- Time of past OR future Camino
- Frances SJPP to SdC Oct/Nov 2015
Frances Burgos toSdC March/April 2016
W. Highland Way August 2016
Camino Somewhere September 2017
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Love the story , Peter.[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
David! That is SO sad!No Footprints
I woke to find no footprints
What was - is only wind
A sea without a shore
No lips, no voice, nor song to sing
And a love, which is no more.
lurker turned newbie--
this is a poem I wrote for my daughter as she prepared for her camino fances. Perhaps a bit sophomoric, but it spoke of my love as she turned her dilemma into a purpose.
Not at all sophomoric. I enjoyed it immensely, and found that its rhythm and spare use of language worked very nicely.
Hi Deb -Jenny--I have loved Rilke for a long time, but haven't read him for awhile. I especially loved his Letters to a Young Poet? I may be remembering the title incorrectly.
The poem by Rumi is exquisite....the world is too full to talk about...my, my!
I'll meet you there, Jenny. I'll meet you there.
Thanks so much Jennie the second poem you posted wow it hit me right "there" I appreciate your posting it so much thank you!Hi Deb - fantastic thread!
Here's my contribution - there's two. They are poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and by Rumi. I first read both poems in a wonderful Camino memoir "Sinning Across Spain" by the much-loved Australian author Ailsa Piper.
“A WALK” by Rainer Maria Rilke …
My eyes already touch the sunny hill
Going far ahead of the road I have begun
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp
It has its inner light – even from a distance –
And changes us, even if we do not reach it,
Into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are,
A gesture waves us on, answering our own wave …
But what we feel is the wind in our face.
An untitled poem by Rumi ...
Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language and even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
These poems are sustenance for any pilgrim's soul!
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
BY E. E. CUMMINGS
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
The Pilgrim Soul: Your Journal for the Camino de Santiago is it available on Amazon Uk though ?Poetry creates one of the "thin places" where our humanity meets the mystery. I have just published a journal specifically for use by pilgrims on the Camino to record their experiences, thoughts, and dreams, among others. It's called The Pilgrim Soul: Your Journal for the Camino de Santiago (on Amazon.com) and there is a quote for each day, much of it from poems relating to walking the Way. Here is one by Jan Richardson (American) included in this journal that I adore:
That each step may be a shedding.
That you will let yourself become lost.
That when it looks like you're going backwards,
you may be making progress.
That progress is not the goal anyway,
but presence to the feel of the path on your skin,
to the way it reshapes you in each place it makes contact,
until the moment you have stepped out.
Buen Camino!
Thank you dear b! I hope that all is going fantastically well with you and Jennie and that you are now on the countdown for your Camino in May.Thanks so much Jennie the second poem you posted wow it hit me right "there" I appreciate your posting it so much thank you!
Ooooh it is so exciting Jennie but I have to get through Lent first but that will have to be on another thread, sorry AugustCaminodeb.Thank you dear b! I hope that all is going fantastically well with you and Jennie and that you are now on the countdown for your Camino in May.
Cheers - Jenny
The Pilgrim Soul: Your Journal for the Camino de Santiago is it available on Amazon Uk though ?
Deb,
I have just noticed that the other pilgrim announcing her arrival in Madrid on September 29th is the same woman who has begun and enriched this wonderful thread on poetry for the camino. I have been returning to poetry recently, as being the most profound way of pointing to the ineffable. As I tried to recall a poem suitable to this context, all that came to me was an "Almost Haiku" written by me about 45 years ago:
Today I paced homeward slowly, drunk on the awful beauty of bare trees.
It seems an appropriate motto for an October/November camino. Now I am really hoping that we will get to know one another on the camino.
Albertagirl
He didn't just die quite young.....he died while walking (to France)! Can you get more perfect than that?Just last night, I researched Antonio Machado--he is one of Spain's most celebrated poet, perhaps "the" poet of Spain. He died quite young --in his sixties--and apparently, the great tragedy of his life was when his beautiful young wife died very young, after they had been together a short time. She died in her twenties, and I believe she married him at the age of sixteen. His poetry is absolutely beautiful, and the example above is especially striking. It is said that he wrote his best poetry when his wife was still alive; this does not surprise me.
I also love Basho: simple, beautiful images. Haiku at its very best!
If you teach high school literature you'd hardly need to "take" my course. I'm sure you'd have as much to teach me as I you (I'm a bit rusty on my american lit pre 1900 and my british lit post 1900). And from all the secondary teachers I know, you probably have your hands tied (in terms of curriculum) and time swamped (from overwork) to have many literary pleasure allowances lol All of that said, if you are interested in seeing the syllabus send me a PM. Glad you are enjoying Machado. My wife (a peninsular spanish prof) is particularly obsessed with him. She studies/teaches poetry more than I tend to (not because I'm adverse to poetry, but because I'm mostly a 20th century guy when a lot of emphasis moved away from poetics)Waveprof: I can't wait to learn more about him. I teach literature too, but am pretty swamped in high school American Lit and English for sophomores--I taught a humanities course long ago, but only for a term. I am so eager to retire from secondary teaching so I can learn more about writers like Machado! I would love to take your course. It sounds wonderful.
