Li-Young Lee

The Moon from Any Window

The moon from any window is one part

whoever's looking.The part I can't see

is everything my sister keeps to herself.

One part my dead brother's sleepless brow,

the other part the time I waste,

the timeI won't have.But which is the lion

killed for the sake of the honey inside him,

and which the wine, stranded

in a valley, unredeemed?

And don't forget the curtains.

Don't forget the wind

in the trees, or my mother's voice saying things

that will take my whole life to come true.

One part earnest child grown tall

in his mother's doorway, and one last look

over the shoulder before leaving.

And never forget it answers to no address,

but calls wave after wave

to a path of thirst. Never forget

the candle climbing down without glancing back.

And what about the heart

counting alone, out loud, in that game

in which the many hide from the one?

Never forget the cry

completely hollowed of the dying one

who cried it.

Only in such pure outpouring

is there room for all this night.

Pierre Martory

Under the elm for a long time

I've been waiting for you, O my soul.

Weeks follow each other like books

Perused, my thoughts elsewhere,

Full of music that's distracted too

Full of a deep buzzing where words images

Perceptions dwell in the jumble of memory

Of which our mind is composed.

And nothing comes to assert your coming

No other sign than smoke.

Is it you that we should have welcomed

When tenderness filled our hearts?

You that we should have discovered

On the shores of pity or of love?

I have not been taught to notice your presence

Even when reveille raises the limbs

Of a future happiness; even when

Tired of a long day I seek

Silence in the immense dark where I jettison

What differentiates the sun from death.

Hours accumulated, absurd riches,

I am ready to give up the trees and the cities

But I still hope to receive you, my soul,

Laden with my own eternity.

You who are me, who resembles nobody,

You that I must give back some day to who knows who.

(translated from the French by John Ashbery)

John Ashbery

It was a night for listening to Corelli, Geminiani Or Manfredini.

The tables had been set with beautiful white cloths

And bouquets of flowers.

Outside the big glass windows

The rain drilled mercilessly into the rock garden, which made light

Of the whole thing. Both business and entertainment waited

With parted lips, because so much new way of being

With one's emotion and keeping track of it at the same time

Had been silently expressed.

Even the waiters were happy.

It was an example of how much one can grow lustily

Without fracturing the shell of coziness that surrounds us,

And all things as well. "We spend so much time

Trying to convince ourselves we're happy that we don't recognize

The real thing when it comes along," the Disney official said.

He's got a point, you must admit.

If we followed nature More closely we'd realize that,

I mean really getting your face pressed

Into the muck and indecision of it.

Then it's as if

We grew out of our happiness, not the other way round,

as is Commonly supposed.

We're the characters in its novel,

And anybody who doubts that need only look out of the window

Past his or her own reflection, to the bright, patterned,

Timeless unofficial truth hanging around out there,

Waiting for the signal to be galvanized into a crowd scene,

Joyful or threatening, it doesn't matter,

so long as we know

It's inside, here with us.

But people do change in life,

As well as in fiction. And what happens then?

Is it because we think nobody's

Listening that one day it comes, the urge to delete yourself,

"Take yourself out," as they say?

As though this could matter

Even to the concerned ones who crowd around,

Expressions of lightness and peace on their faces,

In which you play no part perhaps, but even so

Their happiness is for you, it's your birthday, and even

When the balloons and fudge get tangled with extraneous

Good wishes from everywhere, it is, I believe, made to order

For your questioning stance and that impression

Left on the inside of your pleasure by some bivalve

With which you have been identified.

Sure, Nothing is ever perfect enough,

but that's part of how it fits

The mixed bag Of leftover character traits that used to be part of you

Before the change was performed

And of all those acquaintances bursting with vigor and Humor,

as though they wanted to call you down

Into closeness, not for being close, or snug, or whatever,

But because they believe you were made to fit this unique

And valuable situation whose lid is rising, totally

Into the morning-glory-colored future.

