Alone, we two
travel dust-layered
along the unfamiliar road.

How long?
An hour maybe, a day? Who knows, who cares?
Visions of temples, dark, inscrutable,
flicker and fade away,
time-shimmered into obscurity.

Here is no town, no habitation,
only the silent calm of reapers in distant fields,
and the lame bucking of black, bristled swine,
pincered by the thorny talons
of satin-suited crows.

Two grizzled buffalo, horns
resting like folded wings
graze in a grass-damp ditch;
while on a tarmac-flattened patch of road
a woman in a purple sari
sifts golden ragi, newly-threshed
beneath unwitting tyres.

At last the fields lie bare; their honey spilled.
Air flecked with powdered gold;
with slow applauding hoof beats and protesting squeals
of wooden cartwheels passing close;
with the sweet breath of karma-laden oxen
bearing the harvest home.

The undiscovered gods wait in the temple.
Let them stay hidden in dark places.
Clothed in golden glances
we two are divine

‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost is featured in The Winner Stands Alone.

Many have noticed the contrast between light and dark.

On the one hand we have Neda, a true Warrior of Light, on the other the darkness at the heart of the Supreme Being who gains sustenance through the shedding of blood of innocent people.

Brave people of Iran, have courage, you too must do a little work so that the death of Neda has not been in vain. You must take to the streets and rid the world of this evil regime.

yeah rumi love, i know, i know, that is what they all say in the beginning a little work, that is juts the bait, and what one ends up with is not ‘just a little work’..

“prisoner of time “….hmmmmmmm, the way out it timelessness, and when is one in a timeless state, all have been at some point of time or other, those moments when time seemd / seems to stop.

love
aditya

aditya

Before you

numerous sculptures

and painters

have mounted gazelles

from blend of the leaves

and the trees

Or sketched

the herd of sheep

in the bosom of a mount

in search of a shepherd,

Or in a misty yet green forest

a grazing mare.

But you

You assemble the lines of likeness

Between sigh, tear, iron and cement

Between smoke, fire, pain and deceit.

For silence

for us

is not a virtue.

***

The silence of water

Is either drought

Or the cry of thirst.

The silence of wheat

Is either hunger

or the sobbing of dearth.

And the silence of the sun

That is the victory of darkness.

But the silence of man

Is the defeat of life

And of Spirit!

Sketch the scream!

Sketch this scream:

Our era

confined in the circle of scourge

And scorn!

And my neighbours,

Estranged from the divine

And from hope!

And our honour,

Is set callously on sale!

We,

We possessed all the words of the world

And we did not speak.

We did not speak

Of the awaited name,

For we were not denied

But one word,

One word:

Freedom!

We did not speak

But you drew.

You draw!

By Ahmad Shamlou

Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani

LOVE
Regards
HOMEIRA from IRAN

As the people of Iran voice their concerns and their future at this moment I pray that Rumi’s poetic energy ripples across Iran and the world.

I think Rumi would be so disheartened to see the darkness that still exists. Pray for love. Pray for peace.

Savita

This place is a dream.

Only a sleeper considers it real.

Then death comes like dawn,

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought was your grief.

But there’s a difference with this dream.

Everything cruel and unconscious

done in the illusion of the present world,

all that does not fade away at the death-waking.
It stays,

and it must be interpreted.

All the mean laughing,

all the quick, sexual wanting,

those torn coats of Joseph,

they change into powerful wolves

that you must face.

The retaliation that sometimes comes now,

the swift, payback hit,

is just a boy’s game

to what the other will be.

You know about circumcision here.

It’s full castration there!

And this groggy time we live,

this is what it’s like:

A man goes to sleep in the town

where he has always lived, and he dreams he’s living

in another town.

In the dream, he doesn’t remember

the town he’s sleeping in his bed in. He believes

the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities

settles over us like a forgetful doze,

but we are older than those cities.

We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state, and then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we slightly recall

being green again.

That’s how a young person turns

toward a teacher. That’s how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream,

and that will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.