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.

The Soul's Friend

Listen to your essential self, the Friend.

When you feel longing, be patient,

and also prudent, moderate with eating and drinking.

Be like a mountain in the wind.

Do you notice how little it moves?

There are sweet illusions that arrive

to lure you away. Make some excuse to them.

I have indigestion, or I need to meet my cousin.

You fish, the baited hook may be fifty

or even sixty gold pieces, but is it really worth

your freedom in the ocean?

When traveling, stay close to your bag.

I am the bag that holds what you love.

You can be separated from me.

Live carefully in the joy of this friendship.

Don't think, But those others love me too.

Some invitations sound like the fowler's whistle

to the quail, friendly,

but not quite how you remember

the call of your soul's Friend.

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.