My heart is burning with love

All can see this flame

My heart is pulsing with passion

like waves on an ocean



my friends have become strangers

and I’m surrounded by enemies

But I’m free as the wind
no longer hurt by those who reproach me



I’m at home wherever I am

And in the room of lovers

I can see with closed eyes
the beauty that dances



Behind the veils
intoxicated with love
I too dance the rhythm
of this moving world



I have lost my senses
in my world of lovers

Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.”

Pink confused with white
flowers and flowers reversed
take and spill the shaded flame
darting it back
into the lamp’s horn

petals aslant darkened with mauve

red where in whorls
petal lays its glow upon petal
round flamegreen throats

petals radiant with transpiercing light
contending
              above
the leaves
reaching up their modest green
from the ***’s rim

and there, wholly dark, the ***
gay with rough moss.

The Grave said to the Rose,
"What of the dews of dawn,
Love's flower, what end is theirs?"
"And what of spirits flown,
The souls whereon doth close
The tomb's mouth unawares?"
The Rose said to the Grave.

The Rose said, "In the shade
From the dawn's tears is made
A perfume faint and strange,
Amber and honey sweet."
"And all the spirits fleet
Do suffer a sky-change,
More strangely than the dew,
To God's own angels new,"
The Grave said to the Rose.

The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,
With muffled music, murmured far and wide.
Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,
The messages of love that mortals write
Filled with intoxication of delight,
Written in April and before the May time
Shredded and flown, playthings for the wind's playtime,
We dream that all white butterflies above,
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,
And leave their lady mistress in despair,
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies
Flutter, and float, and change to butterflies

Then a lawyer said, "But what of our Laws, master?"
And he answered:

You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with
  constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.
Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.

But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are
  not sand-towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they
  would carve it in their own likeness?
What of the ******* who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the
  forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all
  others naked and shameless?
And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed
  and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all
  feasters law-breakers?

What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight,
  but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace
  their shadows upon the earth?

But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?
What man's law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no
  man's prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man's
  iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your
  garment yet leave it in no man's path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the
  strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?

the shiver of hands
blind without memory
and so,
friendly still
yet sweet like the words
forgotten
to the tremble of lips

quiet
there are no surprises here
rest your eyelids
until they become stone
rest your heart
until it stops

(it beats now only for itself
in some secret place)

O incomparable Giver of life, cut reason loose at last!

Let it wander grey-eyed from vanity to vanity.

Shatter open my skull, pour in it the wine of madness!

Let me be mad, as You; mad with You, with us.

Beyond the sanity of fools is a burning desert

Where Your sun is whirling in every atom:

Beloved, drag me there, let me roast in Perfection!