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1. Sometimes I Forget Completely
Sometimes I forget completely
what companionship is.
Unconscious and insane, I spill sad
energy everywhere. My story
gets told in various ways: A romance,
a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy.
Divide up my forgetfulness to any number,
it will go around.
These dark suggestions that I follow,
are they part of some plan?
Friends, be careful. Don’t come near me
out of curiosity, or sympathy.
2. An Egypt That Doesn’t Exist
I want to say words that flame
as I say them, but I keep quiet and don’t try
to make both worlds fit in one mouthful.
I keep secret in myself an Egypt
that doesn’t exist.
Is that good or bad? I don’t know.
For years I gave away sexual love
with my eyes. Now I don’t.
I’m not in any one place. I don’t have a name
for what I give away. Whatever Shams
gave, that you can have from me.
3. Say Yes Quickly
Forget your life. Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is. It’s time to pray
You’ve carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where
you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, “How are you?”
and no one says How aren’t you?
Tomorrow you’ll see what you’ve broken and torn tonight,
thrashing in the dark. Inside you
there’s an artist you don’t know about.
He’s not interested in how things look different in moonlight.
If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love,
you’re helping people you don’t know
and have never seen.
Is what I say true? Say yes quickly,
if you know, if you’ve known it
from before the beginning of the universe.
4. Why Organize a Universe This Way?
What does not exist looks so handsome.
What does exist, where is it?
An ocean is hidden. All we see is foam,
shapes of dust, spinning, tall as minarets, but I want wind.
Dust can’t rise up without wind, I know, but can’t I understand
this
by some way other than induction.
Invisible ocean, wind. Visible foam and dust: This is speech.
Why can’t we hear thought?
These eyes were born asleep.
Why organize a universe this way?
With the merchant close by a magician measures out
five hundred ells of linen moonlight.
It takes all his money, but the merchant buys the lots.
Suddenly there’s no linen, and of course there’s no money,
which was his life spent wrongly, and yours.
Say, Save me, Thou One, from witches who tie knots
and blow on them. They’re tying them again.
Prayers are not enough. You must do something.
Three companions for you: Number one,
what you own. He won’t even leave the house
for some danger you might be in. He stays inside.
Number two, your good friend. He at least comes to the funeral.
He stands and talks at the gravesite. No further.
The third companion, what you do, your work,
goes down into death to be there with you,
to help. Take deep refuge
with that companion, beforehand.
5. Strange Business
If you don’t have a woman that lives with you,
why aren’t you looking?
If you have one, why aren’t you satisfied?
You have no resistance to you friend.
Why don’t you become the Friend?
If the flute is too quiet to say,
teach it manners.
Someone’s holding you back, break off.
You sit here for days saying, This is strange business.
You’re the strange business.
You have the energy of the sun in you,
but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine.
You’re some weird kind of gold that wants to stay melted
in the furnace, so you won’t have to be coins.
Say ONE in your lonesome house.
Loving two is hiding inside your self.
You’re gotten drunk on so many kinds of wine.
Taste this. It won’t make you wild.
It’s fire. Give up,
if you don’t understand by this time
that your living is firewood.
This wave of talking builds. Better
we should not speak it, but let it grow within.
6. The Variety of Intelligences in Human Beings
As many kinds as might be marked on a vertical
from the ground to the highest point of the sky:
One intelligence is a steadily burning orb.
One a tiny meteor flickering in and out the atmosphere of Venus.
There is a lantern that looks drunken, barely lighted,
Then flaring to the ceiling, blackening the wall.
There is a cold night star. Many sorts
of intelligent fire. One, green, translucent, plant-green.
One a pole moving out from behind an obscurity.
There’s not one mind-form everywhere equal, as some have said,
But it is particular intelligences that distort Universal
Intelligence, the ones that use light to hunt with.
The Mind of the Whole does otherwise. It gets a glimpse
of a lovely hunt going on, where God
is Hunter and everything else the hunted. That Mind
sees and tries to quit hunting and completely
be prey. That’s the difference.
There’s no way to win from where you’ve gotten yourself.
The queen has your king in danger. When you move out of check,
She takes the rook. Contrive instead
to be near one who serves well.
Figure how to be delivered from your own figuring.
Try to lose. Don’t do anything
for power or influence. Run into the mind’s fire.
Play this game because you love, and the playing is love.
Beg and cry and come walking on your knees.
Thoughtful supplication won’t help.
Joseph’s brothers wept, but inside
they were tricky and jealous.
7. Those You Are With
What is a real connection between people? When the same
knowledge
opens a door between them. When the same inner sight exists
in you as in another, you are drawn to be companions.
When a man feels in himself the inmost nature of woman,
he is drawn to her sexually. When a woman
feels the masculine self of a man within her,
she wants him physically in her.
When you feel the qualities of Gabriel in you, you fly up quickly
like a fledgling not thinking of the ground.
When you feel asinine qualities in you, no matter how you try
to do otherwise, you will head toward the stable.
The mouse is not despicable for its form, which is a helpless victim
to birds of prey, the mouse who loves dark places and cheese
and pistachio nuts and syrup. When the white falcon, though,
has the inner nature of a mouse, it is a disgrace
to all animals. Angelic figures and criminals
shackled head-down in a pit are similar-looking,
same arms, same head. Moses is a bright spirit,
Pharoah disgusting with his sorcery.
Always search for your innermost nature in those you are with.
As rose-oil imbibes from rose.
Even on the grave of a holy man, a holy man lays his face
and hands and takes in light.
8. Silver Coins
Put your cheek against this drunken cheek.
Forget anger and men planning war.
When I hold out silver coins, take them, and give
me a cup of liquid full of gold light.
You can open the wide door of the sky.
Surely you will open me. All I have
is this emptiness. Give it a nickname.
Breaker and healer, break and heal this head.
Don’t press your seal to that pistachio nut.
Put it here. There is that in me
that has to be told fifty times a day:
Stop hunting. Step on this net. |
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