Buon Natale

Oh friend, awake, and sleep no more! The night is over and gone, would you lose your day also? You have slept for un-numbered ages, this morning will you not awake?

---Rabindranath Tagore

The man who in his work finds silence, and who sees that silence is work, this man in truth sees the light and in all his works finds peace.

---The Bhagavad Gita

I never hear the loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, nor the mild cadence of a troop of grey plovers in an autumn morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry.

---Robert Burns

This year's Christmas greeting from beloved friend, mentor, poet John Tagliabue, and his beautiful artist wife Grace, are 3 new poems I'm delighted to share with you. His introductions to everything, including himself, are worth preserving, and so handwritten he says, "I've been hearing it said to me since 1923...Buon Natale and now in 2004 Grace & I say it to your family and we hope we all will have Good Health and Somehow Peace in 2005. All Good Wishes---Grace & John". Inside on lovely recycled paper are the poems, printed by Jan Owen, which I reproduce here exactly (without question or concerns you might expect from me about grammar, punctuation or spelling)~~~

1. Gentle at ease bemused maestro

When you conduct
the symphonies of the world, little baby a
few months old,
when you begin to write your Responses, future Activities,
the City of God
actually seen in the womb, and in your bright early months,
sometimes fondled
by your dismayed and fond and amused Mother, when she
admiring
your hands and motions calls you little Maestro, you
sometimes seem
to know that the planets and stars made you memorize
the score,
you conduct with such gracious knowledge.

2. Hold on, continue to learn, to walk, to praise

One of the best feelings in the world for me,
the feel of
a small child's hand learning to walk, holding
it, or
remembering when I did, now I am 81; but
the
Universe and Miracle sent not only the Christ
Child
but the so-called ordinary child; I continue
to want
Peace that surpasseth understanding to
lead us.

3. Ongoing convictions, Ongoing concerns, Originality

You think the Sun is great but cheer up,
you are
a part of it; you think the reflections of the Moon
are beautiful,
now reflect that you are part of that and every item
or instant
of creation, the infinitissimal first seed of the
sunflower.
All over the body of every person there are stars;
you are
baffled, you are startled? that's only natural,
Mysterious,
Ongoing.

I'll conclude with this personal note from them because perhaps parts of it speak to us all~~~

"Dick, I've been wondering about your health for a long time now...we hope things have been going better for you...and that somehow we will all have more good health (Grace & I at 81, 82 can't expect too much) in 2005 and that Somehow (how??) there will be more Justice & Peace in the world. Anyway---Avanti, music, & hope & love & Buon Natale...Grace & John"