Loves Music

Rod Naquin

LOVES MUSIC

LOVES MUSIC
BY

ROD NAQUIN

March 2012

CONTENTS
Preface I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. XIII. XIV. XV. XVI. XVII. XVIII. XIX. XX. XXI. XXII. XXIII. It is in song that we best find the world But what was that that split us from the first But I am not the only one who sings Theres music also of the spheres above Take appropriate listening posture There is much to be said of the active Between you and me, Her and I: a gap Through words I may bridge the none between Song, like art, isnt adequately defined Astrologues say, As above, so below Lo! two start from the same benefic Source We two are in a dance that is redone It seems that She is in the nude this time Sometimes we twist a sparse jugalbandhi She is the center about which I move Beyond Her form I have of more divined It wasnt til about a dozen in Instead focus on the bounds of a line There is a different music in my reading Lo! drop a stone into the stillest pool Divided self and its unification Science comes from words that mean to know Is self-preservation seat of virtue?
4

7 10 10 11 12 12 13 14 14 15 16 16 17 18 18 19 20 20 21 22 22 23 24 24

XXIV. XXV. XXVI. XXVII. XXVIII. XXIX. XXX. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIII. XLIV. XLV. XLVI. XLVII. XLVIII. XLIX.

Theres a problem with the rhetoric Are you writing just to write or what? But let us not with haste suppose the real Art so joins the subject and the object The world itselfs the vastest museum There is no voice without an inspirate We hear about it in numberless songs Love will find its way through any language Literatures unfolding tapestry Listening to the same old records that I But O! the tenderest love that I have lost! But O! to hold that face just once again! Allhu Akbar means God is greater Shall I compare a love to a music? The worst of intervals do voice their loss An other time Shed forced a change of me Like Klein Ill take a leap into the void I find myself restrained by formalisms Theres so much lost between the mind and page The more I work the more its just a sound O! Beloved! Im so glad you have come! Blue jays somewhere amongst this water oak This little blip of nothing that I am When I suppose that only humans err I still pay too much attention to me! I choose to sing a remembrance of Her
5

25 26 26 27 28 28 29 30 30 31 32 32 33 34 34 35 36 36 37 38 38 39 40 40 41 42

L. LI. LII. LIII. LIV. LV. LVI. LVII. LVIII. LIX. LX.

I told Her that I wasnt gonna beg Her Although my reason tells me that Shes not Forever for Her love Ill gladly wait! My great and irresponsible feeling! The birds have no set occasion for song Lo! when the men are outside working hard The inner-life, the mystical insight A light, percussive rain in Cancer falls This weather is a dance of atmospheres The heat is just as needed as the cold I tune myself to Her pitch and timbre

42 43 44 44 45 46 46 47 48 48 49

PREFACE
This cycle of sonnets was birthed over a six month period in 2011. Id been working as a creative writer casually for over 10 years and as a poet semi-formally for over 5. Despite sometimes prolific output, in the spring of 2011 I realized I had never written a poem with strict knowledge of meter. I resolved myself to cure this inadequacy, quit the conceptual art I pretended was poesy, and get to work on a grand formal project. Thus, this cycle was born. This cycle was envisioned as another in the grand tradition of love song cycles a-la Shakespeare and Goethe. I undertook the project with the grand ambition of creating a cohesive series of songs that presented a consistent thesis, argued for a specific world-view, and revisited the same themes like an unfolding tapestry. Many of these songs demonstrate the growing pains of a fledgling poet whos yet to figure the intricacies of meter; some are more juvenile and directionless in their meanderings; however, I feel the cycle in itself illustrates the toil of a poet trudging into a new sphere. Thematically, the series approaches love and spirituality through analogues of music, light and relationships. The not-somodest series posits music as an illustration of love and separation in this sometimes heartless, sometimes heartful world we find ourselves populating. Its success in this endeavor Ill leave to the reader. Many thanks go out to Tommy Rousse for inspiring a new formal trajectory, my sister Layla Naquin for indulging my
7

innumerable library requests, and the many loves Ive known intimately and nonintimately over the years that have inspired these reckless and unaccomplished songs. Bayou Gauche, 2012

LOVES MUSIC

I. It is in song that we best find the world It is in song that we best find the world, The music of our being surrounds us To sit without a thought, not of some girl, Nor of the ears of passive audience Is what we mean when we say we're amused. A muse is where we focus our attention: An object of desire that we choose To hold as seat of love, as our intention. When first a music lulls us with Her beauty, And moves and lilts, an ascending birdsong; For union with that fount of all we plea: Rest with Beloved is for which we long! So seeing as we've been so separated In song, in music, is our loss abated.

