FAITH HOUSE Manhattan

A Sabbath Poem (Tolkien)

MAXIM
~ by J.R.R. Tolkien

All that is gold does not glitter;
Not all who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither;
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be kindled;
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken;
The crownless again shall be king.

(from The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien)

A Sabbath Poem (Rilke - 4)

FEAR NOT THE STRANGENESS
~ by Rainer Maria Rilke

You must give birth to you images.
They are the future to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you
                    long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth,
for the hour of new clarity.

(Letters to a Young Poet, Transl. Stephen Mitchell, 
New York: Vintage Books, 1986)

A Sabbath Poem (Oliver - 2)

WILD GEESE
~ by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

(Mary Oliver, from Dream Work)

A Sabbath Poem (Rumi - 4))

DIE BEFORE YOU DIE
~ by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

Really to experience the day of Resurrection
You have to die first, for "resurrection" means
"Making the dead come back to life."
The whole world is racing in the wrong direction
For everyone is terrified of non-existence.
That is, in reality, the only certain refuge.
How should we try to win real awareness?
By renouncing all knowing.
How should we look for salvation?
By giving up our personal salvation.
How should we search for real existence?
By giving up our existence.
How should we search for the fruit of the spirit?
By not always greedily stretching out our hands.

(Light Upon Light: Inspirations from Rumi, transl. Andrew Harvey)

A Sabbath Poem (Tao-Sheng)

WE ARE CLAY
~ by Kuan Tao-Sheng

Take a lump of clay,
Wet it, pat it,
Make a statue of you
And a statue of me
Then shatter them, clatter them,
Add some water,
And break them and mold them
Into a statue of you
And a statue of me.
Then in mine, there are bits of you
And in you there are bits of me.
Nothing ever shall keep us apart.

(quoted in Of Love and Lust by Theodor Reik)

A Sabbath Poem (Tennyson)

MUCH ABIDES
~ by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tho' much is taken, much abides,
and though
we are not that strength
which in old days
moved earth and heaven, that
which we are, we are.
One equal temper of heroic beauty
made weak by time and fate, but
strong in will
to strive, to seek, to find, and not
to yield.

(from: Ulysses)

A Sabbath Poem (Milosz)

INCANTATION
~ by Czeslaw Milosz

Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It establishes the universal ideas in language,
And guides our hand so we write Truth and Justice
With capital letters, lie and oppression with small.
It puts what should be above things as they are,
It is an enemy of despair and a friend of hope.
It does not know Jew from Greek or slave from master,
Giving us the estate of the world to manage.
It saves austere and transparent phrases
From the filthy discord of tortured words.
It says that everything is new under the sun,
Opens the congealed fist of the past.
Beautiful and very young are Philo-Sophia
And poetry, her ally in service of the good.
As late as yesterday Nature celebrated their birth,
The news was brought to the mountains by a unicorn and an echo,
Their friendship will be glorious, their time has no limit,
Their enemies have delivered themselves to destruction.

(translated by Robert Pinsky and the author, from
The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life,
by Austin Dacey, 2008, Prometheus Books)

A Sabbath Poem (Stafford - 2)

IT'S HEAVY TO DRAG
~ by William Stafford

It's heavy to drag, this big sack of what
you should have done. And finally
you can't lift it any more.
Someone says, "Come on," and you
just look at them. Trees are waiting,
mountains. You never intended
that it should come to this.

But Now has arrived and is looking
straight at you, the way a lion does
when thinking it over, and anything
can happen. It's time for the cavalry
or maybe the Lone Ranger. But they
won't come. Maybe the music will
spill over and start it all again.
Maybe.

(from The Way It Is, New & Selected Poems, Graywolf Press, 1999)

A Sabbath Poem (Hafiz - 4)

AT THIS PARTY
~ by Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz (c. 1320-1389)

I don't want to be the only one here
Telling all the secrets--

Filling up all the bowls at this party,
Taking all the laughs.

I would like you
To start putting things on the table
That can also feed the soul
The way I do.

