Spiritual Poetry

Ode On Immitations of Immortality

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath past away a glory from the earth

Excerpt from: Odes on Immortality
- by Wiliam Wordsworth

 

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, (from Song of Myself)

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turned over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stripped heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heaped stones, elder, mullein and pokeweed.

-Walt Whitman

 

It is not growing like a tree
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that nightÑ
It was the plant and flower of light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.



- Ben Jonson

 

Oneness

The mind creates division
And division is another name
For devastating pain.
The heart creates oneness,
And oneness is another name
For spontaneous joy.

- Sri Chinmoy

 

Arise and Fill a Golden Cup

Arise! and fill a golden goblet up
Until the wine of pleasure overflow,
Before into thy skull's pale empty cup
A grimmer Cup-bearer the dust shall throw.
Yea, to the Vale of Silence we must come;
Yet shall the flagon laugh and Heaven's dome
Thrill with an answering echo ere we go!

Thou knowest that the riches of this field
Make no abiding, let the goblet's fire
Consume the fleeting harvest Earth may yield!
Oh Cypress-tree! green home of Love's sweet choir,
When I unto the dust I am have passed,
Forget thy former wantonness, and cast
Thy shadow o'er the dust of my desire.

Flow, bitter tears, and wash me clean! for they
Whose feet are set upon the road that lies
'Twixt Earth and Heaven Thou shalt be pure," they say,
"Before unto the pure thou lift thine eyes."
Seeing but himself, the Zealot sees but sin;
Grief to the mirror of his soul let in,
Oh Lord, and cloud it with the breath of sighs!

No tainted eye shall gaze upon her face,
No glass but that of an unsullied heart
Shall dare reflect my Lady's perfect grace.
Though like to snakes that from the herbage start,
Thy curling locks have wounded me full sore,
Thy red lips hold the power of the bezoar--
Ah, touch and heat me where I lie apart!

And when from her the wind blows perfume sweet,
Tear, Hafiz, like the rose, thy robe in two,
And cast thy rags beneath her flying feet,
To deck the place thy mistress passes through.

- Haifz

 

Poetry Arrived

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating plantations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

- Pablo Neruda

 

To Weep Because a Glorious Sun

To weep because a glorious sun has set
Which the next morn shall gild the east again;
To mourn that mighty strengths must yield to fate
Which by that force a double strength attain;
To shrink from pain without whose friendly strife
Joy could not be, to make a terror of death
Who smiling beckons us to farther life,
And is a bridge for the persistent breath;
Despair and anguish and the tragic grief
Of dry set eyes, or such disastrous tears
As rend the heart, though meant for its relief,
And all man's ghastly company of fears
Are born of folly that believes the span
Of life the limit of immortal man.

- Sri Aurobindo

 

One Song

What is praise is one,
so the praise is one too,
many jugs being poured

into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing,
one song.

The differences
are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks slightly different

on this wall than it does
on that wall,
and a lot different
on this other one, but

it is still one light.
We have borrowed these clothes,
these time-and-space personalities,

from a light,
and when we praise,
we pour them back in. - Rumi

 

This one I like...its so simple and beautiful:

Like The Tree

Like the Tree I shall bow down.

Like the mountain I shall forgive and keep my head high.

Like the mother I shall allways remain awake.

Like the heart I shall always worship.

- Sri Chinmoy

 

[size=+1]

The material world is on the brink of a planetary awakening,

propelled by the personal transformation of mind

from the shadows of limited constructs into the truth of being.

As the awakening soul trusts in the Great Love that birthed it,

time shifts to the Eternal Now where the Presence resides...

the bridge constructed in the peace and stillness of the quiet heart.

This is a reality factory where resonance patterns determine the experiential stage.

Behavior is the test of knowing and education is key.

The polarization process is separating and segregating

the diverse energies of faith and fear.

We are One people ... the part and the whole intricately interrelated

in a cosmic web of purpose and intent.

As love comes into dominance in the mind arena,

as spirit energy reaches critical mass,

Eternal Awareness will regain access to this realm and enter the soul of humanity. Second Stage Creation begins...




