More Poetry

"Birds Nesting near the Coast" Soul, if you want to learn secrets, your heart must forget about shame and dignity.  You are God's lover, yet you worry what people are saying. The rope belt the early Christians wore to show who they were, throw it away!  Inside, you are sweet beyond telling, and the cathedral there, so deeply tall.  Evening now, more your desire than a woman's hair. And not knowledge: walk with those innocent of that: faces inside fire, birds nesting near the coast, earning their beauty, servants to the ocean. There is a sun within every person, the you we call companion.   Rumi Ghazal (Ode) 2956 Version by Coleman Barks, with Nevit Ergin "The Glance" Viking-Penguin, 1999 I may be clapping my hands, but I don't belong to a crowd of clappers. I'm neither this nor that. I'm not part of a group that loves flute music, or one that loves gambling, or one that loves drinking wine. Those who live in time, descended from Adam, made of earth and water, I'm not part of that. Don't listen to what I say, as though these words came from an inside and went to an outside. Your faces are very beautiful, but they are wooden cages. You'd better run from me. My words are fire. I have nothing to do with being famous, or making grand judgments, or feeling full of shame. I borrow nothing.   I don't want anything from anybody. I flow through all human beings. Love is my only companion When Union happens, my speech goes inward, toward Shams. At that meeting, all the secrets of language will no longer be secret. Rumi Version by Coleman Barks (from a translation by A.J. Arberry) "Like This"   Maypop, 1990 THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it in the deep heart's core. William Butler Yeats I and I Been so long since a strange woman has slept in my bed. Look how sweet she sleeps, how free must be her dreams. In another lifetime she must have owned the world, or been faithfully wed To some righteous king who wrote psalms beside moonlit streams. I and I In creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives. I and I One says to the other, no man sees my face and lives. Think I'll go out and go for a walk, Not much happenin' here, nothin' ever does. Besides, if she wakes up now, she'll just want me to talk I got nothin' to say, 'specially about whatever was. I and I In creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives. I and I One says to the other, no man sees my face and lives. Took an untrodden path once, where the swift don't win the race, It goes to the worthy, who can divide the word of truth. Took a stranger to teach me, to look into justice's beautiful face And to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I and I In creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives. I and I One says to the other, no man sees my face and lives. Outside of two men on a train platform there's nobody in sight, They're waiting for spring to come, smoking down the track. The world could come to an end tonight, but that's all right. She should still be there sleepin' when I get back. I and I In creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives. I and I One says to the other, no man sees my face and lives. Noontime, and I'm still pushin' myself along the road, the darkest part, Into the narrow lanes, I can't stumble or stay put. Someone else is speakin' with my mouth, but I'm listening only to my heart. I've made shoes for everyone, even you, while I still go barefoot. I and I In creation where one's nature neither honors nor forgives. I and I One says to the other, no man sees my face and lives. Bob Dylan