Can you hear that blackbird singing in the pouring rain? There – he’s risen to a rooftop and is romancing the sun from its hiding-place. The bird is scaling the grey walls between resurrection and ascension. Its song curves beneath the rain. Now I see it – this song is my consciousness.

Wherever we find customs, conventions, codes we should hear the music of human life. And within that music we should discern the graceful, rooftop serenade of individual consciousness. But never for its own sake – rather because it knows what has been raised to life and what will, one day, ascend to its heavenly home. This song curves through all society and argues its case before the very court of life.

Music

No history, no society, no law,

only music, which is the form

of human life in civilization.

Consciousness is a tone within that -

now stronger, now weaker – and the hard earth

dissolves around my ears, leaving life’s chords

and urgent resonance, where once

there were streets and trees and offices of law.

Court

I listen to that single blackbird sing,

its notes curving beneath the rain,

its message for me alone but not,

and the consciousness in me sings back.

Who will hear, who will say this message

was for them alone on their day of rain?

The curve of song itself is what counts

travelling through customs, conventions,

to argue at the very court of life.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

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In Shakespeare’s (and Faulkner’s) immortal phrase ‘the sound and the fury’ of existence threaten always to overwhelm us. So it was for the disciples in the fishing-boat when the storm raged and the master slept. Convulsions and upheavals have the run of the world. Similarly when evil appears to hold sway – when forces of terror run rampage and something inhuman takes up its abode in human faces – then the master sleeps. Is it enough to counter this by force of will, by strength and power, by rule of law? Not exactly – terror has won when all we have to oppose it is law and might.

The answer is to softly waken the master. This is not merely the imposition of the ego onto circumstances and events. It is the discovery of peace in human wakefulness. There is nothing else which can put the humanity back onto the human face or still the raging storm. This is the quintessential opposite of force. Let the master awake and peace will descend.

I must travel

a very long road -

through many deaths -

before I reach

the point at which

the good is true

for all existence.

And then it is like

an eternal flame

whose tiny core

is greater

than all my squalling births.

*

Ah! that needle’s eye

which opens to become

a vast majestic gate

or closes to be

the point at the foot

of a question-mark.

In either event

there are birds singing,

clouds sweeping,

seasons jostling,

all for the sake

of catching our attention

and signalling

that the human being

is always

the perfect questioning eye.

*

On a silent day

I would find

as many suns in the sky

as I need

to state my truth.

But when clouds circle

and winds retrieve

their debt of stillness

from the earth

I must command

the storm

and fear no evil.

I am

the ferocious crescent of sun

which burns its edge

through dark mystery

into the morning.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

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In tragedy, in epic, in comedy, in poetry, the soul twists and turns, waiting for the gyration which will produce happiness. The soul is a great republic which needs its benign rulership. Plato wanted to ban poetry from his ideal republic. This wasn’t because it was disturbing or subversive but because it stood, in his view, three stages removed from truth itself. He saw it as an imitation of an imitation of the real. We may be indignant at this proposal to banish something which – in our estimation – enriches life, but on the other hand we might also be able to admire a worldview which has at its heart such a pure vision of virtue and truth that everything else must seem like unenlightened agitation.

There is certainly something in this. Nine tenths of life is played out on the level of drama which might or might not yield self-awakening. It’s almost impossible to conceive of one’s own life in terms of genuine enlightenment or a vision of the good. But the moment comes in the midst of it all when a clear light appears – fleetingly – before the inner eye. In that second the light works retrospectively and illumines all those gyrations of destiny which lie in the past. The way I see it is this: the moment of light is like the end of a giant archway which reaches up into the sky, into the past, disappearing for a time, but having its other end at a point in some distant epoch – perhaps in the time of Plato or some other period of particular importance to your soul. This presumes, of course, that the soul has existed prior to birth and has probably enjoyed (if that’s the right word) many other lifetimes. In other words there is a clear true path, symbolized by light, overarching all of our existence.

In this sense poetry, tragedy, comedy, epic are all expendable. The truth which illumines our existence is all-important. It’s like the light which reaches down and floods the dark streets of our soul with radiance. The republic of the soul.

The Republic of The Soul

Whether I stand in forum or temple

I will always need light to live by.

There is reflected light on trees and paths

which also works into my shaded thoughts.

