THE BATH by Gary Snyder

Washing Kai in the sauna,
The kerosene lantern set on a box
outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the 
washtub down on the slab
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water
Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach
"Gary don't soap my hair!"
-his eye-sting fear-
the soapy hand feeling
through and around the globes and curves of his body
up in the crotch,
And washing-tickling out the scrotum, little anus,
his penis curving up and getting hard
as I pull back skin and try to wash it
Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around,
I squat all naked too,

                                        is this our body?

Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone
cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing
kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out
sierra forest ridges night-
Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air
sweep down from the door
a deep sweet breath
And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down
her hair falling hiding one whole side of
shoulder, breast, and belly,
Washes deftly Kai's head-hair
as she gets mad and yells-
The body of my lady, the winding valley spine,
the space between the thighs I reach through,
cup curving vulva arch and hold it from behind, 
a soapy tickle                and hand of grail
The gates of Awe
That open back a turning double-mirror world of
wombs in wombs, in rings, 
that start in music,

                                                    is this our body?

This hidden place of seed

The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers

milk and peaks up in a nipple-fits 

our mouth-

The sucking milk from this our body send through

jolts of light; the son, the father,

sharing mother's joy,

That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome

open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss

As Kai laughs at his mother's breast he now is weaned

from, we

wash each other,

                        this our body

Kai's little scrotum up close to his groin,

the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him

In flows that lifted with the same joys forces

as his nursing Masa later,

playing with her breast,

Or me within her, 

Or him emerging, 

                                                        this is our body:

Clean, and rinsed, and sweaing more, we stretch

out on the redwood benches hearts all beating

Quiet to the simmer of the stove,

the scent of cedar

And then turn over,

murmuring gossip of the grasses,

talking firewood,

Wondering how Gen's napping, how to bring him in

soon wash him too-

These boys who love their mother

who loves men, who passes on

her sons to other women;

The cloud across the sky. The windy pines.

the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow

        this is our body,

                                                        

Fire inside and boiling water on the back and thighs

Go in the house-stand steaming by the center fire

Kai scampers on the sheepskin

Gen standing hanging on and shouting,

"Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!"

This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames

drinking icy water

hugging babies, kissing bellies,

Laughing on the Great Earth

Come out from the bath.

Excerpt from The Axion Esti by Odysseus Elytis

 PRAISED BE Myrto standing

on the stone parapet facing the sea
     like a beautiful eight or a clay pitcher
holding a straw hat in her hand
     The white and porous middle of day
the down of sleep lightly ascending
     the faded gold inside the arcades
and the red horse breaking free
     Hera of the tree’s ancient trunk
the vast laurel grove, the light-devouring
     a house like an anchor down in the depths
and Kyra-Penelope twisting her spindle
     The straits for birds from the opposite shore
a citron from which the sky spilled out
     the blue hearing half under the sea
the long-shadowed whispering of nymphs and maples
     PRAISED BE, on the remembrance day
of the holy martyrs Cyricus and Julitta,
     a miracle burning threshing floors in the heavens
priests and birds chanting the Aye:
     HAIL Girl Burning and hail Girl Verdant
Hail Girl Unrepenting, with the prow’s sword
     Hail you who walk and the footprints vanish
Hail you who wake and the miracles are born
     Hail O Wild One of the depths’ paradise
Hail O Holy One of the islands’ wilderness
     Hail Mother of Dreams, Girl of the Open Seas
Hail O Anchor-bearer, Girl of the Five Stars
     Hail you of the flowing hair, gilding the wind
Hail you of the lovely voice, tamer of demons
     Hail you who ordain the Monthly Ritual of the Gardens
Hail you who fasten the Serpent’s belt of stars
     Hail O Girl of the just and modest sword
Hail O Girl prophetic and daedalic
 

Excerpt from The Axion Esti, by Odysseus Elytis, translated by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis, © 1974.
Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Excerpt selected by the Nobel Library of the Swedish Academy.

Shared by Sylvia Linsteadt during her Hestia workshop in October 2021

Nothing Personal by James Baldwin

For nothing is fixed,
forever and forever and forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,

and we are responsible to them because
we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another, 
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot

[...] 

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

[...]

The Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke

Brew us the magic in which all limits dissolve,
spirit forever bent to the fire!
The fathomless limit of evil, first, which resolves,
also around those who are resting and do not stir.

Dissolve with a few drops whatever excludes in the limit

of the ages, which makes our past wisdom a fraud;

for how deeply we have absorbed the Athenian sunlight

and the mystery of the Egyptian falcon or god.

Don't rest until the boundary that keeps the sexes 

in meaningless conflict has disappeared.

Open up childhood and the wombs of more truly expectant

generous mothers so that, shaming all that is empty,

and not confused by the hindering wood, 

they may give birth to future rivers, augmenting the sea.

-Rainer Maria Rilke 

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken by Rainer Maria Rilke

I believe in all that has never been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me

so that, what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear 
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant God, forgive me
for this is what I want to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river, 
no forcing and no holding back, 
the way it is with children.

Then in the swelling and ebbing currents, 
these deepening tides moving out, returning, 
I will sing you as no one ever has, 

streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.

Book of Hours: Love Poems to God by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Joanna Macy

Abre la Puerta by Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Her name is Hope and she’s 12 years old,
going on 20 to life. She is god at 5 feet tall.
Abre la Puerta, open the door
and let her in, give her food.

Old Florence lives in the parking garage
at the university with her bags and packs
on the floor all around and she washes
her 84 year old body in the sink at the library
with a piece of flannel from her deceased husband’s pajamas.
Abre la Puerta, she’s god.
Florence is God, there’s a God named Florencia.