II. But what was that that split us from the first But what was that that split us from the first And caused this space, divide, between the two? This interstice across each of us burst-No! thirst to make a find of what we lose? I in my face, my mind, may only visage Not that which is composite part of me, But, so divided, only then may witness
10

An other in Her resplendent beauty. So of this gap, this Logos granting space, I have a feeling of ambivalence. It seems I am afforded but a taste Only of that without me, of my less. In this, my station, I may do no more Than sing of Her which I had known before.

III. But I am not the only one who sings But I am not the only one who sings Nor is a music merely a man's game. Even these chimes resemble in their rings The song of trees caught up in a wind's aim. Nor are but trees the only instrument; Beyond this trifling self: my vehicle; The means by which this world finds ornament: The players are exceedingly simple. Melodious birds dance it vertical, But not just a sound is that melody, A movement itself is responsible For each and every nuanced harmony. So I move to Her: that which I have lost. Still so for Her I spare no note, no cost.

11

IV. Theres music also of the spheres above There's music also of the spheres above, As day surrenders night surrenders day, Essentially within a music of These luminaries is where we find stay. Moon engenders months and Sun our years In such a cyclic regularity That one often finds occasion to hear A being of the same trajectory. A morning star as evening star returns And alignments that were soon cease to be; But as our Universe, one song, so turns, Eventually I find return in She. And so as those before did prophesy: This celestial dance of Her and I.

V. Take appropriate listening posture Take appropriate listening posture, A musician don't listen to himself. His quiet mind is attuned to an other And so aligned may sing Her song itself. Spine of straightest line: a seated tonic, Not self-absorbed, finds in his situation Much to which he had not yet responded And develops sonant appreciation.
12

Song's a conversation, not a battle, There's no language without other-interest. To find Her finally you're going have to Forget yourself and sit still in silence. A quiescent pose is illuminating And only in repose may we best sing.

VI. There is much to be said of the active There is much to be said of the active: Complement to its feminine other. Passive, in Her langour, finds no motive To move about the world in its color. I've heard the Buddha found a Middle Way, Something not reticent nor haphazard: A simple loving-kindness, that's to say Not just receptivity that's mastered, But spending energy on others too. After he sat beneath that tree and found A wisdom he had yearned for, he could use, He went and actively spread it around. So began another of the teachings: A music of duty and further meaning.

13

VII. Between you and me, Her and I: a gap Between you and me, Her and I: a gap Of which philosophers have conjecture And proposition; diagram and map Of how we meet at this crucial juncture. In India they say that "That art thou," That the object really is the subject. I've always found it curious just how That word "art" holds the center: it connects. Vagaries of learned men and of scholars I find superfluous to this, my cause; If, suppose, love is union it follows Each of us knows well this art, this pause. For when you feel devotion to a lover, Two are now one, illusory is other.

VIII. Through words I may bridge the none between Through words I may bridge the none between, But not only words are up to the task. These graphemes represent sequent phonemes, The bounds where consonants and vowels clash. As that word says, I am no sound alone But sonant with a being that surrounds Me, constitutes my hearth, my fount, my home: An infinitude of orchestral sounds.
14

But silence is the Her encasing this, The space in which a music finds its flow. Thus I prostrate myself before Her gift, Surrendering my self and all I know. There is no song without this Her: my none. Only within a nothing words become.

IX. Song, like art, isnt adequately defined Song, like art, isn't adequately defined. There's plenty that are quick to say this bench Or urinal isn't art. Let me remind You that this is a quite restricted sense. I work continually to indefine That stuff they put in museums, on stage, In magazines. Put simply, though, I find The whole art-world a guise, a ruse, a game. But back to song, how is it different from The language that you use most every day? There's music, prosody, even in ums, You tongue a thought and those are notes I say! O! what you thought it wasn't now is it! In every finite is the Infinite.

