Category: Refuge

Room 502
 
Strands of auburn hair upon the pillow
noble profile in October light:
How did we come to this, two mystics
spun into desire who merged and sank
together, ravished and undone?

Your gaze is turquoise-shattered light
igniting my desire, but can the craving
I attain by kisses spilled along your neck,
tongue-prayers pronounced upon your breast,
cause any moment to [...]

35.  Two Songs of a Dugpa
(C.W. 186, Two Songs of a Fool)
I
A sleek black cat and snow-white steed
eat by my terrace
as they need;
and both confer upon my face
the dignity and elegance
of sentient creatures steeped in trance.
Arising from my kind of sleep,
I contemplate how they reveal
the way the silence runs so deep
and soft throughout the [...]

28.  Tandem Desire
(C.W. 143 The Wild Swans at Coole)
With Jeanne, in conversion
9 November 2009
Andalucia
The leaves turn in their autumn beauty,
The beachside paths are clear,
November’s sky mirrors the sea
and keeps its silence near.
Along the low and lapping shore
Glide tandem swans in love.
The untimed moment now arrives
Beyond all count or measure,
The seer who reveres this love
Counts [...]

21. Consort Yoga
(C.W. 98 Against Unworthy Praise)
One heart in wholeness cannot preserve
itself, yet it can break in two
and joined in twoness, so reserve
the passions of the pair that through
exchange of word and glance
there runs like ‘silver on a trembling leaf
one vein after the next of chance
emotion, feeling [...]

14. A Terton to His Beloved
(C.W. 56, A Poet to His Beloved)
I offer you in reverent mood
my secrets and my treasure lore.
Wild woman who by passion led
entered a wave where moonlight stood
and lingered on the terrace bed,
to entertain divine delight.
Dakini with the gaze of ore,
with you I celebrate the night.
*****
treasure lore Tibetan ter or [...]

7. Two Kayas
(C. W. 37 The Two Trees)
Bodhi, bright essence in the heart
under what tree will you realize
the bliss known never to depart,
diamond light upon your eyes?
Nirmanakaya hues five-fold
adorn your body, scintillate:
this fact is certain to be told
and turned into a huge debate.
But let your blood tell you its truth,
how tremulous the current flows,
and how [...]

Refuge for the Unborn
Yeats Converted: Vajrayana in Verse
1. The Tantrika and the Terton
(C.W. 18, Fergus and the Druid)

Tantrika. This whole eve I have ventured through a dream
and seen you tracking forms among the stars:
first, the knot in the cord between two whales,
one leaping to Andromeda, the other diving west,
then, a spindle you divined, but [...]