Dissolve

I am Al-Kahira, the comparer of nonsense and flowers.

I am grateful for my stupidity, admitted easily, yet I am concerned with specific details of style as I sit here in rags.

By circumstance not by choice this shrub has blossomed: by choice and not by circumstance this life has been kept plain.

I made an effort and found stuff to ignore, leaving rusty strings unstruck.
I neglect the spectacular and overlook the apparently important with deliberation.

I've waited aeons for the reversal of my interests: Now life has become the joke and the sweetness and hilarity of my own thoughts have turned into a point of fascination for me.

No matter what anyone tells you: I don't belong to any creed or sect, culture or race, nor to any period in history.

My only qualification is the age of my soul: I own three hillside palaces of quiet pre-dawn moon sound.

Humiliation is my clothing that I wear to sit and bark with the dogs. I disconnect like dusk and most likely no one will bring flowers to my grave.

I am ardent without deed and I am information zero, unimportant iridescent: Grand Palace of Mercy.

Till now I stayed in one place not avoiding you: now that the traditions are beginning to dissolve, I put on my winter coat and walk away. Business done.

My contemporaries have declared society to be the central item and are discussing things of importance as I'm speaking to you now.
As my mother taught me to, I keep to myself a lot.

I am the lover of trees, found worthy of loneliness.
I could be the postman, the milkman, the sick person, the transvestite.
It takes one, to recognize one…….

I am the unknown dervish."

A Place

"This empty kitchen's where
I'd while away the hours
Just next to my old chair
You'd usually have some flowers
The shelves of books
Even the picture hooks
Everything is gone
But my heart is hanging on

If this old neighbourhood
Survived us both alright
Don't know that it withstood
All the things that took our light
You on the stair
I can see you there
Everything is gone
But my heart is hanging on

Once there was a little girl
Used to wonder what she would be
Went out into the big wide world
Now she's just a memory
There used to be a little school here
Where I learned to write my name
But time has been a little cruel here
Time has no shame

It's just a place where
We used to live
It's just a place where
We used to live

Now in another town
You lead another life
And now upstairs and down
You're someone else's wife
Here in the dust
There's not a trace of us
Everything is gone
But my heart is hanging on

It's just a place where
We used to live
It's just a place where
We used to live"

Lyrics of 'A Place Where We Used To Live'

Mark Knopfler

Wake

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

Morning

Morning

You know how it is waking
from a dream certain you can fly
and that someone, long gone, returned

and you are filled with longing,
for a brief moment, to drive off
the road and feel nothing

or to see the loved one and feel
everything. Perhaps one morning,
taking brush to hair you'll wonder

how much of your life you've spent
at this task or signing your name
or rising in fog in near darkness

to ready for work. Day begins
with other people's needs first
and your thoughts disperse like
breath.

In the in-between hour, the solitary hour,
before day begins, all the world
gradually reappears, car by car.

Deborah Ager

To sit apart

....What I most want
is to spring out of this personality,
then to sit apart from that leaping.
I've lived too long where I can be reached.

Who says the eternal being does not exist?
Who says the sun has gone out?
Someone who climbs up on the roof,
and closes his eyes tight, and says,
--I don't see anything.

.....With one silent laugh
You tilted the night
and the garden ran with stars.

Jelaluddin Rumi

And nothing is given

Be not too hard

Be not too hard for life is short
And nothing is given to man.
Be not too hard when he is sold or bought,
For he must manage as best he can.

Be not too hard when he blindly dies
Fighting for things he does not own.
Be not too hard when he tells lies
Or if his heart is sometimes like stone.

Be not too hard for soon he'll die,
Often no wiser than he began.

Be not too hard for life is short
And nothing is given to man.
And nothing is given to man.

From a Joan Baez song