15

X. Astrologues say, As above, so below Astrologues say, As above, so below: A leaf's a little self-similar tree. Both light and sound are waves, they're both cycles, When cycles meet we find a unity. Pythagoras defined a unison As pitches one-to-one in ratio. Whether higher or lower they run, Their character retains the same simple Aspect, regardless of their final size. It's the same redundant geometry: The phases of the Moon cycle apply To rotations of all luminaries. So we find that song is but the same As all the solar motions that we name.

XI. Lo! two start from the same benefic Source Lo! two start from the same benefic Source And consequently do they separate. Yet though it may be long and arduous course, They do eventually meet, however late. An end is a beginning is an end, The world is not an ever-static place. All other than a dynamism tends To end inadequate, to be a waste.
16

The unending is just ineffable. The words themselves are bound, they find finish, But when it seems, apart, all is trouble, I trust we'll meet again beyond limit. We two begin as one and one as two: Her and I, a dance, Infinite loop.

XII. We two are in a dance that is redone We two are in a dance that is redone In myriad style and in different face. Some argue that we're attributes of one Of nontemporal, of eternal state. I, for one, side with the songs of Persia: All that I perceive brings me delight. An other word for it is nanda, That ecstasy of ever-present light. Lo! just as all is song and all is art, All is a dance done over and over. So if you think you've found a brand new part, I say that you don't know the Unmoved Mover. 'Twas in the book and other places sung: There is nothing new underneath the Sun.

17

XIII. It seems that She is in the nude this time It seems that She is in the nude this time, No coverings for me to bother with: A viola of contour and of line, Delicate as plum, a fleshy gift. When the muse, the music, is laid bare Her sides and symmetries, they become plain. The only veil remaining is Her hair Behind which I may find personal gain. Painters of odalisques all knew the dance: That yearning for the fruit, forbidden taste That dominates poet and artist's glance And in image they place with pomp and haste. In this desire for the sensual: An analogue for God that's personal.

XIV. Sometimes we twist a sparse jugalbandhi Sometimes we twist a sparse jugalbandhi, The space between the movements gets stretched out. Other times it is with fervor She Bridges divides, leaves me no more without. She fills up as the Moon: celestial cup, A container receptive to the light: A little old boat that is filling up, The mother and the guidepost of the night.
18

Our union is a duet, is a song: An eclipse, a miraculous event, And but one of the many so among A chorus that is endless: Infinite. For this music to be not a mere drone I join myself to Her and am redone.

XV. She is the center about which I move She is the center about which I move, The source, the death, where all our paths must end. A yearning for this union is a love, The wound is a division we must mend. She is the root, the ground of all being, The tonal center: substance of the heart. She is the only thing that I am seeing! In each separate attribute an art. Love's a motion of one to an other, In this gap's where everything exists. It is the only reason that we bother To try and claim an other with a kiss. So lets make of our motion harmony: A dance, a whirl, a spin! Now you join me!

19

XVI. Beyond Her form I have of more divined Beyond Her form I have of more divined, She's not just a possessed material. In fact, all ownership I find a crime, For who may own the incorporeal? O! when I press my surfaces to Hers-No, that's not the union of which I speak. But union with Her soul the flesh covers: The inner fire, spark, the central heat. Finally the moment of little death! As in the bigger one, I am no more. We expirate, we inspirate one breath, There is no longer after nor before. In music we do find the beautiful, Just as with souls, wholly intangible.

XVII. It wasnt til about a dozen in It wasn't 'til about a dozen in When I figured out how the music worked, The unnatural rhythms that begin The cycle are where its irration lurked. I'm not a fan, though, of reason alone, Counting syllables is what jars my songs. Doesn't matter if it's missing one, Of if, in this line, an extra one belongs.
20

What else is the fault of a standard unit? The Infinite is incommensurate. The moment we regularly define it Is when we lose all hope of measurement. Song built out the purview of science Is as effortless as a silence.

XVIII. Instead focus on the bounds of a line Instead focus on the bounds of a line, And by bounds I don't mean just its limits. Note the rise and fall, ascent/decline: The nuance that I find standard omits. As the avant-garde has always argued, The plainest language is still literary: Each and every utterance imbued With consummate grace and with artistry. To abandon form and prosody Doesn't just display an ignorance, It's a veritable heresy: A sin against language's redone dance. Knowledge of bounds may loosen up the Form And leave the Unknown Spirit to perform.