Remember, don't throw away

The quadrant of unused situations just because they're here:

They may not always be, and you haven't finished looking

Through them all yet.

So much that happens happens in small ways

That someone was going to get around to tabulate, and then never did,

Yet it all bespeaks freshness, clarity and an even motor drive

To coax us out of sleep and start us wondering what the new round

Of impressions and salutations is going to leave in its wake

This time.

And the form, the precepts, are yours to dispose of as you will,

As the ocean makes grasses,

and in doing so refurbishes a lighthouse

On a distant hill,

or else lets the whole picture slip into foam.

Robert Hass

Time and Materials
Gerhard Richter: Abstrakt Bilden

I.

To make layers,
As if they were a steadiness of days:

It snowed; I did errands at a desk;
A white flurry out the window thickening; my tongue
Tasted of the glue on envelopes.

On this day sunlight on red brick, bare trees,
Nothing stirring in the icy air.

On this day a blur of color moving at the gym
Where the heat from bodies
Meets the watery, cold surface of the glass.

Made promises , made curry, talked on the phone
To friends, the one whose brother died
Was crying and thinking alternately,
Like someone falling down and getting up
And running and falling and getting up.

2.

The object of this poem is not to annihila

To not annih

The object of this poem is to report a theft,
In progress, of everything
That is not these words
And their disposition on the page.

The object o f this poem is to report a theft,
In progre ss of everything that exists
That is not th ese words
And their d isposition on the page.

The object of his poe is t epro a theft
In rogres f ever hing at xists
Th is no ese w rds
And their disp sit on o the pag

3·

To score, to scar, to smear, to streak,
To smudge, to blur, to gouge, to scrape.

"Action painting," i.e.,
The painter gets to behave like time.

4·

The typo would be "paining."

(To abrade.)

5·

Or to render time and stand outside
The horizontal rush of it, for a moment
To have the sensation of standing outside
The greenish rush of it.

6.

Some vertical gesture then, the way that anger
Or desire can rip a life apart,

Some wound of color.

Antonio Machado

A man has four things
that don't work on the sea:
anchor, rudder and oars,
and fear of drowning.

Sohrawardi

If your eyes are not deceived by the mirage

do not be proud of the sharpness of your understanding.

It may be your freedom from this optical illusion

is due to the imperfectness of your thirst.

Gregory Orr

Hunkered down, nerve-numb,

in the carnal hut,the cave of self,

while outside a storm rages.

Huddled there,

rubbing together

white sticks of your own ribs,

praying for sparks

in that dark

where tinder is heart,

where tender is not.

Stephen Dunn

Worst was to live by somebody else’s time.

the hours scheduled for him, smudged

with clarity and motives not his own.
He preferred the enigmas of early morning
and the neither-here-nor-thereness of dusk,

which gave the half-life he lived an atmosphere.

He liked watching it collect itself,

impossible to tell if it descended or rose.
He didn’t care for noon’s bustle and blare.

And evenings couldn’t be trusted, he felt,

so dependent were they on other people.
Even evenings alone were measured

by who wasn’t there. Desire & Need,

how they sat down with him,helped like untrained helpers

arrange the hours that followed.

Evening was their time.
He remembered, of course, the lovely hours—

the body’s sudden holidays,

prolonged fiestas of the mind.

He rewound and rewound.

Leonard Cohen

Like a bird on the wire,

like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free.

Like a worm on a hook,

like a knight from some old fashioned book

I have saved all my ribbons for thee.

If I, if I have been unkind,

I hope that you can just let it go by.

If I, if I have been untrue

I hope you know it was never to you.

Like a baby, stillborn,

like a beast with his horn

I have torn everyone who reached out for me.

But I swear by this song

and by all that I have done wrong

I will make it all up to thee.

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,

he said to me, "You must not ask for so much."

And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,

she cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"

Oh like a bird on the wire,

like a drunk in a midnight choir

I have tried in my way to be free.

