You stay up all night, opening books looking for explanations and justifications.

You sit in leaky boats, in the middle of a flood, arguing who has the better oars!

Poorna* says: Don't stay in dark tarvens, moaning about error. Walk into a cathedral of trees. Get drunk on light's grace!

Poorna* - One who is complete, like the full moon. It was also the name of my great grandfather, a mystic and a poet.

Use the sickle of longing To reap stalks heavy with desire.

Let the grindstone of practice Turn you into a sack of flour.

Load the ovens of love with dough And make thousands of loaves.

Invite the city for a feast. Give away Everything you possess. Go hungry.

Poorna says: Only when the ego is emptied, Does one hear cosmic beat of the inner drum!

Which mad prophet will come, wearing a shirt of fire, To quench this world’s bottomless thirst for fire?

At borders, to be only seen as lines on maps, Guns make mountains burst into fire.

In cities of disquiet, when morning comes Bodies are poured, as dust, over night’s fire.

Most of us are confused, a mixture of wine and water. What will help separate love and lust? Longing’s fire.

So many ways of prayer, and as many ways of murder. Did all our heartless gods, before heaven, create first hell fire?

And you, Beloved, ask why your hands are burnt? Listen. This heart you so casually play with is an organ of fire!

(To be read to the long riff of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’)