21

XIX. There is a different music in my reading There is a different music in my reading, My silent reading, that inside my mind. There there is no breath required leading, No play of vowel sound left to remind Us that we are a vessel: instrument, Like a flute or horn, that's run by air. Sound's the silent's faithful complement, And inspiration is the two a pair. Just like the Her and I of love: a couple, It can't be known through just contemplation. In karma we control both gross and subtle, Though divined they have a relation. Lets not forget: history song predates. Essentially song is that which vibrates.

XX. Lo! drop a stone into the stillest pool Lo! drop a stone into the stillest pool, Then watch ripples begin to radiate. The center is a seed, a source: ovule, From which the waves, the music, emanate. Now you, your song, your self, your energy Affects those likewise around that hear. They have no choice but to sense synergy And vibrate with a sympathy that's clear.
22

Be ever-conscious of the moves you make, The interpenetration of all things No matter what the stress may never break: Song of your self the stuff around you sings. So sing a song of love, simple and true And hear the love you make returned to you.

XXI. Divided self and its unification "Divided self and its unification." We mapped Her paper out in three sections: The Self: the individual's own station, An other, and the medium: perceptions. Affections and sensations also matter, But I'm not bout epistemology. Is this really just a One that's shattered: Reunion thus asked of philosophy? Is the selfish interest Apollinian? Are selves, like nation-states, autonomous? Or is, as the word implies, religion The institution tasked with joining us? I have imaged my love and lust for Her As similarly dissolving other.

23

XXII. Science comes from words that mean to know Science comes from words that mean "to know" And we may know by making a distinction. A useful faculty I do suppose: A way to know our own base limitation. A gathering of precept and of fact, Some observations and a basic method By which we deduce the further impact As long as it's sufficiently tested. While parts of my self are different from you, And I am one to boast of my uniqueness, My basic substance is in by no means new, And ignorance of this fact is a weakness. Common humanity's what understands, And of us altruism this demands.

XXIII. Is self-preservation seat of virtue? Is self-preservation seat of virtue? Seeking one's own needs and no one else's? Or is there character in having learned to Think of others more than of yourself? No matter how big my concept there's always Something I may posit that is without. To designate an enemy allays In some measure personal fear and doubt.
24

But why must we be joined at the expense Of any being underneath the Sun? That we deserve and they don't is nonsense, And of disease is principal symptom. Absolute's unending grace extends Not to just us, but to both us and them.

XXIV. Theres a problem with the rhetoric There's a problem with the rhetoric. Even saying "problem" is no good. While I admit there's time for polemic, The other side must, too, be understood. The artful use of words is but a tool, And as a tool it has so many uses. Deft oration may be used to rule, Or suffer more malefic of abuses. To me, a speaker's like a magician Using sound and meaning for a purpose: A time immemorial charlatan Who sees the faith of others but a purchase. But I, seeing as we are but the same, Exist beyond a right and wrong-doing.

25

XXV. Are you writing just to write or what? Are you writing just to write or what? There's no such thing as art for art's sake. With the realization, Thou art that! There's no purposeless course for you to take. Some argue truth's objectivity, Some bind truth, like meaning, to a use. It is but a farce of modernity To mere aesthetic all our art reduce. It's always been more than just expression, Or just a play of form upon the senses; There's politics in art: moral and lesson, It's where an ideology condenses. To make your art not just a vanity, Make not for art but for humanity.

XXVI. But let us not with haste suppose the real But let us not with haste suppose the real As something very easily defined; A static symbol is wielded with zeal To keep the powerless tightly confined. Authority in a cosmology: Making sense of a chaotic course; An institutional apology: A penance for a man's divorce from Source.
26

No! we must each think of our art a guide Through malefics and other dissonance. To a center where all paths collide: A sublime, ineffable resonance. She is the Kingdom within you and me Yet greater even than Infinity.

XXVII. Art so joins the subject and the object Art so joins the subject and the object, Dissolves the individual in Her-Her being both the cause and the effect, Passive and active, father and mother: The vortex where within and out combine, Rotating admixture of yang and yin. Lo! when in love do Her and I entwine, I find in my end where I did begin. The now of art, just like the now of love, The same as Buddha's supposed ever-present, Is the none toward which being does move: The nothing to which Word, with God, is bent. In love and art we're separate no more, And rest with Her as we did rest before.