That way
We can invite

A hell of a lot more
Friends.

(from The Subject Tonight Is Love: Sixty Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz,
versions by Daniel Ladinsky, Pumpkin House Press, 3rd ed, 2000)

Thank you our friend Daniel Ladinsky for sending us this book! A sweet gift.

A Sabbath Poem (St. Catherine - 2)

THE MIND'S RUIN
~ by St. Catherine of Siena

I first saw God when I was a child, six years of age.
The cheeks of the sun were pale before Him,
and the earth acted as a shy
girl, like me.

Divine light entered my heart from His love
that did never fully wane,

though indeed, dear, I can understand how a person's
faith can at times flicker,

for what is the mind to do
with something that becomes the mind's ruin:
a God that consumes us
in His grace.

I have seen what you want;
it is there,

 a Beloved of infinite
tenderness.

A Sabbath Poem (Rabia - 2)

WHERE I KNEEL
~ by Rabia of Basra

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church
where I kneel.

Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.

Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty is
illumined nothing,

where ecstasy gets poured into itself
and becomes
lost,

where the wing is fully alive
but has no mind or
body?

In
my soul
there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque,
a church

that dissolve, that
dissolve in
God.

(Thank you Lorelei Cress for sending us this poem!)

A Sabbath Poem (Eckhart - 2)

WORLDS ARE FORMING
~ by Meister Eckhart

All beings
are words of God,
His music, His
art.

Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps
in our
souls.

Every act reveals God and expands His being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.

All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.

Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;

I need to be silent
for a while,

worlds are forming
in my heart.

A Sabbath Poem (Polacco)

THE TASTE OF WARM BREAD
~ by Stacey Polacco (New York City)

A child stands outside
The bakery window staring at the
Freshly baked bread,
the scent of hot dough rises up into her imagination and
she can taste the softness between her lips,
the hard chewy crust delicious on her tongue
she continues to stare and sees pure perfection
As if nothing in the world ever looked so good
So desirable, though she’s not unfamiliar with
Being hungry and staring at what she can’t have
Which at first – makes her wonder why…?
Why she can’t havea piece of what she desperately hungers for
Why so many others can
But then understands somehow that starving and staring
Is exactly where she’s supposed to be
As if the bakery was created to reveal her hunger
And there is a delight in that, as there is a delight in the dough
And she breathes in what she knows she can’t have
filled with a sense she somehow created it.

(Thank you Stacey for this gift!)

A Sabbath Poem (Oliver)

 

PRAYING
~ by Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

(from Thirst: Poems by Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, 2006)
Thank you Rabbi David Ingber for sending us this book!

A Sabbath Poem (Frost)

A TIME TO TALK
~ by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, "What is it?"
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

(from You Come Too, by Robert Frost, Owlet, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (Bozarth)

THE SMALL PLOT OF GROUND
~ by Alla Renee Bozarth

The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected

to stay forever
the same.
Earth changes,
and home becomes different
places.

You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one place.

To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but know
more

You have stars in your bones
and oceans
in blood.

You have opposing
terrain in each eye
you belong to the land
and sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.

(from Earth Prayers, edited by Elizabeth Roberts)
Thank you Bowie for sending this to us!

A Sabbath Poem (Whitman)

TO BE A GREAT POEM
~ a reflection by Walt Whitman
(from preface to Leaves of Grass)

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul--and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

A Sabbath Poem (St. John of the Cross - 2)

IF YOU LOVE
~ by St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)
You might quiet the whole world for a second

if you pray.
And if you love, if you

really love,
our guns will

wilt.



(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (Rabia)

I HOPE GOD THINKS LIKE THAT
~ Rabia of Basra (c. 717-801)

There is a dog I sometimes take for a walk
and turn loose in a
field,

when I can’t give her that freedom
I feel in debt.

I hope God thinks like that and

is keeping track of all
the bliss He
owes
me.

