Entering the Shell

Marc Chagall, Village by Night

Love is alive,

and someone borne along by it is more alive

than lions roaring or men in their fierce courage.

Bandits ambush others on the road.

They get wealth, but they stay in one place.

Lovers keep moving, never the same,

not for a second.

What makes others grieve, they enjoy.

When they look angry, do not believe their faces.

It is like spring lightning, a joke before the rain.

They chew thorns thoughtfully,

along with pasture grass.

Gazelle and lioness have dinner.

Love is invisible, except here, in us.

Sometimes I praise love. Sometimes love praises me.

Love, a little shell somewhere

on the ocean floor, opens its mouth.

You and I and we, those imaginary beings,

enter the shell as a single drop of water.

You Are Most Handsome

Think that you're gliding out

from the face of a cliff like an eagle.

Think that you're walking like a tiger walks

by himself in the forest.

You are most handsome when you are after food.

Spend less time with nightingales and peacocks.

One is just a voice, the other just a color.

Harsh Evidence

What sort of person says that he or she

wants to be polished and pure,

then complains about being handled roughly?

Love is a lawsuit

where harsh evidence must be brought in.

To settle the case,

the judge must hear details.

You have heard that every buried treasure

has a snake guarding it.

Kiss the snake to discover the treasure.

The Death of Saladin

Gerhard Mantz, Left Hand of Darkness

You left ground and sky weeping,

mind and soul full of grief.

No one can take your place in existence,

or in absence. Both mourn, the angels, the prophets,

and this sadness I feel has taken from me

the taste of language, so that I cannot say

the flavor of my being apart.

The roof of the kingdom within has collapsed.

When I say the word you, I mean a hundred universes.

Pouring grief water or secret dripping

in the heart, eyes in the head,

or eyes of the soul, I saw yesterday

that all these flow out to find you

when you're not here.

That bright firebird Saladin

went like an arrow,

and now the bow trembles and sobs.

If you know how to weep

for human beings, weep for Saladin.

Whatever Gives Pleasure

Whatever gives pleasure

is the fragrance of the Friend.

Whatever makes us wonder

comes from that light.

What is inside the ground

begins to sprout

because you spilled wine there.

What dies in autumn comes up in spring,

because this way of saying no

becomes in spring your praise-song, yes.

Longing

Apollo and Daphne, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Longing is the core of mystery.

Longing itself brings the cure.

The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,

and what you want to happen

in time, sacrificed.

On the Day I Die

On the day I die,

when I am being carried toward the grave,

don't weep. Don't say, He's gone. He's gone.

Death has nothing to do with going away.

The sun sets and the moon sets,

but they're not gone.

Death is a coming together.

The tomb looks like a prison,

but it's really release into union.

The human seed goes down into the ground

like a bucket into the well where Joseph is.

It grows and comes up

full of some unimagined beauty.

Your mouth closes here

and immediately opens

with a shout of joy there.

The Breeze at Dawn

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don't go back to sleep.

The Cat and the Meat (2)

If you have a body, where is the spirit?

If you are spirit, what is the body?

This is not our problem to worry about.

Both are both. Corn is corn grain

and cornstalk. The divine butcher

cuts us a piece from the thigh

and a piece from the neck.

Invisible, visible, the world

does not work without both.

If you throw dust at someone's head,

nothing will happen.

If you throw water, nothing.

But combine them into a lump.

That marriage of water and earth

cracks open the head,

and afterward, there are other marriages.

The Cat and the Meat (1)

There was once a sneering wife

who ate all her husband brought home

and lied about it.

One day it was some lamb for a guest

who was to come. He had worked two hundred days

in order to buy that meat.

When he was away, his wife cooked a kabob

and at it all, with wine.

The husband returns with his guest.

The cat has eaten the meat, she says.

Buy more, if you have any money left.

He asks a servant to bring the scales

and the cat. The cat weighs three pounds.

The meat was three pounds, one ounce.

If this is the cat, where is the meat?

If this is the meat, where is the cat?

Start looking for one or the other.

Inward Sky (2)

Fokussiertes Glück, by Gerhard Mantz

Prophets come and go for one reason, to say,

Human beings, you have a great value

inside your form, a seed. Be led

by the rose inside the rose.

Doubt is part of existence.

There is no proof of the soul.

So I ask in this talking with soul,

this prayer, this kindness, When the soul

leaves my body, where will these poems be?

Answer: It was like that in the beginning,

so what are you worrying about?

Love, finish this ghazal, please.

