I Know The Way You Can Get, Hafez
The Self-Slaved, Patrick Kavanaugh
The Journey, Mary Oliver
Anthem, Leonard Cohen
Accepting This, Mark Nepo
Last Night As I Was Sleeping, Antonio Machado
I Ask for Silence, Pablo Neruda
Coming Out, Mark Nepo
Those Who Don’t Feel This Love, Rumi
Twilight Time, Buck Ram
The Opening of Eyes, David Whyte
Now Is The Time, Hafez
Poetry Arrived, Pablo Neruda
Song of the Open Road, Walt Whitman (Excerpts)
Come, My Beloved, Rumi
Out Beyond Ideas, Rumi
* * *
The Sheikh Who Played with Children, Rumi
I Know The Way You Can Get*
by Hafez
(Translated by David Ladinsky)
I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love:
Your face hardens,
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About a strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.
Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.
Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one’s self.
O I know the way you can get
If you have not been drinking Love:
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love’s
Hands.
That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep remembering God,
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting,
Just Wanting to help.
That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!
All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!
* From the Penguin publication I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy. Copyright © 1996 & 2006 Daniel Ladinsky and used with his permission.
The Self Slaved
by Patrick Kavanaugh
Me, I will throw away,
Me, sufficient for the day.
The sticky self that clings adhesions on the wings to love and adventure.
To go on the grand tour a man must be free from self-necessity.
See over there, a created splendor made by one individual from things residual,
With all the various qualities hilarious of what hitherto was not.
Throw away thy sloth, self.
Carry off my wrath with its self-righteous satirizing blotches.
No self-exposure, the weakness of the prosa, but undefeatable by means of the beatable.
I will have love.
Have love from anything made of.
And a life with a shapely form,
With gaity and charm and capable of receiving with grace the grace of living.
And wild moments, too, self, when freed from you.
Prometheus calls me on.
Prometheus calls me: Son, we’ll both go off together, in this delightful weather.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
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Anthem
by Leonard Cohen
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Accepting This
by Mark Nepo
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Last Night As I was Sleeping
by Antonio Machado
(translated by Robert Bly)
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt – marvelous illusion —
that there was a spring breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct
are you coming to me, o water,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous illusion! —
that there was a beehive
here in my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey,
from my old failures.
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error! —
that there was a fiery sun
here in my heart.
It was fiery because it gave
warmth as if from a hearth,
and it was sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night as I slept,
I dreamt — marvelous error!
That there was God
here in my heart.
I Ask For Silence
by Pablo Neruda
Now they leave me in peace.
Now they grow used to my absence.
I am going to close my eyes.
I wish for five things only,
five chosen roots.
One is endless love.
Two is to see the autumn.
I cannot exist without leaves
flying and falling to earth.
The third is the solemn winter,
the rain I loved, the caress
of fire in the rough cold.
Fourth, the summer,
plump as a watermelon.
And, fifthly, your eyes.
Matilda, my dear love,
I will not sleep without your eyes.
I will not exist but in your gaze.
I adjust the spring
for you to follow me with your eyes.
That, friends, is all I want.
next to nothing, close to everything.
Now they can go if they wish.
I have lived so much that some day
they will have to forget me forcibly,
rubbing me off the blackboard.
My heart was inexhaustible.
But because I ask for silence,
don’t think I’m going to die.
The opposite is true;
it happens I’m going to live.
To be, and to go on being.
I will not be, however, if, inside me,
the crop does not keep sprouting,
the shoots first, breaking through the earth
to reach the light;
but the mothering earth is dark,
and, deep inside me, I am dark.
I am a well in the water of which
the night leaves stars behind
and goes on alone across fields.
It’s a question of having lived so much
that I wish to live that much more.
I never felt my voice so clear,
never have been so rich in kisses.
Now, as always, it is early.
The light is a swarm of bees.
Let me alone with the day.
I ask leave to be born.
Coming Out
by Mark Nepo
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Those Who Don’t Feel This Love
by Rumi
Those who don’t feel this love
pulling them like a river
those who don’t drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take sunset like supper
those who don’t want to change
let them sleep…
This Love is beyond the study of theology
that old trickery and hypocrisy
If you want to improve your mind that way
sleep on.
I’ve given up on my brain
I’ve torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.
If you’re not completely naked
wrap your beautiful robe of words around you
and sleep.
Twilight Time
by Buck Ram
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The Opening of Eyes
by David Whyte
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Now Is the Time
by Hafez
Now is the time
Now is the time to know
That all that 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 a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
with veracity and love.
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
That this is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is Sacred
Poetry Arrived
by Pablo Neruda
And it was at that age … Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.
I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heaven
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.
And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.
Song of the Open Road (Excerpts)
by Walt Whitman
Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune — I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.
* * *
You road I enter upon and look around! I believe you are not all that is here;
I believe that much unseen is also here.
* * *
Here is the efflux of the Soul;
The efflux of the Soul comes from within, through embower’d gates, ever provoking
questions:
These yearnings, why are they? These thoughts in the darkness, why are they?
Allons! whoever you are, come travel with me!
Traveling with me, you find what never tires.
The earth never tires;
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first — Nature is rude and incomprehensible
at first;
Be not discouraged — keep on — there are divine things, well envelop’d;
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
* * *
The Soul travels;
The body does not travel as much as the soul;
The body has just as great a work as the soul, and parts away at last for the journeys of
the soul.
All parts away for the progress of souls;
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments, — all that was or is apparent upon this
globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of Souls along the
grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all
other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go;
But I know that they go toward the best — toward something great.
* * *
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe — I have tried it — my own feet have tried it well.
Allons! be not detain’d!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopned’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! Let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! Mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! Let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge
expound the law.
Mon enfant! I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Come My Beloved
by Rumi
Come, come, come
My endless desires
Come, come, come
Come my beloved
Come my sweetheart
Come, come, come..
Don’t talk about the journey
Say no more of the path
The path one must take.
You are my path
You are my journey
Come, come, come..
You stole from this earth
A bouquet of roses
I am hidden in that bouquet
Come, come, come..
As long as I am sober
And keep talking about good and bad
I am missing the important event
Seeing your face
Come, come, come..
I must be a fool
Missing this life,
If I don’t cast my mind
In the fire of love
Come, come, come..
Out Beyond Ideas
by Rumi
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.