Kundalini Splendor

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Sunday, December 07, 2008

Poems by Rebecca del Rio 


Arms Full


Gratitude means showing up on life’s doorstep,
love’s threshold, dressed in a clown suit,
rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping.
Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers,
reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda.


To talk of gratitude is to be
the fool in a cynic’s world.
Gratitude is pride’s nightmare,
the admission of humility before something
given without expectation or attachment.

Gratitude tears open the shirt
of self importance, scatters buttons
across the polished floors of feigned indifference,
ignores the obvious and laughs out loud.

Even more, gratitude bares her breasts, rips open
her ribs to show the naked heart,
the holy heart. What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about
sacrifice?
Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy,
something unasked for,
something unearned.

What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet
is simply this:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Rebecca del Rio

(originally published in "The Loop 5," from Press 62)


And here is Rebecca's own translation of "Arms Full" into Spanish:



Agradecimiento es el aparecer en la puerta de la vida,
el umbral de amor, vestido como payaso,
el nariz de goma, zapatos gigantescos zarandeando.
Agradecimiento aparece con los brazos llenos de flores silvestres, recitando McKuen o lo peor de Neruda.

Hablar de gratitud es ser
tontoen el mundo del cínico.
La gratitud es la pesadilla del orgullo,
la admisión de humildad ante algoregalado
sin expectativa ni esperanza.

Agradecimiento arranca la camisa
de auto-importancia,
esparce los botonespos
los pisos lustrados de la indiferencia fingida,
ignore el obvio y se ríe fuerte.

Aun mas, la gratitud se desnuda sus senos, separa
sus costillas y se muestra el corazón desnudo,
divino. Que sea si el corazón sagrado no tiene que ver con
el sacrificio.
Imaginase que es la alegría, descalza y temeraria,
algo no solicitado,
algo no merecido.

Supone que el ritmo que escuchamos cuando por fin nos callamoses simplemente esto:
Gracias. Gracias. Gracias.

Finding Intelligent Design

"You don't have to look
anything further than the sinuses
to refute Intelligent Design," my doctor says.
Yet it's plain as my nose that
Divinity has seated itself, like a satisfied old woman
on the park bench of her psyche.

So what of it?
The design we seek in the material
hides like a defiant child.

Trapped as we are
in three dimensions,
with our intelligence,
looking for Intelligence
is like seeking a galaxy
with a microscope.

Rebecca del Rio
(Image from the Naked Heart Foundation)

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