You have to feel the fire yourself

As much as I love the Sufi poets, I'm not very well-read as my brain simply can't take in more than a just little poetry at any given time. But maybe that lets me love a single poem a little bit more. Here is a small salty, bitter, sweet and sour poem from Rumi (1207-1273) that I really love right now. 

As always, take it with an extra grain of salt, as this is merely my very subtle reworking of Coleman Barks' 2001 reworking ("Sour, Doughy, Numb, and Raw") of translations by John Moyne, Arthur J. Arberry, and others from the original Persian. My hope was to try to get a little closer in English to what I felt was the heart of the theme.

Holi Festival of Colours

If we're not together in the heart,

what's the point? When body

and soul aren't dancing, there's

no pleasure in wearing colorful

clothes. What good are cooking

pans when there's no food in the

house? In this world full of fresh

bread, amber and musk—such an

array of fragrances—what are they

to someone with no sense of smell?

If you stay away from fire, you'll stay

sour, doughy, numb and raw. You may

have lovely, just-baked loaves all

around you, but those friends can't

help. You have to feel the oven's fire

yourself, crust to core. I would never

have known the truth of what love is

had I never felt this boundless longing.

Anything done to excess becomes boring,

except this overflow that moves toward you.

Air

NASA : Yukon Territory

I. visibility

I still see you in the shape of

your clarity, moving with such 

strange speed, almost like light

yet slow as our hearts 

beating underwater

Running in a layer beyond 

this fake backdrop painting

where you can't be seen but 

where your true body emerges,

your skin, your hair, your breath

somehow more real, more 

whole, more urgent and alive

Yet it's all unsayable—

—you said you speak my language

but I don't even have the words to bridge

this chasm you know nothing of 

crossing or even falling into

Do you know it's all there, all 
free for the taking, your riches, 
your weapons of song, of story—

this great divide that waits for you to

see its vast space that invites us to play

and revel in its air, compels our very

movement, that is even joy—

Joy that is the unspoken word

that is the forbidden saying

that is the code to the passage

where the scrolls enfold secrets

that lead to the caves no one's

yet discovered—

II. invisibility

There's a holiness that descends

when you step into a dark place

untouched since creation. Its quiet

ambushes your being and you know

the ground is a threshold you

can't escape unchanged—

—and the voice you longed to hear

all your life doesn't come from behind,

yet suddenly you know this language

and it knows you. All your words

annihilated and remade.

This is why we understand nothing

now. Why you look at me and feel

the ache of waste, why what I see I 

can't say or pull out of the soil of this

field I bought with everything  I owned. 
We can't bring ourselves to name it

for fear of looking down and finding we've 

been walking blind through air all along.

If this is all there is, then why do I

see how all of what you show the world

is just crackling bark, and the loss of it

doesn't mean death as you think?

Why do I see the true skin of what

could grow around the mass of you,

smooth and firm and fitting the whole of

your layered years, you instead like an aspen

with someone sitting in your shade, writing

letters on the substance of what you shed? 

And yes, why do I still believe

that faithful sun will rise tomorrow

when this cave I've slept in my

whole life has told me it's all a lie?

As a child, I saw it: 
why do they say 
that we can't see air
when air is what 
makes us seen?

You tell me.
I know you
still are there.

Work in the invisible

Something from Rumi's (1207-1273) Masnavi, Book III, lines 3077-3109 and one other segment, in somewhat loose translation as always. 
For everyone who fights for hope.

Two Face : David Sanford

The prophets

have wondered to themselves,
"How long

should we keep pounding 
this cold iron?
How long

do we have to whisper 
into an empty cage?"

So don't be timid.
Load the ship and set out.
No one knows for certain

whether the vessel will sink
or reach the harbor.

Just don't 
be one of those merchants

who won't risk the ocean!
This is much more important

than losing or making money!

This is your connection to God.
You must set fire to have light.

Think of the fear and the hope

you have about your livelihood.
They make you go to work

diligently each day.

Now consider what

the prophets have done.

Abraham wore fire

for an anklet.
Moses spoke to the sea.
David molded iron.
Solomon rode the wind.

Work in the invisible world
at least as hard

as you do in the visible.

Be companions 

with the prophets
invisibly,

so that no one knows.

You can't imagine 

what profit will come!

When one of those generous ones

invites you into his fire,

go quickly!

Don't say,

"But will it burn me?
Will it hurt?"

Rise!

Move around the center

as pilgrims wind the Kaaba.

Being still

is how one clay clod

sticks to another in sleep,

while movement wakes us up

and unlocks

new blessings.

Riddles for the Now & Not Yet

Stills from 新少林寺 (Shaolin), 2011

What

It is pain in the needle in the corner of the hall.

The ether of some vision that once stung you

with hope, the kind that brings fever.

It is the fire escape nobody knows of

that you hang tender plants in glass 
baubles from the iron rungs.

The tree in the middle of the tenement 
city whose tiny lights pierce the fog every 
night with a glittering code of love notes 
for ships passing by, lonely, each one.

