soul

Oh Friend

Gill Washington Poems, Yunus Emre , , , 0 Comment

 
Yunus Emre

Oh Friend, when I began to love You,
my intellect went and left me.
I gazed at the rivers. I dove into the seas.

But a spark of Love’s fire
can make the seas boil.
I fell in, caught fire, and burned.

A soul in love is free of worries.
With love all problems left me.
With love I became happy.

When the nightingale saw the face
of the red rose, it fell in love.
I saw the faces of those who matured,
and became a nightingale.

I was a dead tree fallen onto the path.
When a master threw me a glance and
brought me to life.

Yunus, if you are a true lover,
humble yourself.
Humility was chosen by them all.

 

LA HAINE

Gill Washington Poems, Susan Dane , , 0 Comment

 

Susan Dane

It starts as a small little thing,
indignation at a trespass,
anger,  having been wronged.
It grows into a flag,
parading first down small streets,
sweeping up the meanderers,
then avenues and winning crowds,
cheers along the way.
It writes an anthem,
builds a campaign.
Marching through the mind
it settles thoroughly in memory and vein,
changing our posture,
the way we hold our chin.
By the time it reaches bone,
it has eaten through sinew and spine,
cost us all that was benign.
Then, rises up the starless night,
no song no light.
Suddenly afraid,
we want it out:
cut, poison, burn the blighted stem.
But rampant right breeds cell on cell
out of control,
And having eaten heart
it eats the soul.

 

 

Nirvana

Gill Washington Mathilde Blind, Poems , , 0 Comment

 

Mathilde Blind

DIVEST thyself, O Soul, of vain desire!
Bid hope farewell, dismiss all coward fears;
Take leave of empty laughter, emptier tears,
And quench, for ever quench, the wasting fire
Wherein this heart, as in a funeral pyre,
Aye burns, yet is consumed not. Years on years
Moaning with memories in thy maddened ears–
Let at thy word, like refluent waves, retire.

Enter thy soul’s vast realm as Sovereign Lord,
And, like that angel with the flaming sword,
Wave off life’s clinging hands. Then chains will fall
From the poor slave of self’s hard tyranny–
And Thou, a ripple rounded by the sea,
In rapture lost be lapped within the All.

 

Sonnets from the Portuguese – 41 to 44

Gill Washington Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems, Sonnets from the Portuguese , , 0 Comment

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

XLI

I thank all who have loved me in their hearts,
With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all
Who paused a little near the prison-wall
To hear my music in its louder parts
Ere they went onward, each one to the mart’s
Or temple’s occupation, beyond call.
But thou, who, in my voice’s sink and fall
When the sob took it, thy divinest Art’s
Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot
To hearken what I said between my tears, . . .
Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot
My soul’s full meaning into future years,
That they should lend it utterance, and salute
Love that endures, from Life that disappears!

XLII

“My future will not copy fair my past”–
I wrote that once; and thinking at my side
My ministering life-angel justified
The word by his appealing look upcast
To the white throne of God, I turned at last,
And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied
To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried
By natural ills, received the comfort fast,
While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim’s staff
Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled.
I seek no copy now of life’s first half:
Leave here the pages with long musing curled,
And write me new my future’s epigraph,
New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

 XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

XLIV

Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine,
Here’s ivy!–take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colors true,
And tell thy soul their roots are left in mine.

 

The Soul’s Expression

Gill Washington Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Poems , , 0 Comment

WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground.
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air:
But if I did it,–as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Paper Star

Gill Washington Hydeh Aubon, Poems , , 1 Comment

It was mid-June
the sky clear as if
nothing ever went wrong,
as if nothing was ever going
to disturb your poetic melancholy.
You stood before the tall glass window,
walked determined and unsure
and suddenly you were before the ocean
and suddenly I was drinking tea
on the peak of Himalayas
this is what I’ve always loved about you:
knowing and not knowing,
daring and not caring.
making a long trail of colorful paper stars
and letting them fly.
They don’t seem to ever come back.
“They don’t ” , you say.
One day , one night,
they appear in your darkest hour.
When suddenly you are breathing
the salty fresh ocean air,
when the fresh scented air
on top of a mountain makes you one
with the running spring, soaring bird,
wild flowers, and the shiny little creature
that crawls on a dandelion.,
then unknowingly you felt it in your being
that everything you did, said, learned,
longed for, suffered or struggled for,
no matter how real and harsh,
was just another paper star.
And only when you let the star go,
It came back to you
certain, shining and guiding
like a true friend.,
like your beautiful soul.

Hydeh Aubon(6/12/09)