“show me the way to the Ocean!”

Posted on Categories Poetry

who is it?

who thirsts for all this

these transient things

that bind the spirit?

Take me to the sky

wrap me in music,

the gentle silence of dawn

false spring?

it’s the fire of life

the roar of the sea

©️2018 Ontheland

~

Today I respond to Carpe Diem #1391: A Great Silence featuring an ode of Jalaluddin Rumi…perhaps one could call my piece an experimental haibun. Rumi’s poem has so much to savour:

I don’t get tired of You. Don’t grow weary

of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst-equipment

must surely be tired of me,

the waterjar, the water-carrier.

I have a thirsty fish in me

that can never find enough

of what it’s thirsty for!

Show me the way to the Ocean!

Break these half-measures,

these small containers.

All this fantasy

and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave

that rose last night out of the courtyard

hidden in the center of my chest.

Joseph fell like the moon into my well.

The harvest I expected was washed away.

But no matter.

A fire has risen above my tombstone hat.

I don’t want learning, or dignity,

or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn

and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,

but I’m not going with them.

This is how it always is

when I finish a poem.

A Great Silence overcomes me,

and I wonder why I ever thought

to use language.

© Rumi, Coleman Barks translation

~

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Published by Janice

My name is Janice.  I started blogging as Ontheland when I moved from Toronto to a rural area near Kingston, Ontario in Canada.  Over time I have found myself writing poetry, mostly in Japanese forms, such as haiku and haibun.  One of my deepest interests is the natural world: the joy of it and how we can look after it better.

16 thoughts on ““show me the way to the Ocean!””

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