Care-charming Sleep

Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes,
Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose
On this afflicted prince ; fall like a cloud
In gentle showers; give nothing that is loud,
Or painful to his slumbers; easy, sweet,
And as a purling stream, thou son of Night,
Pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain,
Like hollow murmuring wind or silver rain;
Into this prince gently, oh, gently slide,
And kiss him into slumbers like a bride.
from ´ The Tragedy of Valentinian`

John Fletcher, 1579-1625

To see a world

To see a world
in a grain of sand
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
and eternity in an hour.

William Blake:


Eine Welt zu sehn
in dem Körnchen Sand
Eine Welt zu sehn in dem Körnchen Sand,
einen Himmel in wilder Blume:
Halt' Unendlichkeit in der off'nen Hand
und die Ewigkeit einer Stunde.

Übersetzung: Walter A. Aue

Our lives

'Our lives
are like the course of the sun.
At the darkest moment
there is the promise
of daylight.'

NN

Anam Cara

Stairway to Heaven... Anam Cara
(gealic "Soul Friend")

Your home is a sunbeam, a rainbow,
the moon's soft glow

I glimpse you in the sudden burst of light
at the parting of clouds.

I smell your earthy freshness
in the tender breezes of awakening spring.

I hear your voice in the call of geese,
as they lift from the river and form their living arch.

I feel your softness in the brush of a feather,
your sweet warmth as a puppy held close to my cheek.

I find your peace in the murmur of a lonely woodland stream;
sparkling and glistening as it's water softly skips to the sea.

Your memory is the refreshment of cool spring water,
after laboring in summer fields.

I see you waiting inside a garden,
as my pathway turns it's final corner.
I thrill to hear you softly whisper my name again in joy.

No more partings, no more sorrow.
Our souls remember their Song, as we mingle with the ages.

(J.T. Histed)

And can it be...

"AND CAN IT BE THAT IN A WORLD SO FULL AND BUSY,
THE LOSS OF ONE WEAK CREATURE MAKES A VOID IN ANY HEART,
SO WIDE AND DEEP THAT NOTHING BUT THE WIDTH AND DEPTH OF ETERNITY CAN FILL IT UP!"
-Charles Dickens-

Lament for a Son

There's a hole in the world now.
In the place where he was, there's now just nothing.
A center, like no other, of memory and hope and knowledge and affection
which once inhabited the earth
is gone.
Only a gap remains.

A perspective on this world, unique in this world,
which once moved about within this world,
has been rubbed out.
Only a void is left.

There's nobody now who saw just what he saw,
knows what he knew, remembers what he remembered,
loves what he loved.

A person, an irreplaceable person is gone.

Never again will anyone apprehend the world quite the way he did.
Never again will anyone inhabit the world the way he did.

Questions I have can never now get answers.

The world is emptier.

My son is gone.

Only a hole remains, a void, a gap,
never to be filled

(Nicholas Wolterstorff)

Foto: Blumen, niedergelegt auf der Treppe des Hauses Grosvenor Square 50, Dublin

There is a deep beauty

There is a deep beauty
hidden in the
luminosity at the heart
of the soul ...
behind the dull facade of our daily lives.
Only in your solitude
will you actually
find it, find the
neglected beauty of your life!

John O’Donohue

A piece from Ann Henning Jocelyn

...."A member of my extended family was killed in an accident aged twenty.
Who can you come to terms with that? How can his parents be expected ever to come to terms with that? All those years of caring and nurturing, seeing him grow and learn what were they for?

The only comfort I could find was the thought hat perhaps he wasn’t meant to live longer. His life span, we now know, measured twenty years. We shouldn’t look upon it against the possibility that it might have been longer, but accept the gift of those
years and value them accordingly.

„How do I know that I will survive?“ asked my young son after learning about his
cousin’s death. „You probably will“, I assured him. „These days in Ireland, most children do survive. But no one can be completely certain, and that is how it has to be. Because if we take for granted that everyone lives to a ripe of age, we wouldn’t treasure each day and each other quite as much as we do.

As I said it, my heart went out to those parents who have to pay the price for that precious uncertainty.

Let us never forget their pain, the cross they carry on behalf of those more fortunate...."

A piece from Ann Henning Jocelyn who was born in Sweden and now lives in a small village in the West of Ireland...

Foto: Geburtstag in Irland, 2007

Blessing

...."As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to evoke horizons.”

Foto: Donegal, 2007

Memory Stone

...Somewhere on the beach in Connemara.. If anyone found it?

Turning Darkness into Light

I and Pangur Bán my cat

'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will
He too plies his simple skill.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.
'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.
Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

Author Unknown

Dublin, 2006

An African Elegy

We are the miracles that God made
To taste the bitter fruit of Time.
We are precious.
And one day our sufferingt
Will turn into the wonders of the earth.

There are things that burn me now
Which turn golden when I am happy.
Do you see the mystery of our pain?
That we bear poverty
And are able to sing and dream sweet things

And that we never curse the air when it is warm
Or the fruit when it tastes so goodOr the lights that bounce gently on the waters?
We bless things even in our pain.
We bless the silence.

That is why our music is so sweet.
It makes the air remember.
There are secret miracles at work
That only Time will bring forth.
I too have heard the dead singing.

And they tell me that
This life is good
They tell me to live it gently
With fire, and always with hope.
There is wonder here

And there is surprise
In everything the unseen moves.
The ocean is full of songs.
The sky is not an enemy.
Destiny is our friend.

Ben Okri

Nothing Personal

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuNxINUR-R0

Es ist die Geschichte einer Wanderschaft, einer Wanderschaft, die weit wegführt von aller Zivilisation, und dort, am Ende der Welt, den Inbegriff der Zivilisation wiederfindet, und den Glauben an die Menschheit dazu.
Mehr braucht es nicht als zwei Menschen und eine unendlich weite Landschaft, um diese Geschichte zu erzählen, die wie die Ursprungsgeschichte aller Beziehungen und allen Lebens erscheint, archaisch und elementar.

Ein Kleinod - sinnlich, berührend, verstörend - wundervoll!

Benedictus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0SxKrGNyIE

"You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.”

(Benedictus)

Das ist für mich...

„Das ist für mich die schönste und traurigste
Landschaft von der Welt.
Schaut diese Landschaft genau an, damit ihr sie
sicher wiedererkennt, wenn ihr eines Tages
durch Irland reist. Und wenn ihr zufällig da
vorbeikommt, eilt nicht weiter,
ich flehe euch an – wartet ein bißchen –
gerade unter dem Stern!
Wenn dann ein junger Mann auf euch zukommt
wenn er lacht, wenn er goldenes Haar hat,
wenn er nicht antwortet, so man ihn fragt,
dann werdet ihr wohl erraten, wer es ist.
Dann seid so gut und laßt mich nicht
weiter so traurig sein: schreibt mir schnell
wenn er wieder da ist.....“

(Nach: A. Saint-Exupéry: Der kleine Prinz)

On the death of the beloved

Florian on our last trip with him
Connemara 1999

Go raibh maith agaibh go léir agus beannacht.

On the death of the Beloved

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

– John O’Donohue

From:
TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US
(entitled BENEDICTUS in Europe, Ireland and the UK)

Spirit

Spirit
is Life.
It flows thru
the death of me
endlessly
like a river
unafraid
of becoming
the sea

von Gregory Corso
Foto: eigenes - Connemara 2003

TEARS, IDLE TEARS

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892

On the death of Beloved

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

-- John O’Donohue

From:
TO BLESS THE SPACE BETWEEN US
(entitled BENEDICTUS in Europe, Ireland and the UK)