poems

Evening Poetry, July 22

KimLeave a comment

The Guest House

by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

You can find this poem in The Essential Rumi.

Evening Poetry, July 21

KimLeave a comment

You can find this poem in The Book of A Monastic Life in Rilke’s Book of Hours.

I,51

Only in our doing can we grasp you.

Only with our hands can we illuminate you.

The mind is but a visitor:

it thinks us out of our world.

Each mind fabricates itself.

We sense its limits, for we have made them.

And just when we would flee them, you come

and make yourself an offering.

I don’t want to think a place for you.

Speak to me from everywhere.

Your Gospel can be comprehended

without looking for its source.

When I go toward you

it is with my whole life.

Evening Poetry, July 19

KimLeave a comment

Evening

by Emily Dickinson

The cricket sang,

And set the sun,

And workmen finished, one by one,

Their seam the day upon.

The low grass loaded with dew,

The twilight stood as strangers do

With hat in hand, polite and new,

To stay as if, or go.

A vastness, as a neighbor, came,–

A wisdom with face or name,

A peace, as hemispheres at home,–

And so the night became.

You can find this poem in Hope is the Thing With Feathers.

Evening Poetry, July 17

KimLeave a comment

As Ripeness Comes

by Rumi

What souls desire arrives.
We are standing up to our necks
in the sacred pool. Majesty is here.

The grains of the earth take in something
they do not understand.

Where did this come from?
It comes from where your longing comes.

From which direction?
As ripeness comes to fruit.

This answer lights a candle
in the chest of anyone who hears.

Most people only look for the way when they hurt.
Pain is a fine path to the unknowable.

But today is different.
Today the quality we call splendor
puts on human clothes, walks through the door,
closes it behind, and sits down with us
in this companionship.

You can find this poem in The Essential Rumi.

Evening Poetry, July 15

KimLeave a comment

You can find this poem in The Essential Rumi.

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you, not knowing

ho blind that was.

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.

They’re in each other all along.

Evening Poetry, July 14

KimLeave a comment

From The Book of a Monastic Life in Rilke’s Book of Hours.

I, 17

Because once someone dared

to want you,

I know that we, too, may want you.

When gold is in the mountain

and we’ve ravaged the depths

till we’ve given up digging,

It will be brought forth into day

by the river that mines

the silences of stone.

Even when we don’t desire it,

God is ripening.

Evening Poetry, July 13

KimLeave a comment

The Moon

by Emily Dickinson

The moon was but a chin of gold

A night or two ago,

And now she turns her perfect face

Upon the world below.

Her forehead is of amplest blond;

Her cheek like beryl stone;

Her eye unto the summer dew

The likest I have known.

Her lips of amber never part;

But what must be the smile

Upon her friend she could bestow

Were such her silver will!

And what a privilege to be

But the remotest star!

For certainly her way might pass

Beside your twinkling door.

Her bonnet is the firmament,

The universe her shoe,

The stars the trinkets at her belt,

Her dimities of blue.

You can find this poem in Hope is the Thing With Feathers.

Evening Poetry, July 11

KimLeave a comment

Grown-Up

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Was it for this that I uttered prayers,

And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,

That now, domestic as a plate,

I should retire at half-past eight?

You can find this poem in Collected Poems.

Evening Poetry, July 9

KimLeave a comment

Vegetables

by Eleanor Farjeon

The country vegetables scorn

To lie about in shops,

They stand upright as they were born

In neatly-patterned crops;

And when you want your dinner you

Don’t buy it from a shelf,

You find lettuce fresh with dew

And pull it for yourself;

You pick an apronful of peas

And shell them on the spot.

You cut a cabbage, if you please,

To pop into the pot.

The folk who their potatoes buy

From sacks before they sup,

Miss half of the potato’s joy,

And that’s to dig it up.

You can find this in Favorite Poems Old and New.

Evening Poetry, July 8

KimLeave a comment

You can find this poem in The Essential Rumi.

In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,

where no one else sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that sight becomes this art.