from Fidelity

Man and woman are like the earth, that brings forth flowers
in summer, and love, but underneath is rock.
Older than flowers, older than ferns, older than foraminiferae,
older than plasm altogether is the soul underneath.

And when, throughout all the wild chaos of love
slowly a gem forms, in the ancient, once-more-molten rocks
of two human hearts, two ancient rocks, a man's heart and a woman's,
that is the crystal of peace, the slow hard jewel of trust,
the sapphire of fidelity.
The gem of mutual peace emerging from the wild chaos of love.
D.H. Lawrence

MY EYES SO SOFT
Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you as few human
or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender,
My need of God absolutely clear.
Hafiz

WHO MAKES THESE CHANGES?

Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
and I fall in.

I should be suspicious
of what I want.
Rumi

The painter inside the painting.
Picasso

Take all away from me, but leave me Ecstasy,
And I am richer then than all my Fellow Men—
Ill it becometh me to dwell so wealthily
When at my very Door are those possessing more,
In abject poverty—

Emily Dickinson

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,
or your own genuine solitude?
Freedom, or power over an entire nation?

A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.

Rumi

"It is so truly the mystery of the kneeling of the deeply kneeling man. With Rumi the scale is shifted, for in following the peculiar weight and strength in his knees, he belongs to that world in which height is depth. This is the night of radiant depth unfolded."

The spiritual poet Rainer Maria Rilke said the turn of the dervish was a form of kneeling.