Remember that old abuelita, your grandest grandmother?
How she staggered toward you on legs so thin?
You were just a baby then and she smiled all over your infant self
and when you rose young and steaming from the void
that was God in her abuelita form, crying with joy just to see you,
“Que, que, que babybita” she’d say to you.
“Oh look at you, you babybaby you…”

“Look,” says God, “she talks.” God talks baby talk.
She opened a door in her belly for you.
Your grandmother is God. God is a grandmother

And you remember that red room where you grew? That was God.
And remember the warm hands that received you? That was God.
And you remember your father’s hands holding your face,
as though it were some kind of jewel that might break?
In that moment, he was God.

Your mate who snores, well… God snores, you see.
Your mate is God, who can never find his socks.
And your lover who burns for things you cannot give,
that is God also.

Your mate is God.
God is a housewife in mudface and hair curlers
at the door waving goodbye in a housecoat.
God wears a housecoat.

And, oh, the world that is young and has loved so deeply
and been betrayed, whose skin hangs like rags
and whose arms have no muscle and whose eyes have lost luster;
open the door of your heartaches and step through the door of your betrayal.
Pass through the hole that is left in your heart.

Pass through because it is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Do you remember that your legs are el anillo, the ring that circles the lover?
Your legs make a door, pass through the door,
Abre la Puerta pass the bulb through.
Open the door, the most sacred of doors,
the trail through your belly and the road up your spine.

 

Remember, fire is a door.
and song is a door. A scar is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

The forest on fire is a door
and the ocean ruined is a door.
Anything that needs us
or calls us to God is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

 

Anything that hurts us,

anything that needs us opens the door.

Abre la Puerta, open the door.

All of these years of seeming indestructibility,
the grandfather of your world dies
and his heart explodes
and yours breaks into a thousand pieces.
These are doors. Open the doors.
Abre la Puerta. Pass through these doors.

The world is a tribe of one-breasted women.
Walk through the door of the scars on their chest.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Over the edge of the world you go,
into the abyss. You march in time.
And put the best medicine in the worst of the wounds.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

The lake in which you almost drowned, that is a door.
The slap in the face that made you kiss the floor, that is a door.
The betrayal that sent you straight to hell, that is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Same old story, all strong souls first go to hell
before they do the healing of the world they came here for.
If we are lucky we return to help those still trapped below.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Hell is a door caused by pain.

 

Opening a flower, rain opening the Earth

the kisses of humans opening the heart of the world

these are doors.

Abre la Puerta, open the door.

 

The scar drawn by razors, that is a door. 

The scars that are doors are opened, are opened.

Abre la Puerta, open the door.

 

The scars drawn by chainsaws across forests, those are doors. 

The poem of new life that comes every dawn,

the soaring of sun, that is a door, the grave is a door. 

The door to hell is a door.

Abre la Puerta, open the door.

Your grandmother, your grandfather,
your mother, your father have died leaving a hole in your life.
Step through that hole. It is an opening.
That hole is a threshold. That hole is a door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
Abre la Puerta, open the door.
 

From La Pasionaria, Collected Works, Poetry of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf. 

Hymn of the Universe by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

'Never, if you work to live and to grow, never will you be able to say to matter, "I have seen enough of you; I have surveyed your mysteries and have taken from them enough food for my thought to last me for ever." I tell  you: even though, like the Sage of sages, you carried in your memory the image of all the beings that people the earth or swim in the seas, still all that knowledge would be as nothing for your soul, for all abstract knowledge is not enough, you must see it, touch it, live in its presence and drink the vital heat of existence in the very heart of reality.

'Never say, then, as some say: "The kingdom of matter is worn out, matter is dead": till the very end of time matter will always remain young, exuberant, sparkling, new-born for those who are willing.

'Never say, "Matter is accursed, matter is evil": for there has come one who said, "You shall drink poisonous draughts and they shall not harm you", and again, "Life shall spring forth out of death", and then finally, the words which spell my definitive liberation, "This is my body".

'Purity does not lie in separation from, but in a deeper penetration into the universe. It is to be found in the love of that unique, boundless Essence which penetrates the inmost depths, deeper than the mortal zone where individuals and multitudes struggle, works upon them and moulds them. Purity lies in a chaster contact with that which is "the same in all". 

'Oh, the beauty of the spirit as it rises up adorned with all the riches of the earth!

'Son of man, bathe yourself in the ocean of matter; plunge into it where it is deepest and most violent; struggle in its currents and drink of its waters. For it cradled you long ago in your preconscious existence; and it is that ocean that will raise you up to God.'

–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Priest and Scientist), Hymn of the Universe (Harper & Row: 1965), p.64-65

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations-
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice, 

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper 

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do-

determined to save

the only life you could save.

A prayer by Hildegard of Bingen

Holy Spirit,

Giving life to all life,
Moving all creatures,
Root of all things,
Washing them clean,
Wiping out their mistakes,
Healing their wounds,
You are our true life,
Luminous, wonderful,
Awakening the heart from its ancient sleep.

The Invocation to Kali

5.

It is time for the invocation:

Kali, be with us.

Violence, destruction, receive our homage.

Help us to bring darkness into the light,

To lift out the pain, the anger, 

Where it can be seen for what it is -

The balance - wheel for our vulnerable, aching heart.

Put the wild hunger where it belongs, 

Within the act of creation, 

Crude power that forges a balance

Between hate and love.

Help us to be the always hopeful

Gardeners of the spirit

Who know that without darkness

Nothing comes to birth

As without light

Nothing flowers.

Bear the roots in mind, 

Youn the dark one, Kali

Awesome power

May Sarton