Federico Garcia Lorca

I want
…only your hot heart

and nothing more.

My paradise a field

without a nightingale or lyres,

with an unobtrusive stream

and a modest fountainhead.
Without the spur of breeze

troubling the leaves,

without the star that longs

itself to be a leaf.

One enormous light
to be the firefly

of one bigger still,

in a field of broken gazes.

A clear place of repose

and there our kissing,

loud specks shed by echo,

would flower far abroad.

And your hot heart

and nothing more.

Leonard Cohen

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the end of love

Abu Bakr al-Turtushi

Every night I scan

the heavens with my eyes

seeking the star

that you are contemplating.
I question travellers

from the four corners of the earth

hoping to meet one

who has breathed your fragrance.
When the wind blows

I make sure it blows in my face

the breeze might bring me

news of you.
I wander over roads

without aim, without purpose.

Perhaps a song

will sound your name.
Secretly I study

every face I see

hoping against hope

to glimpse a trace of your beauty.

Samuel Beckett

Cascando
1
why not merely the despaired of

occasion ofword shed
is it not better abort than be barren
the hours after you are gone are so leaden

they will always start dragging too soon

the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want

bringing up the bones the old loves

sockets filled once with eyes like yours

all always is it better too soon than never

the black want splashing their faces

saying again nine days never floated the loved

nor nine months

nor nine lives
2
saying again

if you do not teach me I shall not learn

saying again there is a last

even of last times

last times of begging

last times of loving

of knowing not knowing pretending

a last even of last times of saying

if you do not love me I shall not be loved

if I do not love you I shall not love
the churn of stale words in the heart again

love love love

thud of the old plunger

pestling the unalterable

whey of words
terrified again

of not loving

of loving and not you

of being loved and not by you

of knowing not knowing pretending

pretending
I and all the others that will love you

if they love you
3
unless they love you!

Ezra Pound

Some may have blamed us that we cease to speak

Of things we spoke of in our verses early,

Saying: a lovely voice is such as such;

Saying: that lady's eyes were sad last week,

Wherein the world's whole joy is born and dies;

Saying: she hath this way or that, this much

Of grace, this way or that, this much

Of grace, this little misericorde;

Ask us no further word;

If we were proud, then proud to be so wise

Ask us no more of all the things ye heard;

We may not speak of them, they touch us nearly.

Paul Verlaine

Hope shines—as in a stable a wisp of straw.

Fear not the wasp drunk with his crazy flight!

Through some chink always, see, the moted light!

Propped on your hand, you dozed—But let me draw
Cool water from the well for you, at least,

Poor soul! There, drink! Then sleep.

See, I remain,And I will sing a slumberous refrain,

And you shall murmur like a child appeased.
Noon strikes.

Approach not, Madam, pray, or call….

He sleeps.

Strange how a woman’s light footfall

Re-echoes through the brains of grief-worn men!
Noon strikes.

I bade them sprinkle in the room.

Sleep on!

Hope shines—a pebble in the gloom.

—When shall the Autumn rose re-blossom,

—when?

Paul Celan

Your hand full of hours, you came to me –

and I said:‘Your hair is not brown.’

You lifted it, lightly,on to the balance of grief,

it was heavier than I.

They come to you on their ships,

and make it their load,

then put it on sale in the markets of lust.

You smile at me from the deep.

I weep at you from the scale that’s still light.

I weep: Your hair is not brown.

They offer salt-waves of the sea,

and you give them spume.

You whisper:

‘They’re filling the world with me now,

and for you I’m still a hollow way in the heart!

You say:

‘Lay the leaf-work of years by you,

it’s time, that you came here and kissed me.

The leaf-work of years is brown,

your hair is not brown.

Harold Pinter

(For A)

What sound was that?

I turn away, into the shaking room.

What was that sound that came in on the dark?

What is this maze of light it leaves us in?

What is this stance we take,

To turn away and then turn back?

What did we hear?

It was the breath we took when we first met.

Listen.

