III

“Fasting cleanses the soul,
Raises the mind,
Subjects one’s flesh to the spirit,
Renders the heart contrite and humble,
Scatters the clouds of self-conceit,
Quenches the fire of lust, and
Kindles the true light of chastity.
Enter again into yourself.”

In midst of screaming a man drops dead
Fire’s vertical vortex lifting the oxygen out from his lungs
She stumbles, tripping over corpses beginning to burn
Falling again she imagines resting until reduced to cinder
But she says to no one, “’I don’t want to burn to death –
No, no burning – I don’t want to burn!’ Crawling...
I do not know how many people I fell over.”

"Wieviele starben? Wer kennt die Zahl?”
(How many died? Who knows the count?)

Eight square miles of a great city suddenly aflame
Palace cathedral gallery warehouse factory home
Reaping a whirlwind reaching miles into the sky
At night a pillar of fire next day a pillar of smoke
To guide them on their way, those who had been
Sent forth from so very far away. Making a fiery
Ladder between heaven and earth.

Emerging she could see nothing but rubble
Stones craters blizzard of fire, fountains of
Orange-white sparks spilling into streets
Blinding burning ascent into an inferno
Stumbling toward any shadow any dark patch
Free of fire, but one blaze had joined another
Each adding to each in unfolding conflagration.

In the Gemäldegalerie cellars
There remained a very crowded
Crucifixion by Cranach, good to the
Left, bad to the right, Christ bleeding
Between the thief who believes
And he who does not. Just about
Midnight Christ is burnt on his cross.

And with what are these on fire?

The Zwinger was originally a wall
A fort to defend the Wettins but
Became by Goethe’s time a
Citadel of culture temple of
Prestige and subtle power
Intended to narrate and
Validate being self-sovereign.

And with what are these on fire?

The prophecy poured through
Rooftops flooding narrow streets
Breaking asunder centuries of
Accumulation opening widening
Where walls had been erected
Monuments built and gilded
Places to worship ourselves
Consecrated.

And with what are these on fire?

Starting at the Ostragehege
Fanning across the railway tracks
Encompassing all the Old City
Those who had been sent forth
Poured out on all flesh and more
A message of flaming prophecy
Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.

And with what are these on fire?

But beginning about ten on the night
Of February 13th there came a sound from
Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind when
Two-hundred two-ton plumduffs and
Two-hundred thousand fire werks
Are released from just about 8000 feet
Bringing an early end to carnival.

Fire requires air ignition fuel
All three abiding with one accord
In one place creates a possibility
But no certainty of sustained
Combustion. Sometimes stuff
Is dry air is pure and there is a
Spark – yet fire is averted.

Bright white magnesium light
Casting shadows through the night
Rockets' red glare, bombs bursting in air
Reflected in the Elbe’s dark flow
Hundreds of planes 4000 tons of bombs
Three days of destruction and death
Descend on Dresden.

II.

Christmas trees flying on Fat Tuesday
Swinging swaying toward the towers
Frauenkirche, Hofkirche, and Kreuzkirche

In conceiving this aversion, he becomes divested of passion
And by the absence of passion he becomes free
And when he is free he becomes aware that he is free
Knowing rebirth is exhausted, that he has lived a sacred life
That he has done what he was made to do
That he is no more for this world.

Conceives an aversion for mind-consciousness
Conceives an aversion for the impressions
Received by the mind and whatever sensation
Pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent
Originates in dependence on impressions
Received by the mind, for this also he conceives an aversion.

Conceives an aversion for the ear
Conceives an aversion for sounds
Conceives an aversion for the nose
Conceives an aversion for scent
Conceives an aversion for the tongue,
Conceives an aversion for tastes
Conceives an aversion for the body
Conceives an aversion for things tangible
Conceives an aversion for the mind
Conceives an aversion for ideas

The worst picture can speak to our perception and imagination,

Set them in motion, make them free, leave them to themselves.

The best also speaks to our perceptions, but with a higher language,

Which we are bound to hear. It chains the feelings and the Imagination,

It holds us fast in spite of ourselves

We cannot act our will with the perfect

We are compelled to give ourselves up to it

To receive ourselves back.

Perceiving this, the learned and noble disciple
Conceives an aversion for the eye,
Conceives an aversion for forms,
Conceives an aversion for eye-consciousness,
Conceives an aversion for the impressions
Received by the eye; and whatever sensation
Pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent
Originates in dependence on impressions
Received by the eye, he also conceives an aversion.

Deepest stillness dazzling frames

Floors shining with bees'-wax

Imparting solemnity, unique of its kind

Much more resembling the sensation

With which one enters a church

Consecrated fixtures of a capacious temple

Objects of such adoration, seem

Set only for the sacred purposes of art.

Here, in my comfort, I feel really at home.

I enter into this sanctuary

My astonishment surpassing

Every prior conception of form

This room – returning into itself –

Wherein splendor and order reign

With the fire of passion
With the fire of hatred
With the fire of infatuation
With birth aging death,
Sorrow sighs misery grief and
Deep despair are they on fire.

Impressions received by the mind are on fire
Whatever sensation – pleasant, unpleasant
Or indifferent, originates in dependence on
Impressions received by the mind –
That also is on fire.

And with what are these on fire?

The ear is on fire; sounds are on fire
The nose is on fire; scent is on fire
The tongue is on fire; tastes are on fire
The body is on fire; things tangible are on fire
The mind is on fire; ideas are on fire
Mindfulness aflame.

As conception and perception mutually require each other,

I could not long work up these new thoughts

Without an infinite desire arising within me to see

Important works of art, once and away, in great number.

I therefore determined to visit Dresden without delay.

With the fire of passion
With the fire of hatred
With the fire of infatuation
With birth aging death
Sorrow sighs misery grief and
Deep despair are they on fire.

Tongues of Fire

“All things, O priests, are on fire. And what, O priests, are all these things which are on fire?”

                                                                             Aditta-pariyaya Sutta

I.

The eye is on fire
Forms are on fire
Awareness of seeing is on fire
Impressions received by the eye are on fire
All sensations pleasant unpleasant indifferent
Aflame. With what are these on fire?

Καιρός του ποίησις
Kairos tou poiesai
Now is the time to act
Now is the time to do
Now is the right time
Propitious, pregnant with possibility
Space continuing to expand with time
Opening unfolding perpetually new

Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

May I be reconciled with Father Time and our Mother
(of Necessity) and my Cousin Chaos and may I know
How sweet Aether spawns such wonders while nary
Lifting a finger. Asking your introduction and, if needed,
Intercession to be more with fair-haired Kairos. May he
Teach me his eye ear touch and exquisite sense of time.

There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

May I be reconciled with Father Time and our Mother
(of Necessity) and my Cousin Chaos and may I know
How sweet Aether spawns such wonders while nary
Lifting a finger. Asking your introduction and, if needed,
Intercession to be more with fair-haired Kairos. May he
Teach me his eye ear touch and exquisite sense of time.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.

Arriving from this bloody and broken world bringing my
Bruised and battered body hungry thirsty gradually dying
Asking to be fed despite my betrayal banality venality
Asking to join the others at your table and partake of
Beauty, bounty, love. Asking to be in right relationship
With you through you with all beginning with my self.

By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Turning to Thomas Stearns Eliot another Midwestern
Boy with aspirations and, let us say, complications to
Provoke and permission finding and using my own voice
Claiming my own vision making my own choice.

And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer

So here I am, in the final stage, having had fifty years –
Fifty years of exploration experimentation and fruitful
Failures trying to use words to describe explain consider
Create calculate conceive cook-up a recipe for being.