2011.01.15 10:41
Song For Nobody - Thomas Merton A yellow flower (Light and spirit) A golden spirit(Light and emptiness) Let no one touch this gentle sun (No light, no gold, no name, no color) A golden heaven
Death - Thomas Merton Where are the merchants Is the old trader any safer Where are the generals who Take time to tremble Cliffs of your hangovers were More than the momentary night of faith, Yet all my power is conquered |
2011.01.15 10:45
2011.01.16 02:18
2011.01.16 02:56
If I may make a brief comments on these poems,
The first, I believe, is describing a state of deep realization
as Buddha did in that with no attachments whatsoever,
he is wide awake and hears the heavenly song nobody else hears.
Everybody else with one form of attachment or another or
one form of preoccupation or another does not hear the songs of
the holy spirit so that most of the time
God with HIS infinite love winds up singing the heavenly song
by Himself which the poet hears in his wide awake state.
The second poem describes the awefulness of death
which is fair and merciful in that it comes to us unexpectedly and fast
whether we are rich or poor, powerful or weak.
The miserable state of death yet has a hope, a dim candle light in cold midnight,
only by a genuinine, simple and pure faith, like that of a child,
in God, HIS Son, and holy Mary.
I picked two poems out of the book,
"The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton," 1977,
which has, I believe, more than a thousand of them.