April is National Poetry Month

Poetry for April 9, 2008

In Memory of Dori Anderson

1938-2008

Ukiah Library National Poetry Month

Poem of the Day April 9, 2008

The Lovers and the Love Letter

A certain man, when his beloved allowed him to sit beside her, produced a letter and read it to her. In the letter were verses and praise and glory and lamentations, wretched feelings and humble entreaties.

The beloved said to him,

If your’re reading this for me at this time while we both sit together, then you’re wasting my life. I’m here beside you and you read a letter.”

And so the man replied,

“You’re beside me, but I don’t feel that I am really getting closer to you. Last year I felt something different, which I don’t feel know, though I am still close to you.”

I have drunk cool water from the fountain.

I have refreshed eye and heart with this flow.

In you I still see the fountain, but now no water flows, stolen by a thief.

So she replied to him:

Then I am not your beloved.

For I am somewhere else

And the object of your desire departed.

You’re in love with love.

And love is not in your control.

So I am not the whole you seek,

But on part right now.

The temple of love is not love itself.

True love is the treasure,

not the walls about it.

Do not admire the decoration,

but involve yourself in the essence.

The perfume that invades and touches you—the beginning

and the apparent and the unknowable.

Here is the master of all emotions,

independent, time and space are slaves to this presence.

This god, king of all surveys, even death itself.

Thorns and stings become narcissus and wild roses.

He who depends on the state remains human,

for the state comes and goes, good and bad.

You’re in love with your state, not me.

And only He directs it, not you.

Your love for me gives hope for greater things,

And this does nothing but stink,

And he who stinks will bob and drown,

Not the true beloved, who’neither fire nor flow.

He may be the mansion of the moon,

But not the moon herself.

He may be the picture of adoration,

but not the presence.

Go seek a love like this, if you truly live,

Or else remain the slave to time.

And whatever state you seek,

Your lips so dry, must always drink,

Drink up and up and up.

Till dry-lipped you reach the source.

For all your skills have given wealth.

Your quests, your handicrafts and works.

Don’t they begin in thought,

Begin beside the river?

Rumi

Willits Library National Poetry Month Poem of the Day April 9, 2008

“Good poetry makes the universe reveal a secret” – Hafiz

Hafiz

With That Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye

that is always saying,

with that sweet moon language,

what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?