Born nearly five hundred years before Rumi, Rabia was a central female Islamic figure of Sufi tradition. As a young woman, while wandering homeless, she was abducted, sold into slavery and spend decades working in a brothel, exposed to both physical and sexual abuse. Later in life, she became one of the greatest women saints and poets known to history. She once said, "What a place for trials and transformation did my lover put me, but never once did He look upon me as if I were impure." Rabia is a timely spiritual voice for women of this century, especially for any woman (or man) who had had to suffer the emotionally crippling degradation of unwanted touch. After she was given freedom, she helped people heal and was offered a bag of gold for her work, to which she responded, "Dear, if you leave that, flies with gather as if a horse just relieved himself, and I might slip in it while dancing."

(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (St. Teresa)

THE SKY’S SHEETS
~ St. Teresa of Avila

When God touches me I clutch the sky’s
sheets,
the way other
lovers
do
the earth’s weave
of clay.
Any real ecstasy is a sign
you are moving
in the right
direction,
don’t let any prude tell
you otherwise.


(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (Amichai)

THE PLACE WHERE WE ARE RIGHT
~ by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.

The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.

But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plow.

And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.

(You Don't Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right,
by Brad Hirschfield, Harmony Books, 2007)

A Sabbath Poem (Piercy)

TO BE OF USE
~ by Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

(from Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor)

A Sabbath Poem (Ibn 'Arabi)

FIRE
~ by Muhammad
Ibn 'Arabi (Sufi Poet)

O Marvel! A garden amidst the flames of Love.
My heart has become capable of every form:
it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks,
a temple for the Hindu God's and the pilgrim's Ka'bah,
the tablets of the Torah and the book of the Qur'an.
I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love's camel takes me,
that is my religion and my faith.
(Thank you Rabia Gentile for sending us this poem!)

A Sabbath Poem (Rumi - 4))

PRAYER IS AN EGG
~ by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

Don't do daily prayers like a bird
pecking, moving its head
up and down. Prayer is an egg.

Hatch out the total helplessness inside.

(translated by Coleman Barks)

A Sabbath Poem (Markova)

I WILL NOT DIE AN UNLIVED LIFE
~ by Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

(from I Will Not Die an Unlived Life,
by Dawna Markova, Conari Press, 2000)

A Sabbath Poem (Machado)

WAKE UP
~ by Antonio Machado

I love Jesus who told us
heaven and earth will pass.
When heaven and earth have passed,
my word will still remain.
O Jesus, what was your word?
Love? Forgiveness? Charity?
All your words were
one word: Awake!

(quoted in The Music of Time by John S. Dunne,
source: www.spiritualityandpractice.org)

A Sabbath Poem (Budbill)

DILEMMA
~ by David Budbill

I want to be
            famous
so I can be
            humble
about being
            famous.

What good is my
            humility
when I am
            stuck 
in this
            obscurity?

(from Good Poems, Selected and Introduced
by Garrison Keillor, Penguin 2002)

A Sabbath Poem (Stafford)

A RITUAL TO READ TO EACH OTHER
~ by William Stafford

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

(A Scripture of Leaves, Brethren Press, 2nd edition, 1999)

A Sabbath Poem (Tagliabue)

MODERATION IS NOT A NEGATION OF
INTENSITY, BUT HELPS AVOID MONOTONY
~by John Tagliabue

Will you stop for a while, stop trying to pull yourself
    together
for some clear "meaning"--some momentary summary?
    no one
can have poetry or dances, prayers or climaxes all day;
    the ordinary
blankness of little dramatic consciousness is good for the
    health sometimes,
only Dostoevsky can be Dostoevskian at such long
    long tumultuous stretches;
look what that intensity did to poor great Van Gogh;
    linger, lounge,
scrounge and be stupid, that doesn't take much centering
    of one's forces;
as wise Whitman said "lounge and invite the soul." Get
    enough sleep;
and not only because (as Cocteau said) "poetry is the
    literature of sleep";
be a dumb bell for few minutes at least; we don't want
    Sunday church bells
    ringing constantly.

(Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, Penguin Books, 2003)

A Sabbath Poem (Howe)

PART OF EVE'S DISCUSSION
~ by Marie Howe

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand,
and flies, just before it flies, the moment the rivers seem to still
and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when
a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop,
very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you
your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like
the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say,
it was like that, and after that, it was like that, only
all the time.

(from The Good Thief, by Maria Howe, Persea Books, 1988)

A Sabbath Poem (Berry - 3)

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
~ by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

(Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, Penguin Books, 2003)

A Sabbath Poem (Sutphen)

LIVING IN THE BODY
~ by Joyce Sutphen

Body is something you need in order to stay
on this planet and you only get one.
And no matter which one you get, it will not
be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful
enough, it will not be fast enough, it will
not keep on for days at a time, but will
pull you down into a sleepy swamp and
demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.

Body is a thing you have to carry
from one day into the next. Always the
same eyebrows over the same eyes in the same
skin when you look in the mirror, and the
same creaky knee when you get up from the
floor and the same wrist under the watchband.
The changes you can make are small and
costly--better to leave it as it is.

Body is a thing that you have to leave
eventually. You know that because you have
seen others do it, others who were once like you,
living inside their pile of bones and
flesh, smiling at you, loving you,
leaning in the doorway, talking to you
for hours and then one day they
are gone. No forwarding address.

(Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, Penguin Books, 2003)

A Sabbath Poem (Shelley)

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY      
~ by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

The fountains mingle with the river   
And the rivers with the ocean,   
The winds of heaven mix for ever   
With a sweet emotion;   
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine   
In one another's being mingle—   
Why not I with thine?   

See the mountains kiss high heaven,   
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven   
If it disdain'd its brother;   
And the sunlight clasps the earth,   
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—   
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

The Complete Poetical Works of Shelley (1969)

A Sabbath Poem (Bialosky)

ANOTHER LOSS TO STOP FOR
~ by Jill Bialosky

Against such cold and mercurial mornings,
watch the wind whirl one leaf
across the landscape,
then, in a breath, let it go.
The color in the opaque sky
seems almost not to exist.

Put on a wool sweater.
Wander in the leaves,
underneath healthy elms.
Hold your child in your arms.

After the dishes are washed,
a kiss still warm at your neck,
put down your pen. Turn out the light.

I know how difficult it is,
always balancing and weighing,
it takes years and many transformations;
and always another loss to stop for,
to send you backwards.

Why do you worry so,
when none of us is spared?

(from Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives,
by Wayne Muller, Bantam Books, 1999, on this website)

A Sabbath Poem (Gibran)

TRUST THE PHYSICIAN
~ by Kahlil Gibran

Trust the physician, and drink his remedy
   in silence and tranquility:
   For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided
   by the tender hand of the Unseen,
And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips,
   has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter
   has moistened with his own sacred tears.

(source: Bruderhof, Daily Dig)

A Sabbath Poem (Rumi - 3)

PROBLEM WITH HUMAN "GOD TALK"
~ by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

 
Those who don't feel this Love
                pulling them like a river,
                those who don't drink dawn
                like a cup of spring water
                or take in sunset like supper,
                those who don't want to change,  

let them sleep.  

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
                that old trickery and hypocrisy.
                If you want to improve your mind that way,  

sleep on.                  

I've given up on my brain.
                I've torn the cloth to shreds
                and thrown it away.  

             

If you're not completely naked,
                wrap your beautiful robe of words
                around you,  

and sleep.

(Like This: Rumi, versions by Coleman Barks, Maypop Books 1990)

A Sabbath Poem (Rilke - 3)

LET EVERYTHING HAPPEN
~ by Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

(from Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,
translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Three Sabbath Poems (Aquinas)

~by St. Thomas Aquinas, (1225-1274)


CLOSE TO GOD

One may never have heard the sacred word “Christ,”
but be closer to God
than a priest or
nun.

LET ME EMBRACE YOU

I said to God, “Let me love you.”
And He replied, “Which part?”
“All of you, all of you,” I said.
“Dear,” God spoke, “you are as a mouse
wanting to impregnate a tiger.”

