The Winds of Fate

Pablo Picasso

Child With a Dove

The Winds of Fate

One ship drives East, and another drives West,
With the self-same winds that blow;
Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales,
Which tells us the way to go.

Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate,
As we voyage along through life;
Tis the set of the soul that decides its goal,
And not the calm or the strife.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox ~

Alone Looking at the Mountain, Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

Salvador Dali

Solitude

Alone Looking at the Mountain

All the birds have flown up and gone;

A lonely cloud floats leisurely by.

We never tire of looking at each other -

Only the mountain and I.

~ Li Po ~

Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

Until only the mountain remains.

~ Li Po ~

Yesterday is History

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

Inverted Reflection in Water

Yesterday is History

Yesterday is History,

‘Tis so far away

Yesterday is Poetry

‘Tis Philosophy

Yesterday is mystery

Where it is Today

While we shrewdly speculate

Flutter both away

~Emily Dickinson ~

Alone

Pablo Picasso

Blue Nude

Alone

Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone

I came up with one thing

And I don't believe I'm wrong

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can't use

Their wives run round like banshees

Their children sing the blues

They've got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone.

But nobody

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I'll tell you what I know

Storm clouds are gathering

The wind is gonna blow

The race of man is suffering

And I can hear the moan,

'Cause nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

~ Maya Angelou ~

The World's Need

Vincent Van Gogh

Flower Beds in Holland

The World's Need

So many gods, so many creeds,

So many paths that wind and wind,

While just the art of being kind,

Is all the sad world needs.

~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox ~

The Road Not Taken

Caspar David Friedrich

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost ~

If

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

~ Rudyard Kipling ~

Expect Nothing

Edward Hopper

Stairway

Expect Nothing

Expect nothing. Live frugally

On surprise.

Become a stranger

To need of pity

Or, if compassion be freely

Given out

Take only enough

Stop short of urge to plead

Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger

Than your own small heart

Or greater than a star;

Tame wild disappointment

With caress unmoved and cold

Make of it a parka

For your soul.

Discover the reason why

So tiny a human midget

Exists at all

So scared unwise

But expect nothing. Live frugally

On surprise.

~ Alice Walker ~

Happiness

Norman Rockwell

Freedom From Want

Happiness

I asked the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.

And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river

And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

~ Carl Sandburg ~

No Man is an Island

Juaquin Sorolla y Bastida

Otra Margarita

No Man is an Island

No man is an island, entire of itself
every man is a piece of the continent,

a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends
or of thine own were;
any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.

~ John Donne ~

MEDITATION XVII

Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions

The Dream

Pierre Bonnard

The Open Window

The Dream

He dreamed of

an open window.

"A vagina," said

his psychiatrist.

"Your divorce," said

his mistress.

"Suicide," said

an ominous voice within him.

"It means you should close the window

or you'll catch cold,"

said his mother.

His wife said nothing.

He dared not tell her

such a dangerous dream.

~ Felix Pollak ~

Dover Beach

Marc Chagall

Evening at the Window

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;

Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!

Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand,

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow

Of human misery; we

Find also in the sound a thought,

Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.

But now I only hear

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear

And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

~ Matthew Arnold ~

The Dover Bitch

Henri Alesandre Georges Regnault

Salome

The Dover Bitch

So there stood Matthew Arnold and this girl
With the cliffs of England crumbling away behind them,
And he said to her, 'Try to be true to me,
And I'll do the same for you, for things are bad
All over, etc., etc.'
Well now, I knew this girl. It's true she had read
Sophocles in a fairly good translation
And caught that bitter allusion to the sea,
But all the time he was talking she had in mind
The notion of what his whiskers would feel like
On the back of her neck. She told me later on
That after a while she got to looking out
At the lights across the channel, and really felt sad,
Thinking of all the wine and enormous beds
And blandishments in French and the perfumes.
And then she got really angry. To have been brought
All the way down from London, and then be addressed
As a sort of mournful cosmic last resort
Is really tough on a girl, and she was pretty.
Anyway, she watched him pace the room
And finger his watch-chain and seem to sweat a bit,
And then she said one or two unprintable things.
But you mustn't judge her by that. What I mean to say is,
She's really all right. I still see her once in a while
And she always treats me right. We have a drink
And I give her a good time, and perhaps it's a year
Before I see her again, but there she is,
Running to fat, but dependable as they come.
And sometimes I bring her a bottle of Nuit d' Amour.