Baba Bulleh Shah

Falling in love with you

Was like taking a sip of poison

Come my healer, forsaken, Im dying

Your love has made me dance like mad

The sun has set, its flush only left

Ill give my life for a glimpse of you

My fault, I came not when you bade

Your love has made me dance like mad

Dissuade me not from the path of love

Who can hold the boats on the move

Stupid, I joined the boatmen's squad

Your love has made me dance like mad

A peacock calls in the grove of passion

I see my love in Qibla and Kaaba

You asked not once after you stabbed

Your love has made me dance like mad

Bulleh Shah sits at Inayat's door

Who has dressed me in green and red

And caught me the instant I flew from the pad

Your love has made me dance like mad

Gamaliel Bradford

I’ve been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint,
Their bend of weary knees and their contortions long and faint,
And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins,
A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.
I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell,
Where you tell and tell your beads because you’ve nothing else to tell,
Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild fantastic tricks,
Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix.
I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is torn
With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn.
There are moments when I would untread the paths that I have trod.
I’m a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God.

Norman MacCaig

I look across the table and think(fiery with love)

Ask me, go on, ask me

to do something impossible,something freakishly useless,

something unimaginable and inimitable

Like making a finger break into blossom

or walking for half an hour in twenty minutes

or remembering tomorrow.

I will you to ask it.

But all you say is

Will you give me a cigarette?

And I smile and,

returning to the marvelous worldof possibility

I give you one

with a hand that trembles

with a human trembling.

Nazim Hikmet

it's 1962 March 28th

I'm sitting by the window

on the Prague-Berlin train

night is falling

I never knew I liked night descending

like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain

I don't like comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth

can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it

I've never worked the earth

it must be my only platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time

whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills

European hills crowned with chateaus

or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see

I know you can't wash in the same river even once

I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see

I know we live slightly longer than a horse

but not nearly as long as a crow

I know this has troubled people before

and will trouble those after me

I know all this has been said a thousand times before

and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky

cloudy or clear the blue vault

Andrei studied on his back at Borodinoin prison

I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish

I hear voices not from the blue vault

but from the yard

the guards are beating someone again

I didn't know I loved trees

bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino

they come upon me in winter noble and modest

beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish

"the poplars of Izmir

losing their leaves...they call me The Knife...

lover like a young tree...

I blow stately mansions sky-high"

in the Ilgaz woods in 1920

I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief to a pine bough for luck

I never knew I loved roads

even the asphalt kind

Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow

to the Crimea Koktebel formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish

the two of us inside a closed box

the world flows past on both sides distant and mute

I was never so close to anyone in my life

bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé

when I was eighteen

apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take

and at eighteen our lives are what we value leas

tI've written this somewhere before

wading through a dark muddy street

I'm going to the shadow play Ramazan night

a paper lantern leading the way

maybe nothing like this ever happened

maybe I read it somewhere

an eight-year-old boy going to the shadow play Ramazan night in Istanbul

holding his grandfather's hand

his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat

with a sable collar over his robe and there is a lantern

in the negro eunuch's hand and I can't contain myself for joy

flowers come to mind for some reason

poppies cactuses jonquilsin the jonquil garden

in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika

fresh almonds on her breath

I was seventeen

my heart on a swing touched the skyI didn't know

I loved flowers

friends sent me three red carnations in prison 1948

I just remembered the stars

I didn't know I loved them too

whether I'm floored watching them from below

or whether I'm flying at their side.

