unask

 

Hattie

I feel very happy, very contented. This is absolutely the right thing to be doing right now.

Here's a wonderful Rumi poem for you—I tinkered with it a bit…

Today, look: another day; waking, wide open,
Afraid. Don't dive into the library,
Into yet another book. Reach for your guitar,
Let love, let beauty, be what it is we do:
You don't have to fly abroad, in order to kneel
And kiss the tarmac!

So—much love to you.

Hattie

 

From the novel Can’t Catch Me! by Deirdre Burton and Tom Davis, now on sale.

 

 

 

Charlie

Shakespeare. I got Shakespeare on my mind.

The bald bard, with the bulging brow.

Or the furtive unshaven poacher of the other portrait, what’s it called?

Indeed you are, old fox; you are the prince of poachers, out there in the night thickets of literature, looking for plots to steal.

—What are you thinking about, Charlie?

—Shakespeare, my love.

—He was the best, wasn’t he, Charlie?

—The best what, precious?

—I don’t know. What did he do?

Well, yes, what did he do? Tell me, master, teacher, sweet poet, emperor of the unspeakable, what was it, again, that you did? Something to do with plays, was it?

—Plays, my love, he wrote plays and poems.

—What for, Charlie? What were they for?

 

From the novel Can’t Catch Me! by Deirdre Burton and Tom Davis, now on sale.

 

 

sky, air, light

A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.

Denise Levertov

 

 

 

your gold

Your eyes, your large and all-inquiring eyes.
That look so dubiously into me,
And are not satisfied with what you see,
Tell me the worst and let us have no lies:
Tell me the meaning of your scrutinies.

You say not; but you think, without a doubt;
And you have the whole world to think about,
With very little time for little things.
So let it be; and let it all be fair--
For you, and for the rest who cannot share
Your gold of unrevealed awakenings.

Edward Arlington Robinson

 

 

 

I shall be that

I was stone; I died
and became a rose
and died, and became
a butterfly. And died
and found myself to be
human. No fear,
no lessening in death.
Next time, perhaps,
an angel. And next, perhaps
what cannot be imagined:
I shall be that.

Rumi (transl. Tom Davis)

 

 

 

blueness

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness.
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness was awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice

among the splendour of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on the
lost bride and groom.

D.H.Lawrence

 

 

 

three

The beauty of the heart
is what will remain:
it brings to your lips
the water of life.
in truth, it is the water,
and the jug that holds it,
and the lips that drink.

All three become one when
your talismans are broken.
This is a oneness you won't know
by thinking about it.

From: Mathnawi II, 716-718

Rumi, transl. Tom Davis