It is here.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all other green, with tiny waves on the edges of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze) --: why then have to be human - and, escaping from fate, keep longing for fate? ....

Oh not because happiness exists,that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss,Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart, which would exist in the laurel too....

But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which is in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once:to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.

e. e. cummings

let it go -

the smashed word

broken open vow or

the oath cracked lengthwise -

let it go

it was sworn to go

let them go -

the truthful liars and the false fair friends

and the boths and neithers -

you must let them go

they were born to go

let all go -

the big small

middling tall bigger

really the biggest and all things -

let all go dear

so comes love!

Meister Eckhart

All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.

Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,

he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears

and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,

because love does
that.

Love Frees.

Denise Levertov

High, hollowed in green

above the rocks of reason

lies the crater lake

whose ice the dreamer breaks

to find a summer season.

'He will plunge like a plummet down

far into hungry tides'

they cry, but as the sea

climbs to a lunar magnet

so the dreamer pursues

the lake where love resides.

St. Teresa of Avila

I had tea yesterday with a great theologian,

and he asked me,

“What is your experience of God’s will?”

I liked that question –

for the distillation of thought hones thought in others.

Clarity, I know, is freedom.

What is my experience of God’s will?

Everyone is a traveler.

Most all need lodging, food,and clothes.

I let enter my mouth what will enrich me.

I wear what will make my eye content,

I sleep where I will wake with the strength

to deeply love
all my mind can hold.

What is God’s will for a wing?

Every bird knows that.

Hafiz Of Shiraz

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,

Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and

Could give the Beloved His choice,

some nights,He would just drag you around the room

By your hair,

Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world

That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly

And wants to rip to shreds

All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,

And with others,

Causing the world to weep

On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,

Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself

And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants

To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down

And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear

He is in such a “playful drunken mood”

Most everyone I know

Quickly packs their bags and hightails it

Out of town.



(“The Gift” – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Charles Baudelaire

The Invitation To the Voyage

It is a superb land, a country of Cockaigne, as they say, that I dream of visiting with an old friend. A strange land, drowned in our northern fogs, that one might call the East of the West, the China of Europe; a land patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy. A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all things, my beloved, are like you. Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguish of curiosity? It is a land which resembles you, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil and honest, where phantasy has built and decorated an occidental China, where life is sweet to breathe, and happiness married to silence. It is there that one would live; there that one would die. Yes, it is there that one must go to breathe, to dream, and to lengthen one's hours by an infinity of sensations. A musician has written the "Invitation to the Waltz"; where is he who will write the "Invitation to the Voyage," that one may offer it to his beloved, to the sister of his election? Yes, it is in this atmosphere that it would be good to live, yonder, where slower hours contain more thoughts, where the clocks strike the hours of happiness with a more profound and significant solemnity. Upon the shining panels, or upon skins gilded with a sombre opulence, beatified paintings have a discreet life, as calm and profound as the souls of the artists who created them. The setting suns that colour the rooms and salons with so rich a light, shine through veils of rich tapestry, or through high leaden-worked windows of many compartments. The furniture is massive, curious, and bizarre, armed with locks and secrets, like profound and refined souls. The mirrors, the metals, the silverwork and the china, play a mute and mysterious symphony for the eyes; and from all things, from the corners, from the chinks in the drawers, from the folds of drapery, a singular perfume escapes, a Sumatran revenez-y, which is like the soul of the apartment. A true country of Cockaigne, I have said; where all is rich, correct and shining, like a beautiful conscience, or a splendid set of silver, or a medley of jewels. The treasures of the world flow there, as in the house of a laborious man who has well merited the entire world. A singular land, as superior to others as Art is superior to Nature ; where Nature is made over again by dream; where she is corrected, embellished, refashioned. Let them seek and seek again, let them extend the limits of their happiness for ever, these alchemists who work with flowers! Let them offer a prize of sixty or a hundred thousand florins to whosoever can solve their ambitious problems! As for me, I have found my black tulip and my blue dahlia! Incomparable flower, tulip found at last, symbolical dahlia, it is there, is it not, in this so calm and dreamy land that you live and blossom? Will you not there be framed in your proper analogy, and will you not be mirrored, to speak like the mystics, in your own correspondence? Dreams! always dreams! and the more ambitious and delicate the soul, the farther from possibility is the dream. Every man carries within him his dose of natural opium, incessantly secreted and renewed, and, from birth to death, how many hours can we count that have been filled with positive joy, with successful and decided action? Shall we ever live in and become a part of the picture my spirit has painted, the picture that resembles you? These treasures, furnishings, luxury, order, perfumes and miraculous flowers, are you. You again are the great rivers and calm canals. The enormous ships drifting beneath their loads of riches, and musical with the sailors' monotonous song, are my thoughts that sleep and stir upon your breast. You take them gently to the sea that is Infinity, reflecting the profundities of the sky in the limpid waters of your lovely soul ; and when, outworn by the surge and gorged with the products of the Orient, the ships come back to the ports of home, they are still my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from Infinity.

