Laughter

What is laughter? 

What is laughter?
It is God waking up! 

O it is God waking up! 

It is the sun poking its sweet head out

From behind a cloud
You have been carrying too long,
Veiling your eyes and heart.

It is Light breaking ground for a great Structure 

That is your Real body- called Truth.

It is happiness applauding itself and then taking flight 

To embrace everyone and everything in this world.

Laughter is the polestar
Held in the sky by our Beloved, 

Who eternally says,

"Yes, dear ones, come this way, 

Come this way toward Me and Love!

Come with your tender mouths moving
And your beautiful tongues conducting songs
And with your movements - your magic movements 

Of hands and feet and glands and cells - Dancing!

Know that to God's Eye,
All movement is a Wondrous Language, 

And Music - such exquisite, wild Music!"

O what is laughter, Hafiz?
What is this precious love and laughter 

Budding in our hearts?

It is the glorious sound 

Of a soul waking up!

--Hafiz of Shiraz (1310-1390), Sufi, and one of the greatest Persian lyric poets

"For Years My Heart Inquired of Me"

Nakalele Blowhole, Maui

For years my heart inquired of me

                   Where Jamshid's sacred cup might be,

And what was in its own possession

                   It asked from strangers, constantly;

Begging the pearl that's slipped its shell

                   From lost souls wandering by the sea.

Last night I took my troubles to

                   The Magian sage whose keen eyes see

A hundred answers in the wine

                   Whose cup he, laughing, showed to me.

I questioned him, "When was this cup

                   That shows the world's reality

Handed to you?" He said, "The day

                   Heaven's vault of lapis lazuli

Was raised, and marvelous things took place

                   By Intellect's divine decree,

And Moses' miracles were made

                   And Sameri's apostasy."

He added then, "That friend they hanged   

                   High on the looming gallows tree—

His sin was that he spoke of things

                   Which should be pondered secretly,

The page of truth his heart enclosed

                   Was annotated publicly.

But if the Holy Ghost once more

                   Should lend his aid to us we'd see

Others perform what Jesus did—

                   Since in his heartsick anguish he

Was unaware that God was there

                   And called His name out ceaselessly."

I asked him next, "And beauties' curls

                   That tumble down so sinuously,

What is their meaning? Whence do they come?"

                   "Hafez," the sage replied to me,

"It's your distracted, lovelorn heart

                   That asks these questions constantly."

--Hafiz of Shiraz (1310-1390), one of the greatest Persian lyric poets, translated by Dick Davis

The Contemplative Life

Abba Jacob said:
Contemplation is both the highest act
of being human, and humanity’s highest language.
If the language of things reaches beyond things
to designate the Absolute,
the silent interior mantra
bespeaks a profound communion
with that Someone further than ourselves—
and communion within
ourselves, for the two go together.
When we meditate, we enter
paschal mystery, the frontier between death and life.
Egyptian mythology has a wonderful image
of the pass from life to death: a great ship
which bears us to eternity. Charon
is the great passer of Greek mythology,
helping souls cross the River Styx from life to death.
Christianity turns it around: Christ
is the greatest passer, helping us pass
from death to life.
Contemplative life is always making the passage
from death to life, from humanity to divinity.
It is always taking the risk of being human.

There is an extraordinary message from the grave
as to what it takes to be human: a letter
from a Cistercian monk, one of seven
who had their throats cut
by Muslim fundamentalist terrorists
in their monastery in the mountains of Algeria
about ten years ago. Their prior
left a letter, just in case:
they knew it was probably coming,
they knew they were at great risk.
The letter was found and published.
Here is how it ends:

     To the one who will have killed me:

     and also you, Friend of my final moment,
     who would not be aware
     of what you are doing,
     yet, this: Thank you.
     And adieu to you.
     For in you, too,
     I see the face of God.

Abba Jacob wiped his eyes.
Interval of birdsong from the veranda.

He’s seeing not an abstract God,
but a God who has assumed a face,
a God who shows him this face
in every one of those Muslim brothers and sisters,
including the one who kills him.

Contemplative life has no frontiers.
And it is the heritage of all humanity.
Through contemplation we enter
into communion with everybody.
And this leads to service.
But that’s a subject
for another day.

--Marilyn Nelson (1946- ), African American poet and translator, Poet Laureate of Connecticut

