Diving into the Wreck
by Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.

Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.

(Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian poet; here are fragments salvaged from his dives into the wreck: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/11/aphorisms-on-art-morality-spirit-yahia-lababidi/)  

Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich, read by Yahia Lababidi

My Sweet, Crushed Angel by Hafiz as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky in I Heard God Laughing

You have not danced so badly, my dear, 
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One. 

You have waltzed with great style, 
My sweet, crushed angel, 
To have ever neared God’s heart at all. 

Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow, 
And even His best musicians are not always easy 
To hear. 

So what if the music has stopped for a while. 

So what 
If the price of admission to the Divine 
Is out of reach tonight. 

So what, my dear, 
If you do not have the ante to gamble for Real Love. 

The mind and the body are famous 
For holding the heart ransom, 

But Hafiz knows the Beloved’s eternal habits. 

Have patience, 

For He will not be able to resist your longing 
For Long. 

You have not danced so badly, my dear, 
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One. 

You have actually waltzed with tremendous style, 
O my sweet, 
O my sweet crushed angel. 

Image Source | The Wounded Angel (Haavoittunut enkeli) (1898-1903) by Hugo Simberg at the Finnish National Gallery

Yahia Lababidi on the elusive embrace with the Divine:  http://www.onbeing.org/blog/reverence-for-the-visible-and-invisible-worlds/6769

My Sweet, Crushed Angel by Hafiz - read by Yahia Lababidi

I am too alone by Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Robert Bly 

I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough 
to make every minute holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough 
just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, 
as it goes toward action, 
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times 
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things 
or else alone.
I want to be a mirror for your whole body,
and I never want to be blind, or to be too old
to hold up your old and swaying picture.
I want to unfold.
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, 
because where I am folded, there I am a lie.
And I want my grasp of things 
true before you.  I want to describe myself 
like a painting that I looked at
closely for a long time,
like a saying that I finally understood,
like the pitcher I use every day, like the face of my mother,
like a ship that took me safely
through the wildest storm of all.


A peek at Lababidi's inner life:  http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/books-we-were#.VYLleflViko 

I Am Too Alone In The World, And Not Alone Enough by Rilke - read by Lababidi

“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. 
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. 
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. 
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. 

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. 
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. 
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. 
No rhetoric, no tremolos, 
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. 
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. 

So throw away your baggage and go forward. 
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, 
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. 
That’s why you must walk so lightly. 
Lightly my darling, 
on tiptoes and no luggage, 
not even a sponge bag, 
completely unencumbered.”
 
― Aldous Huxley, Island

Passage from "Island" by Aldous Huxley, read by Yahia Lababidi

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay. 

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back. 

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles traveled
means something more than journey. 
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces. 
want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

- by Warsan Shire, Somali–British writer

[Yahia Lababidi left home...  http://www.onbeing.org/blog/paring-toward-tenderness-approaching-the-mystery/8160] 

No one leaves home unless... by Warsan Shire [read by Yahia Lababidi]

Widening Circles - by Rilke

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I've been circling for thousands of years
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

Book of Hours, I 2
(translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows)

Yahia Lababidi, Egyptian poet, celebrates the power of poetry to bring us closer to the Divine:
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/yahia-lababidi-in-embracing-we-let-go/8705

"Widening Circles" by Rainer Maria Rilke - read by Yahia Lababidi

He Fumbles at your Soul - by Emily Dickinson

He fumbles at your Soul
He fumbles at your Soul
As Players at the Keys —
Before they drop full Music on —
He stuns you by Degrees —
Prepares your brittle Nature
For the Ethereal Blow
By fainter Hammers — further heard —
Then nearer — Then so — slow —
Your Breath — has time to straighten —
Your Brain — to bubble Cool —
Deals One — imperial Thunderbolt —
That scalps your naked soul —
When Winds hold Forests in their Paws —
The Universe — is still —

[Yahia Lababidi is learning to appreciate that the guardian of the riddle must speak in riddles:
http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2016/05/the-guardian-of-the-riddle-aphorisms-by-yahia-lababidi.html] 

He Fumbles at your Soul, by Emily Dickinson - read by Yahia Lababidi

Fire and Ice - by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire, 
Some say in ice. 
From what I’ve tasted of desire 
I hold with those who favor fire. 
But if it had to perish twice, 
I think I know enough of hate 
To say that for destruction ice 
Is also great 
And would suffice.