Where

Holy city of flames beneath the 
log in the campfire.

The great carved wall behind the unreachable 
waterfall in the mountains.

That music box built into the innards of 
an old piano in a storage locker.

Places you hide your heart; places no one looks, and if they look, 
no one sees.

Places I only find, eyes closed, all else forgotten, 
fingers on fire.

Places worth climbing to, ascending 
inch by inch.

When

Now. No—then.

The night before.

A day later.

Your name was

written for you

in the book of life.

We sat in silence,

we left in silence,

we aged in silence.

Not now. Yes—then.

Another year later.

Another second before.

Why

You tell me.

I tell you fragments of the

story that surely you know in full.

Mystery loves me madly, and these vows

are a wearying thing, wearing thin.

I wonder that nothing is found.

I wonder that you still appear only to wander

when I know you battle by night; that you feel

the pain of this want even as you march forward,

straight-backed. As I crawl toward this sliver of light.

Who

The only truth:

we are to become.

And love for this becoming

is only grasped by the fools who wait.

And wait. And­—

You are; this substance

is held in cherished suspension, a notch

in history pulsing blue fire.

I am, and we

are pulled from the river mud with

joy, with pride. Even in the dregs of our slumber.

Put aside these thoughts of ruin;

you are here.

Now is the time

Hafez (1326–1390) always has something to say worth hearing in any language or century.

Now is the time to know

that all you do

is sacred.

Now,

why not consider

a lasting truce 

with yourself and God.

Now is the time 
to understand
that all your ideas of right and wrong
were just child's training wheels
to be laid aside 

When you can 
finally live

with veracity

and love.

Hafez is a divine envoy

whom the Beloved has
written

a holy message 
upon—

My dear, 
please tell me,

why 
do you still throw sticks
at your heart 
and God?

What is it within 
that sweet voice inside

that incites 
you to fear?

Now is the time 

for the world to know

that every thought 
and action 

is sacred.

This is the time 
for you
to deeply comprehend 

this sheer impossibility

that there is anything

but Grace.

Now 
is the season to know

that everything 
you do 
is 
sacred.

There could be holy fallout

These days when I don't have many words of my own...thanks, Hafez.  I run into you at just the right moments.

We are often in battle.
So often defending every side of the fort,
it may seem, all 
alone.

Sit down, my dear,
take a few deep 
breaths,
think about 
a loyal friend.

Where is your 
music,
your pet, 
a brush?

Surely one 
who has lasted as long 
as you
knows some path, 
some place inside
that can give a sweet respite.

If you cannot 
slay your panic,
then say within
as convincingly as you can,
It is all God’s will!

Now pick up your life again.
Let whatever is out there
come charging in,

Laugh 
and spit into the air,
and
there could 
be holy fallout.

Throw 
those ladders like tiny matchsticks
with just phantoms upon them
you thought were trying 
to scale your heart.

Your love has such
an eloquent sound.
The sky and I 
want to hear it!

If you still feel helpless,
give our battle cry again—

(Hafez has shouted it
 a thousand-and-one times!)

It is all,
It is all the Beloved’s will!

What is 
that luminous rain I see
all around you 
in the future,

Sweeping in from the east plain?

It looks like, 
O it looks like
Holy fallout

filling your mouth and your palms
with Joy!

In a Tree House

I'm sorry it's been a while; eventually I'll start posting again. In the meantime, I thought I'd share with you a few old, old poems by other people.

This one by the great Hafez (1315–1390) has meant a lot to me ever since I came across it a few months ago. 

Enjoy along with this lovely song by the lovely Azam Ali (just click and it'll play in another window): Noor (The Light in My Eyes).

Bristlecone Pine : Project 80

Light
will someday split you open
even if your life is now a cage.

For a divine seed, 

the crown of destiny,
is hidden and sown 

on an ancient fertile plain
you hold the title to.

Love will surely bust you wide open
into an unfettered blooming new galaxy

even if your mind is now

a spoiled mule.

A life-giving radiance will come;

bounty from the Friend will come––

O look again within yourself,
for I know you were once the elegant host
to all the marvels in creation.

Up from a sacred cleft of your body

a bow rises each night
and shoots your soul into God.

Behold the Beautiful Drunk Singing One
from the lunar vantage point of love––

He is conducting the affairs
of the whole universe

While throwing wild parties
in a tree house

on a limb in your heart.

Luring song

This, this is the thing

the heart of the universe

the nucleus of the acorn

the one sound beneath all sounds

the direction all directions 
eventually run.

This is why you are hungry.

Why you go searching

even when you don’t know you are.

Why grace alights

as a fragile winged creature

on the stone in your belly

and brings it back to life

calling it through the million years

of stony hibernation,

the slow sleep 
of the uncalled.

And so I am calling you.

And so you are called.

And so the universe

the acorn

the one sound

the directions

they hear me.

And so the call

it travels through the heartline into the being

into secret cathedrals and crevices

beneath the skin 
of earth.

And so we are drawn.

