flame

Sing for Very Love

Gill Washington Love, Poems, Spirituality , , , 0 Comment

Jacopone Da Todi

Thou, Jubilus, the heart dost move;
And makest us sing for very love.

The Jubilus in fire awakes,
And straight the man must sing and pray;
His tongue in childish stammering shakes,
Nor knows he what his lips may say;
He cannot quench nor hide away
That Sweetness pure and infinite.
The Jubilus in flame is lit,
And straight the man must shout and sing;
So close to Love his heart is knit,
He scarce can bear the honeyed sting;
His clamor and his cries must ring,
And shame forever take to flight.
The Jubilus enslaves man’s heart –
A love-bewildered prisoner –
And see! his neighbors stand apart,
And mock the senseless chatterer:
They deem his speech a foolish blur,
A shadow of his spirit’s light.
Yea, when thou enterest the mind,
O Jubilus, thou rapture fair,
The heart of man new skill doth find
Love’s own disguise to grasp and wear,
The suffering of Love to bear,
With song and clamor of delight!
And thus the uninitiate
Will deam that thou art crazed indeed;
They see thy strange and fevered state,
But have not wit thy heart to read;
Within, deep-pierced, that heart may bleed,
Hidden from curious mortal sight.

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The Body is Too Slow for Me

Gill Washington Rumi, Spirituality, Sufism , , , 0 Comment

By Rumi

Toward the gardens,
Toward the orchards,
I am going.
If you want to stay here,
Stay here –
I am going!
My day is dark without His Face,
Toward that bright flame
I am going.

My soul is racing ahead of me.
It says, The body is too slow for me –
I am going.

The smell of apples arises
from the orchard of my soul.
One whiff and I am gone –
Toward a feast of apples
I am going.

A sudden wind won’t blow me over.
Toward Him, like a mountain of iron,
I am going.

My shirt is ripped open
with the pain of loss.
Searching for a new life,
with my head held high,
I am going.

I am fire, though I seem like oil –
Seeking to be the fuel of His fire,
I am going.

I appear as a steady mountain
Yet bit by bit,
Toward that tiny opening
I am going.

From: A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi

Ode 1668 Version by Jonathan Star
from a translation by Shahram Shiva

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Thou Walkest With Me

Gill Washington Mathilde Blind, Poems , , 0 Comment

 

Mathilde Blind

THOU walkest with me as the spirit-light
Of the hushed moon, high o’er a snowy hill,
Walks with the houseless traveller all the night,
When trees are tongueless and when mute the rill.
Moon of my soul, O phantasm of delight,
Thou walkest with me still.

The vestal flame of quenchless memory burns
In my soul’s sanctuary. Yea, still for thee
My bitter heart hath yearned, as moonward yearns
Each separate wave-pulse of the clamorous sea:
My Moon of love, to whom for ever turns
The life that aches through me.