You know which words will last.

Shams, say the meaning of the names,

the inward sky that you are.

Inward Sky (1)

Gerhard Mantz, Die Geduld Gottes

You are the soul, the universe,

and what animates the universe.

I live and work inside you. I speak with

what was found in the ruins of a former self.

Concealed in your garden, I have become a ladder

propped against and leading up into the sky-dome.

Why cry for what is closer than voice?

I ask to hear the wisdom that uncovers the soul.

These four come with their answers.

Fire: You have a saucepan to cook what's raw.

Wear it like a saddle on your back.

Water: You have a spring inside.

Soak the earth.

Jupiter in the goodluck aspect: Show your talent,

Do something outside of time and space.

Jupiter in its bad mood: Be consumed with jealousy.

What else is there?

More Range

 Gerhard Mantz, Rachsüchtiger Ansturm

We are friends with the one who kills us,

who gives us to the ocean waves.

We love this death. Only ignorance says,

Put it off a while, day after tomorrow.

Do not avoid the knife.

This friend only seems fierce,

bringing your soul more range,

perching your falcon on a cliff of the wind.

Jesus on his cross, Hallaj on his.

Those absurd executions hold a secret.

Cautious cynics claim they know

what they are doing every minute, and why.

Submit to love without thinking,

as the sun rose this morning

recklessly extinguishing

our star-candle minds.

The Arrow

There is a hand hidden in the pen's writing,

a rider invisible in a horse's dancing about.

We see the arrow's flight, but not the bow,

what is manifest, not the source.

But don't discard the arrow.

Notice the royal markings.

We are the confused polo ball

that does not see the bat's arc coming down.

A tailor tears out seams and sews again.

A blacksmith blows on the fire.

In one moment a saint forgets.

In another, a degenerate begins a forty-day fast.

The Mystery of Presence

The mystery of presence

will not arrive through the mind,

but do some physical work, and it comes clear.

An intellectual gets bound and wrapped

in complicated nets of connectedness.

Whereas the Friend rides the intelligence

that is creating genius at the center.

The mind is husk, and the appetites love coverings.

They look for them everywhere.

That which loves the kernel and the oil

inside the nut has no interest in shells.

Mind carries reams of reasons into court,

but universal awareness does not move a step

without some definite intuition.

One covers volumes of pages.

The other fills the horizon with light and color.

The value of scrip resides in gold

stored somewhere else. The value of a body

stems from the soul. The value of soul

derives from presence. Soul cannot live

without a connection there.

Gnostic Donkeys (2)

You have a wonderful view,

but no way into the prospect.

I have no wings, you mutter, depressed,

but this looking outside the senses

is a fire that kindles the body.

Small sticks and dry grasses catch

to a burning light, and here

is an odd bit: Even if not on fire

and shining, the sticks are still light.

To those who will come after, I say,

Life is not for waiting.

Do not postpone.

Love is bringing everyone by the ear

to a place where reason cannot go,

where Muhammed's eyes close in sleep,

and the night grows quiet.

Truth does not sleep. Sunlight does not go away.

The stars are suns. Shams is everywhere.

Gnostic Donkeys (1)

I am a cup in the Friend's hand.

Look in my eyes. The one who holds me

is none of this, but this that is so filled

with images belongs to that one who is without form,

who knows what is best for a sandgrain

or a drop of water, who opens

and closes our ability to love.

We are being taught like a donkey.

A donkey thinks whoever brings hay is God.

In the same way, we are gnostics,

each with a unique experience

of what binds and what releases us.

We hear the voice of that and our ears

twitch like the donkey who hears his trainer.

Oats may be coming, and water!

What have you been given that is like that?

Confinement, you complain. Stick your head out.

That is all that will fit through

the five-sense opening.

The Polisher

As everything changes overnight,

I praise the breaking of promises.

Whatever love wants, it gets,

not next year, now.

I swear by the one who never says tomorrow,

as the circle of the moon never agrees

to sell installments of light.

It gives all it has.

How do stories end?

Who shall explain them?

Every story is us. That is who we are,

from the beginning to no-matter-how-it-come-out.

Those who know the taste of a meal

are those who sit at a table and eat.

Lover and friend are one being,

and separate beings too,

as the polisher melts in the mirror's face.

The Circle

Nothing is better than selling figs

to the fig seller. That's how this is.

Making a profit is not why we're here,

nor pleasure, nor even joy.

When someone is a goldsmith,

wherever he goes he asks for the goldsmith.

Wheat stays wheat right through the threshing.

