A precept-breaking monk for eighty years --
still, I'm ashamed of Zen that ignores cause and effect.
Sickness is the result of past karma.
Now how can I honor my endless connections?
Translation by Kazuaki Tanahashi and David Schneider in: Essential Zen. 1994. HarperSanFrancisco. p. 126.
To have known him, to have loved him
After loneness long;
And then to be estranged in life,
And neither in the wrong;
And now for death to set his seal—
Ease me, a little ease, my song!
By wintry hills his hermit-mound
The sheeted snow-drifts drape,
And houseless there the snow-bird flits
Beneath the fir-trees’ crape:
Glazed now with ice the cloistral vine
That hid the shyest grape.
Moving through the Great Spontaneous,
Blender blades barely missing --
In fact, sometimes nicking.
The accumulation of those nicks
Is aging.
It takes an ever-defter dance to keep
The damage buildup to a constant pace --
Not letting it blitz one,
Or pull one into the turbine:
Like a goose through
The turbofans of a 787.
A goose may kill a plane,
But becomes dust in the process.
When one surrenders to the choppers
One will not have the satisfaction
Of killing the vehicle,
Of bringing it all down.
The Universe will go on,
And one's molecules will become
Something new.
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
dying by the second
from a starving brain;
each new panicked moment
narrows down the frame.
now, my world is dwindling,
shrinking to a dot:
like TV's used to do
when you shut them off.
Now, this poem is done.
there's nothing past one pel --
except for oblivion:
no sight, no sound, no smell.
I gasp in my last minute living loud, I'd dreamt of being carried on a cloud. But, My body 's too heavy, my mind too light, and nothing remains once I'm failed by sight. Just a pile of death stacked before the door, as carrion feeders squawk out for more. In eternal darkness, that endless void, I was once created, & now once destroyed.
And when the darkness looms
we wander on our way
deep into the forest
and from the path we stray.
A lonely way to go?
I’m not sure I agree.
No lonelier than a bed
far from the nearest tree.
Not blocked from the agents
of Death or of Decay —
perhaps, we feel the Web
more than the fear of prey
as we stagger that last mile.
scorpion corpse
sitting atop a wall
why die there?
vultures circle
i give them wide berth
they’ve yet to choose
ant-swarmed mantis
i thought you a leaf
do the ants know?
fresh flowers
mossy flush-set headstone
unseen, not lost
the potter’s field
out near the back fence
closer to the world
5.) In Flanders Fields by John McCrae
excerpt [2nd stanza]:
We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
4.) Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
excerpt [1st stanza]:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
3.) Because I could not stop for Death (479) by Emily Dickinson
excerpt [1st stanza]:
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
2.) To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick
excerpt [2nd stanza]:
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
The nearer he’s to setting.
1.) Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep by Mary Elizabeth Frye [authorship disputed]
excerpt [opening lines]:
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow…
Tiger Riding for Beginners 