You have been interested
in your shadow. Look instead directly at the sun.
What can we know by just
watching the time-and-space shapes of each other?
Someone half awake in the night sees imaginary dangers;
the morning star rises; the horizon grows
defined; people become friends in a moving caravan.
Night birds may think
daybreak a kind of darkness, because
that’s all they know.
It’s a fortunate
bird who’s not intrigued with evening,
who flies in the sun we call Shams.
The time has come for us to become madmen in your chain, toburst our bonds and become estranged from all;To yield up our souls, no more to bear the disgrace of such asoul, to set fire to our house, and run like fire to the tavern.Until we ferment, we shall not escape from this vat…
There is a broken- open place in a lover.Where are those qualities of bravery andsharp compassion in this group? What’s theuse of old and frozen thought?I want a howling hurt. This is not a treasurywhere gold is stored; this is for copper.We alchemists look for talent thatcan heat up and change.Lukewarm won’t do. Halfhearted holding…
Who makes these changes?I shoot an arrow right.It lands left.I ride after a deer and find myselfChased by a hog.I plot to get what I wantAnd end up in prison.I dig pits to trap othersAnd fall in. I should be suspiciousOf what I want.
Withpassion pray. Withpassion work. With passion make love.With passion eat and drink and dance and play.Why look like a dead fishin this oceanofGod?
I don’t needa companion who isnasty sad and sour the one who islike a gravedark depressing and bitter a sweetheart is a mirrora friend a delicious cakeit isn’t worth spending an hour with anyone else a companion who isin love only with the selfhas five distinct characters stone heartedunsure of every steplazy and disinterested keeping…
When stars wheelaround the North Pole,they are longing for our growing consciousness.Wine got drunk with us,not the other way.The body developed out of us, not we from it.We are bees,and our body is a honeycomb.We madethe body, cell by cell we made it.translated by Robert Bly
