Somewhere...  —e.e. cummings
Like This  —J. Rumi
Never again...  —Robert Frost

Somewhere . . .

by e.e. cummings

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
Any experience, your eyes have their silence:
In your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
Or which I cannot touch because they are too near

Your slightest look easily will unclose me
Though I have closed myself as fingers,
You open always petal by petal myself as spring opens
(Touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

Or if your wish be to close me, I and
My life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
As when the heart of this flower imagines
The snow carefully everywhere descending;

Nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
The power of your intense fragility: whose texture
Compels me with the colour of its countries,
Rendering death and forever with each breathing

(I do not know what it is that closes
And opens; only something in me understands
The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.


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Like This

by J. Rumi

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this.

If anyone wants to know what spirit is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point here.
When someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.

When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.
Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.

How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuuu.
How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuu.
A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.

When a Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge of the door to suprise us.
Like this.


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Never again . . .

by Robert Frost

He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.

Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.

Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.

Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

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