Again and Again
Again and again, however we know the landscape of love and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Be With Those Who Help Your Being
Be with those who help your being.
Don’t sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.
A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.
If you don’t try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it’s too late for all you could become.
Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots
and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?
-Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
Awaking in New York
Curtains forcing their will against the wind,
children sleep, exchanging dreams with seraphim. The city drags itself awake on
subway straps; and I, an alarm, awake as a
rumor of war,
lie stretching into dawn,
unasked and unheeded.
~ Maya Angelou
BMCC Art 100, Professor Reinhardt 