Through The Smoke Hole

  

There is another world above this one; or outside of this one;  the way to it is thru the smoke of this one, & the hole that smoke goes thru. The ladder is the way thru the smoke hole;  the ladder holds up, some say, the world above; it might have been a tree or a pole; I think it is merely a way.

Fire is at the foot of the ladder. The fire is in the center. The walls are round. There is also another world below or inside this one. The way there is down thru the smoke. It is not necessary to think of a series.

Raven and Magpie do not need the ladder. They fly thru the smoke holes shrieking and stealing. Coyote falls thru; we recognize him only as a clumsy relative, a father in old clothes we don’t wish to see with our friends.

It is possible to cultivate the fields of our own world without much thought for the others. When men emerge from below we see them as the masked dancers of our magic dreams. When men disappear down, we see them as plain men going somewhere else.  When men disappear up we see them as great heroes shining thru the smoke. When men come back from above they fall thru and tumble; we don’t really know them; Coyote, as mentioned before.

Gary Snyder

William Butler Yeats

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

An open book and empty cup

On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless.

from   Vacillation  by  William Butler Yeats

A living man is blind and drinks his drop.

What matter if the ditches are impure?

What matter if I live it all once more?

Endure that toil of growing up;

The ignominy of boyhood; the distress

of boyhood growing into man;

The unfinished man and his pain

Brought face to face with his own clumsiness;

The finished man among his enemies? –

How in the name of Heaven can he escape

That defiling and disfigured shape

The mirror of malicious eyes

Casts upon his eye until at last

He thinks that shape must be his shape?

And what’s the good of an escape

If honour find him in the wintry blast?

I am content to live it all again

And yet again, if it be life to pitch

Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch,

A blind man battering blind men;

Or into that most fecund ditch of all,

The folly that man does

Or must suffer, if he woos

A proud woman not kindred of his soul.

I am content to follow to its source

Every event in action or in thought;

Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

When such as I cast out remorse

So great a sweetness flows into the breast

We must laugh and we must sing,

We are blest by everything,

Every thing we look upon is blest.

from   Dialogue Between The Self And The Soul  by  William Butler Yeats

Robert Bly  &  Michael Meade

now each day

i hear that thunderous voice

speak clearly

and show the way of oneness

 and when I look at you

i see my own reflected brightness

streaming from your eyes

radiant face of me shines back from you

 david barnes