ON THE SABBATH

On the Sabbath try and make no noise that
goes beyond your
house.
Cries of passion between lovers
are exempt.


(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002, on this website)

A Sabbath Poem (African)

MY PRAYER, OUR PRAYER
~ African

One person
is not a good thing.

One person
is certainly not
a good thing.

O Lord,
please do not make me
one person.

(from Learning to Pray: How We Find Heaven on Earth,
by Wayne Muller, Bantam Book 2003)

A Sabbath Poem (Nye)

KINDNESS
~ by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things,
Feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
What you counted and carefully saved,
All this must go so you know
How desolate the landscape can be
Between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
Thinking the bus will never stop,
The passengers eating maize and chicken
Will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
Lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
How he too was someone
Who journeyed through the night with plans
And the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
Catches the thread of all sorrows
And you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
Only kindness that ties your shoes
And sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
Only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
And then goes with you everywhere
Like a shadow or a friend.

(from The Words Under the Words:
Selected Poems, Eight Mountain Press, 1995)

A Sabbath Poem (Lewis)

      THE APOLOGIST'S EVENING PRAYER
     ~ by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)

      From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
      From all the victories that I seemed to score;
      From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
      At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
      From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
      Thou, who wouldst give no sign, deliver me.

      Thoughts are but coins.  Let me not trust, instead
      of Thee, their thin-worn image of Thy head.
      From all my thoughts, even from my thoughts of Thee,
      O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
      Lord of the narrow gate and needle's eye,
      Take from me all my trumpery lest I die.

      (source:  sorry, can't remember)

A Sabbath Poem (Zeitlin)

SING OUT
~ by Aaron Zeitlin

Praise me, says God;
I will know that you love me.
Curse me, says God;
I will know that you love me.
Sing out my graces, says God.
Raise your fist against me and revile.
Sing out my praises or revile.
Reviling is also a kind of praise, says God.
But if you sit fenced off
in your apathy, says God.
If you sit entrenched in:
"I don't give a hang."
If you look at the stars and yawn,
If you see suffering and don't cry out,
If you don't praise and don't revile,
Then I created you in vain, says God.

(translation: Emanuel Goldsmith)

A Sabbath Poem (Berry-2)

EVEN WHILE I DREAMED I PRAYED
~ by Wendell Berry

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear
    and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective
    the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked
    like every other city.
I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered
footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments
of those who had died in pursuit of the objective
and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according
to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget
that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now
    pursued the objective
as if nobody ever had pursued it before.

The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in
    pursuit of the objective.
the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free
to sell themselves to the highest bidder
and to enter the best paying prisons
in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction
    of all enemies,
which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction
    of all objects,
which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way
to promotion, to salvation, to progress,
to the completed sale, to the signature
on the contract, which was to clear the way
to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who
    ever wanted to go home
would ever get there now, for every remembered place
had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the
    ground and covered over.

Every place had been displaced, every love
unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant
to make way for the passage of the crowd
of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless
with their many eyes opened toward the objective
which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,
having never known where they were going,
having never known where they came from.

(from A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997,
by Wendell Berry, Counterpoint, 1998)

A Sabbath Poem (Vuletic)

        
            TENACITY
            ~ by Simona Vuletic

            When dreams turn into
            Nightmares
            The only way
            To survive
            Is to keep dreaming,
            Boldly,
            Turning darkness
                        into light,
            Despair
                        into hope,
            Locked doors
                        into sign-posts,
            With perseverance
            Of those who have nothing
            To lose,
            One simple, steady day
            At the time.

Simona Vuletic is from Seattle, USA, where she is engaged in Alzheimer's disease research, and interested in social issues, issues of justice, politics, environment, the brain, the Universe, science, human behavior, religion and beliefs, and human rights.  She blogs at Zvrk's Blog.

A Sabbath Poem (Hafiz-3)

WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE
~by Shams-ud-din Muhammad Hafiz (c. 1320-1389)


Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is
always saying,

with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in
this world is
dying to
hear?



