Joy

Source: Favim

Joy is not produced because others praise you. Joy emanates unbidden and unforced. Joy comes as a gift when you least expect it. At those fleeting moments you know why you were put here and what truth you serve. You may not feel giddy at those moments, you may not hear the orchestra’s delirious swell or see flashes of crimson and gold, but you will feel a satisfaction, a silence, a peace—a hush. Those moments are the blessings and the signs of a beautiful life. 

~ David Brooks 

Joy

Source: Favim

Joy is not produced because others praise you. Joy emanates unbidden and unforced. Joy comes as a gift when you least expect it. At those fleeting moments you know why you were put here and what truth you serve. You may not feel giddy at those moments, you may not hear the orchestra’s delirious swell or see flashes of crimson and gold, but you will feel a satisfaction, a silence, a peace—a hush. Those moments are the blessings and the signs of a beautiful life. 

~ David Brooks 

I Sit and Look Out

Source: Favim

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
     oppression and shame;
 I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
     themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
 I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
     neglected, gaunt, desperate;
 I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer
     of young women;
 I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
     hid--I see these sights on the earth;
 I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--I see martyrs and
prisoners;
 I observe a famine at sea--I observe the sailors casting lots who
     shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
 I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
     laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
 All these--All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out
     upon,
 See, hear, and am silent.

-- Walt Whitman

I Sit and Look Out

Source: Favim

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
     oppression and shame;
 I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with
     themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
 I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying,
     neglected, gaunt, desperate;
 I see the wife misused by her husband--I see the treacherous seducer
     of young women;
 I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be
     hid--I see these sights on the earth;
 I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny--I see martyrs and
prisoners;
 I observe a famine at sea--I observe the sailors casting lots who
     shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
 I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
     laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
 All these--All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out
     upon,
 See, hear, and am silent.

-- Walt Whitman

Poem: Gift

Source: Tumblr/Favim

You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.

There are some men

There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names through time
Grave markers are not high enough or green
and sons go far away to lose the fist
their father’s hand will always seem

I had a friend he lived and died
in mighty silence and with dignity
left no book, son or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk
fragrant, dark and softly white
under the pale of mist
I name this mountain after him.

Believe nothing of me
Except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
I did not see any cities burn,
I heard no promises of endless night,
I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
Promise me that I will return.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.

~ Leonard Cohen

Poem: Gift

Source: Tumblr/Favim

You tell me that silence
is nearer to peace than poems
but if for my gift
I brought you silence
(for I know silence)
you would say
This is not silence
this is another poem
and you would hand it back to me.

There are some men

There are some men
who should have mountains
to bear their names through time
Grave markers are not high enough or green
and sons go far away to lose the fist
their father’s hand will always seem

I had a friend he lived and died
in mighty silence and with dignity
left no book, son or lover to mourn.
Nor is this a mourning song
but only a naming of this mountain
on which I walk
fragrant, dark and softly white
under the pale of mist
I name this mountain after him.

Believe nothing of me
Except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
I did not see any cities burn,
I heard no promises of endless night,
I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.
Promise me that I will return.

When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.

~ Leonard Cohen

A Choice of Weapons

Source: www.topit.me

Sticks and stones are hard on bones,
Aimed with angry art.
Words can sting like anything,
But silence breaks the heart.

~ Phyllis McGinley

A Choice of Weapons

Source: www.topit.me

Sticks and stones are hard on bones,
Aimed with angry art.
Words can sting like anything,
But silence breaks the heart.

~ Phyllis McGinley

From the Silence of Many Trees

Source: Facebook/Favim

Sometimes a tree strikes your face with the memory of loss.
Hickory bark keeps the furrows of the parched fields you left.
The sycamore leaves turning away in the wind are your father’s hands.

From what tree Absalom hanged himself, we never bother to ask.
Of course Jesus blighted the fig that failed to bear its bloodred fruit,
But about the wood that fashioned the true cross, the gospel remains silent.

No matter what changes the earth below them has suffered, geese
Continue their night migrations by checking the alignment of stars.
Our scorched world is only one of a trillion celestial fires,

Although we have never heard that crystalline music Pythagoras sang of.
So we find that grief is a prodigal child, missing at the moment of grief.
The soul should love the snails that gather rusty leaves into themselves.

Did we model the flute on a bolt-struck tree graced by wind?
Or one hollowed by disease? Or on a trunk the woodpecker broke into,
First looking for a meal of sweet termites, then settling for a home?

Why should the tall fir fallen after many years from an escarpment
Care if we hear it? The broken roots shake soil, shake themselves awake,
The sound of someone rising from his knees after long prayer.

~ Temple Cone

From the Silence of Many Trees

Source: Facebook/Favim

Sometimes a tree strikes your face with the memory of loss.
Hickory bark keeps the furrows of the parched fields you left.
The sycamore leaves turning away in the wind are your father’s hands.

From what tree Absalom hanged himself, we never bother to ask.
Of course Jesus blighted the fig that failed to bear its bloodred fruit,
But about the wood that fashioned the true cross, the gospel remains silent.

