Filigree and Shadow

You don’t know how hard it’s been,

to find you a gift.

Nothing fits.

Why bring gold to the seam, water to the sea?

Every idea of mine seemed like hauling spice to the East.

No good, to give you my heart, soul,

you own both already.

So I got you a mirror.

Look at you.

Think of me.

---Rumi, courtesy of 'Copenhagen'

Harmonize with your destiny or it will crush you.
-----

I want to live.
I want to die.
Does this fading, soaring please You so?

Where am I?
Who am I?
Is it winter now?

These voices within the voices.
The fires fragment.
Your Hand, again?
---b.

In the dark before the winter dawn
What’s to say?
Hard to invent oneself
Let alone anyone else


Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour;
And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,
Through love, through hope, and love’s transcendent
dower,
We feel that we are greater than we know.

One of C's gifts. (A.A.)

If your heart is not deceived by the mirage,
be not proud of the quickness of your mind
for the freedom from illusuion is a sign of your imperfect thirst.
---After Urfi.

I sometimes wonder if we wish for something hard enough it might come true. Is the act of desiring that future hour, which is but a moment, enough? Is it the very act of hoping that makes life holy? To gather oneself for that instant. To be sustained by that meagre reflection, weak as this fading winter sun. Give thanks when the heart is contracted? But: the heart's endless desire to break is stronger...and what else is the heart but a patchwork of filigree and shadow?