David Whyte has a collection of poems called "Pilgrim". I carried many of them with me on my Camino. One of my favorites is "Santiago":
Santiago
The road seen, then not seen, the hillside
hiding then revealing the way you should take,
the road dropping away from you as if leaving you
to walk on thin air, then catching you, holding you up,
when you thought you would fall,
and the way forward always in the end
the way that you followed, the way that carried you
into your future, that brought you to this place,
no matter that it sometimes took your promise from you,
no matter that it had to break your heart along the way:
the sense of having walked from far inside yourself
out into the revelation, to have risked yourself
for something that seemed to stand both inside you
and far beyond you, that called you back
to the only road in the end you could follow, walking
as you did, in your rags of love and speaking in the voice
that by night became a prayer for safe arrival,
so that one day you realized that what you wanted
had already happened long ago and in the dwelling place
you had lived in before you began,
and that every step along the way, you had carried
the heart and the mind and the promise
that first set you off and drew you on and that you were
more marvelous in your simple wish to find a way
than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach:
as if, all along, you had thought the end point might be a city
with golden towers, and cheering crowds,
and turning the corner at what you thought was the end
of the road, you found just a simple reflection,
and a clear revelation beneath the face looking back
and beneath it another invitation, all in one glimpse:
like a person and a place you had sought forever,
like a broad field of freedom that beckoned you beyond;
like another life, and the road still stretching on.
- David Whyte
from Pilgrim
And the road still stretching on! I don't know a peregrino who isn't looking forward to their first steps on their next Camino!
I don't know why this stream reappeared with todays postings, must be 'the camino providing'. Whatever and why ever, it's wonderful. I wrote haiku and tanka as I walk the camino, and now we have all these poems you have all shared.
In 2011 on the Camino del Sur, in Zalamea La Real, a friendly librarian gave me a pile of about 6 books, mostly poetry by Spanish writers. I wanted to keep them all, but couldn't, too heavy of course, but I kept just one, "poems' by Antonio Machado. I battle to translate the Spanish but I'm glad I kept this one book.
'waveprof' you have now stirred my interest and I'll look for English translations of Machado. I'd love to read more of his poetry and about him too.
Here's a Pablo Neruda (translation) that I love which could have been written for el camino...
"And that's why I have to go back
to so many places in the future,
there to find myself
and constantly examine myself
with no witness but the moon
and then whistle with joy,
rambling over rocks and clods of earth,
with no task but to live,
with no family but the road."
It has occurred to me that a poem by Christina Rossetti which has long fascinated me could have an appropriate reading in the context of the Camino:
"Uphill"
Does the road wind uphill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.
But is there for the night a resting place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
What do you think?
Albertagirl
Almost single digits. Tick tock tick tock....12 --twelve--XII--teaching days left, and I will be officially retired from full-time teaching as a secondary (high school) English teacher. How about that?
Wow, that's a good one. I love the "Selah" at the end!Almost single digits. Tick tock tick tock....
And how about that? I'd say heartfelt well done for years of service and congratulations!...but am sorry for the kids who will clearly have lost a wonderful teacher.
And this thread? WONDERFUL!
...
This applies best to the Jerusalém Way, I guess...but I love it.
Selah (A.E. Lefton)
On this, first morning of my life,
hosannas are not enough.
I walk and walk,
up streets with Jewish names,
down streets with Arab names —
all in celebration of great poets
or killers.
Men who were both poets and killers.
May my pen draw blood and pour wine.
I walk through old monuments,
tombs of alabaster, car soot.
Slogans half hid
behind green bombs of melon,
grenades of black and purple grapes.
In the end, who will history anoint?
I forget who was Isaac, who Ishmael.
I walk and walk,
forgetting my own language, my alphabet,
the one carried by Phoenicians
from port to port —
trading letters aleph bet
that were rounded like stones
by a lapidist alif ba
and passed from mouth to mouth
until they lost all but essence a b
and continue to be worn and smoothed,
until, as jewels,
only their memory is left —
as I limp through harbours,
the bilge of refugees —
in this, last moment of the day,
when the sky burns purple
and the ocean breaks black,
when the streetlamps tremble and,
all around,
the noise of guns and worship —
Selah. Enough.
I love Jan Richardson's Epiphany Blessing from her Painted Prayer Book called
"For those who have far to travel".
For me it resonates deeply. ..and especially this time on my Camino...(yes I am still in Spain ...now soaking up the sun on the beach in Valencia) but so ready to go home.
IF you could see the journey whole,
You might never undertake it,
Might never dare the first step that propels you from the place you have known toward the place you know not.
Call it one of the mercies of the road:
That we see it only by stages as it opens before us,
As it comes into our keeping step by single step.
There is nothing for it but to go and by our going take the vows the pilgrim takes:
To be faithful to the next step;
To rely on more than the map;
To heed the signposts of intuition and dream;
To follow the star that only you will recognize;
To keep an open eye for the wonders that attend the path;
To press on beyond distractions, beyond fatigue beyond what would tempt you from the way.
There are vows that only you will know;
The secret promises for your particular path and the new ones you will need to make when the road is revealed by turns you could have foreseen.
Keep them, break them, make them again: each promise becomes part of the path;
Each choice creates the road that will take you to the place where at last you will kneel to offer the gift most needed - the gift that only you can give - before turning to go home by another way.
Ingrid
SO true....IF you could see the journey whole,
You might never undertake it,
Might never dare the first step that propels you from the place you have known toward the place you know not.
Call it one of the mercies of the road:
That we see it only by stages as it opens before us,
Have heard and read over the Meseta.Armenius, this is beautiful. Thank you.
I had many moments like that across the meseta. (It was not at the busy time of year, obviously...)
*cough* https://www.caminodesantiago.me/community/threads/lord-give-me-a-blister.34701/ *cough*[/QUOT
Don't you *cough* love it?
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