WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE


Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”

Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is
always saying,

with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in
this world is
dying to
hear?


Hafiz---

PERFECT EQUANIMITY

Look how a mirror
will reflect with perfect equanimity
all actions
before
it.

There is no act in this world
that will ever cause the mirror to look away.
There is no act in this world that will
ever make the mirror
say “no.”

The mirror, like perfect love, will just keep giving
of itself to all
before
it.

How did the mirror ever get like that, so polite,
so grand, so compassionate?

It watched God.

Yes, the mirror remembers the Beloved
looking into itself as the Beloved shaped existence’s heart
and the mirror’s
soul.

My eye has the nature of God.
Hafiz looks upon all with perfect equanimity,
as do my words,
dear.

My poems will never tell you no,
because the Mirror is
not like
that,

and if God ever hits you with a don’t -
He has His fingers crossed,

He is just fibbing
for your own
good.


Hafiz---

...
I'm out here in these same yellow hills
I've written poems to my lover from
when they were green.
I'm out here with the live oaks
rising out of rounded slopes
pushed up and carved into
by plates of earth and flowing water.
When water flows it's reaching for the center.
I'm out here on the first day of fall
sitting on this same wooden bench in the shade
listening to children play
just out of site down the valley
and I came out here
to find a little more peace.
I came out here to simplify things.
I came out here to think of my lover
when these yellow hills were green
and to use my heart to push my blood
like flowing water out of dreams
because riverbeds are drying up
and my hands want something to touch.
But another sensation found me.
It's enough today, with this new season,
to sit with you all here and be satisfied.