kimdorman.bsky.social

Kankha-Revata A campfire at midnight eats at the circle of darkness subduing the shadows for all who pass. Ever so are the Tathagata's words. (Tathagata: one who incarnates enlightenment. Written in Pali script on palm leaves, c. 90 BC. Trans. Andrew Schelling & Anne Waldman) -James Laughlin

Time in India The old man at the temple told me that Sita was his grandmother. Sita, the wife of the hero Rama, who cut off the nine heads of Ravanna, the demon king of Ceylon. How long ago was that? There is no time in India. -James Laughlin

A Great Emperor Akbar, the greatest of the Mogul emperors, who unified the fiefdoms of India as far south as the Godavari, was also a man of intellect. He maintained at his court sages of all religions and had the Mahabharata translated into Persian. -James Laughlin

www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7xz...

Philip Whalen

Lying in bed with a broken toe, I see shadows on the wall; birds are singing, and my neighbor is burning leaves in his yard.

if there’s nowhere to rest at the end how can I get lost on the way? this ink painting of wind blowing through pines who hears it? -Ikkyū (tr. Stephen Berg)

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/152045...

1st lines Before dawn, the watch drum tumbles. Lonely pink face among mountains and streams addled but alert with a cup of fragrant wine as the moon sets, just a sliver not yet full. Moss seems to creep across the earth's face. ... Hồ Xuân Hương 胡春香 tr by John Balaban #1stlines #poetry #Vietnam

1st lines Lamp wick turned up, the room glows white. The loom moves easily all night long as feet work and push below. Nimbly the shuttle flies in and out, wide or narrow, big or small, sliding in snug. ... Hồ Xuân Hương 胡春香 tr by John Balaban #1stlines #poetry #Vietnam

Let the mill-clapper go on clacking, Let mud and ink stiffen On the same sheet. Let the lamb shit on the cross And the pen cut the butcher. Let a fire blow and warm The revolutionaries. I am secular. I walk the streets. I feel sorry for everyone. -Fanny Howe, This Poor Book

from Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters (compiled & translated by Sōiku Shigematsu)

160. The way music speaks. Do not forget that a poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information. -Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Zettle (tr. G. E. M. Anscombe) one of those ‘endless’ books — a Borgesian ‘book of sand’

Dorothea Lange / Untitled (Southeast Asia), 1958

from Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters (compiled & translated by Sōiku Shigematsu)

The peat bog’s Slow deaths accumulate Over time - Carbon accumulates In the water logged debris Microbes spawn - After a walk in the rain Changing my socks Getting close to the heater #poetry #haiku #fall #peat #microbes

Vassar Miller (for bob & susan)

longhousepoetryandpublishers.blogspot.com/2026/10/vass... Vassar was the first ‘real’ poet I met. In Houston, when I was young. I worked in a bookstore, and would carry books she ordered to her adult tricycle (equipped with a large basket) parked outside.

‘Summer Palace, Peking,’ architectural detail. #Photography by David Hockney (1982) #sculpture

Look, badness is easy to have, you can take it by handfuls Without effort. The road that way is smooth and starts here beside you. But between us and virtue the immortals have put what will make us Sweat. The road to virtue is long... Works and Days, Hesiod tr. Richard Lattimore

Dorothea Lange / Japan, 1958

HIVE What you are— bodied light, a store of oil a hive of warm blood chemicals flooding a brain, calculating a furnace filament of awareness in a palpating dark a treeless dark a stone-edged dark coal river dark. Flesh and its impermanence. -Autumn Richardson

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9Bt...

(zettle) Smooth stones in a clear pool Wind’s shadow

7 a.m. stillness of the trees … silent light

#smallpoemsunday@tomsnarsky.bsky.social * LORINE The water did brim to her back door I see her still in the empty boat moored there though she herself's ventured forth. * The Next One Thousand Years: The Selected Poems of Cid Corman, p.105.

from Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters (compiled & translated by Sōiku Shigematsu)

🌐🌐 Announcing! 🌐🌐 NOON is the first-ever collaborative album from British composer Richard Skelton and Australian composer Lawrence English. On opposite sides of the globe, two seminal figures in experimental music finally meet. www.submithub.com/link/phantom...

Richard Skelton, Rescue Archaeology Glass-mastered, lithographed CD in 4-panel Digipak, available from: www.corbelstonepress.com/shop-music aeolian.bandcamp.com/album/rescue... #richardskelton #rescuearchaeology #corbelstonepress

Philip Whalen

Wind breath sound wave • and at night Wings dark Moon

"The entire aul is present to see us depart. The white-bearded elder sits astride a bull, which he drives by means of a ring through its nose. With a last glance I bid farewell to the incomparable beauty of the scene in front of me, bathed in ..." #EllaMaillart #Photography #Kyrgyzstan #TianShan

bombmagazine.org/articles/198...

from Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters (compiled & translated by Sōiku Shigematsu)

In a woman’s hand a cast-off cicada skin crumbling into pieces . Under a glaring sky a graveyard . . . alone, a child passes -Sanki Saitō (tr. Masaya Saito)

The fall of a scarecrow — above its face, the sky . Street urchins all watching a distant summer ship . Under a cloudy sky a hairy caterpillar struggling to cross the street -Sanki Saitō (tr. Masaya Saito)

I heard this story years ago: A woman who lived alone by the river heard a strange voice every night. An astrologer told her it was the ghost of a corpse somewhere on her property. A search was made, & the body of a missing neighbor was found in her well. It appeared the man had taken his life.

Why did witches pursue the beast from the eight sides of the country -John Ashbery

An autumn rock lets a baby wasp play on it . Withered lotuses . . . when the time to move has come they all move . Hoeing — a pebble sparks cold fire . A gleaner face toward the soil arm drooping -Sanki Saitō (tr. Masaya Saiko)

years I lived through noting the world with my small vocabulary

from Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters (compiled & translated by Sōiku Shigematsu)

Dorothea Lange / Two Women, Egypt, 1963

8 a.m. “Flow a copper coin and sugar in water. Keep a piece of silver near the entrance. Feed fodder to a cow to reduce misunderstanding.”