I have some questions for the cosmonauts

were the stars much bigger

did they look like huge jewels on black velvet

or apricots on orange

did you feel proud to get closer to the stars

I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine

now don't be upset comrades but

nonfigurative shall we say or abstract well

some of them looked just like such paintings

which is to say they were terribly figurative and

concretemy heart was in my mouth looking at them

they are our endless desire to grasp things

seeing them I could even think of death

and not feel at all sad

I never knew I loved the cosmos

snow flashes in front of my eyes

both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind

I didn't know I liked snow

I never knew I loved the sun

even when setting cherry-red as now

in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors

but you aren't about to paint it that way

I didn't know I loved the sea and how much

except the seas of Aivazovsky

I didn't know I loved clouds

whether I'm under or up above them

whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid

the most petit-bourgeois strikes me

I didn't know I liked it

I didn't know I liked rain

whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass

my heart leaves me tangled up in a net

or trapped inside a drop and takes off for uncharted countries

I didn't know I liked rain

but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting

by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

is it because I lit my sixth cigarette

one alone could kill me

is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow

her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night

I never knew I liked the night pitch-black

sparks fly from the engine

I didn't know I loved sparks

I didn't know I loved so many things and

I had to wait until sixty to find it out

sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

watching the world disappear

as if on a journey of no return

T. S. Eliot

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair

-Lean on a garden urn

-Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair

-Clasp your flowers to you with a pained suprise

-Fling them to the ground and turn

With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:

But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So I would have had him leave,

So I would have had her stand and grieve,

So he would have left

As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,

As the mind deserts the body it has used.

I should find

Some way incomparably light and deft,

Some way we both should understand,

Simple and faithless as a smile and a shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather

Compelled my imagination many days,

Many days and many hours:

Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.

And I wonder how they should have been together!

I should have lost a gesture and a pose.

Sometimes these cogitations still amaze

The troubled midnight, and the noon's repose.

Stephen Crane

There was a man who lived a life of fire.

Even upon the fabric of time,

Where purple becomes orange

And orange purple,

This life glowed,

A dire red stain, indelible;

Yet when he was dead,

He saw that he had not lived.

Rumi

The clear bead at the center changes everything.

There are no edges to my loving now.

I've heard it said,

there's a window that opens from one mind to the other.

but if there's no wall,

there is no need for fitting the window, or the latch.

William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me

mistakes I have made. Ask me whether

what I have done is my life. Others

have come in their slow way into

my thought, and some have tried to help

or to hurt: ask me what difference

their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.

You and I can turn and look

at the silent river and wait. We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Perhaps it's no more than the fire's reflection

on some piece of gleaming furniture

that the child remembers so much later

like a revelation.

And if in his later life, one day

wounds him like so many others,

it's because he mistook some risk

or other for a promise.

Let's not forget the music, either,

that soon had hauled him toward absence complicated

by an overflowing heart....

Yves Bonnefoy

I'd gone out

to get water from the well, near the trees,

and I was in the presence of another sky.

Gone were the constellations

there a moment before.

Three fourths of the firmament was empty,

the intensest black shone there alone,

though to the left, above the horizon,

in among the tops of the oaks,

there was a mass of reddening stars

like firecoals, from which smoke even rose.

I went back inside

and re-opened the book on the table.

Page after page,there were only indecipherable signs,

clusters of forms without any sense,

although vaguely recurring,

and beneath them an abyssal white

as if what we call the spirit

were falling there, soundlessly,like snow.

Still, I went on turning pages.

Many years earlier,in a train

at the moment the day rises,between Princeton Junction and Newark,

—that is to say, two chance places for me,

two arrows fallen out of nowhere

—the passengers were reading, silent

in the snow that was sweeping the gray windows,

and suddenly,in a newspaper open next to me

—a big photograph of Baudelaire,

a whole page,

as if the sky were emptying the world’s end

in recognition of the chaos of words.

I put together this dream and this memory

when I walked, all of one fall,

in woods where snow would soon triumph,

among the many signs we receive,contradictorily,

from the world devastated by language.

The conflict between two principles,

two lights were becoming one,

the lips of a wound closing.

The white mass of the cold was falling in gusts

on color, but a roof in the distance, a painted

board, standing against a gate,was color still,

and mysterious,like someone coming out of a tomb,

laughing,and telling the world, “No, don’t touch me.”

Truly I owe a lot to Hopkins Forest.

