Categories
Art Beauty Musings Reading

Wendell Berry – Like The Water

Autumn doesn’t officially start until Saturday, but we’ve been having a preview here in Charlottesville for the past week or so. Crisp mornings, cool evenings, leaves beginning to change. It’s raining today; everything is green-come-colorful outside, and there are drops on the windows. It’s a wonderful sound in the background as I work the day away.

It’s a Wendell Berry morning, for sure.

Like The Water

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,
and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy.

Categories
Art Life Reading

Georg Trakl – Music in the Mirabell

Picked up a beautiful book of poems by Georg Trakl today. Highly recommended.

Music in the Mirabell

A fountain sings. Clouds, white and tender,
Are set in the clear blueness
Engrossed, silent people walk
At evening through the ancient garden.

Ancestral marble has grown grey.
A flight of birds seeks far horizons.
A faun with lifeless pupils peers
At shadows gliding into darkness.

The leaves fall red from the old tree
And circle in through open windows.
A fiery gleam ignites indoors
And conjures up wan ghosts of fear.

A white stranger steps into the house.
A dog runs wild through ruined passages.
The maid extinguishes a lamp,
At night are heard sonata sounds.

– Georg Trakl

Categories
Culture Life Musings Reading

Words to Live By: Wendell Berry

Some wise words on how to live life, by Wendell Berry:

Breathe with unconditioned breath the unconditioned air.  Shun electric wire.  Communicate slowly.   Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens.

This, certainly, is not my life.

But I’d like it to be.

The first steps are the hardest.

Categories
Art Reading

The Grain of Sound

Here’s a poem I read yesterday that reminded me of Ron Block, the banjo player for Alison Krauss and Union Station and a frequent poster / commentator over at The Rabbit Room. Thought I’d share:

The Grain of Sound

A banjo maker in the mountains,
when looking out for wood to carve
an instrument, will walk among
the trees and knock on trunks. He’ll hit
the bark and listen for a note.
A hickory makes the brightest sound;
the poplar has a mellow ease.
But only straightest grain will keep
the purity of tone, the sought-
for depth that makes the licks sparkle.
A banjo has a shining shiver.
Its twangs will glitter like the light
on splashing water, even though
its face is just a drum of hide
of cow, or cat, or even skunk.
The hide will magnify the note,
the sad of honest pain, the chill
blood-song, lament, confession, haunt,
as tree will sing again from root
and vein and sap and twig in wind
and cat will moan as hand plucks nerve,
picks bone and skin and gut and pricks
the heart as blood will answer blood
and love begins to knock along the grain.

Robert Morgan

Categories
Faith Life Reading

Sacred Space.

 

http://sacredspace.ie/