Friday, December 12, 2008
Great Lovers (poem)
Great Lovers
Great lovers
do not hold back.
They give themselves
freely
the way an apple orchard
releases its fragrance
to anyone passing near
its scented blooms,
or a sunset
spreads its
scarlet radiance
over the water
for all to see.
But great lovers
do not accumulate
by numbers.
They do not measure their joy
by how many conquests,
count up the tally.
They return rather
to the same bed,
the familiar patterns.
A subtle touching of hands
or lips
is often enough.
They understand Dante
and how it was
he devoted a lifetime
of devotion
to a woman he never knew.
Or Rumi with Shams,
talking about the
Mystery of all things,
alone together.
Because great lovers
give themselves away,
they are often
shattered when their
only beloved disappears,
leaving them to
face their grief
alone on the moonless nights
when they search the heavens
in vain for a sign of comfort.
They are like gamblers
who risk all
at the tables,
winners for a while,
then losing everything
in one sudden turn.
There is but one
Beloved
who never leaves,
never turns away.
Only when you embrace
the Beloved Within
will you find constant love.
Dorothy Walters
December 12, 2008
(Image from Wikipedia)
It is said that when Dante, the great poet of medieval Italy, laid eyes on Beatrice from a distance, he immediately fell in love with her, and though he never actually met her, she became the ideal image of his imagination and his poetry. He even placed her in heaven in the third section of The Divine Comedy (Paradiso).
And it is also said that when Rumi (1207-1273), a respected scholar and teacher in what is now Turkey , first beheld Shams, a wild desert mystic, he was so astonished he fell off the donkey he was riding. He soon took all his books and threw them into a well, and then he and Shams disappeared together for 40 days. No one knows exactly what happened during that time together, but for Rumi, Shams became the emblem of divine wisdom and love, which he celebrated again and again in his poetry. When Shams vanished under mysterious circumstances, Rumi was devastated. He danced (as a dervish) for many days thereafter.