[Yahia Lababidi, aphorist, disturbs the wisdom of silence, briefly:  https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/poetry/briefly-disturbing-the-wisdom-of-silence]

Fire and Ice, by Robert Frost - Read by Yahia Lababidi

The Second Coming - by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity. 

Surely some revelation is at hand; 
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep 
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? 

[Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian-American aphorist:  http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2016/05/the-guardian-of-the-riddle-aphorisms-by-yahia-lababidi.html]

The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats

Ars Poetica?
By Czeslaw Milosz

I have always aspired to a more spacious form   
that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose   
and would let us understand each other without exposing   
the author or reader to sublime agonies.   

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:   
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,   
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out   
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.   

That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,   
though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.   
It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,   
when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.   

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,   
who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,   
and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,   
work at changing his destiny for their convenience?   

It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,   
and so you may think that I am only joking   
or that I’ve devised just one more means   
of praising Art with the help of irony.   

There was a time when only wise books were read,   
helping us to bear our pain and misery.   
This, after all, is not quite the same   
as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.   

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be   
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity,   
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.   

The purpose of poetry is to remind us   
how difficult it is to remain just one person,   
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,   
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,   
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,   
under unbearable duress and only with the hope   
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

(Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee)

Yahia Lababidi believes the air is dense with stray spirits, swarming for soul... http://amzn.com/e/B0042SRQWG

Ars Poetica? by Czeslaw Milosz - read by Yahia Lababidi

The Guest House 


This being human is a guest house. 
Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 
some momentary awareness comes 
as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! 
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, 
who violently sweep your house 
empty of its furniture, 
still, treat each guest honorably. 
He may be clearing you out 
for some new delight. 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, 
meet them at the door laughing, 
and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes, 
because each has been sent 
as a guide from beyond.
 

- The Essential Rumi, version by Coleman Barks

[Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian poet; his latest book is: "The Artist as Mystic" a collaboration on a series of conversations, exploring the ecstatic dimension in literature: http://amzn.com/e/B0042SRQWG ]

The Guest House, by Rumi - Read by Yahia Lababidi

New Translations For Lovers Of Greek Poet Cavafy: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105082310

[Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian poet:  https://www.fomitepress.com/quarantine-notes.html ]

The City, by Constantine Cavafy - Read by Yahia Lababidi

Philip Larkin : The Poetry Foundation - http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/philip-larkin

Yahia Lababidi : Poets & Writers - http://www.pw.org/content/yahia_lababidi

Continuing To Live, by Philip Larkin - read by Yahia Lababidi

Archaic Torso of Apollo by Rainer Maria Rilke 
- translated by Stephen Mitchell 

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could 
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.


[ Yahia Lababidi's latest book is: "The Artist as Mystic" http://www.onesuchpress.com/index.php/books/121-the-artist-as-mystic ] 

Archaic Torso of Apollo, by Rainer Maria Rilke - Read by Yahia Lababidi

There For You 

When it all went down
And the pain came through
I get it now
I was there for you
Don’t ask me how
I know it’s true
I get it now
I was there for you
I make my plans
Like I always do
But when I look back
I was there for you
I walk the streets
Like I used to do
And I freeze with fear
But I’m there for you
I see my life
In full review
It was never me
It was always you
You sent me here
You sent me there
Breaking things
I can’t repair
Making objects
Out of thoughts
Making more
By thinking not
Eating food
And drinking wine
A body that
I thought was mine
Dressed as Arab
Dressed as Jew
O mask of iron
I was there for you
Moods of glory
Moods so foul
The world comes through
A bloody towel
And death is old
But it’s always new
I freeze with fear
And I’m there for you
I see it clear
I always knew
It was never me
I was there for you
I was there for you
My darling one
And by your law
It all was done

