SONG OF SOLOMON

A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits, camphire, with spikenard,

Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices;

A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.

Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south, blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.

4:12-16

King James Bible

PATIENCE

Patience, better than armour, guards from harm.

And why seek enemies, if you have anger ?

With friends, you need no medicine for danger.

With kinsmen, why ask fire to keep you warm?

What use are snakes when slander sharper stings?

What use is wealth where wisdom brings content?

With modesty, what need for ornament?

With poetry's Muse, why should we envy kings?

Bhartrhari

Translated from the Sanskrit by John Brough

From a TABLET FOUND in an ORPHIC TOMB

To him who, purified, would break this vicious round

And breathe once more the air of heaven - greeting !

There in the courts of Hades wilt thou find

Leftward a beckoning cypress, tall and bright,

From out whose roots doth flow the waters of Oblivion.

Approach it not : guard thou thy thirst awhile.

For on the other hand - and further - wells

From bottomless pool the limpid stream of Memory.

Cool, full of refreshment. To its guardians cry thus :

"I am the child of earth and starry sky :

Know that I too am heavenly - but parched !

I perish : give then and quickly that clear draught

Of ice-cold Memory !' And from that fountainhead divine

straightway they'll give thee drink; quaffing the which

Thou with the other heroes eternally shalt rule.

Translated from the Greek; 

Translator anonymous

From DE RERUM NATURA

Matter mingled and massed into indissoluble union

Does not exist. For we see how wastes each separate substance;

So flow piecemeal away, with the length'ning centuries, all things,

Till from our eye by degrees that old self passes, and is not.

Still Universal Nature abides unchanged as aforetime.

Whereof this is the cause. When the atoms part from substance,

That suffers loss; but another is elsewhere gaining in increase:

So that, as one thing wanes, still a second bursts into blossom,

Soon, in its turn, to be left. Thus draws this Universe always

Gain out of loss; thus live we mortals one on another.

Burgeons one generation, and one fades. Let but a few years

Pass, and a race has arisen which was not: as in a racecourse,

One hand on to another the burning torch of Existence.

Lucretius

(Titus Lucretius Carus)

96? - 55 BC

Roman Poet 

Author of  De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Reality)

Translated from the Latin by C.S. Calverley

Photo by J. White

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

American poet

September 10th 1935

Mary Oliver was born in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Vassar College for women.

She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for her collection American Primitive.

VOICES

Grey goose and gander

Go with cranberry sauce.

I can understand the

World without remorse.

Tombstones are a trouble

Others must endure:

Nothing that a double

Brandy will not cure.

Whither shall we wander

After we are dead?

Sometimes I wonder.

Open up my head.

Take out the Alphabet.

Make me forget.

Upstairs or downstairs

Is not our concern.

Deep in your armchairs

Burn, boys, burn.

Drowned sailors clutter

The hovels of the sea.

It's no great matter.

They can't drown me.

In my lady's chamber

Once I found a skull.

It helped her to remember

That she was beautiful.

If I find the moral

That is all my wish.

Men have fetched up coral

When they trawled for fish.

Dom Moraes

Goan poet

July 1938 - June 2004

THE BUDDHA'S LAW AMONG THE BIRDS

The Golden Goose Speaks

To remain from birth to death without the Good Law,

that prolongs the bondage.

To desire emancipation, and still deserve a state of woe,

that prolongs the bondage.

To hope for miraculous blessing,

and still have wrong opinions,

that prolongs the bondage.

To neglect those things

which turn the mind towards salvation,

that prolongs the bondage.

To strive for purity of vision,

and yet be blinded by a faulty judgement,

that prolongs the bondage.

To give and yet be checked by meanness,

that prolongs the bondage.

To aim at lasting achievements,

while still exposed to this world's distractions,

that prolongs the bondage.

To try to understand one's inner mind

while still chained to hopes and fears,

that prolongs the bondage.

translated from the Tibetan by Edward Conze