Denise Levertov

I know this happiness is provisional:
the looming presences—

great suffering, great fear—

withdraw only into peripheral vision:
but ineluctable this shimmering of wind in the blue leaves:
this flood of stillness widening the lake of sky:
this need to dance,

this need to kneel:

this mystery:

Nazim Hikmet

You

You are my enslavement and my freedom

You are my flesh burning like a raw summer night

You are my country

You are the green silks in hazel eyes

You are big, beautiful and triumphant

And you are my sorrow that isn't felt

the more I feel it.

Rainer Maria Rilke

She who did not come, wasn't she determined

nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?

If we had to exist to become the one we love,

what would the heart have to create?

Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are

the center of all my labors and my loves.

If I've wept for you so much, it's because

I preferred you among so many outlined joys.

Ted Hughes

When Crow was white he decided the sun was too white.

He decided it glared much too whitely.

He decided to attack it and defeat it.
He got his strength up flush and in full glitter.

He clawed and fluffed his rage up.

He aimed his beak direct at the sun's centre.
He laughed himself to the centre of himself
And attacked.
At his battle cry trees grew suddenly old,

Shadows flattened.
But the sun brightened—It brightened,

and Crow returned charred black.
He opened his mouth but what came out was charred black.
"Up there," he managed,

"Where white is black and black is white,

I won."

Charles Baudelaire

SEMPER EADEM

‘Where does it come from,’ you ask,

‘this strange sadness,that climbs,

like the sea, over black, bare stone?’

When our heart has once reaped the harvest,

life is an evil.

That’s known,
as the simplest of miseries, and nothing mysterious,

and seen by everyone, like your ecstasy.

Stop searching, you, beauty,

so curious!

And, though your voice is sweet,

sit, silently!
Be quiet, fool!

Ever ravished soul!

Lips of childish laughter!

Often, more than the whole of Life,

Death grips us, with subtle ties we have made.
Let me, let my heart, then,

be drunk on its lies,

plunge as into a beautiful dream,

into your eyes,

and, forever,

sleep,

in your eyelids’ shade.

George Herbert

A broken ALTAR, Lord, thy servant rears,
Made of a heart and cemented with tears;
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workman’s tool hath touch’d the same.
A HEART alone
Is such a stone,
As nothing but
Thy pow’r doth cut.
Wherefore each part
Of my hard heart
Meets in this frame
To praise thy name.
That if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
Oh, let thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,
And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.

E. E. Cummings

i spoke to thee

with a smile and thou didst not

answer

thy mouth is as

a chord of crimson music

Come hither

O thou,is life not a smile?

i spoke to thee with

a song and thou

didst not listen

thine eyes are as a vase

of divine silence

Come hither

O thou, is life not a song?

i spoke

to thee with a soul and

thou didst not wonder

thy face is as a dream locked

in white fragrance

Come hither

O thou,is life not love?

i speak to

thee with a sword

and thou art silent

thy breast is as a tomb

softer than flowers

Come hither

O thou,is love not death?