I kept it on my horizon, in that place

where the visible gives way to the invisible

in the trembling of the blue in the distance.

I listen to it, amid other sounds,

and at times even, in summer,

kicking the dead leaves of other years

lying as if lit in the shade of oaks

grown densely among stones,I stop:

I believe that the ground is opening

to the infinite, that the leaves are falling into it

without hurry, or coming up again,

above and below no longer existing,or sound, on the light

whispering of snowflakes that soon

multiply, draw close, bind together

–and then I see again the whole other sky,

I enter for a moment the great snow.

Amy Lowell

You are ice and fire,

The touch of you burns my hands like snow.

You are cold and flame.

You are the crimson of amaryllis,

The silver of moon-touched magnolias.

When I am with you,

My heart is a frozen pond

Gleaming with agitated torches.

C.P. Cavafy

When suddenly at the midnight hour

an invisible troupe is heard passing

with exquisite music, with shouts

-do not mourn in vain your fortune

failing you now,your works that have failed,

the plans of your life

that have all turned out to be illusions.

As if long prepared for this, as if courageous,

bid her farewell, the Alexandria that is leaving.

Above all do not be fooled, do not tell yourself

it was only a dream, that your ears deceived you;

do not stoop to such vain hopes.

As if long prepared for this, as if courageous,

as it becomes you who are worthy of such a city;

approach the window with firm step,

and listen with emotion, but not

with the entreaties and complaints of the coward,

as a last enjoyment listen to the sounds,

the exquisite instruments of the mystical troupe,

and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you are losing.

Adam Zagajewski

Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter

half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.

I live in strange cities and sometimes talk

with strangers about matters strange to me.

I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.

I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.

The fourth has no name.I read poets, living and dead,

who teach metenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand

the great philosophers--but usually catch just

scraps of their precious thoughts.

I like to take long walks on Paris streets

and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,

anger, desire; to trace a silver coin

passing from hand to hand as it slowly

loses its round shape (the emperor's profile is erased).

Beside me trees expressing nothing

but a green, indifferent perfection.

Black birds pace the fields,waiting patiently like Spanish widows.

I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older.

I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,

and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and houses

dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.

Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me

and irony suddenly vanishes.

I love gazing at my wife's face.

Every Sunday I call my father.

Every other week I meet with friends,thus proving my fidelity.

My country freed itself from one evil. I wish

another liberation would follow. Could I help in this?

I don't know.I'm truly not a child of the ocean,

as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,

but a child of air, mint and cello

and not all the ways of the high world

cross paths with the life that-

-so far--belongs to me.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

In the wasteland of solitude, my love,

quivers shadows of your voice, illusions of your lips.

In the wasteland of solitude, from the dusts of parting

Sprout jasmines and roses of your presence

From somewhere close by, rises the warmth of your breath

and in its own aroma smolders, slowly, bit by bit.

Far-off, across the horizon, glistening drop by drop

Falls the dew of your beguiling glance.

With such overwhelming love, O my love,

your memory has placed its hand on my heart's cheek,

that it looks as if

(though it's still the dawn of the adieu)

the sun of parting has set;

the night of union has come.

Federico Garcia Lorca

But like love

the archers

are blind

Upon the green night,

the piercing saetas

leave traces of

warm lily.

The keel of the moon

breaks through purple clouds

and their quivers

fill with dew.

Ay, but like love

the archers

are blind!

René Char

Despite the open window in the room of long absence,

the odor of the rose is still linked with the breath that was there.

Once again we are without previous experience,

newcomers, in love.

The rose!

The field of its ways would dispel even the effrontery of death.

No grating stands in the way.

Desire is alive, an ache in our vaporous foreheads.

One who walks the earth in its rains has nothing to fear

from the thorn in places either finished or unfriendly.

But if he stops to commune with himself, woe!

Pierced to the quick, he suddenly flies to ashes,

an archer reclaimed by beauty.

