Sunday, December 18, 2011

Ellora

Ellora                                                                                                         

At Ellora, they started with a stone hillside;
carved out everything that wasn’t a temple.

A poem should be like that –
from a vast vocabulary, an elimination

of words unconnected to one another
until the secret combination is found,

unlocking glimpses of Oneness, the inter-connection.
Words that tremble and hum

when placed together
belong to the realm of the Infinite.

The truth of a poem is in its transparency –
columns of words, sturdy as stone ... clear as glass. 

O Lord, take my life.  Make a poem from it –
chip away the awkward, the unrelated, the oblique,

the dissonant and obscure.  Leave me ...
sturdy, connected, crucial and transparent.

O child of God, the Masters say Truth is not
an acquisition but a paring away of the false.

                        

No comments:

Post a Comment