home

The Scholar and His Cat

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

I and Pangur Bán my cat,
‘Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
‘Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

‘Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur’s way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

Anonymous 9th century translated from the Old Irish by Robin Flower

Home by Mosab Abu Toha

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

What is home:
it is the shade of trees on my way to school
    before they were uprooted.
It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding
    photo before the walls crumbled.
It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants
   slept on wintry nights, before it was looted and
   put in a museum.
It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and
   roast chicken before a bomb reduced our house
   to ashes.
It is the café where I watched football matches
   and played—

My child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold
   all of these?

Evening by Rainer Maria Rilke

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment


The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

The labyrinth is thoroughly known

/ Bill Schulz / Leave a comment

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.

-JOSEPH CAMPBELL