Short Poems

Repeating the name of the Beloved
I have become the Beloved myself.
Whom shall I call the Beloved now?

Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.

Remove duality and do away with all disputes;
The Hindus and Muslims are not other than He.
Deem everyone virtuous, there are no thieves.
For, within every body He himself resides.
How the Trickster has put on a mask!

When you channel surf

take care that your mind

doesn’t drown.

At first I would not reply, and my shame showed upon my cheeks, and the beating of my heart brought pain to my breasts.

Then I resisted, I told him 'No! No!' - I turned my head away, and his kiss did not open my lips, - nor love, my tight-closed knees.

Then he begged me to forgive him, kissed my hair, I felt his burning breath, and he went away.... Now I am alone.

I gaze upon the empty place, the deserted wood, the trampled earth. And I bite my fingers until they bleed, and I stifle my sobs in the grass.

'Tis done! - I saw it in my dreams;
No more with Hope the future beams;
My days of happiness are few:
Chill'd by misfortune's wintry blast,
My dawn of life is overcast;
Love Hope, and Joy, alike adieu!
Would I could add Remembrance too!

'Once they were lovers,' says the world, 'with young hearts all aglow;
They have forgotten,' says the world, 'forgotten long ago.'
Between ourselves-just whisper it-the old world does not know.

They walk their lone, divided ways, but ever with them goes
Remembrance, the subtle breath of love's sweet thorny rose.

There are threads of old sound heard over and over
phrases of Shakespeare or Mozart the slender
wands of the auroras playing out from them
into dark time the passing of a few
migrants high in the night far from the ancient flocks
far from the rest of the words far from the instruments

Remember me is all I ask,
And yet
If the remembrance prove a task,
Forget.

Priests indeed may prate
This side o' death, but 'yond the bourne
Their service fails.