[size=-1]p r o j e c t p e r f e c t i o n
perfect projection
galleries | mp3
healing | hOMe

[/size][/size]

 

Gah! this is gorgeoous:

O My Lord Of Beauty

You are beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful,
Beauty unparalleled in the garden of Eden.
Day and night may Thy image abide
In the very depth of my heart.
Without You my eyes have no vision,
Everything is an illusion, everything is barren.
All around me, within and without,
The melody of tenebrous pangs I hear.
My world is filled with excruciating pangs.
O Lord, O my beautiful Lord,
O my Lord of beauty, in this lifetime
Even for a fleeting second,
May I be blessed with the boon
To see Thy Face.

-Sri Chinmoy

 

Man

Man never desires anything so earnestly
as God desires to bring a man to Himself,
that he may know Him.

- Meister Eckhart

 

My Soul

by Sri Chinmoy

O Soul, I am your body. I am thirty-six years old today.
I wish to learn from you.
"Do good."

O Soul, I am your vital. I am nineteen years old.
I want to learn from you.
"Be good."

O Soul, I am your mind. I am sixty years old.
I need to learn from you.
"See good."

O Soul, I am your heart. I am four years old.
Please tell me the secret.
"Remain good."

O Soul, your body again.
What do you do with your boundless Love?
"I distribute my boundless Love
To ever-expanding horizons."

O Soul, your vital again.
What do you do with your Infinite Peace?
"I feed the teeming vasts of the
Past, Present and Future with my Infinite Peace."

O Soul, your mind again.
What do you do with your Vision of the
Ever-transcending Beyond?
"I feather the Golden Nest of my Reality's
Infinitude with my Vision of the ever-transcending Beyond."

O Soul, once more your heart.
Tell me your absolute secret, please.
"I live for the Supreme and for the Supreme alone.
This is my Absolute Secret."

 

The Soul-Bird

by Sri Chinmoy

O world-ignorance,
Although
You have shackled my feet,
I am free.

Although
You have chained my hands,
I am free.

Although
You have enslaved my body,
I am free.

I am free because I am not of the body.
I am free because I am not the body,
I am free because I am the soul-bird
That flies in Infinity- Sky.
I am the soul-child that dreams
On the Lap of the immortal King Supreme.

 

Krishna

At last I find a meaning of soul's birth
Into this universe terrible and sweet,
I who have felt the hungry heart of earth
Aspiring beyond heaven to Krishna's feet.

I have seen the beauty of immortal eyes,
And heard the passion of the Lover's flute,
And known a deathless ecstasy's surprise
And sorrow in my heart for ever mute.

Nearer and nearer now the music draws,
Life shudders with a strange felicity;
All Nature is a wide enamoured pause
Hoping her lord to touch, to clasp, to be.

For this one moment lived the ages past;
The world now throbs fulfilled in me at last.

- Sri Aurobindo

 

There Is A Candle In Your Heart

There is a candle in your heart,
ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul,
ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?
You feel the separation
from the Beloved.
Invite Him to fill you up,
embrace the fire.
Remind those who tell you otherwise that
Love
comes to you of its own accord,
and the yearning for it
cannot be learned in any school.

-Rumi

 

A spontaneous poem I wrote.

I wander through life's kitchen
Looking for something to eat
One of the hungry silly men
The beloved I have to meet
There is a chair I take a seat
In a moment, I am here
Everybody lets out a cheer
As I look into the mirror
Yummy, you can eat the now
and all you can say is WOW!

 

i love that poem, though i never thought of it as spiritual, only political. funny how poetry can be interpreted so many different ways.

heres another ginsberg great:

Sunflower Sutra

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, sur-
rounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
stream, no hermit in those mounts, just our-
selves rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes
Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog
and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sun-
rays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuber-
ance of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
modern--all that civilization spotting your
crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs
& sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
grime, while you cursed the heavens of the rail-
road and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
flower? when did you look at your skin and
decide you were an impotent dirty old locomo-
tive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
shade of a once powerful mad American locomo-
tive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're bles-
sed by our own seed & golden hairy naked ac-
complishment-bodies growing into mad black
formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sit-
down vision.

 

Funny can be spiritual too...

 

The Wave


The wave subsides and the wave rises.
The flower withers and the flower blossoms.
There is no end to human wants
And human achievements.
Nothing is permanent and nothing is fleeting.
Then for whom shall we cry,
For what shall we cry?
Whom shall we invoke
With a new thought and new form?
Everything eventually blossoms.



- Sri Chinmoy