How would the soul feel

in the beloved's river?

Like fish washed free and clear of fear.

You drive us away,

but we return like pigeons.

Shahabuddin Osmond joins the circle.

We will say this poem again

so he can play.

There is no end to anything round.

Light Building in the Pupil

Eye, by Krisjanis Mezulis

Birdcatcher, the birds you want are thirsty,

so you open the wine vat and let the fragrance draw us.

This is the wine the magi brought as a gift,

and the wine musk that led them.

There are certain night-wanderers

that you especially want. Not the drunkards,

and not the ones who just carry cups to others.

This is how it is to come near you.

A wave of light builds in the black pupil

of the eye. The old become young.

The opening lines of the Qur'an open still more.

Inside every human chest is a hand, but it has nothing

to write with. Love moves further in where

language turns to fresh cream on the tongue.

Every accident, and the essence of every being,

is a bud, a blanket

tucked into a cradle, a closed mouth.

All these buds will blossom.

In that moment you will know what your grief was,

and how the seed you planted has been miraculously growing.

Our Caravan Bell

Do you hear what the violin says

about longing? The same as the stick.

I was once a green branch in the wind.

We are all far from home.

Language is our caravan bell.

Do not stop anywhere.

The moment you are attracted to a place,

you grow bored with it.

Think of the big moves you have already made,

from a single cell to a human being.

Stay light-footed and keep moving.

Turkish, Arabic, Greek, any tongue

is a wind that was formerly water.

As a breeze carries the ocean inside it,

so within every sentence is,

Return to the source.

A moth does not avoid flame.

The king lives in the city.

Out of Stillness

I was happy enough to stay still

inside the pearl inside the shell,

but the hurricane of experience

lashed me out of hiding

and made me a wave moving into shore,

saying loudly the ocean's secret

as I went, and then, spent there,

I slept like fog against the cliff,

another stillness.

A Way of Passing Away

There is a way of passing away

from the personal, a dying

that makes one plural, no longer single.

A gnat lights in the buttermilk

to become nourishment for many.

Your soul is like that, Husam. 

Hundreds of thousands of impressions

from the invisible world are eagerly wanting

to come through you. I get dizzy with the abundance.

When life is this dear, it means the source

is pulling us. Freshness comes from there.

We are given the gift of continuously dying 

and being resurrected, ocean within ocean.

Lion of the Heart

You that come to birth and bring the mysteries,

your voice-thunder makes us very happy.

Float, lion of the heart,

and tear me open.

The Sacred Liquid

 Pierre Puvis de Chavanne, Young Girls by the Seaside

(Jeunes filles au bord de la mer)

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?

Why would you refuse to give

this gift to anyone?

Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups.

They swim the huge fluid freedom.

The Great Untying

We search this world for the great untying

of what was wed to us at birth

and gets undone at dying.

We sleep beside a stream, thirsty.

Cursed and unlucky his whole life,

an old man finishes up in a niche

of a ruin, inches from the treasure.

Value

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,

or your own genuine solitude?

Freedom, or power over an entire nation?

A little while alone in your room

will prove more valuable than anything else

that could ever be given you.

This Overflow

I could not have known what love is

if I had never felt this longing.

Anything done to excess

becomes boring except this overflow

that moves toward you.

Sour, Doughy, Raw, and Numb

If we are not together in the heart,

what's the point?

When body and soul are not dancing,

there is no pleasure in colorful clothing.

Why have cooking pans

if there is no food in the house?

In this world full of fresh bread,

amber, and musk, what are they

to someone with no sense of smell?

If you stay away from fire,

you will remain sour,

doughy, raw, and numb.

You may have lovely just-baked loaves

around you, but those friends cannot help.

You have to feel the oven fire yourself.

Inside

Inside a lover's heart

there is another world,

and yet another.

Like Light over This Plain

A moth flying into the flame

says with its wingfire, Try this.

The wick with its knotted neck broken

tells you the same. A candle as it diminishes explains,

Gathering more and more is not the way.

Burn, become light and heat and help. Melt.

The ocean sits in the sand letting its lap

fill with pearls and shells, then empty.

A bittersalt taste hums, This.

 The rose purifies its face, drops the soft petals,

shows its thorn, and points.

Wine abandons thousands of famous names,

the vintage years and delightful bouquets,

to run wild and anonymous through your brain.

The flute closes its eyes and gives its lips

to Hamza's emptiness.

Everything begs with the silent rocks

for you to be flung out like light

over this plain, the presence of Shams.