light the candle

When someone asks what there is to do,

light the candle in his hand.

Like this.

— Rumi, from the poem "Like This"

turning in the wind

. . . The colors of their tails

Were like the leaves themselves

Turning in the wind,

In the twilight wind. . . ."

— Wallace Stevens

from the poem "Domination of Black"

Read the whole poem here

return to a meadow

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,

that is not mine, but a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,

an eternal pasture folded in all thought

so that there is a hall therein

that is a made place, created by light

wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am

I say are likenesses of the First Beloved

whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.

She it is Queen Under the Hill

whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words

that is a field folded.

It is only a dream of the grass blowing

east against the source of the sun

in an hour before the sun's going down

whose secret we see in a children's game

a ring a round of roses told.

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow

as if it were a given property of the mind

that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,

everlasting omen of what is.

— Robert Duncan

Sometimes, When the Light

Sometimes, when the light strikes at odd angles,
and pulls you back into childhood

and you are passing a crumbling mansion
completely hidden behind old willows

or an empty convent guarded by hemlocks
and giant firs standing hip to hip,

you know again that behind that wall,
under the uncut hair of the willows

something secret is going on,
so marvelous and dangerous

that if you crawled through and saw,
you would die, or be happy forever.

— Lisel Mueller