Philippe Jaccottet

Cherchons plutôt hors de portée, ou par je ne sais quel geste,
quel bond ou quel oubli qui ne s’appelle plus
ni “chercher”, ni “trouver”

(Let us rather search out of our reach, or through some gesture,
some leap or some forgetfulness no longer called
“to seek”, nor “to find”)

Rabe’a Al-’Adawiya & Al-Hasan Al-Basri

Once Rabe’a passed by Hasan’s house. Hasan had his head out of the window and was weeping, and his tears fell on Rabe’a’s dress. Looking up, she thought at first that it was rain; then, realizing that it wasHasan’s tears, she turned to him and addressed him.“Master, this weeping is a sign of spiritual languor.Guard your tears, so that there may surge within you such a sea that, seeking the heart therein, you shall not find it save in the keeping of a King Omnipotent’.”These words distressed Hasan, but he kept his peace.

Then one day he saw Rabe’a when she was near a lake.Throwing his prayer rug on the surface of the water, he called,“Rabe’a, come! Let us pray two rak’as here!”

“Hasan,” Rabe’a replied, “when you are showing off your spiritual goods in this worldly market, it should be things that your fellow-men are incapable of displaying.”And she flung her prayer rug into the air, and flew upon it.“Come up here, Hasan, where people can see us!”she cried.Hasan, who had not attained that station, said nothing.Rabe’a sought to console him.“Hasan,” she said, “what you did fishes also do, and what I did flies also do. The real business is outside both these tricks. One must apply one’s self to the real business.”

Once Rabe’a sent Hasan three things—a piece of wax, a needle, and a hair.“Be like wax,” she said. “Illumine the world, and yourself burn. Be like a needle, always be working naked. When you have done these two things, a thousand years will be for you as a hair.”

“Do you desire for us to get married?” Hasan asked Rabe’a.“The tie of marriage applies to those who have being,” Rabe’a replied. “Here being has disappeared,for I have become naughted to self and exist only through Him. I belong wholly to Him. I live in the shadow of His control. You must ask my hand of Him,not of me.”

“How did you find this secret, Rabe’a?” Hasan asked.“I lost all ‘found’ things in Him,” Rabe’a answered.

“How do you know Him?” Hasan enquired.“You know the ‘how’; I know the ‘howless’,” Rabe’a said.

~~

Tadhkirat al-Auliya

by Farid al-Din Attar

Kahlil Gibran

Said the weather-cock to the wind,

“How tedious and monotonous you are! Can you not blow any other way but in my face?

You disturb my God-given stability.”

And the wind did not answer.

It only laughed in space.

Jane Hirshfield

Ripeness is

what falls away with ease.

Not only the heavy apple,the pear,

but also the dried brown strands

of autumn iris from their core.

To let your body love this world

that gave itself to your care

in all of its ripeness,with ease,

and will take itself from you

in equal ripeness and ease,

is also harvest.

And however sharply you are tested -

-this sorrow,

that great love -

-it too will leave

on that clean knife.

Sa'di: The Gulistan, or Rose Garden

King Zuzan had a khajah of noble sentiments and of good aspect who served his companions when they were present and spoke well of them when they were absent. He happened to do something whereby he incurred the displeasure of the king who inflicted a fine on him and also otherwise punished him. The officials of the king, mindful of the benefits they had formerly received from him and being by them pledged to gratitude, treated him kindly whilst in their custody and allowed no one to insult him.

If thou desirest peace from the foe, whenever he

Finds fault behind thy back praise him to his face.

A vicious fellow's mouth must utter words.

If thou desirest not bitter words, sweeten his mouth.

