Why do you care for dichotomy?

x
I reap and I sow,
I sow and I reap.
My joy is full of troubles,
My trouble is full of joys.



That about sums it up...

Chiang Chieh

x
Once when young I lay and listened
To the rain falling on the roof
Of a brothel. The candle light
Gleamed on silk and silky flesh.
Later I heard it on the
Cabin of a small boat
On the Great River, under
Low clouds, where wild geese cried out
On the Autumn storm. Now I
Hear it again on the monastery
Roof. My hair has turned white.
Joy – sorrow-parting-meeting
Are all as though they had
Never been. Only the rain
Is the same, falling in streams
On the tiles, all through the night.

by Chiang Chieh
c.1300
Translation by Eliot Weinberger
From The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry

After Hafiz

On a plane a few weeks ago I was reading The Subject Tonight is Love by Hafiz, as translated by Daniel Ladinsky. Emerson said, "Hafiz is a poet for poets." I was inspired to write a poem and the flight attendant was kind enough to lend me a pen.

*

The love that gives,
The love that receives,
These are not love.
The love that is,
The love that knows,
The love that goes,
What are these loves?
Who is this love?
Where is this love?
In knowledge not,
But love is knowing
Nothing known.
Why am I telling
What cannot be told?
What better words
Than already writ
In the stars bold?
Go away.
Go pluck them for yourself.
I am tired of words, words, words,
And the stars are waiting.
Now the night is long,
But life is short.
Don’t forget.

The Heart-Map

I do not know what meditation is;
I only know the God within
Cries to awake the man without.

And if we build a silence-home
Where He may sit upon His Throne,
Then we will hear the tears
That birth our smiles complete.

This is why I know what Peace is.

Silence

I must say,
“All is beauty.”
But my smile
Will have to meet yours,
To explain exactly
What I mean.

What Was Told, That

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

by Jalalu'l-din Rumi
(Translated by Coleman Barks)

Who?

Who will drink my tears? Who?

You. Only You, my Friend.

*

The word friend struck me as rather strange looking, so I checked the Oxford English Dictionary and it relates back to 'free'. I have copied you the mighty tomes' etymological musings upon free below:

The original sense of the Indo-European base has been conjectured to be ‘one's own’ (perhaps ultimately related to the Indo-European base of Greek (preposition and adverb) round, around, round about: see PERI- prefix), the better to explain the divergent development of sense in the different languages. Whereas the sense ‘beloved, dear’ is reflected in the Sanskrit and Avestan adjectives as well as in senses of the verbal and nominal derivatives in all the Indo-European branches in which they are attested (compare the cognates cited above and also those listed at FREE v.), the sense ‘free, not in servitude’ appears to be a peculiarity of Germanic and Celtic. This sense perhaps arose from the application of the word as the distinctive epithet of those members of the household who were ‘one's own blood’, i.e. who were connected by ties of kinship with the head, as opposed to the unfree slaves. In the context of wider society only the former would have full legal rights, and hence, taken together, they would comprise the class of the free, as opposed to those in servitude. Compare the Old English compounds frobearn free-born child, child or descendant of one's own blood, frobror one's own brother, frodohtor free-born daughter, daughter of one's own blood, fromg one's own kinsman, and see further M. Scheller Vedisch ‘priyá-’ u. die Wortsippe ‘frei, freien, Freund’ (1959), D. H. Green Lang. & Hist. Early Germanic World (1998) 39-41.
In Old English the usual stem form is fro-, fro- (rarely also fra-) beside a less frequent stem form frg-. The diphthongal stem forms arose in Primitive Old English by contraction of (earlier *j) with a following back vowel, while the stem form frg- arose by development of a glide between and a following front vowel, both forms existing in complementary distribution within the same paradigm (e.g. masculine nominative singular fro, masculine genitive singular frges); but in attested Old English analogical forms are already present and the distribution is no longer complementary; see A. Campbell Old Eng. Gram. (1959) §410.
In Old English the word is also found as an element in personal names, compare Frowine, Frobearn, etc.
Old English fro woman (see above), is found only in one isolated attestation in the Old English translation of the fragmentary Old Saxon poem Genesis (not extant at this point) in the collocation fro fægroste ‘fairest woman’ or perhaps ‘fairest of women’, and probably reflects an Old Saxon collocation only partially understood by the translator (compare Old Saxon fro scniosta ‘fairest of women’ (Heliand 2017), in which fro is the genitive plural of fr):
OE Genesis B 457 Oæt he Adam on eorrice, godes handgesceaft, gearone funde, wislice geworht, and his wif somed, freo fægroste.It is also conceivable that the Anglo-Saxon translator may, in fact, be using fro FREE n. in sense B. 2 ‘a person (in this case a woman) of noble birth’ (compare quot. OE at that sense).
With free arts (see sense A. 4) compare classical Latin ingenuae arts studies befitting a free-born person; in some instances probably after Middle Low German vre künste, German freie künste (Middle High German fre künste).]