Poem of the Day

At the last minute a word is waiting
not heard that way before and not to be
repeated or ever be remembered
one that always had been a household word
used in speaking of the ordinary
everyday recurrences of living
not newly chosen or long considered
or a matter for comment afterward
who would ever have thought it was the one
saying itself from the beginning through
all its uses and circumstances to
utter at last that meaning of its own
for which it had long been the only word
though it seems now that any word would do

By:W.S.Merwin

SOUL’S joy, now I am gone,
And you alone,
—Which cannot be,
Since I must leave myself with thee,
And carry thee with me—
Yet when unto our eyes
Absence denies
Each other’s sight,
And makes to us a constant night,
When others change to light ;
O give no way to grief,
But let belief
Of mutual love
This wonder to the vulgar prove,
Our bodies, not we move.

Let not thy wit beweep
Words but sense deep ;
For when we miss
By distance our hope’s joining bliss,
Even then our souls shall kiss ;
Fools have no means to meet,
But by their feet ;
Why should our clay
Over our spirits so much sway,
To tie us to that way?
O give no way to grief,

- John Donne

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness–
Being walkers with the sun and morning.

- Langston Hughes

“Mr. Longfellow said of this poem: ‘I kept it some time in manuscript, unwilling to show it to any one, it being a voice from my inmost heart, at a time when I was rallying from depression.’ Before it was published in the Knickerbocker Magazine, October, 1838, it was read by the poet to his college class at the close of a lecture on Goethe. Its title, though used now exclusively for this poem, was originally, in the poet’s mind, a generic one. He notes from time to time that he has written a psalm, a psalm of death, or another psalm of life. The ‘psalmist’ is thus the poet himself. When printed in the Knickerbocker it bore as a motto the lines from Crashaw:

Life that shall send
A challenge to its end,
And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend.”

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

by Rabindranath Tagore

I heard an Angel singing
When the day was springing:
`Mercy, Pity, Peace
Is the world’s release.’
Thus he sang all day
Over the new-mown hay,
Till the sun went down,
And haycocks looked brown.

I heard a Devil curse
Over the heath and the furze:
`Mercy could be no more
If there was nobody poor,

`And Pity no more could be,
If all were as happy as we.’
At his curse the sun went down,
And the heavens gave a frown.

Down pour’d the heavy rain
Over the new reap’d grain;
And Misery’s increase
Is Mercy, Pity, Peace.

- William Blake

You who are not kept anxiously awake for love’s sake, sleep on.
In restless search for that river, we hurry along;
you whose heart such anxiety has not disturbed, sleep on.
Love’s place is out beyond the many separate sects;
since you love choosing and excluding, sleep on.
Love’s dawn cup is our sunrise, his dusk our supper;
you whose longing is for sweets and whose passion is for supper, sleep on.
In search of the philosopher’s stone, we are melting like copper;
you whose philosopher’s stone is cushion and pillow, sleep on.
I have abandoned hope for my brain and head; you who wish for
a clear head and fresh brain, sleep on.
I have torn speech like a tattered robe and let words go;
you who are still dressed in your clothes, sleep on.

By Rumi

Translated by Jack Marshall
Arabian Nights Coffeehouse Press, October 1986

O coil, honied envoy of the spring,
Cease thy too happy voice, grief’s record, cease:
For I recall that day of vernal trees,
The soft asoca’s bloom, the laden winds
And green felicity of leaves, the hush,
The sense of Nature living in the woods.
Only the river rippled, only hummed
The languid murmuring bee, far-borne and slow,
Emparadised in odours, only used
The ringdove his divine heart-moving speech;
But sweetest to my pleased and singing heart
Thy voice, O coil, in the peepel tree.

O me! for pleasure turned to bitterest tears!
O me! for the swift joy, too great to live,
That only bloomed one hour! O wondrous day,
That crowned the bliss of those delicious years.
The vernal radiance of my lover’s lips
Was shut like a red rose upon my mouth,
His voice was richer than the murmuring leaves,
His love around me than the summer air.
Five hours entangled in the coil’s cry
Lay my beloved twixt my happy breasts.
O voice of tears! O sweetness uttering death!
O lost ere yet that happy cry was still!

O tireless voice of spring! Again I lie
In odorous gloom of trees; unseen and hear
The windlark gurgles in the golden leaves,
The woodworm spins in shrillness on the bough:
Thou by the waters wailing to thy love,
O chocrobacque! have comfort, since to thee
The dawn brings sweetest recompense of tears
And she thou lovest hears thy pain. But I
Am desolate in the heart of fruitful months,
Am widowed in the sight of happy things,
Uttering my moan to the unhoused winds,
O coil, coil, to the winds and thee.

- Sri Aurobindo

From groves of spice,
O’er fields of rice,
Athwart the lotus-stream,
I bring for you,
Aglint with dew,
A little lovely dream.

Sweet, shut your eyes,
The wild fire-flies
Dance through the fairy neem;
From the poppy-bole
For you I stole
A little lovely dream.

Dear eyes, good night,
In golden light
The stars around you gleam;
On you I Press
With soft caress
A little lovely dream.

- Sarojini Naidu

I was warned against writing this book.
People said:
If one did not watch out,
It could be burned.
So I did as I used to do as a child.
When I was sad, I always had to pray.
I bowed to my Lover and said: “Alas, Lord,
Now I am saddened all because of your honor.
If I am going to receive no comfort from you now,
Then you led me astray,
Because you are the one who told me to write it.”

At once God revealed himself to my joyless soul, held this book in his right hand, and said:

“My dear one, do not be overly troubled,
No one can burn the truth….
The words symbolize my marvelous Godhead.
It flows continuously
Into your soul from my divine mouth.
The sound of the words is a sign of my living spirit
And through it achieves genuine truth.
Now examine all these words—
How admirably do they proclaim my personal secrets!
So have no doubts about yourself.”

“Ah, Lord, if I were a learned religious man,
And if you had performed this unique miracle using him,
You would receive everlasting honor for it.
But how is one supposed to believe
That you have built a golden house on filthy ooze…
Lord, earthly wisdom will not be able to find you there.”

“….One finds many a professor learned in scripture who actually is a fool in my eyes.
And I’ll tell you something else:
It is a great honor for me with regard to them, and it very much strengthens Holy Christianity
That the unlearned tongue, aided by my Holy Spirit, teaches the learned tongue.”

- Mechthild of Magdeburg