West Wind

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is the mystery, which is death as well as life, and not be afraid!

Did we sleep long? Is it this life still, or
is it the next life, already? Are we gone, then?
Are we there?
How will we ever know?

Dark is as dark does.

And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders?

I love this poet, which means nothing here or there, but is like a garden in my heart.

And the speck of my heart, in my shed of flesh and bone, began to sing out, the way the sun would sing if the sun could sing, if light had a mouth and a tongue, if the sky had a throat, if god wasn’t just an idea but shoulders and a spine, gathered from everywhere, even the most distant planets, blazing up.

If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not together.

Here is the white and silky trumpet of nothing.
Here is the beautiful Nothing, body of happy,
meaningless fire, wildfire, shaking the heart.