Kick out the stranger-wants which infest your house and lock the door

with his Name.

And wait for his speaking to you beyond the boundaries of praise and blame.

Every want is a giant that stands between me and what I ought to be.

Every landscape is a veil between me and the Beloved I ought to see.

With my body I measure the dusty wad length after length.

If you never send me a whiff of wine on the wind, from where shall I draw

my strength?

If we had been ready to receive his Word, the Beloved would have spoken.

But that would have ended his eternal game of More-hearts-to-be-broken.

In a mirror I met a man with the sad-old face of an ape.

And I thought, O God, all those years you allowed in your presence such

state and shape!

If the Beloved were not infinite mercy how could I at this moment

have existence?

Surely it was his love that drew me on the road to his door — not

my own effort and persistence.

I would drown all the words of my mind in his Silence, but for the dreaming

Which every moment creates fresh hordes of shapes and seeming.

Creation was when God pressed the grapes of existence into the wine

of Knowledge

And gave each soul a drop. And ever since, it has been our sustenance and

our courage.

The Original Word caused the grape-juice to ferment;

And my ferment caused the Beloved to relent.

The Beloved has hidden himself behind my deceitful eyes

Which still, too often, glance furtively towards some mean Paradise.

He is the Ancient One who at every moment is worshipped and at every

turn denied.

Whom we will never know unless we become 'headless' and 'footless' and our

last desire has died.

Still my mind swings with metronomic precision

Between tomorrow's hope and yesterday's decision.

If I do not become One with your Silence how will I hear your Word's Song

of Release?

And without that Song in my soul the next seven hundred years will be a

False Peace.

Speaking and not speaking. Yet it was all spoken by the Original Word.

Hearing and not hearing. Yet not till the last syllable is erased do we

know what we heard.