Home

Ravilious

Home

Night lifts the roofs

from houses, reaches in,

pushes chairs further

into corners, studies people

who do not move

from room to room.

Dreams return, spiders

back to thread the same webs

of sleep. The moist dust

of the carpenter's dream

clings to his shoes and skin.

The Tailor's dream

turns itself inside out

again and again.

The body shifts

in bed. The dream

dances in darkness.

The tongue slides in

the closed mouth

and no one is far from home.

Gregoire Turgeon

A strange poem, yet somehow familiar. It puzzles me. It feels like I've been here, as if I know this poem from the inside but the memory is just beyond reach.

Does night move us around like dolls in a dollhouse? Does it observe our behaviour and wonder why we act the way we do? 

And the dreams! Is night also recording those? Does night lift the roofs of our heads to see the dramas playing out inside?

"And no one is far from home." Hmmm. Are we at home in our houses, in our heads, in our dreams? Are we nested within these protective layers? Who or what is working upon us, and for what purpose?

fr. Plaited Like the Generations of Men

Unknown

fr. Plaited Like the Generations of Men

Come, follow me into the realm of music. Here is the gate

Which separates the earthly from the eternal.

It is not like stepping into a strange country

As we once did. We soon learn to know everything there

And nothing surprises us more. Here

Our wonderment will have no end, and yet

From the very beginning we feel at home.

At first you hear nothing, because everything sounds.

But now you begin to distinguish between them. Listen,

Each star has its rhythm and each world its beat.

The heart of each separate living thing

Beats differently, acording to its needs,

And all the beats are in harmony.

Your inner ear grows sharper. Do you hear

Your deep notes and the high notes?

They are immeasurable in space and infinite as to number.

Like ribbons, undreamt-of scales lead from one world to another,

Steadfast and eternally moved.

Hugh MacDiarmid

This is just to support my other post about music. See? There are a few who have put thought into this. "Come, follow me." "From the very beginning we feel at home." Yes, I do. Music is sometimes the only thing that keeps me in this world, and I know I am not alone in this. Sometimes music is the only thing that reaches into the dark hole where I am. Something, a mystery – a pulse, a heartbeat, rhythm – something - calls me home, recalls me to myself, drags me up from the depths from which I cannot pull myself. There is power in that. I don’t know what it is. Is it that these vibrations, these rhythms, they “lead from one world to another”? Is it that they give us a glimpse of a world where we can be truly ourselves, truly at home, fully accepted, wholly known, and yet complete, full, satisfied? I wonder. But there is no doubt about this, music runs through all of us. Animate or inanimate. No one, nothing is exempt. So we cannot easily dismiss it. Whatever it is.

Plainsong

Ger Stallenberg

Plainsong

Stop. Along this path, in phrases of light,

trees sing their leaves. No Midas touch

has turned the wood to gold, late in the year

when you pass by, suddenly sad, straining

to remember something you’re sure you knew.

Listening. The words you have for things die

in your heart, but grasses are plainsong,

patiently chanting the circles you cannot repeat

or understand. This is your homeland,

Lost One, Stranger who speaks with tears.

It is almost impossible to be here and yet

you kneel, no one’s child, absolved by late sun

through the branches of a wood, distantly

the evening bell reminding you, Home, Home,

Home, and the stone in your palm telling the time.

Carol Ann Duffy 

 “Trees sing their leaves”. Is that true for us too? Do we sing through our actions, through our movements, through the things we make and say? Is there a melody in how we do our daily tasks, in our work? I get the image of a street full of people, their music colliding and harmonizing - winding, weaving, circling and rising up. An image, but the fact is, everything we do has an effect, a consequence, a percussion you could say, a sound. Music isn't so far-fetched. That line, "The words you have for things die in your heart, but the grasses are plainsong, patiently chanting the circles you cannot repeat or understand." just hits me. So often there are no words for what what's in us, yet listening to or watching the trees or the waving grasses embodies those unnamed thoughts. Being among these there is release, rest. The earth expresses what escapes us, what dodges the encumbrance of words, and gives us a movement and sound, a music. "This is your homeland." How beautiful. "Lost One"," Stranger who speaks with tears", "no one's child" - "through the branches of a wood...Home, Home." Earth and earthling together, singing - Home.