LONGING POEM
– January 21 06
You sing your wayward love song
and tell me how you care
you eat the poet’s foodstuffs
and walk his lonely airs
You grant me all the longing
a human heart can bear
and then
find me wanting
when daylight breaks the mirror
You tell me that I leave you
when I have never come
that hopelessness surrounds you
if Heaven turns you down
And ever kindly give me
all you would truly keep
where lover’s lips
are parted
and such poets
fall to weep
All this
the words of honour
so many dreamers told
when each one first departed
upon the search for love
All this more noble
than any scholar’s crown
for in the eyes
with which you see
it feels you may
be found
And all this I know
All this I understand
as you look for me
everywhere
like the child
for his mother’s hand
But is it not time for seekers
of every hungry land
to discover
her suckling breast
has never been hard to find
She does not leave
does not deny
it is we who turn away
and if there is no departure
why beg her to stay?
Like the lover
who cannot quench
because her milk
is kept in dreams
we come to love
our hunger more
pain as its own reward
And so you fervent courtier
of all I seem to be
I ask you now
to look again
at what you want from me
And if my loss
might be not real
if missing me
could not be done
because my love
because all love
is born
and always
lives as One
If no split
has thus occurred
then no reunion
can be yearned
I am yours
you are free
and nothing stops
the love
you seek
So kiss me now
and fade away
your mournful eyes
and fervent prayers
Lift the cloak
of every fear
to find my presence waiting here
Where lovers touch
and always stay
to dream
their earthly lives away
Seek
when it is Self
you would know
Seek
and in this way
you shall find
I am nothing
but a teacher
of what is already known
though this be
the hardest lesson
of all
For we would rather
hear wisdom
in another’s voice
than trust the source
within the soul