A Morning with Sufis
Rumi Calls:
Love is the reality And poetry the drum That calls us to that. …
Why should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping? It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious. …
Watch the dust grains moving In the light near the window. Their dance is our dance. …
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along. …
When one is united to the core of another, to speak of that Is to breathe the name Hu, empty of self and filled With love. As the saying goes, The pot drips what is in it. …
This being human in a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. …
We have forgotten our former states Except in early spring when we slightly recall Being green again. …
My poems have kept me in my self, Which was the greatest gift to me, that now I surrender back.
Someone Responds:
Stones, why do you rain On my head today? Haven’t I Once worshipped you as god?
Drink up, drink up this bitterness My friend, for there is pleasure Hidden in such drinking as well. …
There is a crowd headed To the mosque, to the temple To the church, and everyone Passing by my house calls Out to me to join them.
Don’t they see? I have already Been taken hostage by the Friend. …
Someone tells me I shouldn’t Work on Sundays. Few others Maintain Saturdays are holy, and For others Friday is the day to turn Their faces to god. But Friend Knowing you, I have stepped Out of Time’s doors. …
Mind-monkey, heart-donkey Tell me, who am I? This collection of flesh, bone, Breath, hunger and shit? Or a spinning galaxy Invisible in the light Of too much analysis? …
Friend, it is in the saddest hour You need to throw a feast. Sell your shirt. Buy a loaf Of bread. Buy a cask of wine.
Invite the passerby. Use your Rafters for the all night bonfire. In the morning, freedom You seek will come when You wake facing the sky. …
Friend, how long will you Stay in this marshy place, at the foothills, Between the legs? Listen, the clear snows Dyed in sunlight, are calling your name. …
We repeat clichés to one other When asked, “Tell me how you Love me?” We behave like birds Twittering in the bush, when we Were born as hawks, set to Sail towards the sun. …
You want these rainy days To be done and sun to break Out from its cloud-prison. But how will flowers grow If there was only one And not the other? …
You find yourself in the desert, Huddling in fear from lions Roaring with desire.
Take heart! Leaping warriors With their starry spears are coming Through the night. Listen to the beat Of their drums in your chest. …
I was building A rope bridge across the chasm With these ropes, these sticks Of words, in which I didn’t Have much trust either.
No wonder I kept falling Into the rocky ravine. Friend, teach me the way Of surrender, of silence.
My Poems
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Dream – 3
At daybreak, during those inchoate
Moments before waking, I had embraced
A woman, lying in a waving field of
Spring grass, with so much wanting
That when I sat up rubbing sleep
From my eyes, I forgot everything –
Where we were, how we met, even
Who she was, except this residue of
Desire that is still flaming my breath.
Notes: During these glorious, and gloriously empty, spring days, I have been seeing these verse dreams – crazy edifices of whole lines, whole stanzas, which are perhaps the echoes of poems I hadn’t written down. And since I am yet to devise a system to somehow bottle all these flickering flashes of fire-words, somehow press them into paper, so as to scorch it slightly with these ink tattoos, all that is left to do is to report the aftermaths.
My Poems
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Some News Of This World
[1]
Apologists for wars stand
At pulpits piously providing
Theology for death. I am still
On my knees, walking away
From their dirty stink, in the name
Of Jesus, their Lord and Savior.
How can anyone save man - This hard bitter ground where No seed ever takes root? Other masters were perhaps More right; men need to keep Fighting because it tempers Character and strengthens virtue.
[2] Through the walls of this room, Radio of a construction crew Brings in cadences of a preacher. How easily he pulls verses out, A regular magician for these times!
God! I am sick and tired of his Prattle about glorifying God. What I shall praise this morning Will be quite simple: innocence Of children before their skulls Are blasted open, innocence of Nature before desolation falls.
[3] Meanwhile as before we invite strangers To our tables. Meanwhile we fashion our
Deadly payloads, singing Psalms joyfully. Meanwhile governments keep polishing
Jackboots, bayonets, barbed wire at borders. Meanwhile flags keep fluttering in rockets’
Red glare. Meanwhile we shall continue To pray for peace to spurt out of gun barrels
Like red poppies, and for those men Who hold them up to them up, fingers tense On the trigger. Meanwhile this is the distant
Pain of others, I let myself feel only When I listen to Handel’s Messiah.
My Poems
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