He was absolved of some accusations brought by the king against him but retained in prison for some. Another king in those regions secretly dispatched a message to him, to the purport that the sovereigns of that country, not knowing his excellent qualities, had dishonoured him, but that if his precious mind (may Allah prosper the end of his affairs) were to look in this direction, the utmost efforts would be made to please him, because the nobles of this realm would consider it an honour to see him and are waiting for a reply to this letter. The khajah, who had received this information,being apprehensive of danger, forthwith wrote a brief and suitable answer on the back of the sheet of paper and sent it back. One,however, of the king's courtiers, who noticed what had taken place,reported to him that the imprisoned khajah was in correspondence with the princes of the adjacent country. The king became angry and desired this affair to be investigated. The courier was overtaken and deprived of the letter, the contents of which were found on perusal to be as follows: 'The good opinion of high personages is more than their servant's merit deserves, who is unable to comply with the honour of reception which they have offered him, because having been nourished by the bounty of this dynasty, he cannot become unthankful towards his benefactor in consequence of a slight change of sentiments of the latter, since it is said:

He who bestows every moment favours upon thee

Is to be pardoned by thee if once in his life he injures thee.'

The king approved of his gratitude, bestowed upon him a robe of honour, gave him presents and asked his pardon, saying: 'I committed a mistake.' He replied: 'My lord, it was the decree of God the most high that a misfortune should befall this servant but it was best that it should come from thy hands which had formerly bestowed favours upon him and placed him under obligations.'

If people injure thee grieve not

Because neither rest nor grief come from the people.

Be aware that the contrasts of friend and foe are from God

Because the hearts of both are in his keeping.

Although the arrow is shot from the bow

Wise men look at the archer.

Rumi

Through the weeping, I witness the path I have chosen.

I search for a lost soul, lost only to me.

With every step I pull a caravan of fear,

But there is no turning back.

Not a star points your way.

What remains of your tenderness

Are the memories my mind incessantly paints

And the yearnings of a heart torn from the breast of love

Emptiness echoes into the abyss.

Even the wind denies me sorrow.

I have become someone in some other place at another time.

The shallow voice in the shadow of night is my own.

Where have you gone?

What might I touch to find you?

Shams, who wrested your life from mine?

The mule of sorrow marches stubbornly.

Do not pull me so!

My steps are weighted and I wander in circles.

I am the hub of a wheel revolving in longing,

With hope as my destination.

Is he in Damascus?

Does his blood stain the sands?

Belighted One of Wonderment, is this the lot of fairness?

The flame of our fire no longer burns in my hands.

I require nothing, nothing but my friend.

Heavenly Star of all that loves,

where is Shams?

Rumi

do you still

Stir sugar in your Cup

when Empty or Dissolving

drink Now,

Rumi is drunk

I was going to tell you my story

But waves of pain drowned my voice.

I tried to utter a word but my thoughts

Became fragile and shattered like glass.

Even the largest ship can capsize

In the stormy sea of love,

Let alone my feeble boat

Which shattered to pieces leaving me nothing

But a strip of wood to hold on to.

Small and helpless, rising to heaven

On one wave of love and falling with the next

I don’t even know if I am or I am not.

When I think I am,

I find myself worthless,

When I think I am not,

I find my value.

Like my thoughts,

I die and rise again each day

So how can I doubt the resurrection?

Tired of hunting for love in this world,

At last I surrender in the valley of love

And become free.

Inside the Great Mystery that is,

we don't really own anything.

What is this competition we feel then,

before we go, one at a time,

through the same gate?

None But The Lonely Heart

Goethe's German original:

Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Weiß, was ich leide!
Allein und abgetrennt
Von aller Freude,
Seh ich ans Firmament
Nach jener Seite.
Ach! der mich liebt und kennt,
Ist in der Weite.
Es schwindelt mir, es brennt
Mein Eingeweide.
Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt
Weiß, was ich leide!

An anonymous English translation:

Only one who knows loneliness
can understand my suffering and how I am tormented.
I look into the distance... I have no strength, my eyes grow dim...
He who knew and loved me is far away!
Only one who knows loneliness
can understand my suffering and how I am tormented.
My heart is burning...
One who knows loneliness
can understand my suffering and how I am tormented.
NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART
Pyotr Tchaikovsky(based on a poem by J.W. von Goethe)


None but the lonely heart
Can know my sadness
Alone and parted
Far from joy and gladness
Heaven's boundless arch I see
Spread about above me
O what a distance dear to one
Who loves me
None but the lonely heart
Can know my sadness
Alone and parted
Far from joy and gladness
Alone and parted far
From joy and gladness
My senses fail
A burning fire
Devours me
None but the lonely heart
Can know my sadness!!!

