Meditation LIV (Philippe de Saint Maurice)—on the unknowability of love

This haiku is a translation of one of Philippe de Saint Maurice’s Meditations (the 54th).

As so often with translations of Philippe’s Meditations, whose originals are in a mix of Aramaic, Ancient Greek and Latin (languages in which I’m far from fluent), I’ve relied on intensive discussions with Philippe himself to arrive at the English. This unconventional practice is justified only by Philippe’s perfect command of English in all its forms, as well as of the ancient languages he first used to compose his Meditations.

love is simple yet

impossible to understand:

best just let it be.

The advice—if “best just let it be” is indeed advice—is unlikely ever to have been followed by lovers in the painful phase of passion, but is apt for the kind of unconditional love to which many meditators aspire.

While Philippe never echoes Krishnamurti (say) in injunctions to simplify experience by ceasing to think, love’s simple unknowability is something to which he often returns. He refers elsewhere to love’s “mystical mystery” and in this Meditation seems to say that love should be accepted, left to run its course, and not analysed or attempted to be “understood”.

 

Distanced Days (April Blooms)

Here in the now we think of then

And them – of times when we

Could meet outside – touch, kiss, hug – when

We felt like it, so free –

*

That world of honeyed dreans is lost

In isolated dawn

It succumbed in the last spring frost

And cannot come again

*

In April blooms the bees are woke

And drunk on nectar as the evenings wane

They seep and melt through air like smoke –

They may not come again

*

We sleepwalked into viral purgatory

Long distanced days of social dystrophy –

But nightmares fade away at dawn

If we can wake again.

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

April 2020

 

spring 2020 (health, love: spring springs)

in times of sickness

it’s hard to see spring’s beauty

in the littlest things

*

(all the world’s beauty

– sun, skylarks, cherry blossoms –

can’t make this spring spring

*

when all the world’s sick,

only health, love, could ever

make spring spring again –

*

pale flowers grown on graves

look like little things of health,

love: the seeing is all.

*

**

*

freddie omm

march 2020

Love in Times of Quarantine II (Lockdown Loving)

Still deserted streets –

Spring’s forgotten earth, lovesick

in times of quarantine

*

We’re isolated

Beings – lone, socially-distanced

Bodies in disease:

*

Now in spirit we

Should touch each other’s hearts, share

Droplets of airborne love

*

Spread lockdown loving

Through springtimes of quarantine

Till the virus leaves.

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

March 2020

– love’s words run still (twelve haiku)

things we feel will not

die for want of words to speak

them – those feels will stay

*

your breast warm on my chest

heart and tongue’s incoherence

dissolving in sex

*

how our words run free

of sense when what we feel speaks

more than we can say

*

love shifts forever

infusing lust’s hot moist mouths’

fluent sweet nothings

*

the love we feel gone –

ghosted, holed in our hearts alone

swells in silence still

*

love remembering

each wordless stroke of the tongue

bodies becoming

*

that loss sends us mad

whose griefs we know shall not pass

so we stay still, still

*

love like roots in earth

grows deep, inarticulate

all through tacit seasons

*

till we cry our loss

pain blurred blind – we’ll not be heard

nor seen as we are

*

love is a virus

spreading our sweet infection

mingling genes, bodies

*

this is how these words

might speak to those who hear and

feel their inner sense: –

*

if what we felt died

through lack of words to speak it

this is how it ends –

*

**

*

freddie omm

20.02.2020

Coming Together (haiku chain)

In the still soft hours

Of night I wake as if alone

In bed although we’re not

*

Still there in each space

Between kisses in each breath while

We sleep love completes us

*

When we’ve way too much

Unsaid we want to say and

Much unshared to share

*

Even in silence

Our closeness warms us fills us

Speaks us forever:

*

Coming together

After time apart too long

Fills a voiceless void

*

Our lovers’ talk so close

Lasts longer far than mere remembered life

Never really ends

*

While we’re together

Hold each moment hold each one

In fullness of love

*

Even in silence

Still warmth eloquence love

Speak us forever

*

**

*

Freddie Omm

(very loosely translated from an original Meditation by Philippe de Saint Maurice)

*

**

*

I took the photo of the sunset through a window, quite dirty, in San Francisco.

streaming (haiku chain)


at year’s end we try

to let what’s done and doing

settle in our minds

*

our memories edit

us in a flowing sequence

like a narrative

*

mishmashing hot nights

that wake lush fantasies of

love made (up) just right

*

as kaleidoscopic

impressions make up all our lives,

bye bye bygones stream

*

a vision of us

on waking up in beds we

don’t quite remember

*

to be joyful we should

see life as though providence

really worked for us:

*

(without edits like

random words our streamed stories

make no kind of sense)

*

our dreams of bliss are

real when woke in each other’s

arms in homely beds

*

each day we give fresh

meaning to lives streaming by

loving each other

*

**

*

freddie omm

new year’s eve 2019

*

The kaleidoscope collage is made up of kaleidoscope photos which I shot of various subjects over the past few days, including Coco the Dog, trees and skies, our Christmas tree, etc.

chiffchaff (haiku chain)

 

before the snow falls….

this winter, we’ll warm ourselves

with wine and firelight

*

within tall sheltering walls

we’ll lighten lovelost shadows

through this longest night

*

green-winged chiffchaff calls

warbling from the weeping winter willows: –

woke spirits take flight

*

**

*

freddie omm

the hague

winter solstice, 2019

*

The chiffchaff (pictured below) has an onomatopoeic name evoking its song (cf Dutch: tjiftjaf; German: Zilpzalp) – even though the trilling chirrups of the chiffchaffs I’ve heard sound more like chee chee than chiffchaff. (And how, in any case, could a bird produce an ff , let alone an lp sound?)

