It certainly wasn’t
fish who discovered water or
birds the air. Men built houses in part
out of embarrassment by the stars and raised
their children on trivialities because they had butchered
the god within themselves. The politician standing on
the church steps thrives within the grandeur
of this stupidity, a burnt out lamp
who never imagined
the sun.
We sense that
there is some sort of spirit
that loves birds and animals and the ants —
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you
in your mother’s womb. Is it logical you would be walking
around entirely orphaned now? The truth is you turned away
yourself, and decided to go into the dark alone. Now you
are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what
you once knew, and that’s why everything
you do has some weird
failure in it.
In your light
I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest, where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do, and that sight
becomes this art.
and Rumi’s poetry, are reminders of experience,
larger and deeper ways we readers and listeners might live.
The words describe a taste of grandeur and love, and as they keep
telling us, you cannot do that: it’s impossible to describe such
wonders. The great winetasters may come as close as one
can get. But try to tell me, really, about a pistachio,
or something you have never tasted. Say what
you want, eventually we have
to taste to know.
commentary on The Drowned Book
We
drove her aqua
Ford convertible into the country
with a sack of red apples. It was a perfect day
with her sun-brown legs and we threw ourselves into
the future together seizing the day. Fifty years later we hold each
other looking out the windows at birds, making dinner, a life
to live day after day, a life of dogs and children and the
far wide country out by rivers, rumpled by
mountains. So far the days keep
coming. Seize the day gently
as if you loved
her.