Image by Rassouli
Come close to me,
I will whisper in your ear
Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes
around in another form.
For there is so much More to this life
Than you now understand
Observe the wonders as they occur around you
Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry
moving through, and be silent
For the Truth has been Divinely Conceived
Deeply within each of us
Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way
This Union you want with the earth and sky
This Union we all need with love
Stay here quivering like a drop of mercury
I thought I would let you read that poem through before I told you that
until now this poem never existed and yet it was written by two poets
a century apart. They are the words of Rumi and Hafiz, as translated
by Coleman Barks and Daniel Ladinsky respectively. What I have done
is create a found poem. Each verse is excerpted from a different poem
starting with Hafiz and followed with Rumi. This pattern repeats throughout.
This is now my fourth found poem. The first was combining Mary Oliver and
Wendell Berry, the second was Rumi and Rilke and the third was a compilation
of eight Mary Oliver poems. Below I cite the poems used in this creation.
Hafiz – Turn Left A Thousand Feet From Here
Rumi – Unmarked Boxes
Hafiz – I Will Hire You As A Minstrel
Rumi – Body Intelligence
Hafiz – Of Course Things Like That Can’t Happen
Rumi – Elephant in the Dark
Hafiz – This Union
Rumi – The Waterwheel
All my favorites! I adore Rassouli and it’s a beautiful picture you chose. And the poem is amazing…beautiful work bethie!
Brilliant! I can’t wait to read the others!
I would really love to have the poem, “this union’
Aw, Virginia thank you so much for bringing this poem back to me. It’s what they call a “found” poem. I made it by blending two poets together. There are maybe four found poems on this blog from 5-6 years ago.
Feel free to copy it, print it, whatever, please just make sure you cite the poets and the poems it was pulled from.
Thank you again!