Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The Skinned Knee Is Better Off

The Skinned Knee Is Better Off

Since the Beloved is involved in everything,
it has to be this way: 

The skinned knee is better off for having ached. 

And a face that has known a tear's movement,
it may not show right away any signs of change, 

but a magnificent inner canyon is being formed
from the currents of sacred elements touching - 
shaping us. 

When will tenderness reign? When will love govern? 
There is a court you rule that affects any you near,
so you tell me. 

Something became apparent a while back: 
Listening to others deeply is vital to human development. 

The heart cannot deny the law of action and reaction.
It will give in proportion to what it has cherished. 

Some great thermal force is within us that can warm 
and comfort many. 

The hand will give in proportion to what the eye has seen.
So study my face, share the bounty 
of other worlds in a look my countenance holds. 


         When Hafiz writes: "And a face that has known a tear's movement, it may not show right away any signs of change, but a magnificent inner canyon is being formed."  it provides a lot of hope that saddness (or any other undesirable emotion) is transitory. This reminds me of Rainer Maria Rilke's words: “Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror; just keep going, no feeling is final.” Sometimes it's difficult to accept those words as truth when you're personally going through a trying time. I think Rilke understood this well, for he offered up a passage that I've since realized is necessary to understand: “Do not assume that he who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, he would never have been able to find these words.”
         Rilke is one of my favorite poets (I highly recommend Letters To A Young Poet) and I want to focus on something else he said as well: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
         Hafiz ends the poem: "So study my face, share the bounty of other worlds in a look my countenance holds." Wow. The prize of life is otherworldly, depsite the difficulties and our unresolved determination to "figure things" out, to know why, and even to fail in that pursuit...but we "may live along some distant day into the answer".
        I plan on featuring Rilke again tomorrow. He's just that great!

93 Million Miles (2012), Jason Mraz

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