- Leonard Cohen

[Yahia Lababidi is the author of "Trial by Ink: From Nietzsche to Bellydancing" - http://thehumanities.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.61/prod.24 ]

There For You, by Leonard Cohen - read by Yahia Lababidi

A Blind Man

I do not know what face is looking back
whenever I look at the face in the mirror;
I do not know what old face seeks its image
in silent and already weary anger.
Slow in my blindness, with my hand I feel
the contours of my face. A flash of light
gets through to me. I have made out your hair,
color of ash and at the same time, gold.
I say again that I have lost no more
than the inconsequential skin of things.
These wise words come from Milton, and are noble,
but then I think of letters and of roses.
I think, too, that if I could see my features,
I would know who I am, this precious afternoon.

- Jorge Luis Borges 

[Yahia Lababidi is the author of "Signposts to Elsewhere: http://www.janestreet.org/press/signpostsfore.html ]

"A Blind Man" by Jorge Luis Borges - read by Yahia Lababidi

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

- Jack Gilbert

(Yahia Lababidi believes that poetry is a form of prayer:  http://www.thearabreview.org/poetry-yahia-lababidi/ )

A Brief for the Defense, by Jack Gilbert - read by Yahia Lababidi

Street Crossing, by Tomas Tranströmer

Cold winds hit my eyes, and two or three suns
dance in the kaleidoscope of tears, as I cross
this street I know so well,
where the Greenland summer shines from snowpools.

The street's massive life swirls around me;
it remembers nothing and desires nothing.
Far under the traffic, deep in earth,
the unborn forest waits, still, for a thousand years.

It seems to me that the street can see me.
Its eyesight is so poor the sun itself
is a gray ball of yarn in black space.
But for a second I am lit. It sees me.

- Translated by Robert Bly:  http://tomastranstromer.net/category/robert-bly/

[Yahia Lababidi is a Pushcart-nominated poet: http://www.berfrois.com/2012/10/yahia-lababidi-every-tweet/ ]

Street Crossing, by Tomas Tranströmer - read by Yahia Lababidi

Face to Face, by Tomas Tranströmer 

In February life stood still.
The birds refused to fly and the soul
grated against the landscape as a boat
chafes against the jetty where it’s moored.
The trees were turned away. The snow’s depth
measured by the stubble poking through.
The footprints grew old out on the ice-crust.
Under a tarpaulin, language was being broken down.
Suddenly, something approaches the window.
I stop working and look up.
The colours blaze. Everything turns around.
The earth and I spring at each other.

- Translated by Robin Robertson

[Yahia Lababidi on the Arab Spring:  http://newint.org/contributors/yahia-lababidi/ ]

Face to Face, by Tomas Tranströmer - read by Yahia Lababidi

Tell All the Truth

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise; 

As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind. 

—Emily Dickinson

[Yahia Lababidi tells the truth, slant, here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZaCL780j0rR5oqAzP4rv7w ]

Tell All The Truth, by Emily Dickinson - read by Yahia Lababidi

What Do Animals Dream?

Do they dream of past lives and unlived dreams
unspeakably human or unimaginably bestial?

Do they struggle to catch in their slumber
what is too slippery for the fingers of day?

Are there subtle nocturnal intimations
to illuminate their undreaming hours?

Are they haunted by specters of regret
do they visit their dead in drowsy gratitude?

Or are they revisited by their crimes
transcribed in tantalizing hieroglyphs?

Do they retrace the outline of their wounds
or dream of transformation, instead?

