the kings of the world are old and feeble

The kings of the world are old and feeble.

They bring forth no heirs.

Their sons are dying before they are men,

and their pale daughters

abandon themselves to the brokers of violence.

Their crowns are exchanged for money

and melted down into machines,

and there is no health in it.

Does the ore feel trapped

in coins and gears?  In the petty life

imposed upon it

does it feel homesick for earth?

If metal could escape

from coffers and factories,

and the torn-open mountains

close around it again,

we would be whole.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,24

.

no miracles, please

.

.

All who seek you

test you.

And those who find you 

bind you to image and gesture.

.

I would rather sense you

as the earth senses you.

In my ripening 

ripens

what you are.

.

I need from you no tricks

to prove you exist.

Time, I know,

is other than you.

.

No miracles, please.

just let your laws

become clearer

from generation to generation.

.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

from The Book of Pilgrimage, II,15

.

violence

.

I believe that 

those who have used violence 

have betrayed all true revolution, 

they have changed nothing, 

they have simply enforced with greater brutality

 the anti-spiritual and anti-human drives 

that are destructive of truth and love in man.

.

~ Thomas Merton

from A Life in Letters

.

cold light

.

.

Diamond-like clarity travels cold

the manifold currents, cracks self-concern,

reveals self-suffering, crumbles

the crooked walls of the darkness

of presumed otherness

This far-reaching indifference of wisdom

vision unfolds an always lurking compassion

only when fused in communal warmth,

only by passage in the movement of breath

Breath, the reach of hearts,

the rhythm of living and dying,

the reach solitary voices

meeting in the night.

.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from After

.

the sanity I had been taught

When the desire for the Friend became real,

all existence fell behind.

The Beloved wasn't interested in my reasoning,

I threw it away and became silent.

The sanity I had been taught became a bore,

it had to be ushered off.

Insane, silent and in bliss,

I spend my days with my head

at the feet of My Beloved. 

~ Abu-Said Abil-Kheir

Shaikh Abu-Said Abil-Kheir was one of the earlier Sufi poets. He lived more than two centuries before Jelaluddin Rumi yet, like Rumi, much of his mysticism follows a similar path of annihilation in divine Love.

Abu-Said's poetry ranges from the ecstatic and celestial, to struggles with abandonment. His poetry has an immediacy and even a sort of devoutly wry petulance that can draw comparisons with the great Bengali poet, Ramprasad.

Abu Said referred to himself as “Nobody, Son of Nobody,” to convey the mystic's sense of having completely merged or disappeared into the Divine, leaving no trace of the ego behind.

He lived in Mayhana in what is modern day Turkmenistan, just north of Iran and Afghanistan in Central Asia.

with thanks to poetry chaikhana

conceit

.

.

It is conceit that kills us 

and makes us cowards instead of gods. 

.

Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal! 

we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the cocoon coils of our conceit. 

.

Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves. 

And I am not interested to know about myself any more, 

I only entangle myself in the knowing. 

.

Now let me be myself, 

now let me be myself, and flicker forth, 

now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods. 

.

~ D.H. Lawrence

.

for a leader

 

 

 

 

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a vocation,

Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to serve.

 

As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings,

May your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills.

 

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance,

May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.

 

When thirst burns in times of drought,

May you be blessed to find the wells.

 

May you have the wisdom to read time clearly

And know when the seed of change will flourish.

 

In your heart may there be a sanctuary

For the stillness where clarity is born.

 

May your work be infused with passion and creativity

And have the wisdom to balance compassion and challenge.

 

May your soul find the graciousness

To rise above the fester of small mediocrities.

May your power never become a shell

Wherein your heart would silently atrophy.

May you welcome your own vulnerability

As the ground where healing and truth join.

 

May integrity of soul be your first ideal.

The source that will guide and bless your work.

 

 

 

~ John O'Donohue
from To Bless the Space Between Us
photo by Reuters

.

present

.

.

The incarnate Word is with us,

is still speaking, is present

always, yet leaves no sign

but everything that is.

.

~ Wendell Berry

from Given

IX, Sabbaths 1999

.

a pile of ashes

Your pride in yourself and your wanting,

these steal your energy along the road.

If you can kill these robbers

and become the servant of everyone,

you'll meet the Lord in meditation

and see what you used to protect

as just a pile of ashes.

~ Lalla

from Naked Song

translations by Coleman Barks

beyond the grey continent

It must be those brief moments

when nothing has happened - nor is going to.

Tiny moments, like islands in the ocean

beyond the grey continent of our ordinary days.

.

There, sometimes, you meet your own heart

like someone you've never known.

~ Hans Børli

.

if you love

.

You might quiet the whole world for a second

if you pray.

.

And if you love, if you

really love,

.

our guns will

wilt.

.

~ St. John of the Cross

.

to just be close

.

I was sad one day and went for a walk;

I sat in a field.

.

A rabbit noticed my condition and 

came near.

.

It often does not take more than that to help at times -

.

to just be close to creatures who

are so full of knowing,

so full of love

that they don't

- chat,

.

they just gaze with

their

marvelous understanding.

.

.

~ St. John of the Cross

from Love Poems from God

translations by Daniel Ladinsky

.

oneness into many

.

.

As the same fire assumes different shapes

When it consumes objects differing in shape,

So does the one Self take the shape

Of every creature in whom he is present.

As the same air assumes different shapes

When it enters objects differing in shape,

So does the one Self take the shape

Of every creature in whom he is present.

...

The ruler supreme, inner Self of all,

Multiplies his oneness into many.

Eternal joy is theirs who see the Self

In their own hearts.  To none else does it come!

.

~ Katha Upanishad

translation by Eknath Easwaran

.

november

.

Some aggravations include the whole world.

What can you do?  An old pulp-cutter

Longs to die, imagines

The Easter nails.

.

On his Icelandic farm, Guttorm hears

The news: his two sons

Dead.  He pulls the covers

Up over his head.

.

Some oak leaves hang, others fall.

The body says, "It's all right

To die.  It's not an insult

To the world."

.

~ Robert Bly
from Morning Poems

.

winter afternoon by the lake

.

.

Black trunks, black branches, and white snow.

No one nearby, five o'clock, below zero,

Late January. No birds. No wind.

You look, and your life seems stopped.  Perhaps

.

You died suddenly earlier today.  But the thin

Moon says no.  The trees say, "It's been this way

Before, often.  It's cold, but it's quiet."  We've experienced

This before, among the messy Saxons putting back

.

The hide flap.  A voice says: "It's old.  You'll never

See this again, the way it is now, because

Just today you sensed that someone gave you

Life and said, 'Stay as long as you like.'"

.

The snow and the black trees, pause, to see if we're

Ready to re-enter that stillness.  "Not yet."

.

~ Robert Bly

For Owen

from Morning Poems

.