When Living Itself

If the beloved is everywhere,

the lover is a veil, 

but when living itself becomes

the Friend, lovers disappear.

The Question (2)

You should wish to have a hundred thousand sets

of mothwings, so you could burn them away, one set a night.

The moth sees light and goes into fire. You should see fire

and go to the light. Fire is what of God is world-consuming.

Water, world-protecting.

Somehow each gives the appearance of the other.

To these eyes you have now, what looks like water burns.

What looks like fire is a great relief to be inside.

You have seen a magician make a bowl of rice

seem a dish of tiny, live worms. Before an assembly, with one

breath he made the floor swarm with scropions

that were not there. How much more amazing God's tricks.

Generation after generation lies down defeated, they think,

but they are like a woman underneath a man, circling him.

One molecule-mote-second of considering

this reversal of comfort and pain

is better than any attending ritual.

That splinter of intelligence is substance.

The fire and water themselves?

Accidental, done with mirrors.

The Question (1)

One dervish to another, What was your vision

of God's presence? I haven't seen anything,

but for the sake of conversation, I will tell you a story.

The presence is there in front of me.

A fire on the left, a lovely stream on the right.

One group walks toward the fire, into the fire.

Another toward the sweet flowing water.

No one knows which are blessed and which not.

Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly

in the stream. A head goes underwater

and that head pokes out of the fire.

Most people guard against going into the fire

and so end up in it. Those who love the water

of pleasure and make it their devotion

are cheated with this reversal. The trickery goes further.

The voice of the fire tells the truth, saying

I am not fire. I am fountainhead.

Come into me and don't mind the sparks.

If you are a friend of the presence,

fire is your water.

The Sight of a Soul

One of the marvels of the world

is the sight of a soul sitting in prison

with the key in its hand.

Covered with dust,

with a cleansing waterfall an inch away.

A young man rolls from side to side,

though the bed is comfortable

and a pillow holds his head.

He has a living master, yet he wants more,

and there is more.

If a prisoner had not lived outside,

he would not detest the dungeon.

Desiring knows there is a satisfaction

beyond this. Straying maps the path.

A secret freedom opens

through a crevice you can barely see.

The awareness a wine drinker wants

cannot be tasted in wine, but that failure

brings his deep thirst closer.

The Well

We seem to be sitting still,

but we are actually moving,

and the fantasies of phenomena

are sliding through us,

like ideas through curtains.

They go to the well of deep love

inside each of us.

They fill their jars there

and they leave.

There is a source they come from,

and a fountain inside here.

Be generous and grateful.

Confess when you're not.

We cannot know

what the divine intelligence has in mind.

Who am I,

standing in the midst of this

thought-traffic?

The Way That Moves as You Move

Some commentary on the quatrain:

As you start on the way, the way appears.

When you cease to be, real being comes.

This is how you slip through

to your non-spatial home.

Think of how you came into this world.

Can you explain how that was? No? The same way

that you came is the way you will leave.

You wander landscapes in your dreams.

How did you get there? Close your eyes and surrender,

and find yourself in the city of God.

But you are still looking for admiration.

You love how your customers look at you.

You love to sit at the head of the assembly.

You close your eyes and see people applauding,

as surely as an owl shuts and sees the forest.

You live in an admiration-world,

but what do you offer your admirers?

If you had true spirit-gifts to give,

you would not think of customers.

Night Prayer

Now I lay me down

to stay awake.

Pray the Lord my soul to take

into your wakefulness,

so that I can get this one bit

of wisdom clear.

Grace comes to forgive

and then forgive again.

How You Are with Me

God spoke to Moses,

You are the one I have chosen,

and I love you.

Moses replies, I feel the generosity,

but say what it is in me

that causes your love.

God explains, You have seen a little child with its mother.

It does not know anyone else exists.

The mother praises or scolds,

a little slap perhaps,

but still the child reaches 

to be held by her.