Do they tug at obstinate knots
inassimilable longings and thwarted strivings?

Are there agitations, upheavals or mutinies
against their perceived selves or fate?

Are they free of strengths and weaknesses peculiar
to horse, deer, bird, goat, snake, lamb or lion?

Are they ever neither animal nor human
but creature and Being?

Do they have holy moments of understanding
deep in the seat of their entity?

Do they experience their existence more fully
relieved of the burden of wakefulness? 

Do they suspect, with poets, that all we see or seem
is but a dream within a dream? 

Or is it merely a small dying 
a little taste of nothingness that gathers in their mouths?

- Yahia Lababidi: http://youtu.be/lDhKYQBvNsc

What Do Animals Dream? by Yahia Lababidi

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright 
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can 
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. 

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire 
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
"I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,"
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

 - W. H. Auden	

[Yahia Lababidi believe Poetry can restore our Sight… http://www.berfrois.com/2012/04/poetry-can-restore-our-sight/ ]

"September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden - read by Yahia Lababidi

When Death Comes
 
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
 
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
 
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
 
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
 
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
 
and I think of each life as a flower, as common 
as a field daisy, and as singular,
 
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
 
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
 
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
 
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
 
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
 
- Mary Oliver 

[Yahia Lababidi, Tumblr:  http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/yahia%20lababidi ]


When Death Comes, by Mary Oliver - read by Yahia Lababidi

Ithaca, by Constantine Cavafy

As you set out on the way to Ithaca
hope that the road is a long one,
filled with adventures, filled with understanding.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
Poseidon in his anger: do not fear them,
you’ll never come across them on your way
as long as your mind stays aloft, and a choice
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and the Cyclopes,
savage Poseidon; you’ll not encounter them
unless you carry them within your soul,
unless your soul sets them up before you.
 
Hope that the road is a long one.
Many may the summer mornings be
when—with what pleasure, with what joy—
you first put in to harbors new to your eyes;
may you stop at Phoenician trading posts
and there acquire fine goods:
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and heady perfumes of every kind:
as many heady perfumes as you can.
To many Egyptian cities may you go
so you may learn, and go on learning, from their sages.
 
Always keep Ithaca in your mind;
to reach her is your destiny.
But do not rush your journey in the least.
Better that it last for many years;
that you drop anchor at the island an old man,
rich with all you’ve gotten on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.
 
Ithaca gave to you the beautiful journey;
without her you’d not have set upon the road.
But she has nothing left to give you any more.
 
And if you find her poor, Ithaca did not deceive you.
As wise as you’ll have become, with so much experience,
you’ll have understood, by then, what these Ithacas mean.


- Translated by Daniel Mendelsohn: http://amzn.com/e/B001I9NA3G

[Yahia Lababidi is an Egyptian poet and thinker:  http://amzn.com/e/B0042SRQWG ]

Ithaca, by Constantine Cavafy - read by Yahia Lababidi

The Long Boat

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn't matter
which way was home;
as if he didn't know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.

Poet Stanley Kunitz at 100: http://www.npr.org/2005/07/29/4776898/poet-stanley-kunitz-at-100

(Yahia Lababidi 'longs to be rocked by the Infinite':  http://www.bu.edu/agni/authors/Y/Yahia-Lababidi.html)

The Long Boat by Stanley Kunitz, read by Yahia Lababidi

Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be critical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy.

© Max Ehrmann 1927

(Yahia Lababidi is interested in the intersection of art & prayer:  http://www.bu.edu/agni/interviews/online/2010/stein.html )

Desiderata by Max Ehrmann, read by Yahia Lababidi

Egyptian-American author of 11 critically-acclaimed books.  Lababidi's latest are: "Quarantine Notes" short meditations composed during our global pandemic & "Learning to Pray" a collection of his spiritual poems & aphorisms.

Amazon Author Page:  https://www.amazon.com/author/yahialababidi

Yahia Lababidi

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