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The Water Song
Robin Williamson The Incredible String Band

Water water see the water flow
Glancing dancing see the water flow
O wizard of changes water water water
Dark or silvery mother of life
Water water holy mystery heavens daughter

God made a song when the World was new
Water's laughter sings it true
Oh Wizard of changes
Teach me the lesson of flowing

Astarte Syriaca
 

MYSTERY: lo! betwixt the sun and moon
Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen
Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen
Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon
Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune:
And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean
Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean
The pulse of hearts to the spheres' dominant tune.

Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel
All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea
The witnesses of Beauty's face to be:
That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell
Amulet, talisman, and oracle, --
Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.

Moonlight
Paul Verlaine

Your soul's a countryside extraordinary

Where masks and bergamasks enchanting roam,

Playing the lute and dancing, melancholy,

Under wild disguises quite unknown.

 

Although they're singing in a minor key

Of love triumphant and life opportune,

They do not seem to feel felicity

Their song fades in the brightness of the moon,

 

The moonlight calm and sad and beautiful,

Which sets the birds a-dream on branches high;

Tall  fountains sob with passion over-full,

And marble statues see their ecstasy.

 

The Rain Stick
Seamus Heaney

Upend the rain stick and what happens next

Is a music that you never would have known

To listen for. In a cactus stalk

 

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe

Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

 

And diminuendo runs through all it scales

Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes

A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

 

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

Upend the stick again. What happens next

 

Is undiminished for having happened once,

Twice, ten, a thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires

 

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

 

She holds her favourite cowboy close
Paul Zarzyski

 

               Wristwatch strapped over his cuff, a hand 

thick as a tractor manifold

                pivots off his daughter's shoulder, his arm

looped around her with savvy

                he's used to slip bridles

on 45 years of colts - "easy now"

                as not to spook a single curl

tumbling beneath the powder-blue Resistol -

                "easy now" - as not to foul with diesel or grease,

or the smell of hooves he's just shod,

                her cotton boot-length dress, her satin sash

embossed with silver. She's the crowned

                queen and sweetheart of the "Fremont County Fair

& Rodeo." No mimicked cowboy myth

                posed against their yard fence,

the burrowings of bark beetles in slab

                pickets like swivel-cut leather-

against spirited horses grazing

                blurred acres beyond the camera's depth of field.

No fat or phony frills taint this span

                of father-daughter, lean grin and wide smile

matching perfectly the casts

                of their trophy buckles beaming side by side,

and the speckle-faced Aussie cowdog, squatting

                perk-eared and cocked for some action he craves

outside this frame. The West before wire

                still rides the lineage of family ranch

where broncs, pastured for the bridlewise,

                fashions a soft backdrop for lovers

of horses - like father, like daughter -

                blue-ribboned in their Wind River embrace.

 

Excerpt from Rubaiyat
Omar Khayyam, translated by Edgar Fitzgerald

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument

About it and about: but evermore

Came out by the same Door as in I went.

 

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,

And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:

And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd-

"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."

 

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,

Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:

And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,

I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

 

What, without asking, hither hurried whence?

And, without asking, whither hurried hence!

Another and another Cup to drown

The Memory of this Impertinence!

 

 

Entry
Tommy Mew 1967

catching time deep up in a waiting spell,

shucking spinning suns by the hour,

bent on the sweet annihilation of responsibility

 

i, caught up by sunset, suddenly wheeled about

to face the memory of an earlier time

slam full in the summer air

 

your perfume after our lovemaking

this morning lingered on me

until i went all the way back

to the restless spring of another year,

covered by numberless days,

swept by swirling seas,

moonrushed

 

we used to damn near tear each other apart

trying to pull something we both agreed felt like love

from deep in the superb canyons of our squib souls,

threading our eyes with brilliant nuances

of what we meant by spring

,,,,,,

and the scent of wild flowers

lay all about us like acres of longing,

lilting in the spawning sky,

russet,

sweet,

swung up by sensuality,

sex, and the rainbow wind

 

Blackcurrant River
Arthur Rimbaud

Blackcurrant river rolls unknown in strange valleys

The voices of a hundred rooks go with it, the true benevolent voice of angels

With the wide movements of the fir woods when several winds sweep down.

 

Everything flows with the horrible mysteries of ancient landscapes

Of strongholds visited, of large estates, it is along these banks that you can hear

The dead passions of errant knights, but how the wind is wholesome.

 

Let the traveller look through these clearways, he will journey more bravely.

Forest soldiers whom the Lord sends, dear delightful rooks.

Drive away from here the crafty peasant, clinking glasses with his old stump of an arm.

 

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