Home

I sift the image debris of old homes, brushing the sand out from bones carefully. I have become a shadow watcher, reading wood shavings on the floor as tea-leaves. I see light paint recede into ever-darkening corners (park, lamp, candle, hung filigree). Each space can lurch into life-- a sudden carnival stage-set-- turning slowly, creaking loudly. These spaces are humming, and strange, and then quiet. Sometimes there are passages and tunnels underneath, other times there are torn light pathways from walls that breathe like skin to an outside world. There are always lights that mark the edge of the stage.

5

With echoes for neighbors
we will die together
and live in the shadow of the seasons,
in dust,
in the open book of prairies,
in grass we trampled once
and signed with our footprints.

We will stay like relics
of our kind
for our kind--
reminders, shadows,
echoes of echoes.

from 'Voices' by Adonis (Ali Ahmed Said), Transformations of the Lover 

6

Mihyar assembles space
and spins it on his tray.
He towers over everything.
Nights are his paths,
and stars are his fires.

One look at his face--
and the sky brightens.

from 'Voices' by Adonis (Ali Ahmed Said), Transformations of the Lover 

When We Pray Alone

We are brought thick desserts, and we rarely refuse them.
We worship devoutly when we're with others.
Hours we sit,
                     though we get up quickly,
after a few minutes, when we pray alone.
We hurry down the gullet of our wantings.

But these qualities can change,
as minerals in the ground rise inside trees
and become tree, as a plant faces an animal
and enters the animal, so a human
can put down the heavy
body-baggage and
be light.

Rumi, tr. by Coleman Barks

The Wanderer

A wanderer, I make a prayer
of dust.
             Exiled, I sing
my soul until the world
burns to my chants
as to a miracle.
              Thus am I
risen.
               Thus am I redeemed.

Adonis, (Ali Ahmed Said), Transformations of the Lovers, tr. Samuel Hazo

The Annunciation

It was not night, not even when the darkness came
That came blacker than any night, and more fearful,
Like a bell beating and I under its darkness dying
To the stun of the sound. Before that
It was not dark nor loud nor any way strange,
Just the empty kitchen, with the smell of the bean-flowers
In their late blossom, coming in at the window,
And the stillness, just that empty hour of the afternoon
                              When it is hard indeed to believe in time...

W.S. Merwin, from The First Four Books of Poems

Attributes of the Lovers

Sifting through old writings I came upon this enchanted tiny fragment.  As I continue to read and study and write-- over the years the tracery of my thoughts overlap.  I find much comfort in the repetition of obsessive themes-- as my thoughts circle back like wing-beats to a similar theme I can try again to overlay the trace paper with something more true, more frilled and delicate.  I have always tried to write about a spiritual beloved-- to outline the shape of ecstatic love with the graphite dust from everyday passions, from real figures and shapes.  How to address this type of love/ beloved except with constant praises and attention?

Attributes of the Lovers:

Magpie, orchids, alexandrite, tourmaline, Iceland spar, wormwood, ergot and ecbolics, ominous appearances, banshees (?)

Gary Snyder

“If a Bodhisattva retains the thought of an ego, a person, a being, or a soul, he is no more a Bodhisattva.”

            You be Bosatsu,

            I’ll be the taxi-driver

            Driving you home.

The curious multi-stratified metamorphic rock.  Blue and white,

clouds reaching out.  To survive a winter here learn to browse

and live in holes in the rocks under the snow.

Sabi: One does not have a great deal to give.  That which one

does give has been polished and perfected into a spontaneous

emptiness; sterility made creative, it has no pretensions, and

encompasses everything.

                                    Zen view, o.k.?

Cratershan 15 August 1957

Lookout’s Journal

Gary Snyder, Earth House Hold

279

Last night in sleep I dreamed- yet what sleep is there for lovers?-- that I was searching inside the Kaaba for where a prayer-niche might be.

The Kaaba of the spirits, not the Kaaba which, when you reach it on a dark night, you say, "Where is candle or moon-light?"

Nay, rather its foundations are the light of the whole world, from which the rays of your spirit take light. Only how can the soul endure it?

Its hospice is all light, its carpeting is knowledge and reason, its Sufis all bewildered, where is the clatter of your shoes?

Fortunate one, the crown and throne you hold hidden in you are beyond the imagination of Kay-qobad and Sanjar and Sohrab.

Bird of heart, fly amidst the garden of its beauty, for there is a secure abode; where is snare or beating stick?

There is a gift in the midst of your body's loans; search in the middle of the soul for the gift of Giver.

Rumi, tr.A.J. Arberry, Mystical Poems of Rumi 2

As cinders curl inwards on themselves

As lit cinders curl inward,

You are the round changing edge,

slow-burning tracery,

charcoal-spiral.

I follow you closely along the burn-path,

you are smoke from the edge,

you are cinder ground ash,

you are the curl of the wood as it gives, just now, into fire.

You are smoke-storm racing down the hill, hot path,

water-seeker.

I am black pitch no-sound, whisperer,

quiet-coiled.

You are singed, then waterspun,

dervish-one, molten-borne.

I am cooling bath,

routed-out, muddied-one,

sacred pool, crystal heart,

spark-found. 

elg 2010

All minerals and schist

All minerals and schist,

you are true sun,

golden, bright.

we two have to tone down our brightness,

we can’t be beacons and fuel

this time.

Now,

we are inward gold, handspun,

molten.

your hair is like floss dear,

your sweetness spills out

like rays from a lit cut gem.

eg 4/22/2010

304

Give that spirited wine, for we are all in such a state that we cannot tell wine from cup, head from foot.
We are all fresher than the lily and the rose branch, become entirely spirit and spirited glow.

Rumi, tr. by A.J. Arberry