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?

No Room for Form (1)

On the night when you cross the street

from your shop and your house to the cemetery,

you will hear me hailing you from inside

the open grave, and you will realize

how we have always been together.

I am the clear consciousness-core

of your being, the same in ecstasy

as in self-hating fatigue.

That night, when you escape the fear of snakebite

and all irritation with the ants,

you will hear my familiar voice,

see the candle being lit,

smell the incense, the surprise meal

fixed by the lover inside all your other lovers.

This heart-tumult is my signal

to you igniting in the tomb.

So don't fuss with the shroud

and the graveyard road dust.

Those get ripped open and washed away

in the music of our finally meeting.

A Trace

You that give new life to this planet,

you that transcend logic, come.

I am only an arrow. Fill your bow with me

and let fly. Because of this love for you,

my bowl has fallen from the roof.

Put down a ladder and collect the pieces.

People ask, Which roof is your roof?

I answer, Wherever the soul came from

and wherever it goes back to at night,

my roof is in that direction.

From wherever spring arrives

to heal the ground, from wherever searching rises

in a human being. The looking itself is a trace

of what we are looking for.

But we have been more like the man

who sat on his donkey and asked the donkey where to go.

Be quiet now and wait. It may be the ocean one,

the one we want so to move into and become,

it may be that one wants us out here

on land a little longer

going our sundry roads to the shore.

*September 30 is Rumi's birthday, in 1207.

Childhood Friends (4)

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe

Vincent Van Gogh

Put your vileness up to a mirror and weep.

Get that self-satisfaction flowing out of you.

Satan thought, I am better than Adam,

and that better than is still strongly in us.

Your streamwater may look clean,

but there is unstirred matter on the bottom.

Your guide can dig a side channel

that will drain that waste off.

Trust your wound to a teacher's surgery.

Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,

those flies of your self-protecting feelings,

your love for what you think is yours.

Let a teacher wave away the flies

and put a plaster on your wound.

Don't turn your head. Keep looking

at the bandaged place.

That is where the light enters you.

And don't believe for a moment

you are healing yourself.

Childhood Friends (3)

Women Mending Nets in the Dunes, Vincent Van Gogh

He took the mirror from his robe

where he was hiding it.

What is the mirror of being? Non-being?

Always bring a mirror of non-existence as a gift.

Any other present is foolish.

Let the poor man look deep into generosity.

Let bread see a hungry man.

Let kindling behold a spark from the flint.

An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,

when they are held up to each other, that is when

the real making begins. That's when art and crafting are.

A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise.

The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again,

so they can be used for fine carpentry.

Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor.

Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.

Whoever sees clearly what is diseased in himself

begins to gallop on the way. There is nothing worse

than thinking you are well enough. More than anything, 

self-complacency blocks the workmanship.