I don’t get tired of you. Don’t grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!
I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.
This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.
A great silence overcomes me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.
IN BAGHDAD, DREAMING OF CAIRO:
IN CAIRO, DREAMING OF BAGHDAD
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀‘The water of life is here.
I’m drinking it. But I had to come
This long way to know it!’
CRAFTSMANSHIP AND EMPTINESS
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Dear soul, if you were not friends
with the vast nothing inside,
why would you always be casting your net
into it, and waiting so patiently?
The beauty of careful sewing on a shirt
is the patience it contains.
‘Anything that comes and goes,
rises and sets,
is not what I love.’
NO ROOM FOR FORM
And don’t look from in a human shape.
I am inside your looking. No room
for form with love this strong.
Beat the drum and let the poets speak.
This is a day of purification for those who
are already mature and initiated into what love is.
No need to wait until we die!
There’s more to want here than money
and being famous and bites of roasted meat.
Now, what shall we call this new sort of gazing-house
that has opened in our town where people sit
quietly and pour out their glancing
like light, like answering?