IV-VI Swedenborg, Yeats & Rilke (Parts I-III)




IV SWEDENBORG, YEATS & RILKE (PART I)

Buddha of the North 
You were kind, you were a kind man 
Drinking coffee black with sugar all the time 
At your Summer House, taking influences 
To give others, and learn from everyone 
Foreseeing the fire(s), angelic brightness 
Or demonic embers, in holy Erik’s land 
But then stoking the flame of approval 
With knowledge, a sign for men of Truth 
And faith in Light and Warmth divine 
”When someone else had been here, 
When something else had been thought” 
Researching and studying the Revelation 

The principle of the Soul’s kingdom 
Never lost in sorrow, in the House of Nobles 
While serving the crown (Ulrika Eleonora) 
With your name, oh your name changed 
And no regal mining company found this 
For our teacher, what should be said 
Of the Spiritual World’s Sun 

Where is the seat of the soul 
The question of consciousness 
For these men who are as they think 
(Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Kant etc) 
To come and go, travelling with journals 
Dreams and spirits, for you to tell them 
Of the meaning(s) hidden in the Script. 
And of marriage, a quest for lovers



The Magus of Stockholm 
You were kind, you were a kind man 
Of Renaissance in the age of Enlightenment 
Good like the coffee, unlike the damned times 
Forgotten to mention your name in this…. 
All those who read your books and could not 
Appreciate enough the work before them 
”How they will take the world coming” 

The mission (in 1744-5), London Bridge 
Alchemy, an insight near the crossroads 
Where the scientific and the religious meet 
Reason and knowledge would rely on faith 
With sincere feeling, the (in)finite comes 

An Emanation of the Divine 
Breathing and praying to medi(t)ate 
Even young Goethe had praised you, 
Though anonymously, unnaming 

On the cover of a book 
The Gardener has been taking care 
Of things, pouring water from a vase 
With temperantia, grids of algebra 
The series of degrees corresponding 
Strange methods, quite attractive 
Corridors and paths on the estate 
And a house of mirrors, too



Compassion, porn in the eyes watching you
”Our Great Chain of Being and Man” 
The reason in this era would be irony 
If charity's gone, repetition after another 
No state for im mater I al righteousness

The art of conjugial love, the spouses 
Meet in Heaven and are joined together 
Those who were meant to be, the union of two 
In selfish or unselfish way to serve no less 
For the difference between Heaven and Hell 

Written somewhere around 
30th of June, 2017 

There is just as much warmth and light in the spiritual world as there is in the physical world, but the warmth there is spiritual and so is the light. Spiritual warmth is the good that thoughtfulness does and spiritual light is the truth that faith perceives. Now, since the only possible source of warmth and light is a sun, it stands to reason that there is a different sun in the spiritual world than there is in the physical world. It also stands to reason that because of the essential nature of the spiritual world's sun, spiritual warmth and light can come forth from it, while because of the essential nature of the physical world's sun, physical warmth [and light] can come forth from it. The only possible source of anything spiritual - that is, anything that has to do with what is good and true - is divine love and wisdom. Everything good is a result of love and everything true is a result of wisdom. Any wise individual can see that this is their only possible source. People have not realized before that there is another sun besides the sun of our physical world. This is because our spiritual nature has become so deeply involved in our physical nature that people do not know what the word "spiritual" means. 

-Emanuel Swedenborg / 
Sapientia angelica de divino amore 
(English translation by George F. Dole) 




SWEDENBORG, YEATS & RILKE (PART II)
(November 2016) 

Abbey Theatre hall in a distant eerie land 
So relatively close to ours, a national version 
Of Leda, and the other wild ones at Coole 
With living memories, (un)conscious 
And still unique, how to shoot the swan 
At last not least to see Lucifer and Adam 
Both forgiven, guilt and redemption 

Sailing to Ireland 
No, I’ve never been there 
But I have seen Byzantium 
The dreams and unreality 
Or what’s left of them 
In the history today 

Thoor Ballylee, tower 
Like the creed of Yeats 
Another place to visit, rent 
The museum has been closed 
No winding stairs, due to flooding 
The museum is still closed 
For the savings of God-Man 
Would someone open it again 
Rooms just for you, to let….

Chorus:
Now there is an actor singing off stage 
”With the religious play the part of a devil 
And with the devils, when lost among them, 
Please act like a man, like a man of faith” 


With old song titles to express human being 
Travel to Italy, there’ll be mosaics to admire 
Byzantine artworks and the (in)significance 
Of a responsible poet, to brood upon

 

And now, what is the human form 
When everything in the world is a part 
Of ourselves, and if there is nothing 
That could not be expressed 
Through this being of (wo)man 
What it takes to embody truth, 
Or to know it, angry and disappointed 
Hearts would be broken again 

Near the island o
Poseidon, the golden city 

More best of Celtic tales 
And stories of the flood
 
If these hearts were not broken, 
How they should be, how they should be, 
Who were angry and disappointed 

Without these hearts broken already, 
Without the hearts broken again (in this) 
How they would be, how they would be 

Chorus: 
Now there is an actor singing off stage 
”With the religious play the part of a devil
And with the devils, when lost among them, 
Please act like a man, like a man of faith” 


O sweet everlasting Voices, be still; 
Go to the guards of the heavenly fold 
And bid them wander obeying your will, 
Flame under flame, till Time be no more; 
Have you not heard that our hearts are old, 
That you call in birds, in wind on the hill, 
In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore? 
O sweet everlasting Voices, be still. 


-William Butler Yeats / The Everlasting Voices 



VI SWEDENBORG, YEATS & RILKE (PART III)
(February 2017) 

By the Adriatic sea, the castle Duino 
Near the city of Trieste, with fine rhythm 
You could still weave sonnets and elegies 
But times changed, they’ve changed a lot 
Since then, mails became reserved electrically 
And posting has derailed in a terrible way 
Completely different from the calendar(s) 
Used by pen pals talking to each other 

The Intelligence of the Sun 
Where is the beginning of beauty 
How to translate, and not to miss 
The point, or something else 
Like the face and the scales 
Oh not to become a traitor 
In English or in Finnish [
No, see the boat and the healing 
A tradition, our working men ready 
For the higher waves to come 
”And every angel is terrific” 
Why the fear went in / on 
With the wings of a bird 

I missed the bus, dear friend(s) 
And laid with my open-letter-wife 
I would go with our little girl baby 
To heed the Word, forgetting lyrics 
If it was ”not so good, not so well” 
Forgive me, that I didn’t make it 
To your tower full of angels…. 
Instead, I went to the bar and cried 
Feeling sorry for not getting it done 
And there, beyond the veil of tears 
From all the(se) times I’ve lost yeah 
So it is, a message came through 



If the wine is red and magic white 
Like their wine is red, their magic white 
”For the wine is red and magic white…” 
Your wine is red, and your magic white 


And if every angel is terrific 
Like a mosaic on the church wall 
And their whole life is praising 
And their thinking not discursive 
Seeing everything, to look or touch 
Then real humility is like a bridge 
Over the abyss and troubled water 
”And real humility is like a bridge 
Over the abyss and troubled water”

For my friend, teacher R.W. (1929-2018)

He sang Origins in depth 
And spells in order 
How by their Creator’s leave 
At the Almighty’s command 
Of itself the sky was born 
From the sky water parted 
From the water land stretched forth 
On the land all growing things; 
He sang of the moon’s shaping 
The sun’s placing, the fixing 
Of the sky’s pillars 
Heaven being filled with stars. 


-Kalevala 
(English translation by Keith Bosley)