Disappointment, elation,

there is only one direction

that the child turns.

That is how

you are with me.

Your Features

The light you give off

did not come from a pelvis.

Your features did not begin in semen.

Do not try to hide inside anger

radiance that cannot be hidden.

I, You, He, She, We

I, you, he, she, we.

In the garden of mystic lovers

these are not true distinctions.

Sheba's Throne (2)

Solomon saw that her heart was open to him

and that the throne would soon be left behind.

Let her bring it, he said.

It will soon become a lesson to her.

She can look at that throne

and see how far she has come.

In the same way God keeps the process

of generation constantly before us.

The smooth skin and the semen,

the wet of desire and the growing embryo.

When you see a pearl on the bottom,

you reach through the foam and the broken sticks

on the surface. When the sun comes up,

you forget about the problem of locating 

the constellation of Scorpio.

Inside the splendor of union,

the attractions of duality seem poignant

and lovely, but much less interesting.

Sheba's Throne (1)

When the Queen of Sheba came to Solomon,

she left behind her kingdom and her wealth,

the same way lovers leave their reputations.

Her servants meant nothing to her,

less than a rotten onion.

Her palaces and orchards, so many piles of dung.

She heard the inner meaning of LA: No.

She came to Solomon with nothing, except her throne.

As the writer's pen becomes a friend,

as the tool the workman uses day after day

becomes deeply familiar, so her filigreed throne

was her one attachment.

It was a large throne and difficult to transport,

because it could not be taken apart,

being as cunningly put together as the human body.

A Small Green Island

There is a small green island

where one white cow lives alone, a meadow of an island.

The cow grazes till nightfull, full and fat,

but during the night she panics

and grows thin as a single hair.

What shall I eat tomorrow? There is nothing left.

By dawn the grass has grown up again, waist-high.

The cow starts eating and by dark

the meadow is clipped short.

She is full of strength and energy, but she panics

in the dark as before and grows abnormally thin overnight.

The cow does this over and over,

and this is all she does.

She never thinks, This meadow has never failed

to grow back. Why should I be afraid every night

that it won't. The cow is the bodily soul.

The island field is this world where that grows

lean with fear and fat with blessing, lean and fat.

White cow, don't make yourself miserable

with what's to come, or not to come.

Half-Heartedness

Gamble everything for love,

if you are a true human being.

If not, Leave this gathering.

Half-heartedness does not reach

into majesty. You set out

to find God, but then you keep

stopping for long periods

at mean-spirited roadhouses.

The Buddhist Sufi

Last night my soul asked a question of existence.

Why are you upsidedown 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.

Bewilderment

There are many guises for intelligence.

One part of you is gliding in a high windstream,

while your more ordinary notions

take little steps and peck at the ground.

Conventional knowledge is death to our souls,

and it is not really ours. It is laid on.

Yet we keep saying we find "rest" in these "beliefs."

We must become ignorant of what we have been taught

and be instead bewildered.

Run from what is profitable and comfortable.

Distrust anyone who praises you.

Give your investment money, and the interest

on the capital, to those who are actually destitute.

Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.

Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.

I have tried prudent planning long enough.

From now on, I'll be mad.

Fog

As fog rising off the sea

covers the sea,

so it is noble work to build

coherent philosophical discourses,

but they block the sun of truth.

See God's qualities as an ocean

and this world as foam

on the purity of that ocean.

Here is the mystery.

This intricate, astonishing world

is proof of God's existence,

even as it covers the beauty.

One flake from the wall of a goldmine

does not give much idea

what it is like

when the sun shines in

and turns the air

and the workers golden.

An Evolving Course

We began as a mineral.

We emerged into plant life and into

the animal state, and then to being human.

And always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring,

when we dimly recall being green again.

That is how a young person turns

toward a teacher, how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing

the secret of its desire,

yet turning instinctively.