But light itself in its own bright name

holds converse in the forum and is etched

upon the temple’s architrave unseen

except by those who’ve woken from dark’s pain.

And though we twist and turn in tragedy,

like actors on the world’s stage – our lives

blended in with shadows, pierced with pain -

yet light is still the source from which we spring.

My own Republic of the heart and mind

will not be ruled by anything but this:

the light which set me on my path of life,

the source which makes the shadows burn like flame.

Only the effort is lacking to make

the goal, of light which shines back on the path.

And here is my soul, the living city,

whose streets are dark, waiting for my brightness.

The world too has only one chance at light

and must turn to it now or lose its self.

Then where are the souls who will master time

and reach back to where life’s archway began?

Best wishes, today,

Landar

Picture: The School of Athens, by Raphael

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

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Author: Jay Landar

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The poem says it all. Then any commentary comes to seem superfluous. But here it is, in the nature of a conversation. Even to talk about spirit, higher truth, inner being, is an unwieldy process. We seem to wake up to words, in the morning, instead of to being. A stream of words – and among those words your own name. This is my feeling anyway. And in the course of using words, as a poet, I arrive back at spirit, at being. For me, then, the inner being is a conscious, living, indisputable fact. And strange to say it is the person who writes as well as the person who is discovered by writing. This is the strange anomaly I find in my work: I am teacher and taught, creator and created. Therefore while I would like to speak and write as a teacher, authoritatively, I can only acknowledge that I am also a pupil, learning.

The best part of myself speaks to the best part of you. It is here and not here, just as yours is here and not here. This is the conversation. It is a conversation of spirit, between inner voice and inner ears. It can lift right off the page if we will allow it. And that is what I wanted to say to you today.

Imprint

The cold stream of words before dawn
continues, muttering, on its way.
I hear my name mentioned. From time to time
I dip my hands in. Sometimes I reach them up
to my face. Then, with a shock,
I am awake in my sleep, or sleeping awake.
Dreams are stones in the stream. The words
are everything. Day will come. The day
will come when all our names will change,
when all the words we speak will be
strange, unrecognizable truths. I want to wake up
on that day.

-                        And when I stop all my forming
I am still a formed thing, and the flow
continues in me, through me, without cessation.
How much I want to be that form and to leave it!
The one which set the stream in motion.
To be it, to start again. To leave it,
to flow out into the world unconstrained.
The terrible burden of self is to be and to make
an imprint. A man
wakes this way, a woman
regards the imprint with pity.

With pity, yet she rushes in to fill it.
We can’t fill in all the world’s imprints
and some must remain, gathering water,
containing drought. These have resort to
poetry, which finds creator and created
united in the same form, with one standing
slightly apart from the other, and shining,
like a ghost.

-                          Or spirit, which is the same
thing, but unwieldy in the mind. The most
you can say for spirit is that it is
an empty fullness which proceeds ahead of us,
an extraordinary guide whose liquid footprints
will not succumb to drought or rain.
This teacher – without the difficulty of words -
will find your shape, will reach up with your hands,
above dreams, above dawn, neither sleeping
nor waking, but embodying all it is.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

Photo by Ilan Shacham

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

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The word of resurrection hurts the ears. Somehow at this time of year – before the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox – no matter what religion you are, something strains in you, in the hour before dawn, to know if it is going to be allowed to walk the world again. Before, before, before – and after.  The hour before dawn – when pre-dawn and dawn mix their bloods – is the time when the body listens for its name. It listens in that eternal mixture of humor and despair which is its lot.

I return to this theme every year. It’s important to know if the body is going to go on. It’s important – magical – to name the wonderful sequence of cosmic events – full moon, equinox, day of rest – that signal resurrection. It’s important to ask, no matter what religion you belong to, because the body itself wants to know. And it’s a word which hurts the ears because, each year, there is no certainty that the victory has been won until the cosmos declares it.

According to the materialistic narrative, which science has largely adopted, the body dissolves after death and there’s an end to it. Yes, no doubt. But a larger science – also an empirical one – hears the voices calling out before: before dawn, before creation, before I am. It senses the humor and despair. It allows the absurd question because the body – physical matter – itself is asking it: is there a resurrection for me? Then comes the other question of course – how am I, as an individual human being, involved in the process of resurrection? That’s a narrative for another day when, perhaps, I’ve gained in wisdom.

