Love is the fire that burns all deadness away.rnA ferocious burnishing that leaves only light to the eye.rnA voice from the forest, the pheasant’s cry,rnA cry from the waters’ depths, a woman’s cry,rnBut it is not a woman. It is the cry of Love himself.rnHer very veils are Revelation itself,rnHer black tresses, yes, conceal the mole in her white neck.rnBut they display oceans of shining darkness.rnOut of the blackness of the pool spreads the image of herrnface.rnDo not touch it, or it will disappear.rnAs you look in the pool, you look in the rose.rnIn the center that is yellow, a sea of light.rnA vision of clouds and roses, the clouds themselves are roses,rnThe roses themselves are light, the light is clouds.rnClouds eternally moving in the still mirror of the sky.rnAnd the Empyrean is intense motion, utterly at rest.rnThe call of a dove, it is the call of a womanrnWho is not a woman, the woman calling her lover.rnOn that same path, for love of a Christian girl.rnThe pious Sheik took to herding her swine.rnWhat is the world without longing, without desire?rnWithout desire, neither a man nor the nightingale can sing.rnNor can the rose bloom or her petal blow on the wind.rnThe Sheik has broken his pens in bewilderment.rnThe pious girl has given succour to an Infidel.rnThe air is an oil of roses distilled in the dew of dawn.rnIt burns with a light blue flame, silent as moonlight.rnThe sounds of the goldsmiths’ hammering in the bazaar,rnThe sound of the watermills in the Garden of Meram,rnThe playing of the children in the square, the silence ofrndeserts.rnThe voices of space, and the spaces between the voices.rnThe tongues of the moods, of wind and earth, of fire and sea,rnOf running waters, the yearning of all creatures for home.rnIt is pure, but not like water; subtle, but not like air;rnLuminous, but not like fire. Spirit it is, that never knewrnbody.rnThat Wine never dwelt with Care, that Sorrow never withrnSong.rnJoyless he is who lives sober, he that does not die drunk.rnLet him weep, for he will lose the way towards wisdom.rnBe thinking of beautiful things that neither age nor wintersrnChange. Listen to a thousand tongues reciting before thee.rnAnd as for the lays of old time, a thousand have beenrnscatteredrnOn the wind, a thousand buried in the snow.rnThese the Teutonic Knights trampled with heavy boots.rnThose the spells of maleficent priests rooted out.rnThere are a thousand tongues in the wood, a thousandrntongues in the sky.rnIn the running brook; in the deep lake a thousand more.rnThe states of mind of the gnostic seek out and findrnThese thousands of tongues, unforgetting, and thousandsrnmore.rnI shall pursue the woman to the new pastures where rain hasrnfallen.rnAnd the thorn-bushes are green and the small bird sings.rnMeanwhile the mill-wheel turns and the noise of thernchildren in the squarernReverberates clearly, though the City is three hundred milesrnout of earshot.rnIt is the silence of these sounds that knits my mind.rnAnd the roar of many waters in the night refreshes me.rnA constant sound, more various than many wordsrnOf maenads, maniacs, mystics—all the sober Bards.rnEros is everywhere, and everywhere ErisrnThrows Love’s pure harmonies into the jangle of the street,rnChaos of market-place and battleground, the jungle of thernworld.rnRapture itself calls out in rut for cleaving rupture.rnStill ocean cloven silently by the immane waves.rnMoses with his rod slew the Pharaoh of worldly existence.rnThe Muses gave Hesiod their wand and he harmonizedrnworlds.rnSinging of generations of Gods he welded in one thernsaeculum.rnSomnijn the lover said that you cannot define anything.rnUnless in terms more subtle than that thingrnThere is nothing more subtle than that thing.rnThere is nothing subtler than Love. How shall it bernexplained?rnThe rational interpreter is like the donkey carrying books.rnHe brays loud, but nothing unclouds the lover’s furrowedrnbrow.rnAnd I ask what Kant ever said about Love, or Hegel,rnContradicting his contradictions, about the eye of thernBeloved?rnThinking of the Muses, envious of the love-crazed mystics,rnI am Drosophila in the harvester’s web.rnIn that mysterious solitude when she unveils herselfrnWhen no more thought of battling self-regard.rnThe sentinel on the lip, the watcher in the heart,rnPersisted in their censorship, I said to Her:rnSeparation has been hard; in this proximityrnNaked beholding alone divides.rnDart now on me that glance, like one who looks on a loverrnBefore Love blinds him to himself and all appearances,rnAnd body vanishes in Love’s effulgence. Say:rn”Thou shalt not!” Others before me have heard thisrncommandmentrnAnd known increase of love. Can man ask morernThan once united with thee he no more needs to see.rnThis mystics call, in the anguish of their lovernAnd stark clairvoyance, the Second Separation.rnThe mountains crumble, even Sinai is laid low,rnAnd words fail utterly in the darkness of this joy.rn”O fire of the burning furnace, be coolness and peace!”rnAnd what is Death, the dissolution of the body,rnA fair young woman who well knows how to treatrnDissolute bodies. Let her come with her seductions.rnShowing her nakedness, irresistibly dissimulatingrnThe wanton hariot. Welcome, O harlot! Welcome!rn0 holy saeculum, and O unholy heavens.rnOpen with all your awful revelations!rn1 am here.rnJANUARY 1994/15rnrnrn