who knows what is going on

.

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

How many times the sunrise was

there, behind a mountain!

How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off

was already a golden body full of thunder!

This rose was poison.

That sword gave life.

I was thinking of a flowery meadow

at the end of a road,

and found myself in the slough.

I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,

and found myself in the divine.

.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

from The Winged Energy of Delight

translated by Robert Bly

with thanks to  poetry chaikhana

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unpetalled

.

I unpetalled you, like a rose,

to see your soul,

and I didn't see it.

.

But everything around

--horizons of lands and of seas--

everything, out to the infinite,

was filled with a fragrance,

enormous and alive.

.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

translated by Stephen Mitchell

.

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Oceans

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More often than not, we feel so enmeshed in the life we have that the prospect of change appears remote or impossible.  Thus, we continue on the tracks that we have laid down for ourselves,  We are unable to think in new ways and we gradually teach ourselves to forget the other horizons.  We unlearn desire.  Quietly, over time, we succumb to the dependable script of the expected life and become masters of the middle way.  We avoid extremes and after a while we no longer even notice the pathways off to the side and no longer sense the danger and disturbance that could be experienced "out there."  We learn to fit our chosen world with alarming precision and regularity.  Often it takes a huge crisis or trauma to crack the dead shell that has grown ever more solid around us.  Painful as that can be, it does resurrect the longing of the neglected soul.  It makes a clearance.  Again we can see the horizons and feel their attraction.  Though we may wince with vulnerability as we taste the exhilaration of freedom, we feel alive!

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John O'Donohue

from The Invisible Embrace: Beauty

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I have a feeling that my boat

has struck, down there in the depths,

against a great thing.

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And nothing

happens! Nothing... Silence... Waves...

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-Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,

and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

translated by Robert Bly

.

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I am not I

.

.

I am not I.

I am this one

walking beside me whom I do not see,

whom at times I manage to visit,

and whom at other times I forget;

who remains calm and silent while I talk,

and forgives, gently, when I hate,

who walks where I am not,

who will remain standing when I die.

.

~ Juan Ramon Jimenez

translated by Robert Bly

.

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