27

XXVIII. The world itselfs the vastest museum The world itself's the vastest museum, No frames around the bluejay nor the oak; No portion removed from the final sum, No trickery nor elaborate hoax. No branding, marketing nor promotion, No choices, nor aesthetic attitude; No value bestowed by an institution, No aura nor the stuff of man imbued. You've got to get your self out of the art! O! Over what have you a copyright? I'm with Rousseau: property was the start Of decadence from a celestial height. Her, immeasurable, suffers no claiming, False symbol, nor inadequate naming.

XXIX. There is no voice without an inspirate There is no voice without an inspirate, Or respirate: the drawing in of air; Capacity for song in breath's innate: Exhale, inhale, like Her and I: a pair. Let us dissolve this base duality! It's all coincidence of opposites! Sometimes what's joined is Shiva and Shakti, As in eclipse the Sun with Moon unites.
28

There is no bad without opposing good, There is no ugly without beautiful. No! neither concept may be understood Without other in contrast: dutiful. An exhalation breath's cycle completes: The symbol of a Her and I repeats.

XXX. We hear about it in numberless songs We hear about it in numberless songs: In pop it's sung as "Babe, won't you love me?" A litany of lovers suffer wrongs And pine all ways for reciprocity. Lo! everybody's looking for some love, Everybody suffers separation. A dove, for release, finds an other dove And in their union finds a liberation. Love's a movement of self to an other, And song's the grace allowing its voicing. When my body sounds a song within Her It's not my me doing the rejoicing.. But universal absolute, substratum: The whole of cosmic vibration: Aum.

29

XXXI. Love will find its way through any language Love will find its way through any language; Faithful are mirrors to one an other. In every era and in every age Poets have sung eternal love of Her. Sometimes it's veiled in syllables erotic, Sometimes it strikes us as a novelty; But to suppose that love is but exotic Is, like duality, illusory. I am no different than anyone else, And we all use our own words to describe What we experience within ourselves: The nothing that we share being alive. No matter what the voicing or the word, All language is spoken and, likewise, heard.

XXXII. Literatures unfolding tapestry Literature's unfolding tapestry: An ever-vivid and rich dynamism. Tradition, culture and all history Transcend the paltry bounds of modernism. Suppose yourself as different from the past? That seems to me an unmatched ignorance. O! in whose image have you been so cast? Don't you pay ancestors remembrance?
30

None of this is simply my idea. I am myself the idea of my parents. I am no different, with two eyes, a seer Than any other global residents. The being repeats again and again And begins where it ends where it begins.

XXXIII. Listening to the same old records that I Listening to the same old records that I Used to listen to when I was with Her. I remember driving and making my Way back to Her house when She returned From the family trip, from Her grandmother's, Or the time we combed the beach together... I'm not sure why I feel right now so smothered, Or overwhelmed by aspects of the weather. I keep wondering how I might best predict Its changes, how I might become a bird. Maybe having hollow bones is the trick? I'm interested in what you have heard... Delusional I think the world unkind; That expectation's error, I remind.

31

XXXIV. But O! the tenderest love that I have lost! But O! the tenderest love that I have lost! The tousled blondness of Her beachy hair, The way She pulled the car over to toss Some flowers in the back without a care. I keep thinking about Her shoulder posture, Or how She moved in dance as a ballet. O! it's the sweetest citrus I can conjure! A lullaby: this suffering allayed! Then the shortest dress, porous as canvas, Or the legs, the stems of porcelain. Without Her it's as if I feel as poor as This oak in winter, when no leaf remains. All the sensual parts I knew are gone And I feel but an inadequate One.

XXXV. But O! to hold that face just once again! But O! to hold that face just once again! To breathe in that effervescent fragrance! In no other such Infinite contained! In no other so effortless a dance... And none so round, so curved, so soft: a vase In which to place my self and grow up straight. When I loved Her my life was but a daze, And for eternal sleep I had no wait.
32

In fact, I never felt quite so illumined. I told my friends I wanted nothing more Than the enlightened sleep in Her I find, Within Her body's sensual contour. But no! never to return, my Beloved. A love that has no hope of being loved.

