The End of March 

Elizabeth Bishop


It was cold and windy, scarcely the day
to take a walk on that long beach.
Everything was withdrawn as far as possible,
indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken,
seabirds in ones or twos.
The rackety, icy, offshore wind
numbed our faces on one side;
disrupted the formation
of a lone flight of Canada geese;
and blew back the low, inaudible rollers
in upright, steely mist.

The sky was darker than the water
--it  was the color of mutton-fat jade.
Along the wet sand, in rubber boots, we followed
a track of big dog-prints (so big
they were more like like lion-prints). Then we came on
lengths and lengths, endless, of wet white string,
looping up to the tide line, down to the water,
over and over. Finally, they did end:
a thick white snarl, man-size, awash,
rising on every wave, a sodden ghost,
falling back, sodden, giving up the ghost....
a kite string? --But no kite.

I wanted to get as far as my proto-dream-house,

my crypto-dream-house, that crooked box
set up on pilings, shingled green,
a sort of artichoke of a house, but greener
(boiled with bicarbonate of soda?),
protected from spring tides by a palisade
of--are they railroad ties?
(Many things about this place are dubious).
I'd like to retire there and do nothing,
or nothing much, forever in two bare rooms:

look through binoculars,read boring books,
old, long, long books, and write down useless notes,
talk to myself, and, foggy days,
watch the droplets slipping, heavy with light.
At night, a grog a l’américaine.
I'd blaze it with a kitchen match
and lovely diaphanous blue flame
would waver, doubled in the window.
There must be a stove, there is a chimney,
askew, but braced with wires,
and electricity possibly
--at least, at the back another wire
limply leashes the whole affair
to something off behind the dunes.
A light to read by--perfect! But--impossible.
And that day the wind was much too cold
even to get that far,
and of course the house was boarded up.

On the way back our faces froze on the other side.
The sun came out for just a minute.
For just a minute, set in their bezels of sand,
the drab, damp, scattered stones
were multi-colored,
and all those high enough threw out long shadows,
individual shadows, then pulled them in again.
They could have been teasing the lion sun,
except that now he was behind them
--a sun who'd walked the beach the last low tide,
making those big, majestic paw-prints,
who perhaps had batted a kite out of the sky to play with.

One

Your spirit is mingled with mine,
as wine is with water;
whatever touches you touches me.
In all the stations of the soul you are I.

Mansur al-Hallaj (Persia, 9th century)

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don't open the door to the study

and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

from "Song of the Universal"

....
In spiral routes, by long detours (as a much-tacking ship upon the sea)
For it, the partial to the permanent flowing,
For it the real to the ideal tends.
....
For it, the mystic evolution,
Not the right only justified, what we call evil also justified.
....
Electric, antiseptic yet, cleaving, suffusing all,
only the good is universal.
....
Over the mountain-growth's disease and sorrow,
an uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,
high in the purer, happier air.
....
Oh the blest eyes, the happy hearts,
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine,
Along the mighty labyrinth.
Walt Whitman

"All Is Truth"

O ME, man of slack faith so long!

Standing aloof--denying portions so long;

Only aware to-day of compact, all-diffused truth;

Discovering to-day there is no lie, or form of lie, and can be none,

but grows as inevitably upon itself as the truth does upon

itself,

Or as any law of the earth, or any natural production of the earth

does.

(This is curious, and may not be realized immediately--But it must be

realized;

I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,

And that the universe does.)

Where has fail'd a perfect return, indifferent of lies or the truth?

Is it upon the ground, or in water or fire? or in the spirit of man?

or in the meat and blood?

Meditating among liars, and retreating sternly into myself, I see

that there are really no liars or lies after all,

And that nothing fails its perfect return--And that what are called

lies are perfect returns,

And that each thing exactly represents itself, and what has preceded

it,

Ant that the truth includes all, and is compact, just as much as

space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the truth--but

that all is truth without exception;

And henceforth I will go celebrate anything I see or am,

And sing and laugh, and deny nothing.

Walt Whitman

from "Not a Day on Any Calendar"

This is not a day for asking questions,

not a day on any calendar.

This day is conscious of itself.

Today is a lover, bread, and gentleness,

more manifest than saying can say.

Thoughts take form with words,

but this daylight is beyond and before

thinking and imagining.

Rumi