From: ‘Cien sonetos de amor’-Pablo Neruda

And this word, this paper written

by the thousand hands of a single hand
does not rest in you, does not serve for dreams.
It falls to the earth: there it continues.

No matter that light or praise
were spilled and rose from the glass
if they were a tenacious tremor of wine,
if your mouth was dyed amaranthine.

It no longer needs the lagging syllable
that which the reef brings and withdraws
from my memories, the incensed spume,

It no longer needs a single thing but to write your name.
And even though my sombre love silences it
much later the spring will speak it.

Paul Éluard

Would you see
The dark form of the sun
The contours of life
Or be truly dazzled
By the fire that fuses all
The flame conveyer of modesties
In flesh in gold that fine gesture

Error is as unknown
As the limits of spring
The temptation prodigious
All touches all travels you
At first it was only a thunder of incense
Which you love the more
The fine praise at four
Lovely motionless nude
Violin mute but palpable
I speak to you of seeing

I will speak to you of your eyes
Be faceless if you wish
Of their unwilling colour
Of luminous stones
Colourless
Before the man you conquer
His blind enthusiasm
Reigns naively like a spring
In the desert
Between the sands of night and the waves of day
Between earth and water
No ripple to erase
No road possible

Between your eyes and the images I see there
Is all of which I think
Myself inderacinable
Like a plant which masses itself
Which simulates rock among other rocks
That I carry for certain
You all entire
All that you gaze at
All

This is a boat
That sails a sweet river
It carries playful women
And patient grain
This is a horse descending the hill
Or perhaps a flame rising
A great barefooted laugh in a wretched heart
An autumn height of soothing verdure
A bird that persists in folding its wings in its nest
A morning that scatters the reddened light
To waken the fields
This is a parasol
And this the dress
Of a lace-maker more seductive than a bouquet
Of the bell-sounds of the rainbow
This thwarts immensity
This has never enough space
Welcome is always elsewhere
With the lightning and the flood
That accompany it
Of medusas and fires
Marvellously obliging
They destroy the scaffolding
Topped by a sad coloured flag
A bounded star
Whose fingers are paralysed

I speak of seeing you
I know you living
All exists all is visible
There is no fleck of night in your eyes

I see by a light exclusively yours.

Rumi

Listen to the living walls.

Whose silence are you?

i set the paper aside.

break my pen.

name myself silence.

go insane

go mad

burn like a candlemoth

arrive ahead of yourself.

you ask me

who are you

and with such a shaky existence

how can you fall in love.

Paul Celan

Silence, like Gold cooked in
charred
Hands.

Vast, grey,
near as all that is Lost
Sisterly-Shape:

All the Names, all the with-
Burnt up
Names. So much
Ash to be blessed. So much
Land gained
above
the light, so light
Soul-
Rings.

Vast. Grey. Clinker-
less.

You, then.
You with the pale
bitten-out bud,
You in the Wine-Flood.

(Did it not discharge
us too, this Hour?
Good,
Good, that your Word died away here.)
Silence, like Gold cooked, in
charred, charred
Hands.
Fingers, smoke-thin. Like Crowns, Air-Crowns
around – –

Vast. Grey. Track-
less.
Queen-
like.

Walt Whitman

O living always, always dying!

O the burials of me past and present,

O me while I stride ahead, material, visible, imperious as ever;

O me, what I was for years, now dead,

(I lament not, I am content;)

O to disengage myself from those corpses of me,

which I turn and look at where I cast them,

To pass on,

(O living! always living!)

and leave the corpses behind.