Joy,

for no reasonI flick the dusteras if I’m in some song-and-dance act;for no reasonI stop; sit down; fall silent;for no reasonget up again; do something elsewith a light heart;for what has reasonto do with all this?it always arrives just a moment too lateto enjoy such events.*[leaning on Hafiz’ poem of this title]

look for the ‘meaning’and the poem’s dead.

run towards each other, eagerly, yet shyly, wonderingly,from the two ends of a bridgehigh over the water that joins and separates – run to meet:Constantinopolis, Byzantium;a city never here and always there,a city made of images in the mind and heartits jewelled, aqueous, shifting lightpromising and hidinglike a jewelled dancer swirling, whom our senses yield…

and I promise not to claim thatI wrote it myself…or if that’s too much to ask,just a line somewhere, that I’ll watchas it writes itself and knowthat you, not I, write itor if that’s too much to ask,open an old book ata page that smells just faintlyof attar of roses, and know thatRumi read this…

would like to speak through meand it doesn’tbut the stillness as I wait –that’s good.Then just occasionally, whenI’m not visited by a poem,I visit – without planning – Poetry.It’s a place without a namewhere many things meet:there’s space, and hope,and possibility, and, out of the present,a future growing..and something that’s not less, ornot less bright,…

before the day when it revealed itself, gentle, sweet and mild,living its life of glorious detachment,invulnerable, free as freedom lives forever, is itself?Or did it reveal itself to those who neededthe vision of itself, magnetic in its beauty;the reassurance that it’s there, andmay be loved; loved unconditionally?It’s difficult to say which is the truth.But those…