In the murk the Way advances
as the knife of the slow word -
in the murk there is a mark that
breathes which poem gets lost
in that breath? the knife of the slow word
cuts only when the river flows -
I collect quills and count moons - where
the worries are taken to pitch and the quills
remain, there I anchor my poem -
I do not know its name
– Lao Tsu
I style it “Tao”
Until her knife had pared
– Sylvia Plath
The moon to a rind of little light.
What brews below is symptom, nay act
it follows that the feather is free
Communion with the people ceased to be a mere theory, to become an integral part of ourselves
– Che Guevara
What haunts below is wish, nay will
it follows that the word will suffice
The wise have no mind of their own, finding it in the minds of ordinary people
– from the Tao Te Ching, transl. by Ursula Le Guin
When the river speaks you listen you
tend to the bend of the river they say is pain as it tends to
the shadow you hark to the sense of
the shadow
at the heart of the river –
When I speak of the Tao, I know not
but vaguely I
speak of Lorde the fruit of my wis-
dom is twenty
inches too far from soul, twenty
years too large, twenty
something, perhaps more maybe
much less
When I speak of the Tao, I speak of Lorde
—
for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are — until the poem — nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt
— Audre Lorde, “Poetry is not a luxury”
Let no death pierce you, the arrow
make no wound, let
no companion of a companion count
from three to ten –
the death spot is serious; would the
tiger laugh at it?
—
The way that can be spoken of
Is not the constant way;
The name that can be named
Is not the constant name.
Tao Te Ching
The seed of knowns and pretexts have at my side nothing but a compensatory bulb these are non-expositions gaining ground as it seeks further ground as it pronounces the tenor and say of what precedes this pretext is known it is seeded alongwith supposition the compensation has life only when it tremors bulb-like these are non-expositions seeded in known ground unknown in all ways except in what is granted supposition
This is the sixth post in the Tagore/Kabir series.
The bridge is the swan that tickles your
fickle feather at night; it is the shadow
That falls between heaven and
The idea of earth; it is the
Bellows that swings between the
Real and what passes for the act
Of motion and its resting place; it is
The poem, but you knew that, no?
Tagore/Kabir
II. 59. jânh, cet acet khambh dôû
Between the poles of the conscious and the unconscious, there has
the mind made a swing:
Thereon hang all beings and all worlds, and that swing never
ceases its sway.
Millions of beings are there: the sun and the moon in their
courses are there:
Millions of ages pass, and the swing goes on.
All swing! the sky and the earth and the air and the water; and
the Lord Himself taking form:
And the sight of this has made Kabîr a servant.
T.S. Eliot/Lao Tsu
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow – T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”
—
The space between Heaven and Earth
Is it not like a bellows?
Empty, and yet never exhausted
It moves, and produces more. – Lao Tsu, “Tao Te Ching”
This is the first of series of posts to follow up on my recent visit to Accra, Ghana. 2008 was when I was there last, and 2002 was when Ghana introduced me to Africa. Since then, what has changed without as seen through the prism of what has changed within is written out in verse and reflection. The context has always been work, but content can change context.
May 15 – Inflight Dubai to Accra
The plumb fascination dons every mask, every trite boredom, every sink that wishes well, the Plum fascination is a gasp, a gap of known and little known facts, a gap of missing factotums.
“Small small” is Ghanaian speak for a little quantity, small change, etc. Poetically, it captures the spirit of the Tao Te Ching, “know the high, stick to the low.” But all that has been forgotten and turned upside down historically in favor of the grand. A redemptive poetics of the small small is not possible without reaching back and bringing back to the fore the “little known facts” and the “missing factotums.”
May 16
The tailbone of the journey is far from
Release unless you
Endear its father & soulfish its
Ancestry; its ghoul of
Faith & train of unreason; the
Tailbone of your untapped
Soulwhistle is the further ash
That trammels and pouts
As it sings, inks into the
Untimed meter of gash
Of ink and the body of craft & pain.
A poetics of the small small is also not possible without a soulful accounting of the damage done by the patriarchal laws of entitlement and its “train of unreason” masked as faith.
May 17
The old dominion of dread is but half past dead, half past the fleet of the unsaid, the blue cart of a thrush's unusual said, and done and what is untrue of sky is true of sin, true too of the half past unsung dread the languor, the peel of dread and its song.
What has been damaged is felt today as dread, what Erich Fromm calls “the fear of freedom.” The machinery of sin and shame keeps that fear – though irrelevant, unrooted, out of place and time – in play.
May 18
The sin has to decide to drown its bellowed Insight in the shadow of this here wanton Word wanting to drift a broken toast, a Wooden art and the semblance of a power turret
In the following posts, I will try to tackle aspects of the “power turret”, the myth of the great leader, the history of colonialism, neoliberalism and Orientalism as they relate to Ghana and as voiced by its poets.
The dagger sinks in
Where grass has no
Home, where death took leave,
Where the bright claws of rust
Meet corpuscles of greed, lost
& felled, the maker of
Halves and halves not.
I have heard it said that one who excels in safeguarding his own life does not meet with rhinoceros or tiger when traveling on land nor is he touched by weapons when charging into an army. There is nowhere for the rhinoceros to pitch its horn; there is nowhere for the tiger to place its claws; there is nowhere for the weapon to lodge its blade. Why is this so? Because for him there is no realm of death. Lao Tzu.
For what
shall I wield a dagger
O lord?
What can I pluck it out of,
or stab it in
when You are all the world?
O Ramanatha?
Dasimayya, translated by A.K. Ramanujan.
“The empire is a sacred vessel and nothing should be done to it. Whoever does anything will ruin it; whoever lays hold of it will lose it.” Tao Te Ching (XXIX)
An odd navel gazing that makes and keeps on making the same
Error; an uneven
Bent of sight goes on galvanizing sightless tirades of excellentia,
Apologia when
The naught of naughts was so much at hand, when the grace
Of a zero could
Persuade an inner calm, when the stream could have meandered
Downwards as
Physics would have it had it not been for a relentless will of wanton
Magnanimity.
the small-small lays no claim on heaven, lays nothing
by store as it seeks only to diminish what seems to be
its gain; the small
small makes no effort, strives
not one bit, not
one bit as it seeks
to belittle, to be
little
itself.
Gathering just-a-bit-o moss 