Contemplative Poetry

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Posted by Jeremy Taylor
8/31/2015 7:09 pm 		#1

I thought I would start a thread of spiritual, especially contemplative, poetry. Others should feel free to post their favourite such poems here.

Perhaps inevitably I thin​k the thread must start with a poem from Rumi:

REMEMBERED MUSIC

'Tis said, the pipe and lute that charm our ears
Derive their melody from rolling spheres;
But Faith, o'erpassing speculation's bound,
Can see what sweetens every jangled sound.

We, who are parts of Adam, heard with him
The song of angels and of seraphim.
Our memory, though dull and sad, retains
Some echo still of those unearthly strains.

Oh, music is the meat of all who love,
Music uplifts the soul to realms above.
The ashes glow, the latent fires increase:
We listen and are fed with joy and peace.

 
Posted by DanielCC
9/01/2015 10:01 am 		#2

Divine Contemplation
 
Who in this mortal life would see
The Light that is beyond all light,
Beholds it best by faring forth
Into the darkness of the Night.

—   Angelus Silesius, The Cherubinic Wanderer
 

 
Posted by iwpoe
9/02/2015 3:02 am 		#3

Psalm
BY GEORGE OPPEN

https://youtu.be/gyY7iHwKkLE  
       
Veritas sequitur ...

In the small beauty of the forest
The wild deer bedding down—
That they are there!

                              Their eyes
Effortless, the soft lips
Nuzzle and the alien small teeth
Tear at the grass

                              The roots of it
Dangle from their mouths
Scattering earth in the strange woods.
They who are there.

                              Their paths
Nibbled thru the fields, the leaves that shade them
Hang in the distances
Of sun

                              The small nouns
Crying faith
In this in which the wild deer   
Startle, and stare out.

Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 
Posted by iwpoe
9/03/2015 12:23 am 		#4

(I confess, I like Ezra Pound more than most people.)
Plotinus 
by Ezra Pound

As one that would draw through the node of things,
        Back sweeping to the vortex of the cone,
        Cloistered about with memories, alone
In chaos, while the waiting silence sings:

Obliviate of cycles' wanderings
        I was an atom on creation's throne
        And knew all nothing my unconquered own.
God! Should I be the hand upon the strings?!

But I was lonely as a lonely child.
I cried amid the void and heard no cry,
And then for utter loneliness, made I
New thoughts as crescent images of me.
And with them was my essence reconciled
While fear went forth from mine eternity.

Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 
Posted by Jeremy Taylor
9/07/2015 6:11 pm 		#5

From The Dry Salvages, y T. S. Eliot:

The point of intersection of the timeless
 With time, is an occupation for the saint—
  No occupation either, but something given
 And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
 Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
 For most of us, there is only the unattended
 Moment, the moment in and out of time,
 The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
 The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
 Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
 That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
    While the music lasts.

 


 
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