Ya Allah...!

They said: “Our Lord! We have wronged our own souls: if thou forgive us not and bestow not upon us Thy Mercy, we shall certainly be lost.”

(The Holy Quran,Surah Al-Araf, Verse 23)

...!

Say: Shall We inform you who will be the greatest losers by their works?

Those whose effort goeth astray in the life of the world, and yet they reckon that they do good work.

(Holy Quran, Surah Al-Kahf ,Verse103-104)

...

Rudyard Kipling

If I were hanged on the highest hill,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine

I know whose love would follow me still,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

If I were drowned in the deepest sea,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine

I know whose tears would come down to me,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

If I were damned of body and soul,

I know whose prayers would make me whole,

Mother o’ mine, 0 mother o’ mine!

Rabe‘a Al-Adawiya Basri RA

O Lord...

Once I wanted You so much

I didn't even dare walk past Your house-

- And now I am not even worthy

to be let in...

J.L. Borges

Being with you and not being with you

is the only way I have to measure time.

~ "The Threatened One," from The Unending Rose

...

O Allah, How may I call unto You, when I am but a sinner

Yet how may I not call unto You ,when you are the Most Benevolent …

Franz Kafka

She reaches for the highest garland not because it is momentarily hanging a little lower but because it is the highest; if she had any say in the matter she would have it still higher.

–“Josephine the Mouse Singer”

Robert Bly

The Translucent Stone

It is a stone that fits into my three fingers. It rests on the thin bed of the main finger, and the pointing finger is always ready to receive some orientation from it, petting its side from time to time. The lower underside of the stone rests on my ring finger, as well it might, for that is the finger of faithfulness, able to hold strange objects for decades.

If the fingers turn it completely over, then we see another mysterious surface, a few spots partly transparent, other spots cloudy white like milk clotted on the bottom of a pan. . . and in its confused solidity there is no hint that there might be a curious prayer room inside, that place where a hermit could sit, his or her head touched by the hairs coming out from the center of the earth. All solids are washed in its acidulous flowings like those little spears of feeling that leap out of the Valentine poem made by the tenth grader.

And the colors, a pale, crystalline ivory, what is not edible will never have the brown of dung. When hit with a pen, it gives off the solid clack of the pool ball made because human beings could not tolerate the immense length of the elephant's tusk. And what the elephants used for fighting people wanted to use for play. The elephant's great, huge-hearted aggression the humans cut up into small units of oppression.

An old gardener once said to me, "If there's a rock in the center of the pond, the carp will circle around it. But if there's no rock at the center, the carp don't eat well and they don't thrive."

Rumi( RA)

I don't like it here. I want to go back.

According to the old knowers, if you're absent from the one you love even for one second,

that ruins the whole thing.

There must be someone,

just to find one sign of the other world in this town would be helpful.

You know the great Chinese Saimer bird got caught in this net.

What can I do? I'm only a wren.

My desire-body, don't come strolling over this way.

Sit where you are. It's a good place.
When you want dessert, you choose something rich.

When you choose wine, you look for what's clear and firm. What is the rest?

"What is the rest? "

The rest is mirages and blurry pictures and milk mixed with water.

The rest is self-hatred and mocking other people and bombing.

So, just be quiet and sit down.

The reason is you're drunk.

And this is the edge of the roof.

Tomas Tranströmer

We got ready, and showed our house.

The visitors said, "You live well.

The slum must be inside you."

Pablo Neruda

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry

speak of dreams and leaves

and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.

Come and see

The blood in the streets.

Come and see the blood

In the streets!

Emmanuel Hocquard

Viviane, there has been the canale, and there is the burnt stump.

Between the two, thirty paces, seventeen iron-woods and eight seasons gone by.

What operation in mathematics or logic can count

at the same time in meters, trees and years?

Should one even try?

Would somebody with sense go and add up

bread and feeling?

It’s like saying: I remember the islands.

Here, however, is an intention, tied to a film project

– the sequel of the voyage –

a matter of going from the canale to the burnt stump.