Birds of passage

[MJA]

BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Song of the Universal


I

Come said the muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the universal.

In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its sacred heart,
Nestles the seed of perfection.

By every life a share or more or less,
None born but it is born,
Conceal'd or unconceal'd the seed is waiting.


Walt Whitman
1874

[Graybeard]

here was set before me a mighty hill,
And long days I climbed
Through regions of snow.
When I had before me the summit-view,
It seemed that my labour
Had been to see gardens
Lying at impossible distances.

Stephen Crane (1871 - 1900)

[Meem]

I have tired.
Into the night I go.
To places far off yet so near.
Relieving my ear from here,
where there are too many sounds that grow.

I am weary.
Into the night I go.
Where my eyes are not dazzled by man made illusion.
Here there are no overplayed and underdone solutions,
but only where the light of stars shine true and show.

It is, into ...
into the night I go.

Where voyagers dare and brave.
Many before have set sail on this cosmic wave,
Yet I, am no pilot, captain, with no crewman singing yo ho-ho.

It is, into ...
into the night I go.

I drop the sail and lead the charge,
but the course before me is still at large
So whether by faith or chance I set my course as the wind doth blow ...

It is, into ...
into the night I go.

[MJA]

THESE CAROLS

These carols sung to cheer my passage through the world I see,
For completion I dedicate to the Invisible World.

Walt Whitman
1875

[austintorn@aol.com]

Re-Attached

Like two golden birds
Perched in the self-same tree,
“Lo,” one said to his siamese twin,
“I am thee and you are me,
Forever joined in harmony.”

The Ego and The True Self
Are such intimate friends
As to be inseparable
By any operation,
And so each may ever
Have joy unto the other.

The former partakes of
The bitter and the sweet fruits,
These experiences bursting
Alive against the palate,

A grand taste
Of the The Tree of Life,
While the latter looks on in
Glorious attachment and witness
Of life’s wondrous experience.

[MJA]

POETS TO COME

Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.

I myself write but One or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.

I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping,
turns a casual look apon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.


Walt Whitman
1860

[austintorn@aol.com]

Soaring like a bird…

The brain fabricates reality,
When flying a hang-glider,
Out from one's arms
Unto the ends of the wings,
Making the wings seem
As an extension
Of the nervous system.

[leskey]

Soaring like a bird…

The brain fabricates reality,
When flying a hang-glider,
Out from one's arms
Unto the ends of the wings,
Making the wings seem
As an extension
Of the nervous system.

ENJOYING HAWAII, AUSTIN?

Round,
Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain
Or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning
Running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it’s face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Like a tunnel that you follow
To a tunnel of it’s own
Down a hollow to a cavern
Where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving
In a half-forgotten dream
Like the ripples from a pebble
Someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping
Past the minutes on it’s face
And the world is like an apple
Whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

Keys that jingle in your pocket
Words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly?
Was it something that I said?
Lovers walk along a shore
And leave their footprints in the sand
Was the sound of distant drumming
Just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway
Or the fragment of a song
Half-remembered names and faces
But to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over
Were you suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning
To the colour of her hair?

Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind

[Graybeard]

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

William Butler Yeats

[labelwench]

Taken from Jonathon Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach


It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a
gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water. and the
word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a
thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another
busy day beginning.
But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan
Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered
his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard
twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly
slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until
the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce
concentration, held his breath, forced one... single... more... inch...
of... curve... Then his featliers ruffled, he stalled and fell.
Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air
is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.
But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings
again in that trembling hard curve - slowing, slowing, and stalling once
more - was no ordinary bird.
Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of
flight - how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it
is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not
eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else. Jonathan
Livingston Seagull loved to fly.
This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one's self
popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent
whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.