John Ashbery

Just Walking Around

What name do I have for you?
Certainly there is not name for you
In the sense that the stars have names
That somehow fit them. Just walking around,

An object of curiosity to some,
But you are too preoccupied
By the secret smudge in the back of your soul
To say much and wander around,

Smiling to yourself and others.
It gets to be kind of lonely
But at the same time off-putting.
Counterproductive, as you realize once again

That the longest way is the most efficient way,
The one that looped among islands, and
You always seemed to be traveling in a circle.
And now that the end is near

The segments of the trip swing open like an orange.
There is light in there and mystery and food.
Come see it.
Come not for me but it.
But if I am still there, grant that we may see each other.

Rumi

In this house of mud and water,

my heart has fallen to ruins.

Enter this house,

my Love,

or let me

leave.

Hazrat Shah Hussain

My wrist in the beloved’s grip,
I cannot ask Him to leave hold.
Dark is the night, the cloud is dripping,
I suffer it for lack of a messenger,
The tyrant has sent a call.
They alone know what is love and longing,
Who have it in their lives.
Like digging a well in dry land,
With no cart to carry away the sand.
Carrying loads everyday,
You will leave at last.
Says Husain, the humble fakir,
Put thy eyes into mine, O love.

Glukupikron-Gregory Orr

To Sappho

Word you created

which we translate

bittersweet

thereby reversing the terms

as if we thought pain

came first and pleasure only later;

for you maybe joy was initial,

to be followed

by harsh disappointment.
Yet in the word itself the two fuse,

and in the condition it refers to

they mingle,indistinguishable,

not to be separated by any force.
It was your word

for love.

Idries Shah-The Magic Horse

A king had two sons. The first helped the people by working for them in a manner they understood. The second was called 'Lazy' because he was a dreamer, as far as anyone could see.

The first son gained great honours in his land. The second obtained from a humble carpenter a wooden horse and sat astride it. But the horse was a magical one. It carried the rider, if he was sincere, to his heart's desire.

Seeking his heart's desire, the young prince disappeared one day on the horse. He was absent a long time. After many adventures he returned with a beautiful princess from the Country of Light, and his father was overjoyed at his safe return and listened to the story of the magic horse.

The horse was made available to anyone who wanted it in that country. But many people preferred the obvious benefits which the actions of the first prince provided for them because to them the horse always looked like a plaything. They did not get beyond the outer appearance of the horse, which was not impressive - just like a plaything.

When the old king died, the 'prince who liked to play with toys' became, by his wish, the king. But people in general despised him. They much preferred the excitement and interest of the discoveries and activities of the practical prince.

Unless we listen to the 'lazy' prince, whether he has a princess from the Country of Light with him or not, we shall not get beyond the outer appearance of the horse.. Even if we like the horse, it is not its outward shape which can help us travel to our destination.

From: 'The Way of the Sufi'

Margaret Atwood

More and more frequently the edges of me dissolve

and I become a wish to assimilate the world,

including you,

if possible through the skin like a cool plant's tricks with oxygen

and live by a harmless green burning.
I would not consume you or ever finish,

you would still be there surrounding me,

complete as the air.
Unfortunately I don't have leaves.

Instead I have eyes and teeth and other

non-green things which rule out osmosis.
So be careful, I mean it,I give you fair warning:
This kind of hunger draws everything into its own space;

nor can we talk it all over,

have a calm rational discussion.
There is no reason for this,

only a starved dog's logic about bones.

Voici mon secret.

Il est très simple :

on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur.

L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

(It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;

What is essential is invisible to the eye.)

Emily Dickinson

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself-
-Finite Infinity.

Octavio Paz

Hands and lips of wind

Heart of water

Eucalyptus

Campground of the clouds

The life that is born every day

The death that is born every life
I rub my eyes:

The sky walks the land

Rabindranath Tagore

Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs.

It was they who led me from door to door,

and with them have I felt about me,

searching and touching my world.

It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt;

they showed me secret paths,

they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart.

They guided me all the day long to the mysteries

of the country of pleasure and pain, and, at last,

to what palace gate have they brought me in the evening

at the end of my journey?

