have we learned anything

 The sorrow

Even after

Twenty five

Years —

The unkindness

Of cruelty

(let x stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)

The Names

                      by Billy Collins

Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.

A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,

And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,

I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,

Then Baxter and Calabro,

Davis and Eberling, names falling into place

As droplets fell through the dark.

Names printed on the ceiling of the night.

Names slipping around a watery bend.

Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.

In the morning, I walked out barefoot

Among thousands of flowers

Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,

And each had a name --

Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal

Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.

Names written in the air

And stitched into the cloth of the day.

A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.

Monogram on a torn shirt,

I see you spelled out on storefront windows

And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.

I say the syllables as I turn a corner --

Kelly and Lee,

Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.

When I peer into the woods,

I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden

As in a puzzle concocted for children.

Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,

Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,

Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.

Names written in the pale sky.

Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.

Names silent in stone

Or cried out behind a door.

Names blown over the earth and out to sea.

In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.

A boy on a lake lifts his oars.

A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,

And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --

Vanacore and Wallace,

(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)

Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.

Names etched on the head of a pin.

One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.

A blue name needled into the skin.

Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,

The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.

Alphabet of names in a green field.

Names in the small tracks of birds.

Names lifted from a hat

Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.

Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.

So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart.

...   ...   ...

        *This poem is dedicated to the victims of September 11 and to their survivors.

            © by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes

...   ...   ...

Analysis (ai): The poem unfolds in free verse with a loose alphabetical progression, using the alphabet as a structural spine. Line lengths vary organically, mirroring the rhythm of thought rather than adhering to metrical patterns. Enjambment is frequent but unobtrusive, maintaining a quiet, meditative pace. The form avoids rigid symmetry, aligning with post-1950 American lyrical norms that prioritize conversational cadence. 

Imagery and Setting: Rain, light, and natural elements frame the poem’s transitions from night to morning to evening. Names appear as physical inscriptions—in raindrops, petals, clouds, bark—blurring the boundary between the tangible and the ephemeral. Urban and rural images coexist: storefronts and warehouses sit alongside fields, lakes, and woods, suggesting a national scope. 

Function of Names: Rather than memorialize individual lives, the poem uses names as units of presence, emphasizing sheer quantity and ubiquity. The alphabetical sequence resists hierarchy, treating all names with equal weight, reflecting democratic impulses common in late 20th-century American verse. The inclusion of ethnically diverse surnames subtly underscores the pluralism of the victims. 

Temporal Movement: The poem spans a single day, from night to the following evening, structuring remembrance as a cyclical, daily practice. This quotidian framing contrasts with grand elegiac traditions, aligning with contemporary tendencies to ground mourning in routine rather than ritual. 

Comparative Context: Unlike the surreal turns and humor in much of the author’s other work, this poem sustains a rare solemnity. It departs from his typical irony, yet retains his accessible diction and focus on ordinary moments. Compared to post-9/11 poems that invoke political or religious language, this one resists rhetoric, focusing instead on quiet accumulation. 

Less-Discussed Angle: The emphasis on reading—names hidden in a puzzle, deciphered in bark—shifts the act of mourning from listening or speaking to interpreting. The reader becomes a participant in an ongoing search, suggesting remembrance as a cognitive task rather than an emotional release. This intellectualized approach is unusual in elegies of this period. 

Place in the Author’s Oeuvre: Among his lesser-performed pieces, this stands out for its sustained focus and public subject matter. Most of his work avoids direct historical engagement, making this poem a conceptual outlier. Its dedication anchors it in a specific event, rare for a poet who typically resists topicality. 

Contemporary Engagement: The poem responds to post-9/11 demands for collective memory while resisting monumentalization. By dispersing names across natural and urban landscapes, it critiques the impulse to centralize grief in physical memorials. This decentralization mirrors digital-age realities, where memory is distributed and persistent. 

Use of Alphabet: The alphabet functions not as a child’s tool but as a containment strategy for overwhelming loss. The progression to Z—and the deferral of X—acknowledges the limits of systems in capturing human absence. The line “let X stand, if it can” introduces doubt into an otherwise orderly sequence. 

Final Imagery: The closing image of names on a pinhead recalls Donne, but without metaphysical certainty. The reference is faint, underscoring absence rather than divine presence. The “warehouse of memory” suggests storage without access, resonating with contemporary anxieties about forgetting in an age of information overload. (ai)

the terror of ignorance

rhetoric’s task

cannot mask

the hole

in our soul

the one breath of the universe

Listening to introduction to Prayers of the Cosmos, by Neil Douglas-Klotz.

 “Don’t let surface things delude us, but free us from what holds us back.”

Neil Douglas- Klotz (1951 - ) says that line is the correct translation of "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," from the original Aramaic.

Pope Francis (Jorge Mario Bergoglio) (1936-2025) suggested this translation:

Old wording: "Lead us not into temptation"

New wording: "Do not let us fall into temptation"

What we say of things becomes what they are for us.

 When we pray, we are moving forward. When we curse things, we are stuck unmoving.

I pray for you.

Even in stillness we can be moving forward together.

Then, the phrase "be you perfect" really means "be you all-embracing".  The word "heaven" in Aramaic, really means "the universe." 

