Showing posts with label Jalaludin Rumi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jalaludin Rumi. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ A / The Moment




 
    “I like the moment when I break a man’s ego.”— Bobby Fischer


SOURCE

“In any given moment we have two options : to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.”— Abraham Maslow



   Midweek Motif ~ A / The Moment





When we say a/the moment we mean it’s either a casual moment or a defining one. Your lines might be about any one of them.

You can extend it further to a moment of the past, or even future (to do, to have or to be moment).

If you wish you can block the history of yesterday, refuse the dream of tomorrow and choose to live in the present, only being mindful of what’s happening now.

Anything you do it has to be about a moment only.


A few poems to share with you :


The Moment
by Margaret Atwood

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.



A Moment of Happiness
by Rumi

A moment of happiness,
you and I sitting on the verandah,
apparently two, but one in soul, you and I.
We feel the flowing water of life here,
you and I, with the garden's beauty
and the birds singing.
The stars will be watching us,
and we will show them
what it is to be a thin crescent moon.
You and I unselfed, will be together,
indifferent to idle speculation, you and I.
The parrots of heaven will be cracking sugar
as we laugh together, you and I.
In one form upon this earth,
and in another form in a timeless sweet land.



Moment
by Wislawa Szymborska
(Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)

I walk on the slope of a hill gone green.
Grass, little flowers in the grass,
as in a children's illustration.
The misty sky's already turning blue.
A view of other hills unfolds in silence.

As if there'd never been any Cambrians, Silurians,
rocks snarling at crags,
upturned abysses,
no nights in flames
and days in clouds of darkness.

As if plains hadn't pushed their way here
in malignant fevers,
icy shivers.

As if seas had seethed only elsewhere,
shredding the shores of the horizons.

It's nine-thirty local time.
Everything's in its place and in polite agreement.
In the valley a little brook cast as a little brook.
A path in the role of a path from always to ever.
Woods disguised as woods alive without end,
and above them birds in flight play birds in flight.

This moment reigns as far as the eye can reach.
One of those earthly moments
invited to linger.


Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

(Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ The Year's End)

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Love



     
“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved”— George Sand


Le Printemps by Pierre Auguste Cot (1873)

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”— Martin Luther King, Jr.


         Midweek Motif ~ Love 

This week’s motif is Love.

I ask you to honor and celebrate Love in your lines today.

I am sharing some simple, passionate and timeless lines from some of my favorite poets from Persia, Lebanon and Syria:  


Rumi:

The Privileged Lovers

The moon has become a dancer
at this festival of love.
This dance of light,

This sacred blessing,
This divine love,
beckons us
to a world beyond
only lovers can see
with their eyes of fiery passion. 

They are the chosen ones
who have surrendered.
Once they were particles of light
now they are the radiant sun.

They have left behind
the world of deceitful games.
They are the privileged lovers
who create a new world
with their eyes of fiery passion. 

Translated by: Fereydoun Kia 


Khalil Gibran:

Which Is More Important?

One day you will ask me
which is more important?
My life or yours?
I will say mine
and you will walk away
not knowing
that you are my life.


Most Love Is Lost

Between what is said and not meant
   And what is meant and not said
             Most of love is lost.


Nizar Qabbani:

Because My Love For You

Because my love for you
Is higher than words
I have decided to fall silent


In Spite Of The Tribe

she married me , in spite of the tribe
and she traveled with me , in spite of the tribe
and she gave me zaynab and omar , in spite of the tribe

and when I used to ask her _ why ?
she would take me , like a child, against her chest :
and say " because you are my tribe"


My Lover Asks Me

                          My lover asks me:
"What is the difference between me and the sky?"
                       The difference, my love,
                        Is that when you laugh,
                           I forget about the sky.


When I Love

When I love
I feel that I am the king of time
I possess the earth and everything on it
and ride into the sun upon my horse.

When I love
I become liquid light
invisible to the eye
and the poems in my notebooks
become fields of mimosa and poppy.

When I love
the water gushes from my fingers
grass grows on my tongue
when I love
I become time outside all time.

When I love a woman
all the trees
run barefoot toward me...


Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—
                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Fun)

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Balance


"You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance."
 ―Ken Kesey


Guds hand 2007.jpg
God's Hand, sculpture by Carl Milles (2007)
photo by Ellgaard Holger


“Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.” 
― Jelaluddin Rumi
Libra2.jpg
Balance Scales: symbol of Libra


Midweek Motif ~ Balance

Astrologically, we're in Libra.  Is that not reason enough to think of balance, balance with grace and poise?  

How easy is balance in any area of life?  Do you look for balance? lose it? create it? guard it? suspect it?