~ Anthony Hecht ~

We’ll Go No More A-roving

Toulouse Lautrec

In the Salon of the Rue-des-moulins

We’ll Go No More A-roving

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

~ Lord Byron ~

(No More) Luxuries

Gustav Klimt

Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer

(No More) Luxuries

Your uncle's scandals shook the house of lords

Your daddy's squeezed out as Chairman of the Board

No more doctors write you no more 'scripts

No more intercontinental trips

No more luxuries

No more luxuries

No more crystal pistols up your nose

The dry cleaner wants money on the clothes

The Rolls Royce, my dear . . . need it be said?

If I were you I would think "Mo-Ped"

No more luxury . . .

No more luxuries

And all you are left with is me

Left with me

Left with me

No more luxuries

You gotta do it in a whole new way

But I'm gonna make a vow to stay

We gotta eat it off the floor a while

You don't even have a phone to dial

Do it in a whole new way,

Honey, that's the price we pay

Your necklaces have turned to centipedes

They slowly crawled away . . .

And the bar is empty and there ain't no waiter

The ice all melts in the refrigerator

The dead meat drips

On the asparagus tips

There's no more luxuries

You're left with me

No more, no more

There's no more luxuries

That article on you in Interview

It was dropped for a feature on Monaco's Zoo

Calvin called, he wants his hand-made vest

And it's snip snip to your American Express

No more luxuries

No more luxuries

And all you are left with is me

Just me, mon cheri

No more lunching out at "21"

What you get now comes inside a bun

"C'est la vie," the color TV

That's gone too, but I'll stay with you

~ Jim Carroll Band ~

I Taught Myself To Live Simply

Lucian Freud

Girl With a Kitten

I Taught Myself To Live Simply

I taught myself to live simply and wisely,

to look at the sky and pray to God,

and to wander long before evening

to tire my superfluous worries.

When the burdocks rustle in the ravine

and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops

I compose happy verses

about life's decay, decay and beauty.

I come back. The fluffy cat

licks my palm, purrs so sweetly

and the fire flares bright

on the saw-mill turret by the lake.

Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof

occasionally breaks the silence.

If you knock on my door

I may not even hear.

~ Anna Akhmatova ~

What Would You Fight For?

René Magritte

The Menaced Assassin

What Would You Fight For?

I am not sure I would always fight for my life.

Life might not be worth fighting for.

I am not sure I would always fight for my wife.

A wife isn't always worth fighting for.

Nor my children, nor my country, nor my fellow-men.

It all deprnds whether I found them worth fighting for.

The only thing men invariably fight for

Is their money. But I doubt if I'd fight for mine, anyhow

not to shed a lot of blood over it.

Yet one thing I do fight for, tooth and nail, all the time.

And that is my bit of inward peace, where I am at one

with myself.

And I must say, I am often worsted.

~ D. H. Lawrence ~

Light Shining out of Darkness

Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Lemminkainen’s Mother

Light Shining out of Darkness

God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never-failing skill,

He treasures up his bright designs,

And works his sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust him for his grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,

And scan his work in vain;

God is his own interpreter,

And he will make it plain.

~ William Cowper ~

The Unknown Citizen

Quentin Massys

Portrait of a Notary

The Unknown Citizen

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for he time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

~ W. H. Auden ~

The Summer Day

Claude Monet

femme assise dans le jardin

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver ~