Ghost ships are sailing
on empty seas

the light that was in the darkness
it does not shine on me

So hit an elephant with a dart

and he just reaches around and pulls it out with his trunk

But hit a whale in the heart and the whole ocean turns red,

It turns red.

Concepts that have proven useful in ordering things 

easily achieve such authority over us 

that we forget their earthly origins 

and accept them as unalterable givens.

I loved you in the morning,
our kisses deep and warm, 

your hair upon the pillow
like a sleepy golden storm

He who can no longer pause 

to wonder and stand rapt in awe, 

is as good as dead; 

his eyes are closed.

Safe in the womb

Of an everlasting night

You find the darkness can

Give the brightest light …

It is neither good nor bad, 

but thinking makes it so.

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life 

as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

Every religion is true one way or another.

It is true when understood metaphorically.

But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, 

interpreting them as facts, 

then you are in trouble.

It is the theory which decides what we can observe.

One way or another,
we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life,
and dedicate ourselves to that.

The past lingers with me

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. 

It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb 

or ordering that it should be dropped. 

It's despair that so few of us care. 

It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world.

Adrift without a course,

it's very lonely here, 

our only conjecture 

what lies behind the dark.

And I was green, greener than the hill

Where flowers grew and sun shone still

Now I’m darker than the deepest sea

Just hand me down, give me a place to be

But you stand there so nice,
in your blizzard of ice,

oh please let me come into the storm.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts …

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

For most of us, there is only the unattended 

Moment, the moment in and out of time, 

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight, 

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning 

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply 

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music 

While the music lasts.

History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of 

whatsoever is grave and constant in human suffering 

and unites it with the human sufferer.

I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am; 

Mælstrom of passions in that hidden sea 

Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me; 

And in small compass the dark waters cram.

You are gone

and I am with you:

this will never come again.

Look at the sky, but it's empty now;

look at the sea, it holds nothing but despair.

I raise my eyes, but my head stays bowed...

I look to my side, but you're not there.

Just take this longing from my tongue 

all the lonely things my hands have done. 

Let me see your beauty broken down 

like you would do for one your love.

No man was ever wise by chance.

The birds they sang

at the break of day.

"Start again"

I heard them say.

Don't dwell on what

has passed away

or what is yet to be.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. 

Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the centre.

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;

but if you really make them think they'll hate you.

When the night is cold

Some get by but some get old

Just to show life’s not made of gold

When the night is cold

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.

When my father died 

it was like a whole library

Had burned down.

You live your life as if it's real,

a thousand kisses deep.

I was born to use my eyes

Dream with the sun and the skies

To float away in a lifelong song

In the mist where melody flies.

Create all the happiness you are able to create;

remove all the misery you are able to remove.

Memory is the mother of all wisdom.

When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, 

we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.

This mental space is occupied and everything is mine.

Cleverness is not wisdom.

I am a part of all that I have met.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: 

First, by reflection, which is noblest; 

Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and 

third by experience, which is the bitterest.

The only thing that binds me to the turning world below

and all the people and noise and sounds and shouts.

This tightrope made of sound

This long thin line made of my own blood.

When you read a book, you hold another's mind in your hands.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life,

lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence

and leading the individual towards freedom.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; 

it is a profound source of spirituality.

Where I come from
it's a long thin thread

Across an ocean.
Down a river of red.

Now that the living
outnumber the dead.

I'm one of many.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

As I see it, life is an effort to grip,

before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion,

the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination

before they whip away on the endless current

and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.

Winter Solstice