Saturday, November 27, 2010

Only Breath (1)


Ah, true believers, what can I say?
I no longer know who I am.

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim.
Not Hindu, Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.
I am not from the East or the West,
not out of ocean or up from the ground.
Not natural or ethereal, not composed
of elements at all. I do not exist.

I am not from China or India, not
from the town of Bulghar on the Volga
nor remote Arabian Saqsin. Not 
from either Iraq, between the rivers,
or in western Persia. Not an entity
in this world or the next. I did not
descend from Adam and Eve or any origin
story. My place is the placeless,
a trace of the traceless, neither
body or soul, I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two worlds as one
and that one call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner, only
that breath breathing human being.