Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
“The More Loving One” by W.H. Auden, from Collected Poems. © The Modern Library — Random House, 2007. (buy now)
snagged from The Writer’s Almanac, http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2010/01/16
“Who you are is what you love, not what loves you.” — Baron Baptiste
“Be a good human being, a warmhearted, affectionate person. That is my fundamental belief.” — His Holiness The Dalai Lama
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Copyright @ 1990 by Mary Oliver. First published in House of Light, Beacon Press. Reprinted in The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays, Beacon Press.
“i found god in myself
and i loved her
i loved her fiercely”
― Ntozake Shange
Today’s Rilke.
If I forget her, will she disappear?
“At daybreak if the weather is fine, I go into the garden. This time of day is very special to me. The sky is clear, I see the stars, and I have this special feeling of my insignificance in the cosmos, the realization of what we Buddhists call impermanence.” — H.H. The Dalai Lama
“I like the sea: we understand one another. It is always yearning, sighing for something it cannot have; and so am I.” — Greta Garbo (via floralnymph)
(Source: mizenscen, via sableonblond)
“Try to develop a deep conviction that the present human body has great potential and that you shall never waste even a single minute of its use. Not taking any essence of this precious human existence, but just wasting it, is almost like taking poison while being fully aware of the consequences of doing so. It is very wrong for people to feel deeply sad when they lose money, yet when they waste the precious moments of their lives they do not have the slightest feeling of repentance.” — H.H. The Dalai Lama