BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem

Subject: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: SDShad
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 06:52 PM

The mention by katlaughing on another thread of some Sufi advice reminded me of a poem by the Sufi master Mewlana Jelaludin Rumi about a place "where everything is music." Sounds kind of like a certain Cafe. Take from it what you will or can or wish.

Where Everything Is Music

Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn't matter.

We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world's harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.

So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.

This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!

They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can't see.

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.

-- Version by Coleman Barks
from a translation by John Moyne

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: bbelle
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 06:55 PM

The thought is nice but I can't figure out why you would call it bullshit.

moonchild

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 06:59 PM

Chris, thanks for posting that, certainly not BS, like Jenny says.

I didn't say who it was posted the other Sufi thing, in the Orange thread, because I didn't ask his permission to say who it was. I just copied it from another thread. So, credit should go to RichM for posting those wise words.

Thanks,

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: SDShad
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 07:00 PM

Oh, mind you I don't think the poem's bullshit, moonchild. I'm just using the BS: tag in the "not directly folk-and-blues" related sense which has often been advocated, rather than the "this is bullshit" sense that some 'Catters don't like the BS: tag for.

So borrow a page from Praise (I think), and consider it to stand for "Bounteous Sharings," nonfolkandblues department, and the title works.

Chris

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: bbelle
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 07:09 PM

My point is that NO designation is needed. It is what it is and if someone is not interested, they can hit the back button.

moonchild

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 07:25 PM

Up-end the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies
Then glitter-drizzle, almost breaths of air.
Up-end the stick again. What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is a fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

The Rain Stick, by Seamus Heaney.

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: katlaughing
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 07:37 PM

Kevin! Very kewl! Thanks for posting that...I love my rainstick and that poem has just put the finger on why!

katlaughing

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 10:05 PM

These are great poems! Thanks so much for sharing them. BS stands for Beautiful Stuff in this context.

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: SDShad
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 10:49 PM

Gobsmacked, I am. Simply gobsmacked. What an incredible poem, Kevin! Thanks for sharing it with us. Now I'm just sitting here trying to figure out what excuse, if any, I have for having reached the age of 37 without buying so much as a single volume of Heaney. Must correct that, I think.

Well, to continue in the vein of musical poetry, you can't go wrong with the classics, and while this one of Billy Yeats' is well-known enough to be a bit cliched by now, I still love it:

The Fiddler Of Dooney

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With "Here is the fiddler of Dooney!"
And dance like a wave of the sea.

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: GUEST,Filbert
Date: 07 Jul 00 - 11:54 PM

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

I knew a woman
I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods could speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand,
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay;
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: Tracey Dragonsfriend
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 12:29 PM

Lovely!

Subject: RE: BS: Sort-of-Mudcat-Relevant Sufi Poem
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 08 Jul 00 - 03:49 PM

Whoever did that translation deserves a mention! Any good translation of a poem is really a new poem in its own rights.