Posts tagged Spring
Posts tagged Spring
I.
O, WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
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Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O, thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
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The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow
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Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
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Wild Spirit, which art moving every where;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O, hear!
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II.
Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
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Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
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Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
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Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
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Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O, hear!
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III.
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
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Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
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All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
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Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
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Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O, hear!
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IV.
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
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The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O, uncontroulable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
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The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
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As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
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A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
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V.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
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Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
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Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,
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Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
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The trumpet of a prophecy! O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
When I see your face, the stones start spinning!
You appear; all studying wanders.
I lose my place.
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Water turns pearly.
Fire dies down and doesn’t destroy.
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In your presence I don’t want what I thought
I wanted, those three little hanging lamps.
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Inside your face the ancient manuscripts
Seem like rusty mirrors.
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You breathe; new shapes appear,
and the music of a desire as widespread
as Spring begins to move
like a great wagon.
Drive slowly.
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Some of us walking alongside
are lame!
~
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
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Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
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Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
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When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
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The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
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You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
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People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
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The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
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I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
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Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.
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Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
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They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.
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In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
and you are that.
But we have ways within each other
that will never be said by anyone.
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Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.
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If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.
- Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī