4
" Go back,
go back to sleep.
Yes, you are allowed.
You who have no Love in your heart,
you can go back to sleep.
The power of Love
is exclusive to us,
you can go back to sleep.
I have been burnt
by the fire of Love.
You who have no such yearning in your heart,
go back to sleep.
The path of Love,
has seventy-two folds and countless facets.
Your love and religion
is all about deceit, control and hypocrisy,
go back to sleep.
I have torn to pieces my robe of speech,
and have let go of the desire to converse.
You who are not naked yet,
you can go back to sleep. "
― Rumi , Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi
6
" Have You Prayed”
When the wind
turns and asks, in my father’s voice,
Have you prayed?
I know three things. One:
I’m never finished answering to the dead.
Two: A man is four winds and three fires.
And the four winds are his father’s voice,
his mother’s voice . . .
Or maybe he’s seven winds and ten fires.
And the fires are seeing, hearing, touching,
dreaming, thinking . . .
Or is he the breath of God?
When the wind turns traveler
and asks, in my father’s voice, Have you prayed?
I remember three things.
One: A father’s love
is milk and sugar,
two-thirds worry, two-thirds grief, and what’s left over
is trimmed and leavened to make the bread
the dead and the living share.
And patience? That’s to endure
the terrible leavening and kneading.
And wisdom? That’s my father’s face in sleep.
When the wind
asks, Have you prayed?
I know it’s only me
reminding myself
a flower is one station between
earth’s wish and earth’s rapture, and blood
was fire, salt, and breath long before
it quickened any wand or branch, any limb
that woke speaking. It’s just me
in the gowns of the wind,
or my father through me, asking,
Have you found your refuge yet?
asking, Are you happy?
Strange. A troubled father. A happy son.
The wind with a voice. And me talking to no one. "
― Li-Young Lee , Behind My Eyes [With CD]
7
" Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head,so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name,like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllableslike a charm, like a spell.Falling in loveis glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heartlike a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin.Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in. I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine,in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze,staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud,from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at meas I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you areon the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream." You "
