Saturday poem: Inner wakefulness
Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi
By Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)
This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought
was your grief
Saturday poem 1: At the end of a crazy-moon night
by Lalla (Lal Ded), (14th century)
At the end of a crazy-moon night
Continue Reading »
Saturday poem 2: 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
Saturday poem: Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold
by Anna Akhmatova
Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold, Continue Reading »
Saturday poem: The Shape of Love
By Adyashanti
What we see is not the most important.
Could dust rise without the invisible
hand of the wind?
Saturday poems: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
By Christopher Marlowe
Read below for Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Fried Potatoes.
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields. Continue Reading »
Saturday poems: Between going and staying
Octavio Paz
By Octavio Paz
Between going and staying the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
Continue Reading »
Saturday poems: The Fig
In a rare prose poem, Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral of Chile, unmasks the mysteries of the fig.
Gabriela Mistral was the first female poet and the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize.
Today, Latin America remembers her as a teacher who inspired a network of schools named in her honor, encouraging improved education for women and deprived children. While most of her poetry did not defy the conventions of form prevalent during her life, she also wrote prose poems, suggesting her desire to write untethered.
Her prose poem, The Fig, is part ode and part self portrait. While she sings praise to the ancient fruit, she also embodies it. The poet connects the fruit to Africa, the Middle East, and Greece, underscoring the nourishment the fig provided the Greeks, in particular, a gift that the deva of the plant, speaking, found completely unappreciated. Continue Reading »
I don’t write poems but, in any case, poems are not poems
By Ghassan Hage
Long ago, I was made to understand that Palestine was not Palestine;
I was also informed that Palestinians were not Palestinians;
They also explained to me that ethnic cleansing was not ethnic cleansing. Continue Reading »