The movement of God beneath atoms of light,

of darkness, unthinkable particles

goes finally unhindered.

It is

the simplest ceremony.

I see you coming from
the edge of the desert

over the curve of the foothill

up from the other side of the solar system.

I see the water and the wind

rejoice.

Easy Target

1. Words that arrest the pulmonary valve

I am a sucker, always

ready to be crushed.

Pull the cord 

of this robe at any 
time and I’ll be exposed,

the whole length of my

soulish ribbon so easily

unraveled with your

single reveal,

lie or not.

And it is okay.

The ones who love

just to love, they’re the 

ones put away in asylums 

to dream on the fumes, the 

entrails of these heart explosions

and their atomic wake; they’re the
ones drugged for the sake of 

generative factories that fuel

the world’s healing machine;

they’re kept in padded 
rooms that pretend to 
keep them from 
falling on their 
own swords.

But we, the unraveled,

the easily exposed, the

naked and around the world

in 80 days breakers of records—

we know the shimmer of hope

when we see it. Even when

nothing but a lightsail a

lifetime of stars away.

2.  What is real is what is unseen

Inside 
this desert is a carved acacia organ unplayed, 
cloaked by a red curtain in a theater of damp walls and

echoes.

Outside

an old white man still escaping jungle

theaters plays Blind Willie Johnson songs

off-beat, his thin voice naïve and

beautiful.

Underneath

is a grid of tunnels that makes the whole

city sing unawares, notes like drops that make caves

one decade at a time, notes like bullets that ricochet from

angled wall to ceiling to wall, aiming with

intrigue.

And above,

a whole world of drying blankets and

kite magicians, ravens that map out in their ink eyes

every inch of the rooftops, the earth, and relay it in sung loops

of history, revelatory clouds rolling black coverings

off hills that were always there, growing in

secret.

3. Even when hunger drives you

You resist with your downshift,

you reverse right off the reservation.

You chase the fast without vengeance,

only learning to eat air, to drink wavering

molten light right as it passes through you, over

the curve of the world. Velocity saps your blood.

You throw your roots farther out, before

the gold in the frying pan can say when.

Riddles for the Shadow on the Other Side of the Mountain & the Pillar of Fire at the Top

A.  

The heat bore down and

the city staggered and I was glad.

It was something to feel in the

bones, to push our limits, to

equalize. To touch your skin,

somewhere in this city.

B.  

I have nothing left but half-formed

questions at the end of each night. Beginning

with what—the needle or the plough? Half-

played actions—to winnow or to fray? What

is creation, if not the movements of

molecules that keep our blood from

freezing over as we sleep?

Selah.

A.  

You never stop. You sing it again.

And again. The ocean follows your pull

and yet the land is never flooded; you move

back and then forward and always back

and so forth; you never stop and so

I am pulled, too. With a body of

water always between us.

B.  

You said I wasn’t dead, only

sleeping. But I was tangled in a maze

and jumping from story to story with

no body of my own. You said that

the mourners should be silent, but

the quiet that moved with the speed

of lava from your words snatched

the breath of every thought from

the middle of my gut. If I am alive,

I am speechless and unable to explain.

Selah.

A.  

Truly: did you see me? Did you read the

blank pages concealed in the book around my

neck? That must be why I became a ghost

thereafter, nameless and conjured only

in tales told around the fire. If only you’d

flipped the pages in the opposite direction.

You never would’ve been content

with a simple haunting.

B.  

The shadow of your wing,

wild goose, is a refuge of weather

without rules. And so I am comforted

without knowledge by bone-crushing

thunder and left weeping under a

perfect circle of rainbow. If

I am covered, which I am,

the wind rushing at my bare skin

is nothing but a cloak.

Selah.

A.  

I dare you. At the edge of

the woods. But that is all, and I am

left running in the silence of shifting

dimensions, having never been followed

there before. All must find that seam

between times by their own search.

Only comets brush my side; only 

stars say my name.

B.  

This light at the summit: I recognize

its shape, its temperature, even at this

distance. Old love, I never stop fitting

my hands and feet into these crevices I know

you carved before the beginning of the

world to bear me upward. I forget the blood

seeping from these jagged wounds whenever

I hear the air flying up to meet you.

Selah.

A.  

To travel yet never go outside—may this

blind fate never reach you. You have no idea

how many enemies pursue you. And so this is how

you climb through the bars on the window, this is how you

climb the ladder to the roof.  I want to show you the side

of the cliff where you can see them coming, where you

draw the velocity of every wave into a song you’ll

hurl at each one before it sinks its teeth into your sleep.

I leave you with this: May beauty shock your eyes

open, simple as that.

Selah.

C.  

What happens if this shape is moving

unseen up the other side? Will we burn to ash and

spirit when we reach the edge of the stone altar at the

top? Or see the continents rolled out before us, see

the world for the first time? In truth: I have assumed

I climb alone. In truth: I still assume. In truth: I know

nothing but the pull of every muscle moving upward, the

pull of some hidden magnet pulsing through the mountain,

the pull of light, the pull of light.