Eagle poem, by Joy Harjo

 Ludwig van Beethoven - Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92

with Leonard Bernstein  

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren't always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River.  Circles in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

 

 

 

from How We Become Human: New and Selected Poems 1975-2001

Say Yes Quickly, by Rumi

Ludwig Van Beethoven - Fifth Symphony, I - Allegro con brio

Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray.
You’ve carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hands out to another door, beyond where
you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, “How are you?”
and no one says How aren’t you?

Tomorrow you’ll see what you’ve broken and torn tonight,
thrashing in the dark. Inside you
there’s an artist you don’t know about.
He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love,
you’re helping people you don’t know
and have never seen.

Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, if you’ve known it
from before the beginning of the universe.



poem from The Threshold Society website
translated by Coleman Barks

remote

Ludwig van Beethoven - Sonata in E major Op. 109, III with Lívia Rév


if it wasn't for               your              fin - gers

whis - per - ing              the lost voice

i               wouldn't know              i               am trapped


between a me              i               forgot


and               one               living in the world

              without                             voice

Longing, by Sue Sinclair

Ludwig van Beethoven - Cello Sonata No.3 in A major, Op.69 - III
with Pablo Casals, cello and Mieczyslaw Horszowski, piano

Tired of being alone, especially at night.
The stars broken down in the sky, engines stalled,
shining, waiting for rescue.
The height of things stares down at you.

You settle into the night's own loneliness,
let the universe expand, stretch like a curing hide.
Someday the absence on the other side
will show through, unquantified:
if history is an animal, this is its pain,
an unspoken reproach, the throbbing in the vein
that accompanies the inevitable going forth,
you or someone like you taking the place
of the unborn, feeling their stare.

Is the great beauty of things somehow visible to itself?
If so, is it enough? For how quickly it vanishes,
becomes its own ghost. And then there is you:
you have only the barest idea of what you'll leave behind.
History must feel its failures vividly.
You wonder if it heard the chorus fade away
when you were born, for you grew up
knowing nothing of the echoes that surrounded you,
still less of the voices that will be lost when you leave.


in Breaker, Brick Books, 2008

People at Night, by Denise Levertov

Ludwig van Beethoven - Piano Trio in D major Op. 70 No. 1 (Ghost), I
Melbourne Piano Trio (June 2011 at The Independent, Sydney)
Ji Won Kim, violin 
Chris Howlett, cello 
Hoang Pham, piano

A night that cuts between you and you
and you and you and you
and me : jostles us apart, a man elbowing
through a crowd. .........We won't
..................look for each other, either-
wander off, each alone, not looking
in the slow crowd. Among sideshows
..................under movie signs,
..................pictures made of a million lights,
..................giants that move and again move
..................again, above a cloud of thick smells,
..................franks, roasted nutmeats-

Or going up to some apartment, yours
..................or yours, finding
someone sitting in the dark:
who is it really? So you switch the
light on to see: you know the name but
who is it ?
.........But you won't see.

The fluorescent light flickers sullenly, a
pause. But you command. It grabs
each face and holds it up
by the hair for you, mask after mask.
..................You and you and I repeat
..................gestures that make do when speech
..................has failed .........and talk
..................and talk, laughing, saying
..................'I', and 'I',
meaning 'Anybody'.
...........................No one.


from poemhunter.com

Recovery, by Jan Zwicky

Ludwig van Beethoven - Sonata in E major Op. 109, III 
with Lívia Rév

And when at last grief has dried you out, nearly
weightless, like a little bone, one day,
no reason in particular, the world decides to tug:
twinge under the breastbone, the sudden thought
you might stand up, walk to the door and
keep on going... And in the seconds following,
like the silence following the boom under the river ice, it all
seems possible, the egg-smooth clarity of the new-awakened,
rising, to stand, and walk... But already
at the edges of the crack, sorrow
starts to ooze, the brown stain spreading
and you think: there is no end to it.

But in the breaking, something else is given - not
that glittering jumble, shrieking and churning in the blind
..................................................centre of the afternoon,
but something else - a scent,
like a door flung open, a sudden downpour
through which you can still see the sun, derelict
in the neighbour's field, the wren's bright eye in the thicket.
As though on that day in August, or even July,
when you were first thinking of autumn, you remembered also
the last day of spring, which had passed
without your noticing. Something that easy, let go
without a thought, untroubled by oblivion,
a bird, a smile.


in Songs for Relinquishing the Earth, Brick Books, 1998

the lesson of the moth, by Don Marquis

Ludwig van Beethoven - Ode to Joy, 9th Symphony, with Leonard Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself


from donmarquis.com

Away

Ludwig van Beethoven - Seventh Symphony, II

I want to think that if we were near,
Maybe I’d ask you to hold my hand,
Maybe I’d ask for help to feel my Fear,
Or just a soft touch for my weary head.

But there's no room: shoulder to shoulder,
A mighty congregation is already here -
Anger, Apathy, Dread, Loathing, and,
Always moving away from sight, Tears.