Electric

A new poem is like a new lover. The first time you write it, you're left sparking. And when you revise, you're perfecting the lovemaking, magnifying pleasure.

circa 30 Oct 2005

My favorite Rumi poem

EVENING SKY GARNET RED

Morning opens a door with help for
those who don't ask for any. Love

tears its shirt. Mind begins the
sewing repair. You come and both

run off. I burn like aloe wood to
touch the one who set this. Dressed

sometimes like disaster, sometimes
like a guide, the ox of the self

sweetens his mouth in a pasture. A
parrot falls in love with an Arabian

colt. Fish want linen shirts. The
drunken lion hunts drunken gazelles.

It cannot be said how you take form.
One man asks for spoiled cheese.

The prayer rugs all point different
ways. If you would soak again the

evening sky your garnet red, the
qibla tips would turn that way.

(from The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems trans. Coleman Barks)