Shinto

Jorge Luis Borges

Listen (to Pavi read)

When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
the endless yearning of the compass,
a book we thought was lost,
the throb of a hexameter,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the former name of a street,
the colors of a map,
an unforeseen etymology,
the smoothness of a filed fingernail,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us–
touch us and move on.

Pavi writes,
“A poem about the glimpses of grace that are our unexpected and
unlikely salvation through troubled times. Mindfulness and memory he
says. Awareness in this moment and the gentle thrill-tipped
remembrance of things past that can sometimes come alive to comfort
and console us through the inconsolable. Our mortal hearts can lean
inexplicably on such little things (such little little things! where
the shape of a cloud is a blessing in an uncertain sky, and the colors
on a map can take your breath away) brief moments of beauty that throb
and swell with the implicit sensuous significance of what it means to
live in this world – to be tasting witness a participant to this
many-splendoured assault of quiet loveliness. Just the thought of
eight million beings wandering invisible and unassuming through this
earth, brushing past us light as a whisper soft as a sigh reorienting
us away from despair in all but imperceptible silver-threaded instants
is enough to make me look up from this clackety keyboard and into the
ready, steady beauty of this moment in silent wonder- and tardy
gratitude.”

[blackmamba]