Most chiffchaffs who breed in Europe migrate south in winter, but they seem quite keen on the continent, arriving earlier in spring, and leaving later in autumn than other birds.

Avian heralds of global warming, many of these summer colonists are now becoming permanent residents, overwintering by Dutch and Belgian coasts, the English Channel, on southern Welsh and Irish shores, in Normandy and Britanny, and along the Mediterranean.

For all that, this slightly bastardised haiku chain isn’t exclusively about chiffchaffs, much as I love their presence and the vigorous, spirit-enlivening brio of their song.


when we make love a billion cells break free (villanelle)

when we make love a billion cells break free

our bodies flowing fluid like disgendered

creatures of great beauty growing unbound gloriously

*

although we’re only human too and so quite ordinary

we spiral into plasmic dust as spores sprinkling our eggshell world

while making love a billion cells break free

*

in some identities we hardly see

among us – beside, within, beyond us – enraptured,

creatures of great beauty rising upward gloriously

*

like stars that gleam and glow in space and transiency

like birds in deep still forest undergrowth unheard

love is made perpetually so billions of our cells break free

*

our love in life is that which lets us be

ourselves in an intensity of moments scattered

creatures of great beauty growing unbound gloriously

*

we find new freedoms freeform ecstasy

now top and out of mind and sight no need for thought nor any word

when we make love a billion cells break free

like creatures of great beauty growing unbound gloriously

*

**

*

griffith park

LA

moving


we humans stand alone and still in life until

love takes our hand  and kisses us and helps us walk and talk

*

loveless, the passing hours through which all things must pass

stand still the days succeeding days stand still

and all is focused on ourselves alone

as if the universe herself is holding breath

*

we humans stand alone in life until

one day we find our love and it is good

while loving lasts all lives are rich in joy

and come together we all taste the fruits of heaven.

*

so can we forget a while that sometimes

a human stands alone in life until they fall apart in death

and make our wishes all come true with hope

and faith in love to keep us humans moving?

*

**

*

freddie omm

venice beach

september 2019

surf

Meditations of Philippe de Saint Maurice, which I’m editing and transforming into haiku, will be published by Mad Bear Books. The Meditations offer insights into spiritual growth. I’ll be posting a few in advance here, interspersed with other work.

The first was gulls.

The second is surf:

our loves are dolphins

weaving wild unwinding waves

in and out of sight

*

our sentiments are seals

on rocks submerged in ocean

slicked in ceaseless tides

*

our thoughts’ sea lions

flap and flip on cold bare shores

to breed in rookeries

*

our lives’ deep mysteries

will swim and sink and drift through

phosphorescing seas

*

like drops in quick waters

loves, thoughts, lives are liquid

flowing surfing beings

*

**

*

freddie omm

june 2019

text by freddie omm, header pic by pagie page, footer pic by daniel h. tong

i burn for your love (lit lust) – may haiku

fresh spring rains pass by –

mist like smoke seeps up from earth,

buried burning warmth

*

i grow in your heat

pulse beats in the furrowed hearth

of this maykissed field

*

moist excited skies

spread out wide like heavy thighs

fecundating space

*

i burn for your love

lit lust lifts my loins my life

planting fresh new seeds

*

**

*

freddie omm

woke like song (haiku chain invocation) – for all the lovers everywhere

I

open up like song

let music play us sing us

melodising us

*

we two wrapped in heat –

loose entangled limbs like riffs

of carnal melody

*

interlaced and lit

lasciviously dangerous

lullabying life

*

our bodies pick up

the pumping of each other’s

heartbeat rhythms

*

in our love for us

we’re lyrical and languorous

climax in chorus

*

wild music wakes us

enchanting and shaking us

open like song

*

our skin pricked with notes

glissando licks quickening us

like a morning shower

*

in our love for us

in trust in truth we give tongue

to life’s loving song

*

II – envoi:

*

for all the lovers

who grew lonely as time passed

silencing their space –

*

music of the spheres

come join us close together

sing us woke in song!

*

**

*

freddie omm

may 2019

*

photo by spencer imbrock

valentine possibilities (haiku couple)

each love is a kiss

melting and mingling – messed-up

unmissable bliss

*

each kiss is a sign:

unspoken love awoken –

timeless Valentine

*

**

*

freddie omm

14 february 2019

*

(illustration by annie spratt via unsplash)

song of the morning muse – sonnet

Every morning I sing – the birds above

And earth below move in those dawning musings –

Those twists and turns of dream and thought, those swings

Of mood that drive us off course when we love

*

But when we think we have the lives we hoped we’d live

We sometimes see ourselves as creatures that we feared we’d be –

Monsters of imagination, whom we

Fed because of what we dreamed they’d give –

*

We travelled far through countries strange, and stranger time

Wore out our wishes, blotted all that dreaming shaped in rhyme:

Our vital hopes were blurred – still, half-asleep –

Although throughout it all our vocal passions stirred: racing deep –

*

Till one fine day (like now) we wake, we rub our eyes and then

Realise we’re singing songs of morning once again.

*

**

*
Omm

May 2018

la muse et la petite mort – a sonnet

la muse et la petite mort

 

i sometimes wish I didn’t love you yet

so much that I do I do for you but

nothing ever works for us both, and words mistook cut

us up and out of our connection, when we let them.
*
i always love the way you never get

stuck on stuff – some folk would fall into a rut

when hard and heavy tribulations put

their lives on hold – thoughts mired like fish in a net.
*
but you, you seem to blithely slip

through that wide open ocean of freedom

from all the drifting flotsam pains you ever met
*
setting sail on a climactic far-out trip

through wine-dark heavens, where you and all our friends can come –

loving, yet somehow wishing we didn’t love you, yet…
*

       April 2017