LETTER
TO LERMONTOV
You
are distant, alone, and far on the horizon,
obscured,
almost nurtured, by the ocean's fog.
Seeking
and searching, you are always a stranger:
What
did leaving me, losing me, cost?
I
would swim with one foot on the sand of the dry land;
I
would wait for you, never explore.
But
you are the waves, and the wind and its whistle,
and
the storm you embrace far from shore.
My
few timid ships all cling to the shoreline
too
frightened to leave what they know.
You
laugh and command them: There is another shore;
the
second appears when the first is gone.
So
sing, my dear love, of the wide morning's gold sky,
and
the call of the azure strand,
and
the gull and the salt and the mast that pitches,
and the lure of a foreign
land.
I
will be your welcome, your country forever;
I'll
receive, then release you (adieu).
I
will be your native and nurturing homeland
and
wait to be called home by you.
LOVE’S COMELY BEHIND
Say,
is not all love illicit and blind?
True,
it hides, undone, in the mind.
Who knows Allah’s
thoughts truly loves
the Self that is Allah’s
own wisdom to know,
and you are Allah’s, my
milk, sheep, and doves,
unsure yet certain, a
dervish in the snow.
Did
you, today, attend upon love?
No,
intent instead, you will not find.
Who knows Allah’s
thoughts truly loves
the Self that is Allah’s
own wisdom to know,
and you are Allah’s, my
milk, sheep, and doves,
unsure yet certain, a
dervish in the snow.
Greedily,
you eat and fruit is gone.
Pulp
devoured, you hold the rind.
Who knows Allah’s
thoughts truly loves
the Self that is Allah’s
own wisdom to know,
and you are Allah’s, my
milk, sheep, and doves,
unsure yet certain, a
dervish in the snow.
You
have lost your love? O, sing, fool:
Now
gaze upon love’s comely behind.
Who knows Allah’s
thoughts truly loves
the Self that is Allah’s
own wisdom to know,
and you are Allah’s, my
milk, sheep, and doves,
unsure yet certain, a
dervish in the snow.
I
love love’s desert and its snow.
I,
Larissa, dervish, a lover signed.
