the child is father to the man

by Gerard Manley Hopkins

'The child is father to the man.'

How can he be? The words are wild.

Suck any sense from that who can:

'The child is father to the man.'

No; what the poet did write ran,

'The man is father to the child.'

'The child is father to the man!'

How can he be? The words are wild.

Moving Forward

by Rainer Maria Rilke



The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
That I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can't reach.
With my senses, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
in the ponds broken off from the sky
my falling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

Evening by Rainier Marie Rilke

Slowly the evening changes into the clothes
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you look: and two worlds grow separate from you,
one ascending to heaven, another, that falls;

and leave you, belonging not wholly to either one,
not quite as dark as the house that remains silent,
not quite as certainly sworn to eternity
as that which becomes star each night and rises—

and leave you (unsayably to disentangle) your life
with all its immensity and fear and great ripening,
so that, all but bounded, all but understood,
it is by turns stone in you and star.

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends

winter and Robert Frost

"Mum, I want the sun to shine tomorrow."

So this is it. The cold, fatigue, bouts of depression. I have never taken people's gripes about winter all too seriously. Not until today. Lakay always feels tired. I can't get anything I read into my head. Even my little one is not smiling at the snow anymore.

At times like these, you need...poetry! So take it away Robert Frost:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

My papa shared this poem to me when I was in high school, his ever gentle way of encouraging me to keep dreaming, and to keep holding on to my dreams. The poem did a good job on me.

And in the midst of this seemingly unending cold, it still does.

Autumn

by Rainier Marie Rilke

The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.

We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It's in them all.

And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

weekend poem

This poem was shared by a couple at the marriage retreat that lakay and I attended this weekend. It's supposed to remind us that there is poetry in every aspect of our lives. Some are written, but most are (gladly) left unwritten. Here's an invitation to all of us to see and appreciate the sacred poem that is in each person we come to encounter.

How To Be a Poet

(to remind myself)

by Wendell Barry


i.

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill--more of each
than you have--inspiration.
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.



I am not a poet, and I won't pretend that I understand poems expertly. But what I like about poems is how they teach you to read slowly. That's why I like the movie of Cameron Diaz, In her Shoes. Her character is that of a beautiful woman who has also grown up into a slow learner, an illustration of the dumb blonde stereotype. There is a part in that movie when she is asked by a blind old man to read him a poem. After a lot of hesitation, she reads, as slowly and awkwardly like that of a 5-year old still learning how to read. Silly as she may have sounded, I understood the poem because of the way she delivered it. Slowness, is therefore, a virtue.


Some of the lines I like best about the poem above:


"patience joins time to eternity"


Any reader who likes your poems doubts his judgment.


"There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places."