Rosa Parks

This is for the Pullman Porters who organized when people said
they couldn’t. And carried the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago
Defender to the Black Americans in the South so they would/
know they were not alone. This is for the Pullman Porters who
helped Thurgood Marshall go south and come back north to fight
the fight that resulted in Brown v. Board of Education because
even though Kansas is west and even though Topeka is the birth-
place of Gwendolyn Brooks, who wrote the powerful “The
Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock,” it was the
Pullman Porters who whispered to the traveling men both
the Blues Men and the “Race” Men so that they both would
know what was going on. This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled as if they were happy and laughed like they were tickled
when some folks were around and who silently rejoiced in 1954
when the Supreme Court announced its 9—0 decision that “sepa-
rate is inherently unequal.” This is for the Pullman Porters who
smiled and welcomed a fourteen-year-old boy onto their train in
1955. They noticed his slight limp that he tried to disguise with a
doo-wop walk; they noticed his stutter and probably understood
why his mother wanted him out of Chicago during the summer
when school was out. Fourteen-year-old Black boys with limps
and stutters are apt to try to prove themselves in dangerous ways
when mothers aren’t around to look after them. So this is for the
Pullman Porters who looked over that fourteen-year-old while
the train rolled the reverse of the Blues Highway from Chicago to
St. Louis to Memphis to Mississippi. This is for the men who kept
him safe; and if Emmett Till had been able to stay on a train all
summer he would have maybe grown a bit of a paunch, certainly
lost his hair, probably have worn bifocals and bounced his grand-
children on his knee telling them about his summer riding the
rails. But he had to get off the train. And ended up in Money,
Mississippi. And was horribly, brutally, inexcusably, and unac-
ceptably murdered. This is for the Pullman Porters who, when the
sheriff was trying to get the body secretly buried, got Emmett’s
body on the northbound train, got his body home to Chicago,
where his mother said: I want the world to see what they did
to my boy. And this is for all the mothers who cried. And this is
for all the people who said Never Again. And this is about Rosa
Parks whose feet were not so tired, it had been, after all, an ordi-
nary day, until the bus driver gave her the opportunity to make
history. This is about Mrs. Rosa Parks from Tuskegee, Alabama,
who was also the field secretary of the NAACP. This is about the
moment Rosa Parks shouldered her cross, put her worldly goods
aside, was willing to sacrifice her life, so that that young man in
Money, Mississippi, who had been so well protected by the
Pullman Porters, would not have died in vain. When Mrs. Parks
said “NO” a passionate movement was begun. No longer would
there be a reliance on the law; there was a higher law. When Mrs.
Parks brought that light of hers to expose the evil of the system,
the sun came and rested on her shoulders bringing the heat and
the light of truth. Others would follow Mrs. Parks. Four young
men in Greensboro, North Carolina, would also say No. Great
voices would be raised singing the praises of God and exhorting
us “to forgive those who trespass against us.” But it was the
Pullman Porters who safely got Emmett to his granduncle and it
was Mrs. Rosa Parks who could not stand that death. And in not
being able to stand it. She sat back down.

--Nikki Giovanni (1943- ), African American poet and teacher

In the Islands

Parents had gone where parents go,
except for Mrs. Pocket, who sat against a log,
engrossed in a paperback, smoking a Lark
and tugging absentmindedly
her swimsuit's oily strap.

Our minor wounds stung by dried salt, we were surprised
how far the kelp had been dragged up,
left like silage from a great combine.
Crows hawked in the Douglas firs,
their inland world dense and inaccessible,

so I and the other children stayed on the open beach,
towheaded, curious, and bored.
Some rocks we could overturn, and there
we subjugated neighborhoods of tiny crabs
who scampered from the light.

Between our playing and the woods
the bones of old trees bleached by the Sound
were heaped as if in the aftermath of battle.
I crawled inside a rack of driftwood,
pretending it was home.

By now, insinuating tides have tugged it apart.
Mrs. Pocket finished her book, and sometime later
died of cancer. Her daughters have grown up,
no longer the crabs' tormentors.
We've all been changed,

drifting into new configurations
and seldom taking time to watch the light.
But we remember boredom,
the pleasure of letting says go nowhere
till something called us home.

--David Mason (1954- ), American poet and librettist, poet laureate of Colorado, 2010.

In the Mushroom Summer

Colorado turns Kyoto in a shower, 
mist in the pines so thick the crows delight 
(or seem to), winging in obscurity. 
The ineffectual panic of a squirrel 
who chattered at my passing gave me pause 
to watch his Ponderosa come and go— 
long needles scratching cloud. I’d summited 
but knew it only by the wildflower meadow, 
the muted harebells, paintbrush, gentian, 
scattered among the locoweed and sage. 
Today my grief abated like water soaking 
underground, its scar a little path 
of twigs and needles winding ahead of me 
downhill to the next bend. Today I let 
the rain soak through my shirt and was unharmed.

--David Mason (1954- ), American poet, librettist, and Colorado Poet Laureate, 2010

St. Columba's Boat Song

Cut in the forests, swept down the two-horned Rhine,
Our keel, tight-caulked, now floats upon the sea. 
Heia, men! Let the echoes resound with our heia! 
The wild gusts swell, the slashing torrents fall, 
But manly strength has force to tame the storm.
Heia, men! Let the echoes resound with our heia! 
To earnest effort, clouds and tempest yield;
Zeal and unceasing labor conquer all.
Heia, men! Let the echoes resound with our heia!

Endure and save yourselves for better things; 
O you who have suffered worse, this too shall end.
Heia, men! Let the echoes resound with our heia! 
So when the loathsome foe assaults our hearts, 
Tempting and shaking the depths of our hearts with passion,
Let your souls, men, remembering Christ, cry heia! 
In resolution fixed, scorn Satan's wiles. 
By virtues armed, defend yourselves with valor.
Let your souls, men, remembering Christ, cry heia!

Firm faith and holy ardor conquer all.
The ancient fiend, defeated, breaks his arrows. 
 Let your souls, men, remembering Christ, cry heia! 
The Source of Good and Being, the Highest Power,
Offers the warrior and gives the victor prizes.
Let your souls, men, remembering Christ, cry heia!

--St. Columba (521-597), Irish monk, abbot, poet, philosopher, and diplomat; founder of Iona Abbey

Making Peace

A voice from the dark called out, 
                       ‘The poets must give us 
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar 
imagination of disaster. Peace, 
not only the absence of war.’ 
                                       But peace, like a poem, 
is not there ahead of itself, 
can’t be imagined before it is made, 
can’t be known except 
in the words of its making, 
grammar of justice, 
syntax of mutual aid. 
                                        A feeling towards it, 
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have 
until we begin to utter its metaphors, 
learning them as we speak. 
                                                A line of peace might appear 
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making, 
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power, 
questioned our needs, 
allowed long pauses . . . 
                         A cadence of peace might balance its weight 
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence, 
an energy field more intense than war, 
might pulse then, 
stanza by stanza into the world, 
each act of living 
one of its words, each word 
a vibration of light—facets 
of the forming crystal.

--Denise Levertov (1923-1997), Anglo- American poet, from Breathing the Water, 1987