delicate art of poem watching

Kodak Picture of the Day, Oct. 18 (look for it in Times Square) photographer: Glenn Losack MD

http://www.flickr.com/photos/firozeshakir/1532106416/

Break open your personal self
to taste the story of the nutmeat soul.

These voices come from that rattling
against the outer shell.

The nut and the oil inside
have voices that can only be heard
with another kind of listening.

If it weren’t for the sweetness of the nut,
the inner talking, who would ever shake a walnut?

We listen to words
so we can silently
reach into the other.

Let the ear and the mouth get quiet,
so this taste can come to the lip.

Too long we have been saying poetry,
talking discourses, explaining the mystery outload.

Let us try a dumb experiment.
from: ‘A Year With Rumi’ Colman Barks, translator

~Rumi

In the early morning hour, just before dawn, lover and beloved wake and take a drink of water.
She asks, “Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth.”

He says, “There’s nothing left of me.
I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight.”
The ruby and the sunrise are one.
Be courageous and discipline yourself.

Work. Keep digging your well. Don’t think about getting off from work. Submit to a daily practice.
Your loyalty to that is a ring on the door.

Keep knocking, and the joy inside will eventually open a window and look out to see who’s there.
from: ‘A Year With Rumi’ Coleman Barks translator

~Rumi

Listen to your essential self, the Friend: When you feel
longing, be patient,

and also prudent, moderate with eating and drinking. Be like
a mountain in the wind.
Do you notice how little it moves?

There are sweet illusions that arrive
to lure you away. Make some excuse to them,
“I have indigestion,” or “I need to meet my cousin.”

You fish, the baited hook may be fifty
or even sixty gold pieces, but is it really worth
your freedom in the ocean?

When traveling, stay close to your bag.
I am the bag that holds what you love.
You can be separated from me.

Live carefully in the joy of this friendship.
Don’t think, “But those others love me so.

Some invitations sound like the fowler’s whistle
to the quail, friendly,
but not quite how you remember
the call of your soul’s Friend.
from: A Year With Rumi Coleman Barks translator

~Rumi

We have tried the fullness of presence.
Now it’s time for desolation.

Love is pulling us by the ears to school.
Love wants us clean of resentment
and those impulses that misguide our souls.

We are asleep, but Kidr
keeps sprinkling water on our faces.
Love will tell us the rest of what
we need to know soon.

Then we’ll be deeply asleep and profoundly awake
simultaneously, like cave companions.
~Rumi
from, ‘A Year With Rumi” Coleman Barks, translator

Again, the violet bows to the lily.
Again, the rose is tearing off her gown!

The green ones have come up from the other world,
tipsy like the breeze up to come new foolishness.

Again, near the top of the mountain
the anemone’s sweet features appear.

The hyacinth speaks formally to the jasmine,
“Peace be with you.” “And peace to you, lad!
Come walk with me in this meadow.”

Again, there are sufis everywhere!

The bud is shy, but the wind removes
her veil suddenly, “My friend!”

The Friend is here like the water in the stream,
like a lotus on the water.

The narcissus winks at the wisteria,
“Whenever you say.”

And the clove to the willow, “You are the one
I hope for.” The willow replies, “Consider
these chambers of mine yours. Welcome!”

The apple, “Orange, why the frown?”
“So that those who mean harm
will not see my beauty.”

The ringdove comes asking, “Where,
where is the Friend?”

With one note the nightingale
indicates the rose.

Again, the season of Spring has come
and a spring-source rises under everything,
a moon sliding from the shadows.

Many things must be left unsaid, because it’s late,
but whatever conversation we haven’t had
tonight, we’ll have tomorrow.
~Rumi
from ‘A Year With Rumi’ Coleman Barks translator

The Buddhist Sufi

Last night my soul ask a question of existence.
Why are you upside down with flames in your belly?
Happy, unhappy, indigo-orange like the sky?

Why are you an off-balance wobbling millstone,
like the Buddhist Sufi Ibrahim Balkhi?
who was king, beggar, buddha, and dervish?

Existence answers, All this was made
by the one who hides inside you.

You are like a beautiful new bride,
quick to anger, stubborn,
hot, naked, but still veiled.
~Rumi
from A Year With Rumi, Coleman Barks translator
not related just interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8QuZfT5yIE

This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness

Prasie to the emptiness that blanks out existence, Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness! Yet somehow comes emptiness, This existence goes.Praise to that happening,over and over!For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.Then one swoop,one swing of the arm,that work is over.Free of who I was, free of presence, free of dangerous fear, hope,free of mountainous wanting.The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of straw blown off into emptiness. These words I’m saying so much begin to lose meaning:Existence,emptiness, mountain, straw: Words and what they try to say,swept out the window down the slant of the roof.
~Rumi
from ‘A Year With Rumi’ Coleman Barks (translator)

Come, come again…
Whatever you are…
Whether you are infidel,
idolater or fireworshipper.
Whether you have broken your vows
of repentance a hundred times
This is not the gate of despair,
This is the gate of hope.
Come, come again…
~Rumi

In my hallucination
I saw my Beloved’s flower garden
In my vertigo,
In my dizziness,
In my drunken haze,
Whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel

I saw myself as the source of existence
I was there in the beginning
And I was the Spirit of Love
Now I am sober
There is only the hangover
And the memory of love
And only the sorrow
I yearn for happiness
I ask for help
I want mercy

And my Love says
“Look at me and hear me
Because I am here just for that”

I am your moon, and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden, and your water too
I have come all this way eager for you,
Without shoes or shawl
I want you to laugh
To kill all your worries
To love you
To nourish you
Oh the sweet bitterness
I will soothe you and heal you
I will bring you roses
I too, have been covered with thorns
~Rumi