|
Poetry
The Gate
By Tony Buczko
This love
Lights up the World
Like a massive Sun
In orbit around a huge
Bronze bell
A sound that some see
And start the walking
To
Asia
Then Past
The Monk dwelling in
Kindness of original nature
Sober clarity beyond
Intoxication
Little mind dissolves
Into big Mind
Slowly like a warm
Breeze
The sound of
The road
The path
The trail
To the gate
When the trees
Sway beyond
The wrong place
And time
The Behemoth spoke
Shall you sink
Through the Gate?
He asked
With a roar!
What roads? What Gates?
The Ocean of Mind Overflows
To take words literally is to be
Lost
Words and Silence Thrown Out
The patient is already Dead
Said the Doctor
The Long March is at an
End
Empty
He knew
To beat
The drum
While dying
The Great
Death
Passing
Through
The Gate
And so
What do you know
Of the Gateless Gate
The Behemoth asked
No thing I answered
Then enter in
With
Joyful Heart
And
Limping
Towards
Oblivions
Gate
This World
Beyond the Gate
Is like a silent
Egg and then
Through this trackless
Waste
The sound of the owl
Gives weightless
Salutations.
In
this Age We Live
By TR Stone
building our relation ships
and formalities more open
in admitting Our Lighted Lives
As Love breathing also out As
none-other than this We Art and
are re-cognizing Our Self to ever
Be, have been and ever Will Be
The
Labours of Hercules
By Andrew Nellist
Cancer
Having hunted for the Keryneian doe
Through deceiving gleams of moonlight
And through the dazzling glare of sun,
I bore it to the sacred temple of Mykenae
To be freed and sought again by all.
Let St Peter unlock the ancient gate
Into death, that we may scuttle like scarabs
Across burning sand, or fly
Like a swallow over a rippling lake.
Sailing oceans and ages of experience,
The Pole star pulls us
Through the gate, opening and closing
Many times upon the change of light.
Always God breathes through the changing form,
Life inhaled by the living clay.
Thoughtless rutting amidst crying stone,
Fluster and fear by flickering firelight,
Dearest friends betrayed, enemies used,
Treaties detailed and ignored, torn:
Hearing voices, unable to speak;
Amazed, in awe, obedient; how
Many scenes of intercession, who
Are the unknown observers, where
Are the witnesses, and why?
When the breath is lived within the heart of heaven
The jostling crowd settles in quiet observance.
O we who cannot die because we were not born,
Assemble at the feet of Christ’s Transfiguration.
A new day, I search the track for a sign,
Cicadas discourse in the glades of cypress,
And there in the shimmering haze of heat
The doe turns, quickened, beckoning on.
Leo
This cup of bitter wine we drink
Bears witness to the lying vine
Which trails along the muddied bank
Meandering, serpentine.
Sinuous and curved the Hydra
Coils her wiles around the murky sky,
Reflecting mankind’s errant ways,
Mirroring waywardness, leading astray.
Its thrice six coils entwine the will
With bubbles of illusion, deluding dregs;
Befuddling thought, drowning sense,
Distilling the vices of experience,
This cracked grail echoing to
The coarse, cracked caw of the crow.
Still the dove descends through lightening air
As light through cloud after bruising storm,
When the hero traps in its haunted lair
The lion of his own lure and living.
Let the lion of Judah lie down,
Quiescent on the fertile plain,
Let gambolling lambs leap unafraid.
Enter the dark cave, Hercules,
And bring the beast out into the open,
Dragged under the sun for all to see,
Delivered from the threat of its tawny skin.
Throw the hide upon your shoulder
To show that you have overcome,
Not with vengeance, wrath or weapon,
But brave hand, a selfless heart,
Seeking to save all who tremble in fear,
And with a wise and sober head.
Virgo
Follow the path through the fields of wheat,
Tresses of the earth mother, pray to her,
Agelong attentive to our errant steps.
She has nurtured, gravid under heaven,
Born and covered us, ashen, grave.
In her cycling aeons our story is told;
Tree rings, sedimentary layers,
Ice cores, mud, radioactive decay.
Caesarian scars, bruises, creases,
Love bites of little emperors, marks
Of matricide, poison, insult, rape,
Waste lands of desolation: these are
Her professions of love, the Pieta
Of lifelost limbs across her lap, enfolded
In love; what greater love than in her heart?
The tender hands of mothers through history
Have soothed the brows of infant and hero,
Wise words have comforted in the night,
Thoughts sustained through dark adventure.
By waters of the Nile and in soil of Eleusis
Her toes have pressed unspoken syllables
Of rite and prayer into the tablet of our clay.
It is in her annunciation and her assumption
That we shine as atoms in a greater light,
Where all is light in the ascended son.
A deer leaps over the bowing grain
In full September, trees thick and green
With deep shade. Remember your mother,
Who are spirit like a fleeting swallow,
Kneel in her warm earth, feel the wind
Move over the land like the breath of God.
* * *
|