(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002, on this website)

A Sabbath Poem (Milosz)

            

             untitled
             ~ by Czeslaw Milosz

            "In this world
            we walk on the roof of hell
            gazing at flowers."

            To know and not to speak.
            In that way one forgets.
            What is pronounced
            strengthens itself
            What is not  pronounced
            tends to nonexistence.

(received from Danut Manastireanu, Romania)

A Sabbath Poem (Bly)

        THE NIGHT ABRAHAM CALLED TO THE STARS
        ~ by Richard Bly

        Do you remember the night Abraham first saw
        The stars?  He cried to Saturn:  "You are my Lord!"
        How happy he was!  When he saw the Dawn Star,

        He cried, ""You are my Lord!"  How destroyed he was
        When he watched them set.  Friends, he is like us:
        We take as our Lord the stars that go down.

        We are faithful companions to the unfaithful stars.
        We are diggers, like badgers; we love to feel
        The dirt flying out from behind our back claws.

        And no one can convince us that mud is not
        Beautiful.  It is our badger soul that thinks so.
        We are ready to spend the rest of our life

        Walking with muddy shoes in the wet fields.
        We resemble exiles in the kingdom of the serpent.
        We stand in the onion fields looking up at the night.

        My heart is a calm potato by day, and a weeping
        Abandoned woman by night.  Friend, tell me what to do,
        Since I am a man in love with the setting stars.

(first appeared in Poetry Magazine) 

This poem based loosely on the Islamic ghazal form in which a major portion of Sufi poetry was written.  Almost all work of Hafiz was in ghazal form. In its classic form, each stanza stands alone–has its own landscape, so to speak–and the theme of the poem is never stated.  The reader has much more to do than he would be used to in the contemporary English poem.

A Sabbath Poem (Apllinaire)

      COME TO THE EDGE
      ~ by Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), French Poet and Philosopher

      “Come to the edge.”
      “We can’t.  We’re afraid.”
      “Come to the edge.”
      And they came.
      And he pushed them.
      And they flew. 

A Sabbath Poem (St. John of the Cross)

WHAT IS GRACE?
~ by St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)


"What is grace?" I asked God.

And He said,

"All that happens."

Then He added, when I looked perplexed,

"Could not lovers
say that every moment in their Beloved's arms
was grace?

Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how one can turn
away from
me

until the heart has
wisdom."

(from the Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices
from the East and West, translation Daniel Ladinsky
- Penguin Compass, 2002, on this website)

A Sabbath Poem (Rumi - 2)

        DERVISH AT THE DOOR
        ~ by Jalaludin Rumi (1207-1273)

        A dervish* knocked at a house
        to ask for a piece of dry bread,
        or moist, it didn't matter.
        "This is not a bakery," said the owner.
        "Might you have a piece of gristle then?"
        "Does this look like butchershop?"
        "A little flour?"
        "Do you hear a grinding stone?"
        "Some water?"
        "This is not a well."
        Whatever the dervish asked for,
        the man made some tired joke
        and refused to give him anything.
        Finally the dervish ran into the house,
        lifted his robe, and squatted
        as though to relieve himself.

        "Hey, hey!"
        "Quiet, you sad man. A deserted place
        is a fine spot to relieve oneself,
        and since there's no living thing here,
        or means of living, it needs fertilizing."
        The dervish began his own list
        of questions and answers.
        "What kind of bird are you? Not a falcon,
        trained for a royal hand. Not a peacock,
        painted with everyone's eyes. Not a parrot,
        that talks for sugar cubes. Not a nightingale,
        that sings like someone in love.
        Not a hoopoe bringing messages to Solomon,
        or a stork that builds on a cliffside.
        What exactly do you do?
        You are no known species.
        You haggle and make jokes
        to keep what you own for yourself.
        You have forgotten the One
        who doesn't care about ownership,
        who doesn't try to turn a profit
        from every human exchange."

        *Dervishes were Sufi poets, whirling dancers, mystics of Islam 

(from Essential Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, HarperOne, 1997)