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.