No matter what changes the earth below them has suffered, geese
Continue their night migrations by checking the alignment of stars.
Our scorched world is only one of a trillion celestial fires,

Although we have never heard that crystalline music Pythagoras sang of.
So we find that grief is a prodigal child, missing at the moment of grief.
The soul should love the snails that gather rusty leaves into themselves.

Did we model the flute on a bolt-struck tree graced by wind?
Or one hollowed by disease? Or on a trunk the woodpecker broke into,
First looking for a meal of sweet termites, then settling for a home?

Why should the tall fir fallen after many years from an escarpment
Care if we hear it? The broken roots shake soil, shake themselves awake,
The sound of someone rising from his knees after long prayer.

~ Temple Cone

Silences

Credit: elisaxdcfc @ Tumblr

There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt.
There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.

~ Beryl Markham

Silences

Credit: elisaxdcfc @ Tumblr

There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt.
There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.

~ Beryl Markham

Anyone Can Sing

Source: Community of Mindful Parents

Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth,
and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open - to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that - to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.

~ William Ayot

Anyone Can Sing

Source: Community of Mindful Parents

Anyone can sing. You just open your mouth,
and give shape to a sound. Anyone can sing.
What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,
to initiate a wild and necessary deepening:
to give the voice broad, sonorous wings
of solitude, grief, and celebration,
to fill the body with the echoes of voices
lost long ago to bravery, and silence,
to prise the reluctant heart wide open,
to witness defeat, to suffer contempt,
to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,
to retreat to the last dark hiding-place
where the tattered remnants of your pride
still gather themselves around your nakedness,
to know these rags as your only protection
and yet still open - to face the possibility
that your innermost core may hold nothing at all,
and to sing from that - to fill the void
with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy
that staves off death yet honours its coming,
to sing both full and utterly empty,
alone and conjoined, exiled and at home,
to sing what people feel most keenly
yet never acknowledge until you sing it.
Anyone can sing. Yes. Anyone can sing.

~ William Ayot

The Lamp

Source: DHD Multimedia Gallery

I write in order to comprehend not to express myself
I don’t grasp anything I’m not ashamed to admit it
sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf
So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself
to things that will endure long after us
I wait to gain wisdom from chance
I expect sense from silence
Perhaps something suddenly will happen
and pulse with hidden truth
like the spirit of the flame in the oil lamp
under which we bowed our heads
when we were very young
and grandma crossed the bread with a knife
and we believed in everything
So now I yearn for nothing as much
as for that faith

~ Anna Kamienska

The Lamp

Source: DHD Multimedia Gallery

I write in order to comprehend not to express myself
I don’t grasp anything I’m not ashamed to admit it
sharing this not knowing with a maple leaf
So I turn with questions to words wiser than myself
to things that will endure long after us
I wait to gain wisdom from chance
I expect sense from silence
Perhaps something suddenly will happen
and pulse with hidden truth
like the spirit of the flame in the oil lamp
under which we bowed our heads
when we were very young
and grandma crossed the bread with a knife
and we believed in everything
So now I yearn for nothing as much
as for that faith

~ Anna Kamienska

Silence broke my mouth

Source: Delaney Shall (gotmunk)

Silence broke my mouth:
the crumbs flew out the window
like paper butterflies or those magnolias
nonchalantly shattered on the grass.
These mirrors are confusing,
so cold and expensive, they ripple out
noiselessly like the sweet curve
of water from a cliff
where I am looking down, seeing further out
that blue point beyond
any voice.

~ Alison Croggon

Silence broke my mouth

Source: Delaney Shall (gotmunk)

Silence broke my mouth:
the crumbs flew out the window
like paper butterflies or those magnolias
nonchalantly shattered on the grass.
These mirrors are confusing,
so cold and expensive, they ripple out
noiselessly like the sweet curve
of water from a cliff
where I am looking down, seeing further out
that blue point beyond
any voice.

~ Alison Croggon

Death

Pic credit: Frank Thompson @ All Things Wildly Considered

She was not afraid of death. Death was a thief that always wore a mask. Accident, disease, stillbirths, old age, natural causes, war, murder. It existed in the shivering silence between tolls of a bell. It stole everything away while it left its mark, a dark knowledge that lingered at the back of smiling eyes, a hesitation between thought and action in times of danger, a heaviness that tunneled wormholes into happy memories.
She and death had danced together for a long time now. Sometimes they were partners. Sometimes they were opponents. Sometimes she might cheat him, but hell, that old thief was still bound to win some day.

~ Thea Harrison

Death

Pic credit: Frank Thompson @ All Things Wildly Considered

She was not afraid of death. Death was a thief that always wore a mask. Accident, disease, stillbirths, old age, natural causes, war, murder. It existed in the shivering silence between tolls of a bell. It stole everything away while it left its mark, a dark knowledge that lingered at the back of smiling eyes, a hesitation between thought and action in times of danger, a heaviness that tunneled wormholes into happy memories.
She and death had danced together for a long time now. Sometimes they were partners. Sometimes they were opponents. Sometimes she might cheat him, but hell, that old thief was still bound to win some day.

~ Thea Harrison