XXXVI. Allhu Akbar" means God is greater "Allhu Akbar" means God is greater. Great's not enough, our God is Infinite! Her being does extend beyond the theater Of letter, symbol, sound, all definite. Know that one may never fully know Her-That when we make a map we lose some part Of the unspeakable and greater treasure: Ineffable, immeasurable art. I can't tell you how much I did love Her, Or how, in fact, I love Her now the same. She turned me to a poet, to a lover, Now I return a love beyond Her name. O! being sonorous I reimburse My base, substance, our Her: this Universe.

33

XXXVII. Shall I compare a love to a music? Shall I compare a love to a music? Lo! all the world's a string in vibration, And frequency to a wave is basic; An interval is waves in a ration. Music's an art of accompaniment; It's tones in sympathy and symphony: A choreographed dance of element, Of arranged melody and harmony. This note relates to that one as a third, But to an other one it is a fifth. Sometimes a song of two notes sings a bird, In inversion an opposition lifts. Our separation gives birth to romance, As with a music's intervallic dance.

XXXVIII. The worst of intervals do voice their loss The worst of intervals do voice their loss In agonized and falling dissonance; Their cycles so estranged they gather moss, It seems they'd never meet at a first glace... But meet they do, just as a long-cycle; After a hundred years of solitude, And character is building all the while, Reshaping of both party's attitude.
34

I didn't know how much I loved Her 'til I had to live without Her warmth and grace. I sat: motionless drone, completely still And felt Her love returned at slowest pace. And so a love that seemed forever gone Is but a dance of cycles, just undone.

XXXIX. An other time Shed forced a change of me An other time She'd forced a change of me. She'd changed my pattern, made me look different. Lo! of my light and sound She's gravity: A fount of my endless astonishment! Sometimes She's a fruit, a pear, a plum; Sometimes She's the piano I am tuning: A mode, a minx, a muse, a medium; The referent to which my word's alluding. I talk of Her rasa, Her tone and flavor As the sweetest nectar that satisfies. I take Her in my mouth, attempt to savor Her form that's manifest before it dies. I love Her still whatever the aspect! And, older now, no returned love expect!

35

XL. Like Klein Ill take a leap into the void Like Klein I'll take a leap into the void And practice the religion of submission. It's with belabored choice that I have toyed, Just to my self, my will, did I give listen. No more do I suppose I have control Over the things this existence provides; A negligible point I am: a pole Opposed to that without, where She resides. But no! me as my self can't be without! No thing is outside of the Universe! O! of its basic union I've no doubt, And love as its movement fills up my verse. And verse itself is but a word for turn, With each line to Beloved I return.

XLI. I find myself restrained by formailsms I find myself restrained by formalisms. Rhyme and meter: a little song's device; Tagore adrift beyond the modernisms: It's hard enough to make the same sound twice... A wholly decadent language, this English, It's all irregulars and exceptions! To read my beloved Borges in the Spanish, O! the labyrinthine celebrations!
36

The Gurudev sang for his countrymen! This poetry is a slave to its form, But sounds repeat themselves if one gives listen, The stuff of language mouth and breath inform. Only in this, my form, may I be free! In verse temporal is eternity!

XLII. Theres so much lost between the mind and page There's so much lost between the mind and page, Knowledge of page's bounds I have acute. Art's but a game redone in every age... Though doomed to failure I must not stay mute! There's limits here, there's limits everywhere, Limits to all image and to all symbol. Superfluous I am resounding here! The Real's infinitude I don't resemble! Or do I? What's this stuff I cannot say? Isn't it funny there's a word for no words? A game (without a purpose?) we still play! What manifold splendor this world affords! Of Infinite symbol's inadequate! A word and It are incommensurate!

37

XLIII. The more I work the more its just a sound The more I work the more it's just a sound, Just strings of consonants designed to please The ear with vowels closed, central or round, To roll across a tongue with such an ease! That's just what my self is asking of it! Or is my self the same as any man's? Me: an avatar of Her deposit? My other-ness a guise of charlatans? I see just what I want to see, that's all? And you're a fan of what's most like your self? But when the greater Self I do recall, Beyond my me I find immeasured wealth! But if we ask of this, of art, nothing, Lo! everything around begins to sing!

