Sublime

where Confucius compiled the Book of Poetry.

Someone asked once, “What is love?” “Be lost in me,” I said.

Where have you dimmed the luster of your eye?

Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee.

Of how his head continued to recite his poems of love even after it had been severed from his body, and how he picked up his speaking head, as casually as a modern-day motorcyclist might pick up his helmet, and walked up the steps into the Jama Masjid, and then, equally casually, went straight to heaven.

The oldest among them, the humble elder, a tall, stooped man worn fine as a clean, well-used rag by his years of service, so that the mildness of his temperament shone through all his looks and gestures,

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

enswathed

What seems wrong to you is right for him. What is poison to one is honey to someone else.