Music Master

You that love lovers,

this is your home. Welcome.

In the midst of making form,

love made this form that melts form,

with love for the door

and soul for the vestibule.

Watch the dust grains

moving in the light near the window.

Their dance is our dance.

We rarely hear the inward music,

but we are all dancing to it nevertheless,

directed by the one who teaches us,

the pure joy of the sun,

our music master.

The Truest Devotion

Moses ran after the shepherd.

He followed the bewildered footprints,

in one place moving straight like a castle

across a chessboard.

Then sideways, like a bishop.

Now surging, like a wave cresting.

Now sliding down

like a fish, with always his feet

making geomancy

symbols in the sand,

recording his wandering state.

Moses finally caught up with him.

I was wrong. God has revealed to me

that there are no rules for worship.

Say whatever and however your loving tells you to.

Your sweet blasphemy is the truest devotion.

Through you a whole world is freed.

Loosen your tongue

and don't worry what comes out.

It is all the light of the spirit.

Presences

Listen to presences inside poems.

Let them take you where they will.

Follow those private hints,

and never leave the premises.

Constant Conversation

Who is luckiest in this whole orchestra? The reed.

Its mouth touches your lips to learn music.

All reeds, sugarcane especially, think only

of this chance. They sway in the canebrake,

free in the many ways they dance.

Without you the instruments would die.

One sits close beside you. Another takes a long kiss.

The tambourine begs, Touch my skin, so I can be myself.

Let me feel you enter each limb bone by bone,

that what died last night can be whole today.

Why live some soberer way and feel you ebbing out?

I won't do it.

Either give me enough wine or leave me alone,

now that I know how it is

to be with you in a constant conversation.

Whatever You Really See

A human being is essentially

a spirit-eye.

Whatever you really see,

you are that.

The Wandering Kings

The King of Tabuk went on like this,

praising Imra'u 'l-Qays, and talking theology

and philosophy. Imra'u 'l-Qays kept silent.

Then suddenly he leaned and whispered something

in the second king's ear, and that second

that second king became a wanderer too.

They walked out of town hand in hand.

No royal belts, no thrones.

This is what love does and continues to do.

It tastes like honey to adults and milk to children.

Love is the last thirty-pound bale.

When you load it on, the boat tips over.

So they wandered around China like birds pecking

at bits of grain. They rarely spoke because

of the dangerous seriousness of the secret they knew.

That love-secret spoken pleasantly, or in irritation,

severs a hundred thousand heads in one swing.

A love-lion grazes in the soul's pasture,

while the scimitar of this secret approaches.

It is a killing better than any living.

All that world-power wants, really, is this weakness.

The Vigil

Lovers cannot sleep

when they feel the privacy

of the beloved all around them.

Someone who is thirsty

may sleep for a little while,

but he or she will dream of water,

a full jar beside a creek,

or the spirit-water you get

from another person.

All night, listen to the conversation.

Stay up. This moment is all there is.