The hour of paralysis and cold dream,

the hour of dawn before dawn. I will not

use words to unwrinkle returning self,

to declare the body an empty stage.

But I will ask who sends me to perform

and why it is that concentration coils

my words into untoward shapes, like trees

which have borne more springs than they care to name.

Yet there is a name, a sound, an I am,

even before dawn and pre-dawn mix their bloods.

It’s a name for worlds and their opposites,

un-creation – enough to make me rise.

Nothing can break the unformed flower’s despair,

nothing can entertain its humor but

resurrection before the act. In name,

in sound, in dawning I am, day returns.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

Image: Equinox Stone, Loughcrew, Ireland

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

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I would like to shine like the pure sun itself but I have to have regard for the small plants around me which depend on my diffusion. They need me to pattern and regulate myself. And many of those small plants are the different stages of consciousness which exist just below the surface. You find them in the ‘pre-sun’, in the dew, in the pang of unconscious light circulating among the leaf-buds. Therefore, in a sense the sun is metaphor for ego – but ego must be mediated by growth and development, by dependents who teach you how much self they need from you.

The sun itself. Can we admit it’s pure spirit? Can we believe it’s what we are when we’ve woken up, when we’ve gathered up every experience of subconscious momentum, every requirement of daily mediation and regulation? Here lives the blazing power of faith. The faith to conceive and transform, the faith to become sunlike. Therefore, the sun is also faith.

A Single Life

I can walk along a very narrow wall

into sunlight, and for a time I am

a base for that light, a balancing home

for its spontaneity. The pleasures

and pains of light neutralize me until

I am an equilibrium. This is

my life. But when attention wanders then

the wall becomes a dream with people in

its stones, and mortar free to choose where it

will harden, but it never does. One day

I might feel less alone in balancing.

And then again I am the pattern

of the sun itself, a cross-hatching, a

nicety for which small plants are grateful.

I would lose the sun’s old greatcoat, the one

it wears for sheltering the myriad life

below, and burn like sun itself. In fields

of snow I would blind old hibernia,

those who tussle with dreams below the ground.

Milder things, the dew encapsulating

pre-sun, precious intimation of growth,

cross-fertilization of dream and will -

milder, milder things: pang of unconscious

light circulating among the leaf-buds.

Only at the end, dark intelligence

making a shape out of sun’s intrusion.

I can choose, or not, its vision of day.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

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What are all these stories of transcendent self and mystical union? Just another barrier of words? Ah, but I find the simple heart of the fairy-tale more easy to comprehend! I will search to the very ends of the earth to find the purple flower which will heal my loved one. It lies hidden beside a crumbling wall. It lives in my dreams.

There is incorruptible beauty in the flower. Do I seek permanence? Never! What grows and blossoms fades and dies as well. Everything born in time and in creation passes away. But the beauty and its power of healing remain constant. The image of the loved one dwells inside the flower. I will take this flower and lay it beyond the crumbling wall – within duration.

Then finally I see that I myself am the threshold. I am myself what lies beyond the outer gate. Creation’s temple is my own being – it lies in my own aspiring to find the god within.

Roses growing by a crumbling wall -

what gives its heart to permanence? defence

or perishable beauty? Life itself

creates the scene and stays there till the end.

My heart is a crumbling wall, and flowers

dwell in its periphery: red roses

life has made me – incorruptible source

of what I am until time ends my story.

Is constancy a color? Blinding red

or reverential blue? Soft violet,

imitating neither, being both. I

will have no time for permanence, my reach

is short and pulls up at creation’s gate.

Let constancy be the flower I will place

beyond that limit and outside the wall,

its simple violet living for all time.

But timeless Love conceals its flower in me

who seems at best a bauble made of time.

The threshold of creation is my life -

I am what lies beyond its outer gate.

Transcendent self no storybook design

but what grows in my half-forgotten being,

enlightenment imagination’s gain

which finds the rose of Love within its shrine.

Best wishes, today,

Landar

© Landar 2012. All rights reserved

You are welcome to quote from Light on the Page on the condition that you cite the author and the source:

Author: Jay Landar

Source: www.lightonthepage.com

For other permissions please contact the author.