The Source of Joy

Henri Matisse, Le repos de la danseuse

No one knows

what makes the soul wake up so happy.

Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil

from the face of God.

A thousand new moons appear.

Roses open laughing.

Hearts become perfect rubies

like those from Badakshan.

The body turns entirely spirit.

Leaves become branches in this wind.

Why is it now so easy to surrender,

even for those already surrendered?

There is no answer to any of this.

No one knows the source of joy.

A poet breathes into a reed flute,

and the tip of every hair makes music.

Shams sails down clods of dirt from the roof,

and we take jobs as doorkeepers for him.

A Cleared Site

The presence rolling through again

clears the shelves and shuts down shops.

Friend of the soul, enemy of the soul,

why do you want mine?

Bring tribute from the village.

But the village is gone in your flood.

That cleared site is what I want.

Live in the opening where there is no door

to hide behind. Be your absence.

In that state everything is essential.

The rest of this must be said in silence

because of the enormous difference

between light and the words

that try to say light.

A Frog Deep in the Presence

Since you have left, death draws us in.

A fish quivers on rough sand until its soul leaves.

For those of us still living, the grave

feels like an escape-hole back to the ocean.

This is no small thing, the pulling of a part

back into the whole. Muhammad used to weep

for his native land. To children who do not know

where they are from, Istanbul and Yemen

are similar. They want their nurses.

When I close my mouth, this poetry stops,

but a frog deep in the presence

cannot keep his mouth closed.

He breathes and the sound comes.

A mystic cannot hide his breathing light-burst.

I reach this point, and the pen breaks,

as Sinai once split open

for the generosity it was given.

The Face

So the frowning teacher came and left.

He is very consistent with that vinegar face.

But maybe he shows that to us and smiles with others.

Such a beautiful teacher, but so sour.

He is a pure standard for tartness.

Consider how your face is a source of light.

If you enter a grieving room

with the Friend in your eyes,

light will bloom there

according to the laws of sweet and sour.

Locked in a cell, you grow bitter, but out walking

in morning sunlight with friends,

how does that taste?

There are exceptions. Joseph caught the rose

fragrance down in his abandoned wellhole.

In this quietness now

I feel someone seated on my right

like a kindness that will never leave.

Fasting

There is a hidden sweetness in the stomach's emptiness.

We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox

is stuffed full of anything, no music comes.

But if brain and belly are burning clean

with fasting, every moment a new song

comes out of the fire.

The fog clears and new energy

makes you run up the steps in front of you.

Be emptier, and cry like reed instruments cry.

Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.

When you are full of food and drink, an ugly metal

status sits where your spirit should. When you fast,

good habits gather like friends who want to help.

Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it

to some illusion and lose your power, but even if you have,

if you have lost all will and control,

they come back when you fast, like soldiers, appearing

out of the ground, pennants flying above them.

A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.

Expect to see it when you fast, this table spread

with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

Sky-Circles

The way of love is not

a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom.

How do they learn that?

They fall, and falling,

they are given wings.

Mirror and Face

Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Johannes Vermeer

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.

We are tasting the taste this minute

of eternity. We are pain

and what cures pain, both.

We are the sweet cold water

and the jar that pours.