Poetry is music written in words – the most subtle, yet precise way to unveil the depth of inner self; the depth of a seeker’s heart. True poetry is like sutras. They take you as deep as you are willing to travel. It is a journey; and if you are up to it, than have a great one!
POETRY BY ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS
FULL OF HOPE I CLIMBED THE DAY
Full of hope I climbed the day while hunting the game of love,
And soared so high, high above that at last I caught my prey.
In order to seize the game–the divine love in the sky–
I had to fly so high, high I floated unseen and became
lost in that dangerous day; and so my flight fell short of
Height–yet so high was my love, that at last I caught my prey.
In this most exalted quest the higher I began to soar
The lower I felt-more sore and broken and depressed.
I said: None can seize the prey! and groveled so low, so low
That high, higher did I go, and at last I caught my prey.
By strange reckoning I saw a thousand flights in one flight;
For hope of heavenly light is achieved by hoping now.
I hoped only for this way and was right to wait for love,
And climbed so high, high above that at last caught my prey.
I CAME INTO THE UNKNOWN
I came into the unknown and stayed there unknowing,
Rising beyond all science
I did not know the door but when I found the way,
Unknowing where I was, I learned enormous things,
but what I felt I cannot say, for I remained unknowing,
Rising beyond all science
It was the perfect realm of holiness and peace.
In deepest solitude I found the narrow way:
a secret giving such release that I was stunned and stammering,
Rising beyond all science
I was so far inside, so dazed and far away
My senses were released from feelings of my own.
My mind had found a surer way: a knowledge by unknowing,
Rising beyond all science
And he who does arrive collapses as in sleep,
for all he knew before now seems a lowly thing,
and so his knowledge grows so deep that he remain unknowing,
Rising beyond all science
The higher he ascends the darker is the wood;
it is the shadowy cloud that clarified the night,
and so the one who understood remains always unknowing,
Rising beyond all science
This knowledge by unknowing is such a soaring force
That scholars argue long but never leave the ground.
Their knowledge always fails the source; to understand unknowing,
Rising beyond all science
This knowledge is supreme crossing a blazing height;
though formal reason tries it crumbles in the dark,
But one who would control the night by knowledge of unknowing
Will rise beyond all science
And if you wish to hear: the highest science leads
to an ecstatic feeling of the most holy Being;
And from his mercy comes his deed: to let us stay unknowing
Rising beyond all science
POETRY BY HAFIZ
FOR A SINGLE TEAR
Know of beauty that no one has ever known.
How could that be possible
When I may seem so new in infinite time?
It is because God belongs to only you!
Did you hear that?
Did you hear what Hafiz just said?
God belongs to only you!
It is the only reasonable payment for a single Tear.
WHAT THE HELL
The Real Love I always keep a secret.
All my words are sung outside Her window,
For when she lets me in
I take a thousand oaths of silence.
But, Then She says,
O, then God says,
“What the hell, Hafiz,
Why not to give the whole world My Address.”
POETRY BY RUMI
THE WATER WE SEEK /MATHNAWI IV, 3226-3241
Translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski
The eye or the spirit that focuses on the transient
Falls on its face wherever it goes.
Someone who focuses on the distance, without knowledge, may see far,
But just as we do in a dream.
Asleep on the bank of a river, lips parched,
You dream you are running toward water.
In the distance you see the water of your desire
And, caught by your seeing, you run toward it.
In the dream you boast,
“I am the one whose heart can see through the veils.”
Yet every step carries you further away toward the perilous mirage.
From the moment you dreamed you set out you created the distance
From that which had been near to you.
Many set out on a journey that leads them farther away from their goal.
The intuitive claims of the sleeper are a fantasy.
You, too, are sleepy; but for God’s sake,
if you must sleep, sleep on the Way of God,
and maybe some other seeker on the Way
Will awaken you from your fantasies and slumber.
No matter how subtle the sleeper’s thought becomes,
His dreams will not guide him Home.
Whether the sleeper’s thought is twofold or threefold,
It is error multiplying error.
While he dreams of running through the wilderness, the waves are lapping so near.
While he dreams of the pangs of thirst,
The water is nearer than his jugular vein.
WHY ARE YOU MILKING ANOTHER?
MATHNAWI V, 1061; 1064-1072
Translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski
Strip the raiment of pride from your body:
In learning, put on the garment of humility.
Soul receives from soul the knowledge of humility,
Not from books or speech.
Though mysteries of spiritual poverty are within the seeker’s heart,
She doesn’t yet posses knowledge of those mysteries.
Let her wait until her heart expands and fills with Light:
God said, “Did we not expand your breast…?
For we have put illumination there,
We have put the expansion into your heart.”
When you are a source of milk, why are you milking another?
An endless fountain of milk is within you:
Why are you seeking milk with a pail?
You are a lake with a channel to the Sea:
be ashamed to seek water from a pool;
For Did We not expand your chest…?
Again, don’t you posses the expansion?
Why are you going about like a beggar?
Contemplate the expansion of the heart within you,
That you may not be reproached with, Do you not see?
POETRY BY KAHLIL GIBRAN
LOVE
They Say The jackal and the mole drink from the self-same stream
Where the lion comes to drink.
And they say the eagle and the vulture dig their beaks into the same carcass,
And are at peace, one with the other, in the presence of the dead thing.
O love, whose lordly hand has bridled my desires,
And raised my hunger and my thirst to dignity and pride,
Let not the strong in me and the constant
Eat the bread or drink the wine that tempt my weaker self.
Let me rather starve, and let my heart parch with thirst,
And let me die and perish, ere I stretch my hand
To a cup you did not fill, or a bowl you did not bless.
OUT OF MY DEEPER HEART
Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skyward.
Higher and higher did it rise, yet larger and larger did it grow.
At first it was but a swallow, then a lark, then an eagle,
Then as vast as a spring cloud, and then it filled the starry heavens.
Out of my heart a bird flew skyward. And it waxed larger as it flew.
Yet it left not my heart.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
O my faith, my untamed knowledge, how shall I fly to your height
And see with you man’s larger self pencilled upon the sky?
How shall I turn this sea within me into mist,
And move with you in space immeasurable?
How can a prisoner within the temple behold its golden domes?
How shall the heart of a fruit be stretched to envelop the fruit also?
O my faith, I am in chains behind these bars of silver and ebony,
And I cannot fly with you.
Yet out of my heart you rise skyward, and it is my heart that holds you,
And I shall be content.
