At Nightfall

The blood you once bled
Now more brightly shines
Through the hidden wounds
Of those who follow.
Light splinters to impossible fineness
In this ensphered perfection.

Where will it be then,
The light gathered and formed
In slow breath rising
Slow breath falling?
Where will it be then,
When breath is final stilled?

Gather now the rays while yet they shine
Hear now the songs while yet they sound
Become now strong, for the night will be long.

It All Depends on Who you're Fighting

Light armour and swift-footedness
Can overcome giants
So long as you keep your distance.
They also serve those who would walk city streets and high roads
Deflecting and evading occasional dangers.

Brute force is hard to handle at close range
Without diamond-fast sight
Or diamond-hard fist
Not to shatter
But to block the shattering blow.

The warlike man in times of peace
Must now make peace within himself.

Stay light on your feet.
Be swift in smile and presence.
Well conceal the mental blade
That cuts through all obstruction and deceit,
The ocean too long traveled now to harbour doubt.

Make peace, not war, within yourself
And then the rest will follow.

Of Early Departures

This post offers a poetic reflection on the perplexity and grief that inevitably arise on the death of a young person.

A story is told in Tibet concerning Trisong Detsen, a 9th century ruler in Tibet's line of Dharma Kings, Shantarakshita, Buddhist Abbott and scholar, and Padmasambhava, the great founding father of Tantric Buddhism in Tibet. It so happened that the King's daughter, Princess Pema Sel, died unexpectedly at a young age - at 8 years according to some accounts, at 17 years according to others.

Her father could not comprehend such a fate. He inquired of Padmasambhava how such a thing could come to pass. He was told that in a previous life, the King, Shantarakshita and Padmasambhava had known each other as low-caste boys and had worked together on the building of a Stupa, a Buddhist shrine which often houses the relics of saints. At that same time, the future Princess Pema Sel had taken birth as a mosquito.

While the boys were at work, the mosquito landed on the future king's neck and started to draw blood. While absent-mindedly brushing the mosquito away, he happened to kill it. Padmasambhava told the King that the insect had been reborn as his daughter in order to repay the karmic debt.


Of Early Departures
Querying Padmasambhava

Even kings can lose discernment.
When the three diamond carriers met once again
Their jeweled minds flashed forth much radiance
As that is the nature of diamonds.

The softer light of moonstone
Shadows and glides within turning cabochons
More softly suggestive of insights and excurvations.

The need to explain,
To unfold the crypt of meaning
That holds the losses
That unbidden
And without foreboding or intimation
Tear away the loved and cherished from our lives. . . .

No idle or intended slap of hand
That smites annoying insect
Accounts for this.

Gaza, January 2009

Burning Horizons

Dresden. Late February, 1945

On the 14th February 1945, the German city of Dresden was engulfed in  a firestorm as the British and US Air Forces dropped thousands of high explosive bombs and incendiary devices over the city. Over 25,000 people - mostly civilians - were incinerated.


This original piece offers a poetic reflection on the moral obscenity of aerial warfare as it has been exercised from the attack on Dresden in February 1945 to the sacking of Baghdad in March 2003.

Production Notes
Music: Nico Di Stefano
Voice:  Vincent Di Stefano



Burning Horizons can be streamed using the media player above. A CD quality mp3 file is available for download here.

The Poem

Burning Horizons

What was it like when Dresden was sleeping

When the sky shrieked metal then crashed all around

When the town was a furnace, a fiery hell-world

For mothers and children now under the ground?

And what was it like that big sky morning

When Little Boy cried then howled down the day

The flashing of atoms, the tempest of terror

The unknowing mothers all gone away?

First in Kabul and then on the Tigris

Silicon soldiers tore open the night

And wounded yet further a people near broken

And brought further darkness in fulminant light.

The hatred now stored in the cones of the missiles

Will rage and release in ruin and woe

And the heart of the night pierced again with fierce metal

The blood and the water continue to flow.

I wait for the turn of a cheek that was promised

I wait for the love of a world now in woe

I wait for the call of a sorrowing mother

For terror on Terra can nowhere go.

Anahata

Within the passion and the tension

Unleashed anger, unheld tears

Within the loathing and the longing

Harsh rebukes and helpless fears

Within the terror and the torment

Frozen fire, frozen time

The love that moves in silent moments

Calls and claims us as its own.

I call for knowledge, call for wisdom

Call for patience in despair

In midst of graces never ending

In midst of mercies ever there.

Heart can harden when hard driven

Mind can fail when too hard pressed

The love that draws us to each other

Be forgotten, be repressed.

Why must we always rage so proudly

Why is it we can never pause

In midst of beauty ever present

In midst of life’s eternal cause?

I call upon the one before me

Upon the one who clearly knows

The way beyond all false distinctions

The way beyond all needless woes

The way beyond the fire and ferment

The way beyond the yeas and no’s

The way of light forever shining

The way through which we all can go.

Failing Breath

When stilled and done of mortal breath
There will remain the wisp of smoke the burst of light
The fragrance sweet the dance of flame
The deeds of day the dreams of night
Look and listen while yet you may

Journey on and live your days
In patient love one with another
Remember all that's been and done
And all that which has yet to come.

Mother love sustain through grace
This battered home this broken place
This body scarred this air disturbed
The damage wrought the life perturbed
Keep us close to you this day

And we will find again the thread
And share the wine and break the bread
And keep to heart the sacred vow
All through the night till morning come

Vincent Di Stefano
December 2011

Of Art and Water (A Song for Bobbie)

This short poem offers a remembrance of Bob Coy, a widely-known and well-loved artist and musician whose iconic presence energised the Lorne community throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

My dear gone friend
Great lover of that sea into which you slowly slipped
In ashen remains of your once-laughing frame.

At first, a solitary bird.
Then another.
A flock soon wheeled around that billowing plume
Spreading beneath the circle of boards and bards
Gathered on furl and fall of Louttit Bay.

We were all there for your return to mother-water.
But that stark night, you laboured long alone
Then fell full still.

Your elements now curl through cold currents
And you are well-gone, long-gone beyond containment.

The birds of the air swooped into the sea that day.
They carried you to your new home.

Of Princely Monks and Waiting Women

Time in the cave may bring you closer to silence,
But the young child's cry more sweetly calls.

Entrancing chants voice old stories, enhance old memories,
But it is the one tongue that tells the time-held tales lived through every life.

The silence of the cave neither stills nor stalls the calls of turning worlds.
The glance of a full-blooded woman can dance you to forgotten times.

Wild seed thrashes through crimson bed, finding, fusing and fixing fates
That await their own awakening.

We are all free to leave. But some will choose to stay,
To feel the pain, to heal the hurt, to break the chain.

The princes have taken their leave.
The murmur of mothers softens the cries of those left behind.

Sweet comfort, strong as touch, sways through the dark nights.

Why walk on when you can hold another close?