Elsewhere, 

AI Overview

The Aramaic word for "heaven" or "heavens" is shmaya (שְׁמַיָּא / שמיא). [1, 2]

Linguistic Details 

• Pronunciation: shah-mah-yeen or shm-ah-ya [1]
• Root Meaning: In ancient Aramaic, it literally translates to "the heavens" or "sky," but its linguistic root evokes notions of breath, light, expansion, and sound/vibration rather than just a physical location above the clouds. [1, 2]
• Usage in Phrase: You can see it famously used in the Aramaic Lord's Prayer (Abwoon d'bashmaya), where bashmaya means "in heaven" (or "in the divine light/vibration"). You can explore more historical context anlow Lord's Prayer Guide. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) said that Prayer is the "Breathing in and breathing out the one breath of the universe."

There is a living, breathing scripture that, perhaps, requires a mystic attentiveness to encounter.

These words:

“The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or he will not exist at all.” (Karl Rahner, {1904-1984} Theological Investigations XX, 149.)

We have much to consider.

Like faith in sacred unity.

από τον ουρανό

 tell me

what you see

when you look

at rain

it falls

to earth

just as

truth does --

o happy earth

receiving rain

watering seed 

for tomorrow

η αλήθεια είναι ότι 

στάζει σαν ψιλή 

βροχή από τον ουρανό

(the truth that drops

like gentle rain

from heaven)

good for the soul

 i apologize

i don't care

if i'm forgiven

i wanted you 

to know i failed

to be kind

i pray

for your good

here-out 

miracles of modern medicine

 He went over the blood panel

Said what still needed to come in

The nice oncologist suggested

Another spinal tap and maybe

Begin pill chemo therapy — then

Asked what the man sitting across

From him was thinking about just then —

“Dunkin’ Donuts” the man answered

laissez les mots parler d'eux-mêmes.

 see

what you

are

say 

what you 

see

be

what you

say

now

enter

silence

Laissez les 

mots parler 

d'eux-mêmes.

let the words

speak for

themselves

push/knock, seeking le mot juste

 Yes, there is bitterness in the world. I am not one who pretends that optimism cures either pessimism or realistic assessment. We are, in America, under the reign of a foolish depravity and roiling madness that 34% of the voting population considers quaint and desirable.

The path to the meditation hall

Is steep and perilous;

I look back to view

The upper watershed.

A woodcutter’s trail links

All the peaks;

A boulder-choked creek

Flows through bamboo.

In deep woods,

Snow still lingers;

In foothills,

Gibbons have not yet cried.

Desiring to part from

The bitterness in the world,

I seek some words

From the Master.

Chia Tao (779-843)

Chia Tao (779–843)

Translations by Mike O'Connor 

In: The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China 

Wisdom Publications, 1998, pp. 11-42. 

 

INTRODUCTION 

CHIA TAO WAS A BUDDHIST POET of the Middle T'ang dynasty. Born into an impoverished family near today's Beijing, he became a Ch'an (Zen) monk early in his youth, with the religious name Wupen. While scant biographical detail of his monastic days exists, his official biography does note that upon arriving at the Eastern Capital, Lo-yang, Chia Tao wrote a poem protesting a curfew forbidding monks to go out after noon.The poem caught the sympathetic eye of the eminent Confucian poet Han Yu (768–824) and led to the latter becoming Chia Tao's poetry mentor.  

 

A more famous account—a literary anecdote—describes the meeting of the poets this way: Chia Tao, while riding a donkey on the way to the marketplace, was deeply absorbed in trying to choose between two words, push (t'ui) and knock (ch'iao) in the line “Under the moon, a monk [knocks at, or pushes] the gate.” Reciting the line over and over, Chia Tao became oblivious of his surroundings and collided with a sedan chair carrying HanYu. Han Yu, waving off apologies from Chia Tao, became interested in his poetic impasse, and immediately opted for the word “knock.”The compound “push-knock (t'ui-ch'iao)” thereafter became the traditional term to describe, not only Chia Tao's assiduousness of craft, but any poet's exacting labor to find the   mot juste,   or to make careful stylistic distinctions.  

 

What is known factually is that Chia Tao, at about age thirty-one, abandoned monasticism to devote himself to a secular life of poetry, supported by subsistence civil service. He was encouraged in this by a circle of prominent poets, including Han Yu, Meng Chiao (751–814) and Chang Chi (ca. 776–ca. 829).The group was based in the political and literary capital Ch'ang-an, modern Xi'an, the largest city in the world at the time and Chia Tao's principal home until his “banishment” late in life to provincial posts—an apparent victim of slander.           https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/JiaDao.html 

Maybe poets can wrestle reality into a coherent line. Maybe departing from the bitterness is a journey begun by finding the right words to encompass/distinguish reality from delusion and trickery on the part of nefarious imposters.

Who is the master Chia Tao seeks for their wise counsel? Who and where do we seek?

Poets do not fire guns into the heads of insane poseurs and request a clear statement of intentions and executive orders aiming to obliterate decent interactions with local neighbors and neighboring countries.

For us the mot juste remains obscured by our oblivious calculation that the brigand in DC is merely a comical celebrity acting the fool for our entertainment.

He is a far more dangerous lack-of-character.

Look for good poets.

Look for your own words.

Wrestle with them. Pronounce them. Try to figure what fits.

This is no time for a distracted and conically dunce aphasia.