Poetry Out Loud

soundscape ecologies for humans

Phrase Your Question // Rumi

Why doesn’t a soul fly when it hears the call?
Fish on the beach always move toward wave sound.

A falcon hears the drum and brings the quarry home.
Why is not every dervish dancing in the sun?

You have escaped the cage.
Your wings are stretched out.
Now, fly.

You have slept in shed and outbuildings
so long that you think you live there.

How many years, like children,
do we have to collect sticks and pieces of broken pottery
and pretend that they are valuable?

Leave childhood. Go to the banquet of true human beings.
Split open the cultural mold.
Put your head up out of the sack.

Hold this book in the air with your right hand.
Are you old enough to know right from left?

A voice says to your clarity, Walk.
Move into the moment of your death.
Learn some discipline there.

To the soul, Move into the invisible,
and take what’s given. You are the king.
Phrase your question and expect an answer.

Gift | W.S. Merwin

I have to trust what was given to me

if I am to trust anything

it led the stars over the shadowless mountain 

what does it not remember in its night and silence

what does it not hope knowing itself no child of time

what did it not begin what will it not end

I have to hold it up in my hands as my ribs hold up my heart

I have to let it open its wings and fly among the gifts of the unknown

again in the mountain I have to turn

to the morning

I must be led by what was given to me

as streams are led by it

and braiding flights of birds

the gropings of veins the learning of plants

the thankful days

breath by breath

I call to it Nameless One O Invisible

Untouchable Free

I am nameless I am divided

I am invisible I am untouchable

and empty

nomad live with me

be my eyes

my tongue and my hands

my sleep and my rising

out of chaos

come and be given