XLIV. O! Beloved! Im so glad you have come! O! Beloved! I'm so glad you have come! It took me all these years to finally see Your face in every name, in every home, In every way, every philosophy. You're in the dog in Persia, in this river, Big and wide, its driftwood and sediment. An inverted triangle: endless giver! No longer I'm ashamed of sentiment!
38

No longer I find fault in personal Conceptions of the divine ground of this; Nothing more intimate nor musical, No simpler description of what love is! No sooner than this truth we realize Then we may lift the veil, the ruse, the guise.

XLV. Blue jays somewhere amongst this water oak Blue jays somewhere amongst this water oak, These little strings of seeds from the junk tree; The roots of momma's okra's gonna soak What little rain has fallen finally. I seen the cracks in Mississippi mud In Thibodaux, how low the water table! Unlike the Costa Rican dew-drop bud... Sometimes I worry if this Earth is able To weather the abuses we inflict, Or if we're just a parasite, disease: An ailment that she could not quite predict, And is this climate change our shortened lease? But I forget how small we are to Her... How many things our better She's conquered.

39

XLVI. This little blip of nothing that I am This little blip of nothing that I am: A single drop within a boundless ocean... I am zero within Infinite span: One degree of precessional motion. With great audacity we do suppose We shape the world around us with our stuff, Use Her material for our purpose, But She has not, despite us, cast us off! Lo! is this a great mark of forgiveness? Reception of our blunders in silence? Or might some say that this is a madness? No self, not Hers nor ours lacks recompense... To our great sin She turns the other cheek; In my penitence I don't find Her weak.

XLVII. When I suppose that only humans err When I suppose that only humans err, Or try to comprehend the fall of man I find deviant wills most everywhere: Ignorant, faithless man's chose course and plan. No other being extends out sideways And conjures up an artificial light; No other whittles away all their days In front of screens at morning, noon and night.
40

Lest we forget our origin: the Sun, Estrange ourselves from Her undying heat; What more has technology for us done Than divorce us from Her, our souls deplete? O! might we let Her teachings like rain showers Nurture our hearts and souls as those do flowers!

XLVIII. I still pay too much attention to me! I still pay too much attention to me! Entertainment in the French's distraction; I am my own enlightened polity, My interest is what drives all my action. Yet to myself I can't be so unkind! I find, in love, greater capacity To teach, to sing, embrace, perhaps remind Every one else of their Infinity! But I may do this only to a measure, Or sing sublimely just to a degree; To find balance between love and censure Is chief of the Middle Way's quality! But nothing is so near to me as God And so it is I embrace my selfhood.

41

XLIX. I choose to sing a remembrance of Her I choose to sing a remembrance of Her: The Fall happened because a man forgot. I won't forget! I refuse to surrender Her form my imagination begot. It just was starting to really get good; The songs, the sex, were really musical! Within Her contour I felt understood: A nurtured bud to blossom mystical... How could it be that it both is and isn't? Why are we damned to not have it both ways? It maybe mattered to you, maybe didn't... It never fails to differ, what She says. I must learn not to force duality Of what I see as one reality.

L. I told Her that I wasnt gonna beg Her I told Her that I wasn't gonna beg Her, I wasn't looking back, that I forgive, And all the luxury we spent together I celebrate as a privilege to live. I sense the burgeoning of a great feeling: An ease awakening beneath Her hand, And it's this song's content that is revealing The wealth I place in Her, forever grand.
42

But O! they say a true love asks for nothing: If you really care, don't think of yourself; But I still find myself alone and wanting The stuff of Her, nectar of further health. With each new dawn I wake to new confusion And wonder if this all is a delusion...

LI. Although my reason tells me that Shes not Although my reason tells me that She's not In love with me, nor my point of solution, No dearth of want and wishing have I got: A hope is birthed of my imagination. What poverty a life without a trying! Why not for reunion might I make case? She said distinctly once that my crying Showed depth of feeling rare amongst this place. So I work out here my dense emotion, Try to make sense of all that has happened. Her scent I felt the best feminine potion: Alone all my infirmities it mends. I sing: the stuff of creation is effort! But sometimes resigning's the best resort.

43

LII. Forever for Her love Ill gladly wait! Forever for Her love I'll gladly wait! When I no longer speak I sit and listen: Meditate on Her attribute and trait, Her gloss and lustre, sparkle and glisten. Absence is what makes the heart grow fonder, The grass is greener on the other side. Often times in this posture I wonder If that's why Her, as God, so chose to hide... I'm loving what my self may never have, But still I hold out hope of apprehension! I must remember all else that She gave And mused of me: a song dissolving tension. Beyond a mind and body is Her gift! So relative my fall becomes my lift.

