Walnuts

Blarney, Ireland

Philosophers have said that we love music

because it resembles the sphere-sounds of union.

We have been part of a harmony before,

so these moments of treble and bass

keep our remembering fresh.

Hearing the sound, we gather strength.

Love kindles with melody. Music feeds a lover

composure, and provides form for the imagination.

Music breathes on personal fire and makes it keener.

The waterhole is deep. A thirsty man climbs

a walnut tree growing next to the pool

and drops walnuts in one by one.

He listens carefully to the sound

as they hit and watches the bubbles.

A more rational man gives advice, You will regret

doing this. You are so far from the water

that by the time you get down to gather walnuts,

the water will have carried them away.

He replies, I am not here for walnuts.

I want the music they make when they hit.

Water From Your Spring

Drinking from the Holy River, Mitchell Kanashkevich

What was in that candle's light

that opened and consumed me so quickly?

Come back, my friend. The form of our love

is not a created form.

Nothing can help me but that beauty.

There was a dawn I remember

when my soul heard something from your soul.

I drank water from your spring

and felt the current take me.

Goldsmithing

Danae and the Shower of Gold, by Orazio Gentileschi

By Saladin's shop suddenly

I hear the music of gold

being hammered, gold and God.

As gold thins out,

the presence becomes a sheer

goldleaf light

on this goldbeater's face,

in his eyes as he works.

As the love-secret of Jacob

becomes Joseph's smile,

as lovers leave what keeps them confined,

as Job's patience dissolves to nothing,

you are the Friend

coming toward this touching.

You are the soul.

Be that, and when you hear yourself

in some hypocrisy,

cut free. Quickly, cut.

*This poem records the moment in Konya when Rumi heard an inner music in the goldbeater's hammering coming from his friend Saladin's shop. The legend is that he began spontaneously turning in the street in response to the music of existence.

Hoping to Be More Alive

You are an ocean in a drop of dew,

all the universes in a thin sack of blood.

What are these pleasures then,

these joys, these worlds

that you keep reaching for,

hoping they will make you more alive?

This Dove Here

Someone who does not run

toward the allure of love

walks a road where nothing lives.

But this dove here

senses the love-hawk floating above,

and waits, and will not be driven

or scared to safety.

Out Beyond

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, Language, even the phrase each other

doesn't make any sense.

No Room for Form (2)

And don't look for me in a human shape.

I am inside your looking. No room

for form with love this strong.

Beat the drum and let the poets speak.

This is a day of purification for those

who are already mature and initiated

into what love is.

No need to wait until we die.

There is more to want here than money

and being famous and bites of roasted meat.

Now, what shall we call this new sort of gazing-house

that has opened in our town where people sit

quietly and pour out their glancing

like light, like answering?