HADEWIJCH of Antwerp

We must wholly forsake love for Love;

He who forsakes love for Love is wise.

It is all one whether we die or live:

To die for Love's sake is to have lived enough.

Alas, Love! You have long driven me to extremity;

But in this very extremity to which you have driven me,

I will keep vigil, Love, in service of your love.

Yunus Emre

My soul,the way of the masters

is thinner than the thinnest.

What blocked Solomon's way was an ant.

Night and day the lover's tears never end,

tears of blood,remembering the Beloved.

"The lover is outcast and idle,"they used to tell me.

It's true.It happened to me.

I tried to make sense of the Four Books,

until love arrived,and it all became a single syllable.

You who claim to be dervishes

and to never do what God forbids -

-the only time you're free of sin

is when you're in His hands.

Two people wer talking.

One said, "I wish I could see this Yunus."

"I've seen him," the other says,

"He's just another old lover."

Hart Crane

Interior

It sheds a shy solemnity,

This lamp in our poor room.

O grey and gold amenity,

--Silence and gentle gloom!

Wide from the world, a stolen hour

We claim, and none may know

How love blooms like a tardy flower

Here in the day's after-glow.

And even should the world break in

With jealous threat and guile,

The world, at last, must bow and win

Our pity and a smile.

Adrienne Rich

The world's not wanton

only wild and wavering

I wanted to choose words that even you

would have to be changed by

Take the word of my pulse,

loving and ordinary

Send out your signals,

hoist your dark scribbled flags

but take my hand

All wars are useless to the dead

My hands are knotted in the rope

and I cannot sound the bell

My hands are frozen to the switch

and I cannot throw it

The foot is in the wheel

When it's finished and we're lying

in a stubble of blistered flowers

eyes gaping, mouths staring

dusted with crushed arterial blues

I'll have done nothing

even for you?

Adrienne Rich

Final Notions

It will not be simple, it will not take long

It will take little time, it will take all your thought

It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath

It will be short, it will not be simple

It will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart

It will not take long, it will occupy all your thought

As a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied

It will take your flesh, it will not be simple

You are coming into us who cannot withstand you

You are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you

You are taking parts of us into places never planned

You are going far away with pieces of our lives

It will be short, it will take all your breath

It will not be simple, it will become your will

Wallace Stevens

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening

In which we rest and, for small reason, think

The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.

It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,

Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl

Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,

A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.

We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,

A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.

We say God and the imagination are one...

How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,

We make a dwelling in the evening air,

In which being there together is enough.

David Whyte

Guillaume Appollinaire

"Come to the edge" he said,

"We can't, we are afraid" they said...
"Come to the edge"

"We can't, we will fall"

"Come to the edge"and they came

and he pushed them

and they flew.

Rumi

Last night I gave a star a message for you.

On my knees I begged her to tell you

How much I pray that you will turn my stony heart

golden with your radiance.

I bared my chest to show my wounds

and asked her to tell you that if I sway this way and that

it’s because I need to calm the infant in my heart;

babies sleep when rocked in their cradle.

My Beloved, my heart was always yours

Nurse it like a child, save it from wandering.

How long will you keep me in exile?

I will be quiet now, but even in my silence

My heart will long for you in the grave.

Czeslaw Milosz

It appears that it was all a misunderstanding.

What was only a trial run was taken seriously.

The rivers will return to their beginnings.

The wind will cease in its turning about.

Trees instead of budding will tend to their roots.

Old men will chase a ball, a glance in the mirror -

They are children again.

The dead will wake up, not comprehending.

Till everything that happened has unhappened.

What a relief!

Breathe freely, you who suffered much.

Philip Larkin

The little lives of earth and form,

Of finding food, and keeping warm,

Are not like ours, and yet

A kinship lingers nonetheless:

We hanker for the homeliness

Of den, and hole, and set.
And this identity we feel-

Perhaps not right, perhaps not real -

Will link us constantly;

I see the rock, the clay, the chalk,

The flattened grass, the swaying stalk,

And it is you I see.