time and with water, everything changes

 

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Water is sometimes sharp and sometimes strong, 
sometimes acid and sometimes bitter, 
sometimes sweet and sometimes thick or thin, 
sometimes it is seen bringing hurt or pestilence, 
sometime health-giving, sometimes poisonous. 

It suffers change into as many natures as 
are the different places through which it passes. 

And as the mirror changes with the colour of its subject, 
so it alters with the nature of the place, 
becoming noisome, laxative, astringent, sulfurous, salty, 
incarnadined, mournful, raging, angry, red, yellow, 
green, black, blue, greasy, fat or slim. 
 

Sometimes it starts a conflagration, 
sometimes it extinguishes one; 
is warm and is cold, carries away or sets down, 
hollows out or builds up, tears or establishes, 
fills or empties, raises itself or burrows down, 
speeds or is still; 
 

is the cause at times of life or death, or increase or privation, 
nourishes at times and at others does the contrary; 
at times has a tang, at times is without savor, 
sometimes submerging the valleys with great floods. 

In time and with water, everything changes.


—Leonardo da Vinci

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questions

  

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I have been thinking of the difference between water 

and the waves on it. 

Rising, 

water's still water, falling back,

it is water, will you give me a hint 

how to tell them apart? 

Because someone has made up the word 

"wave," do I have to distinguish it from water? 

There is a Secret One inside us; 

the planets in all the galaxies 

pass through his hands like beads.

That is a string of beads one should look at 

with luminous eyes. 

—Kabir 

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the whole moisty night

  

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The Viking ship sails into the full harbor.

The body meets its wife far out at sea.

Its lamp remains lit the whole moisty night.

Water pours down, faint flute notes in 

the sound of the water.

—Robert Bly

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