THE AUCTION

Once on returning home, purse-proud and hale,

I found my choice possessions on the lawn.

An auctioneer was whipping up a sale.

I did not move to claim what was my own.

"One coat of pride, perhaps a bit threadbare;

Illusion's trinkets, splendid for the young;

Some items, miscellaneous, marked 'Fear';

The chair of honour, with a missing rung."

The spiel ran on, the sale was brief and brisk;

The bargains fell to bidders, one by one.

Hope flushed my cheekbones with a scarlet disk.

Old neighbours nudged each other at the fun.

My spirits rose each time the hammer fell, 

The heart beat faster as the fat words rolled.

I left my home with unencumbered will

And all the rubbish of confusion sold.

Theodore Roethke

1908-1963

MOUNTAIN TEMPLE

Bhuddist Temple in the Mountains
11th century
Ink on Silk

I have locked the gate on a thousand peaks

To live here with clouds and birds.

All day I watch the hills

As clear winds fill the bamboo door,

A supper of pine flowers,

Monk's robes of chestnut dye -

What dream does the world hold

To lure me from these dark slopes?

Zekkai

translated from the Chinese by Burton Watson

THE GOOD PAINTER

Nahuatl

The good painter:

The artist of the black and red wisdom,

the creator of things with the black water . . . 

this good painter, understanding,

with god in his heart,

holds a dialogue with his own heart.

He knows the colours, he applies them, he shades them.

He draws feet and faces,

traces the shadows, brings his work to perfection.

Like an artist

he paints the colours of all the flowers.

Anonymous Nahuatl Poem

translated from a Spanish version by J.M. Cohen

PIANO

Pierre-August Renoir
1841-1919
"Woman At The Piano"

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;

Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see

A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings

And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song

Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside

And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour

With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour

Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

D.H. Lawrence

1885-1930

ACQUAINTED WITH THE NIGHT

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet

When far away an interrupted cry

Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;

And further still at an unearthly height

One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.

I have been one acquainted with the night.

Robert Frost

1874-1963

ON TRUST IN HIS HEART

The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose;

Do not like, do not dislike, all will then be clear.

Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart;

If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against.

The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind's worst disease;

While the deep meaning is misunderstood, it is useless to meditate on Rest.

It is blank and featureless as space; it has no 'too little' or 'too much';

Only because we take and reject does it seem to us not to be so.

Do not chase after Entanglements as though they were real things,

Do not try to drive pain away by pretending that it is not real;

Pain, if you seek serenity in Oneness, will vanish of its own accord.

Stop all movement in order to get rest, and rest will itself be restless;

Linger over either extreme, and Oneness is forever lost.

Those who cannot attain to Oneness in either case will fail:

To banish Reality is to sink deeper into the Real;

Allegiance to the Void implies denial of its voidness.

The more you talk about It, the more you think about It, the further from It you go;

Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand.

Return to the Root and you will find the Meaning;

Pursue the Light and you will lose its source,

Look inward, and in a flash you will conquer the Apparent and the Void.

For the whirligigs of Apparent and Void all come from mistaken views;

There is no need to seek Truth; only stop having views.

TAKAKUSU XLVIII

translated from the Chinese by Arthur Whaley

THE IRONMONGER'S SHOP

Two elderly orphans 

who inherited it

when they were nineteen,

nineteen years ago.

Nuns in washed-out aprons,

walled in by leaden chests

of drawers,

tacks and adjusting screws

between their lips.

Their rosy devotion,

their greying eagerness

under the naked lightbulb,

the grey smell of grease,

of rubber, metal and putty.

Enormous wrenches, breast drills

in unloved hands.

The moist tongue

longing for another mouth

while the bill is made out.

Is this what you dreamt of,

Primal Soup? Weltgeist,

did you have your wits about you?

Was that all you had in mind,

Divine Providence?

Two elderly sisters

imprisoned for life

in an ironmonger's shop?

Their rosy eagerness,

their grey devotion

to the emery paper?

Hans Magnus Enzensberger

1929-

Translated from the German by the Author

The photograph is of the shopfront

of Bunner's Hardware Store in 

Montgomery, Powys, which has been

trading since 1892. Bunner's is still family-run 
and largely unchanged.