So humankind is a being led along

an evolving course through this migration 

of intelligences, and though we seem

to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream.

It will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

An Egypt That Does Not Exist

I want to say words that flame

as I say them, but I keep quiet

and don't try to make both worlds

fit in one mouthful.

I keep secret in myself

an Egypt that does not exist.

Is that good or bad? I don't know.

For years I gave away sexual love

with my eyes. Now I don't.

I am not in any one place.

I do not have a name for what I give away.

Whatever Shams gave,

that you can have from me.

Be Your Note

Remember the lips where wind-breath

originated, and let your note be clear.

Don't try to end it.

Be your note.

I'll show you how it's enough.

Go up on the roof at night

in this city of the soul.

Let everyone climb on their roofs

and sing their notes.

Sing loud!

Burnt Kabob

Last year I admired wines.

This year I am wandering inside the red world.

Last year I gazed at the fire.

This year I am burnt kabob.

Thirst drove me down to the water,

where I drank the moon's reflection.

Now I am a lion staring up

totally lost in love with the thing itself.

Do not ask questions about longing.

Look in my face.

Soul-drunk, body-ruined, these two

sit helpless in a wrecked wagon.

Neither knows how to fix it.

And my heart, I would say it is more

like a donkey sunk in a mudhole,

strugglings and miring deeper.

But listen to me. For one moment

quit being sad. Hear blessings

dropping their blossoms

around you. God.

Let Yourself Be Drawn

You miss the garden,

because you want a small fig from a random tree.

You do not meet the beautiful woman.

You are joking with an old crone.

It makes me cry how she detains you,

stinking-mouthed with a hundred talons,

putting her head over the roof edge to call down,

tasteless fig, fold over fold, empty

as a dry-rotten garlic.

She has you tight by the belt,

even though there is no flower

and no milk inside her body.

Death will open your eyes

to what her face is: leather spine

of a black lizard. No more advice.

Let yourself be silently drawn

by the stronger pull of what you really love.

Childsplay

There is no one with intelligence

in our town except that man over there

playing with the children.

He has keen, fiery insight

and vast dignity like the nightsky,

but he conceals it in childsplay.

[Today I have been married to that man 32 years. ~ Ruth]

This Day

This is not a day for asking questions,

not a day on any calendar.

This day is conscious of itself.

This day is a lover, bread and gentleness.

Blessing

I want to be where

your bare foot walks,

because maybe before you step,

you will look at the ground.

I want that blessing.

Urgency

When the captain sees the girl,

he immediately falls in love with her

like the Caliph.

Don't laugh at this.

His loving is also part of infinite love,

without which the world does not evolve.

Forms move from inorganic to vegatation

to selves endowed with spirit

through the urgency of every love

that wants to come to perfection.

Already Under

Late by myself, in the boat of myself,

no light and no land anywhere,

cloudcover thick.

I try to stay just above the surface,

yet I am already under

and living within the ocean.

On Resurrection Day

On Resurrection Day your body testifies against you.

Your hand says, I stole money.

Your lips, I said meanness.

Your feet, I went where I shouldn't.

Your genitals, me too.

They will make your praying sound hypocritical.

Let the body's doings speak openly now,

without your saying a word

as a student's walking behind a teacher

says, This one knows more clearly

than I the way.

Our Closeness

Friend, our closeness is this.
Anywhere you put your foot
feel me in the firmness under you.

How is it with this love,
I see your world and not you?

The Diver's Clothes

You are sitting here with us,

but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.

You are yourself the animal we hunt

when you come with us on the hunt.

You are in your body

like a plant is solid in the ground,

yet you are wind.

You are the diver's clothes

lying empty on the beach.

You are the fish.

In the ocean are many bright strands

and many dark strands like veins that are seen

when a wing is lifted up.

Your hidden self is blood in those,

those veins that are lute strings

that make ocean music,

not the sad edge of surf,

but the sound of no shore.