LIII. My great and irresponsible feeling! My great and irresponsible feeling! My great and irregular prosody... Neither do the best job of concealing The irration that lurks in my body. Lo! no distinction makes a null of taste, Dissolves all individualism. If love be all then hate we but misplace, Invoke at the expense of altruism.
44

I'm always gonna do what I should not! I'll be the cog in the resplendent wheel Whose benefactor I have not forgot: An image of both ridicule and zeal, A secret that's as funny as it's sacred, A hearty laughter transcending all hatred.

LIV. The birds have no set occasion for song The birds have no set occasion for song, Or sections of their chorus are so timed That none enjoin the symphony in wrong Meter or pitch, their very being rhymed. And in the summer's heat they change their tone, Like ragas, in each season they differ; A lark's spring song's phrasing and polyphone Assumes a different character in winter. In June the ballad is frogs and love bugs; November: orange maple leaf's descent. In March the clanking of the vernal jugs Dance like syllabic feet without accent. With song there is no date too late nor soon: I find in every calendar a tune!

45

LV. Lo! when the men are outside working hard Lo! when the men are outside working hard, Or in the heat of kitchens they dismay; Or when the world's a white, confused blizzard, Or coiled moistures of hurricanes play; When being with Her is a world of hurt, Or depth of feeling is unbearable; When lost, abandoned in the dry desert And the schism seems irreparable; When all is toil, pain and suffering What is the tool of respite we employ? Why then we cry, we yell, we call, we sing! Catharsis through this action we enjoy! The being, as a word, was from the start, Sounded and heard: an art informed of heart!

LVI. The inner-life, the mystical insight The inner-life, the mystical insight; This nonsense alchemy of self-knowledge. Lo! in Enlightenment is the word light! O! that! a lucid and distinct message! The inner-knowing precedes the without; What's esoteric of the ritual One may not be able to learn about Through book-learning or symbols visual.
46

Know your self and all things shall be added! The Kingdom of the Lord is within you! Once to the center of your heart you've waded Expanding consciousness can continue! O! when we find the stillness that's inside, Then with Her, seed of yoga, we've allied.

LVII. A light, percussive rain in Cancer falls A light, percussive rain in Cancer falls: Heaven and Earth's languid, moist intercourse Does cleanse the atmosphere and so enthralls The local with a measured, metric verse. The clanking of the chimes and glistened leaves: A composition authored by no one, A choiceless course no songwriter achieves Being a willing self amongst a none. The water loves the Earth so from its cloud It separates to bring the soil delight, And the evaporate is but a shroud For water's loving return to the Light. In this above and below do relate; A salve, like tears, my self precipitate.

47

LVIII. This weather is a dance of atmospheres This weather is a dance of atmospheres, Their boundaries conflict and are defined As choruses of drops, whereso inheres The very stuff of life wetly designed. A couple birds call out into the mist; And other times the wind's so strong they hide, Pretend in pockets that they don't exist, Deny the world in which they must reside. But like the trees they only can be passive, Just like the trees they error and sin not; Their silent, measured posture is purposive, A signal that, of Her, they've not forgot. So all the flow and flux of this air pressure Is but a music infined, without measure.

LIX. The heat is just as needed as the cold The heat is just as needed as the cold, And so as seasons change I can't complain. The best of us retire and get old And fall back to our Source as tired rain. But worst is just as needed as is best, And really using either is our fault. For judgment is the cause of our unrest And with its end our suffering we halt.
48

Imagine a world without distinction! Imagine barriers of self dissolved, No longer having just your own position, No longer differing from your Beloved! In this image I sing in ecstasy! I stand beside my self-duality!

LX. I tune myself to Her pitch and timbre I tune myself to Her pitch and timbre, The color of Her sound I symphonize; I organize the tones around Her center. O! the disparate parts I synthesize! I image Her a detuned grand piano, Pry Her apart to view Her inner strings And all the while I voice a soft soprano: A song illumined of Her sufferings. She is the music that I'm always hearing, The space I move through, separate, in love. After my sleep, Her, all of Her, appearing: The context into which I'm ever-wove. To end one's self, to meditate, to listen Is all that's sung and said, spoken and written.

49