Your Challenge:  Explore the possibilities of balance in a new poem.

A woman demonstrating the ability to balance (1904)

In life
one is always
balancing

like we juggle our mothers 
against our fathers 

or one teacher 
against another 
(only to balance our grade average) 

3 grains of salt 
to one ounce truth 

our sweet black essence 
or the funky honkies down the street 

and lately i've begun wondering 
if you're trying to tell me something 

we used to talk all night 
and do things alone together 

and i've begun 
(as a reaction to a feeling) 
to balance 

the pleasure of loneliness 
against the pain 
of loving you 


GOODBYE TO TOLERANCE
Genial poets, pink-faced   
earnest wits—
you have given the world   
some choice morsels,
gobbets of language presented
as one presents T-bone steak
and Cherries Jubilee.   
Goodbye, goodbye,
                            I don’t care
if I never taste your fine food again,   
neutral fellows, seers of every side.   
Tolerance, what crimes
are committed in your name.
And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,   
blood donors. Your crumbs
choke me, I would not want
a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped   
by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never   
falter: irresponsive
to nightmare reality.
It is my brothers, my sisters,
whose blood spurts out and stops
forever
because you choose to believe it is not your business.
Goodbye, goodbye,
your poems
shut their little mouths,   
your loaves grow moldy,   
a gulf has split
                     the ground between us,
and you won’t wave, you’re looking
another way.
We shan’t meet again—
unless you leap it, leaving   
behind you the cherished   
worms of your dispassion,   
your pallid ironies,
your jovial, murderous,   
wry-humored balanced judgment,
leap over, un-
balanced? ... then
how our fanatic tears
would flow and mingle   
for joy ...
File:Edderkoppmannen.jpg
Spiderman in old age, Reykjavik by Pobel (2010)
⚖
An Irish Airman foresees his Death
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love; My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor, No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before. Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death.
⚖
Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others 
in the spirit of the community—
                (Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ The Owl.)

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Bittersweet


Solanum-nigrum-berries.jpg
True Bittersweet: Solanum dulcamara, photo by Sten Porse


“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart. 
Bitter. Sweet. Alive.” 

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.” 

“Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.” 

Image: fall berries of bittersweet vine.
From The Spruce: American Bittersweet Plants vs. Invasive Oriental Vines 

By , Updated 10/17/17  

(Very Interesting Reading about 3 types of bittersweet!)




Midweek Motif ~ Bittersweet

I met the beautiful bittersweet in shades of orange on an oak tree while on a walk with my grandmother.  I gasped!   She said (perhaps erroneously), that it was a parasite, living on the life-blood of another.  I found the word parasite to be negative, and wondered at how something so pretty could have an ugly side.  Well, there you have it (! ) both noun and adjective: Bittersweet.  



Your Challenge: Write a brand new poem with a bittersweet mood and theme.  



Celastrus orbiculatus
Oriental Bittersweet

🍂
How it is fickle, leaving one alone to wander

the halls of the skull with the fluorescents
softly flickering. It rests on the head

like a bird nest, woven of twigs and tinsel
and awkward as soon as one stops to look.
That pile of fallen leaves drifting from

the brain to the fingertip burned on the stove, 

to the grooves in that man’s voice 
as he coos to his dog, blowing into the leaves 

of books with moonlit opossums
and Chevrolets easing down the roads 
of one’s bones. And now it plucks a single 

tulip from the pixelated blizzard: yet 

itself is a swarm, a pulse with no
indigenous form, the brain’s lunar halo. 

Our compacted galaxy, its constellations 
trembling like flies caught in a spider web, 
until we die, and then the flies

buzz away—while another accidental 

coherence counts to three to pass the time 
or notes the berries on the bittersweet vine

strewn in the spruces, red pebbles dropped
in the brain’s gray pool. How it folds itself 
like a map to fit in a pocket, how it unfolds 

a fraying map from the pocket of the day.

Source: Poetry (February 2012) and the Poetry Foundation
  (Posted with the poet's permission.)

Buried Love

by 
I have come to bury Love
 Beneath a tree,
In the forest tall and black
 Where none can see.

I shall put no flowers at his head,
 Nor stone at his feet,
For the mouth I loved so much
 Was bittersweet.

I shall go no more to his grave,
 For the woods are cold.
I shall gather as much of joy
 As my hands can hold.

I shall stay all day in the sun
 Where the wide winds blow, --
But oh, I shall cry at night
 When none will know.



Bittersweet - Jalaluddin Rumi Poem read by Madonna - Lyrics

💮
Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and
visit others in the spirit of the community— 
(Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be Vanity / Narcissus. )

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