Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844

                                under …          … the evening aisle lights
         as she gazes across                  on the tinted glass
            bites her quick                         and the passing
         flicks her phone                          crimson and custard leaves
   smile in her mouth                          turning
                she has a fixed                   while the blokes do their
shake-heads, look-down –          talking – ‘so funny’,

—\O___

out of Birmingham New Street
the seagull holds the glide

southwards over the wetted
bitumen floors of long demolished buildings

cars rise slowly
to traffic lights held at bright red

—\O___

mauve pilot lights into the early evening
the crane folded away into a four

—\O___

on the regional train
the darkening has set in,

there is no outside
just a double world on the window

with occasional disembodied station lights
illuminating railings to go

went to visit my daughter in the midlands, then travelled home

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

buildings wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
cars & voices wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
crane wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
evening wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
glass & light & windows wormhole: birth in the world
leaves & red wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
mauve wormhole: mauve
passing & travelling wormhole: horizon
reflection wormhole: ash leaves
seagull wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
smile wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
talking wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
traffic lights wormhole: transferring
train wormhole: passing
world wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra

passing

06 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in alladem poems

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2018, 5*, passing, realisation, revolution, train, wind turbines

                passing
                side-on to
                the turbine
                blades a

                whole cut
                is made
                clean to the
                revolution

                generated
                before I
                realise what
                has happened

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

passing wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
realisation wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
train wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

23 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2018, 8*, action, being, black, body, British Museum, civilisation, clouds, column, concepts, crane, day, fields, gap, Germany, glass, Have, horizon, horse, Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, jar, Jon, language, life, lintel, liquid, London, looking, message, mind, mist, morning, movement, passing, pediment, plane, reading, rooftops, settled, sitting, speech, stone, sun, sunlight, tertön, text, Tibet, time, train, travelling, Uckfield-London line, vertical, world

early

the sun
blankets flat across the fields

a glint
wipes along the banking plane;

the terton,
settled and comfy in the deepest

mind, enough
to reach down a text in an

unknown
language and read it with ease;

60 mph
on the lines into town, one long

finger of
cloud between the sun and train

ever not
moving; he said he saw no need

to burden
the world with yet more babble

from a
conceptual mind; even now

looking
sharp forward through the glass

approaching
London there is a ripple in the

glass makes
the cranes on the rooftops

twitch

-\\O___~~ ~~___O//-

Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum

there was
mass of body the length of recline

the height
of seat and stone bath the end

of time,
but the keep of store and brim

of handle (the
maximum bulb upon impossible base)

were lithe
of all action scratched into blackest

liquid
despite all the belts of mist between

each day;
and those lintels planted in weight

upon the
lip of each column and across all, the

heavenly
pediment; having was being,

transcendent
of bound, the message leapt from

behind,
across the impossible gusts of gap,

the wrap
of robe, loose and sun-dried to the

crease of
agitation, there, O beast with power

standing
over me, will you take me from

here

early: my son was moving to Germany to live with his girlfriend, he was spending the last week or so with his parents before leaving; there was a sense that this was a Major Life Move both for him (and for us watching a child move to another country … even though he is 31 years old); he wanted to do a ‘final’ trip up to London and took his old man with him, we went up early – I watched the horizontal morning sun over the fields become vertical up London’s sandstone buildings; a “terton” is someone who has developed his or her mind to be subtle-enough to find and decode Buddhist teachings hidden by Guru Padmasambhava in places or in minds so that they will be ‘discovered’ in time when the conditions – and minds – are right: I had just finished the biography of Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro who was a renowned terton and teacher in Tibet who declined to publically reveal many of his found texts because, as he commented, he didn’t want to clutter up peoples’ minds with yet more babble from a “conceptual mind” (although seasoned ‘readers’ of life in Tibet at that time would have ‘understood’ this statement to mean that the prevailing karma of mind in Tibetan society at that time was not up to appreciating them – Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Londro died in 1959, the year the Chinese seized control of Tibet and the religious infrastructure of Tibet was decimated); the Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum: we spent most of the time in the British Museum, Jon wanted to have a final look at the early Minoan and later Mycenaean Greek exhibitions … I haven’t fully worked out how these two pieces are joined as a diptych, but present them as such nevertheless

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & looking wormhole: blister on me thumb
black wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
clouds & travelling wormhole: space for probing thought
crane wormhole: that
glass wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
Have wormhole: you
horizon wormhole: we held cold hands
Jon wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
life & sun wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
London & mind & speech & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
mist wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
passing wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reading wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
rooftops wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sitting wormhole: allowed all gain
stone wormhole: only
train wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
Uckfield-London line wormhole: mother and daughter
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

A Solitude by Denise Levertov

26 Sunday Aug 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in alladem poems

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

1961, 7*, air, anxiety, being, blindness, breeze, children, Denise Levertov, doors, exit, face, hands, image, journey, joy, light, movement, nowhere, passing, people, presence, quiet, right, seeing, shame, smile, solitude, sound, speech, stairs, staring, station, stranger, streets, sunlight, thought, train, water, way, world

A Solitude

                A blind man. I can stare at him
                ashamed, shameless. Or does he know it?
                No, he is in a great solitude.

                O, strange joy,
                to gaze my fill at a stranger’s face.
                No, my thirst is greater than before.

                In this world he is speaking
                almost aloud. His lips move.
                Anxiety plays about them. And now joy

                of some sort trembles into a smile.
                A breeze I can’t feel
                crosses that face as if it crossed water.

                The train moves uptown, pulls in and
                pulls out of the local stops. Within its loud
                jarring movement a quiet,

                the quiet of people not speaking,
                some of them eyeing the blind man,
                only a moment though, not thirsty like me,

                and within that quiet his
                different quiet, not quiet at all, a tumult
                of images, but what are his images,

                he is blind? He doesn’t care
                that he looks strange, showing
                his thoughts on his face like designs of light

                flickering on water, for hedoesn’t know
                what look is.
                I see he has never seen.

                And now he rises, he stands at the door ready,
                knowing his station is next. Was he counting?
                No, that was not his need.

                When he gets out I get out.
                ‘Can I help you towards the exit?’
                ‘Oh, alright.’ An indifference.

                But instantly, even as he speaks,
                even as I hear indifference, his hand
                goes out, waiting for me to take it,

                and now we hold hands like children.
                His hand is warm and not sweaty,
                the grip firm, it feels good.

                And when we have passed through the turnstile,
                he going first, his hand at once
                waits for mine again.

                ‘Here are the steps. And here we turn
                to the right. More stairs now.’ We go
                up into sunlight. He feels that,

                the soft air. ‘A nice day,
                isn’t it?’ says the blind man. Solitude
                walks with me, walks

                beside me, he is not with me, he continues
                his thoughts alone. But his hand and mine
                know one another,

                it’s as if my hand were gone forth
                on its own journey. I see him
                across the street, the blind man,

                and now he says he can find his way. He knows
                where he is going, it is nowhere, it is filled
                with presences. He says, I am.

how to be in another’s head about being in another’s head: this is a wonderful example of Whalen’s ‘graph of the mind’ – the reach and score of effervent; there is a wonderful clarity and excise about these words such that the encounter is ours as much as just reported; thank you Denise Levertov, as she touches her throat lightly to feel the vibrations as she listens

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
anxiety wormhole: anxiety
being & water wormhole: `whappn’d!
breeze & hands wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
doors wormhole: letting them go
light wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
passing wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
people wormhole: tram
quiet wormhole: new blue porsche
seeing wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
smile wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
streets wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
thought wormhole: presence
train wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
world wormhole: scintillating to mind’s content

all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving

21 Monday May 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in alladem poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2018, 8*, arrival, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Bodhisattvas, body, Buddhas, clarity, clothes, clouds, confession, emperor, falling, ignorance, immanence, mind, naked, non-duality, omnipresent, omniscience, Perfection of Wisdom, presence, realisation, self-image, self-indulgent, standing, stillness, time, train, ultimate reality, visualisation, walking, windows, wisdom

               all the low clouds keeping pace
                through the train window,
                always arriving, whether fast or
                slow, but never actually moving

                ‘I am always in the presence of all
                 the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who
                 are always endowed with unobstructed
                 wisdom’; there is no ultimate

                difference between the body and
                the mind therefore those who
                walk about in that realisation are present
                wherever an omniscient mind is,

                throughout each plane of ten directions
                within each of the ten directions
                none of them safely away in far places
                of my mind (where I might just get

                get away with anything) and when I
                invoke them to come ‘here’, they are
                already always here, far more immanent
                than I could stand on my own two feet,

                far more immediate before I could even
                think to in-front generate, far more
                intimate than my dignity could allow …
                and then at and long and even last, I’ll

                recognise it all, all my rotting lacks and
                fetid habits (never successfully hidden),
                finally signalling that I get it – confessing
                it all, each writhing and breaking-up sod

                of wilful and peevish stupidity, undressing
                it all with lay-aside relief; and it’s not
                like I’m informing them, they won’t be
                shocked or recoil with disgust or resigned

                with disappointment, it is just me falling
                far short of being right, let alone clever
                or wise, unpeeling from myself all the
                lies I accepted that said I am right,

                clever and vindicated like an emperor
                with new clothes; this immanence of
                clarity, this confession that inculcates a non-
                duality rising to a Perfection with wisdom

Bodhisattvacharyavatara II 27; V 31

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being wormhole: the balance necessary between
clouds wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’
mind wormhole: to arms, then;
realisation wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
stillness wormhole: cape and cowl
time & windows wormhole: … the underleaves show
train wormhole: mother and daughter
walking wormhole: amniotic avenue