1. |
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Baba , what can I say to please You?
What tuneless song could I try to sing?
What note can I strive for to reach You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Baba, what can I do to keep You?
Close to my heart as it beats out my time?
Close in the crowds where I speak with You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Baba, what can I think of to praise You?
If I mastered expression in everything?
If I measured Your Grace in a poem for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Baba, what deepest bow could raise You?
Were the depths of humility sounded?
Were my debt to You found and expounded for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Baba, what heights of beauty could touch You?
Could the world rest in laurels at my feet?
Could I sing like Orpheus in the deep for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Baba, what kind of love could I utter You?
Would my drop were an Ocean pouring?
Would my life were an answer to Your calling for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Baba, what can I know to impress You?
Should all of my moments come clear?
Should all my inspirations come together for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Baba, what kind of sense can I make for You?
Can I open my heart and reveal it ALL?
Can I seek to know Your Word and express it for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Beloved, these questions I ask of You,
Yet Love asks no questions, and answers none.
I am lost, but in love I am lost in You.
In Your Presence my failings mean nothing.
©Gareth Calway 1979/ 2016
credits
from Leila and Majnun, track released February 25, 2023
Lyric ('Beyond Words") from this book www.sheriarbooks.org/product/6-degrees-of-separation/
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2. |
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O Majnun, this quest is your own end, you're lost and that's why you win,
You’re stripped of even your held breath and kiss what God alone knows.
This Leila I love is a chantress, her mouth like a painted rose,
Her ringed hands fly out of time's rut and pluck my harp of its woes.
This Leila I love is a dancer, unfastened hair like a tide,
Her body held in a soft flame of stillness, freed in a pose.
This Leila I love is a priestess who trails her heaven scent
To hell and back round a navel the musk-deer endlessly roves.
This Leila I love is a goddess, whose neck is softer than sky,
She turns to me like a planet, and everything else explodes.
O Majnun, this quest is your own end, you're lost and that's why you win,
You’re stripped of even your held breath and kiss what God alone knows.
(repeats )
Our lips blown apart on the wind like a bee
From the flower’s haven, he lives, eats, drinks
And solely breathes and as sleeplessly thinks
Only of me for whose rival he’d die,
If wedding that rival made me happy -
Happy alone in this cleaving that links
Our broken heart as punctured souls wince
In divided union’s blissful agony.
But when his prayer is crushed between our lips
And kisses come inside me like a bee's
And draw my honey from me, every drop,
A stillness comes upon me as of ships
That tall and stately slide beneath the sea's
Uncharted depths. "Oh God," I whisper, "stop...."
Forbidden other half, who elevates
My depths and takes my breath,
Elusive scent I seek through scorching
Desert day and iced night-ravine,
Up precipice and swirling peak
To fall and breathe my last at last –
Her Everest source in Me. (‘The Musk Deer.’)
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3. |
The Peacock's Tale
03:00
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Haunted Middle English suburban castle leylandii battlements TIPSY half cut LAWNS concealing parrots concealing peacocks....
Not this luscent fan
Of massed sunrise
With its strutting mail
Of blinkless eyes.
Not this Argos fake news
That our daughters must die
For a West to burn down
An Eastern sky
Not this parrotry perched
In Love's poetry
A deaf world applauds
Nor this fame miscalled
Immortality
Immortality.
This unheard dance
Of the peacock’s heart
Is our joyous love
And our secret art.
Not this heaven train lost
Up a Khuber pass
Not this gold and blue vision
Lost up its ass.
Not this marriage vow caught
In the All Together
Nor this false ‘I’ blind
To the blaze around Krishna.
Not this parrotry perched
In Love’s poetry
A deaf world applauds
Nor this fame miscalled
Immortality
Immortality.
This unheard dance
Of the peacock’s heart
Is our joyous love
And our secret art.
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4. |
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Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.
Birth of the deadliest thing on the planet,
The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.
Damn all these currents of feeling that kiss
And wear me, so much, with their wetness, or grit,
Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.
Silence, a stare, are my anaesthetists.
I freeze out pressure, heat. I won’t admit
The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.
Sunshine, tears, won’t melt my heart like Ice’s,
I’m dead hard. Whatever moves, I’ll kill it,
Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.
I went to pieces once; perhaps round this
More grainy core, less brittle, I can fit
The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.
Made of dead reactions, buried stresses,
Grist to milling Earth, I’ll never quit
Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.
The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.
Hear this track as part of "Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz" (a Dante's Inferno for the space age) here. https://bardonthewire.bandcamp.com/track/hell-rock
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5. |
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Baba , what can I say to please You?
What tuneless song could I try to sing?
What note can I strive for to reach You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Your tongue held but pealing praise
Tolled through my works and days.
Baba, what can I do to keep You?
Close to my heart as it beats out my time?
Close in the crowds where I speak with You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Your agonies blown with a kiss
Laughing stops of a silent bliss:
Baba, what can I think of to praise You?
If I mastered expression in everything?
If I measured Your Grace in a poem for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
There’s a feeling of flinty God
In your ‘have faith, I’ll help you’ nod.
Baba, what deepest bow could raise You?
Were the depths of humility sounded?
Were my debt to You found and expounded for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
The iris of Love in your gaze.
A Sun of days' rays in its blaze.
Baba, what heights of beauty could touch You?
Could the world rest in laurels at my feet?
Could I sing like Orpheus in the deep for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
(wedding ring!)
There's an infinite number of ways
To rephrase the maze of your gaze.
Baba, what kind of love could I utter You?
Would my drop were an Ocean pouring?
Would my life were an answer to Your calling for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Your eyes worn again and frayed
Have seen much better todays.
Baba, what kind of sense can I make for You?
Can I open my heart and reveal it ALL?
Can I seek to know Your Word and express it for You?
In Your Presence words fail and are nothing.
Broken face
Unbroken Grace
(Un)spoken.
O Beloved, these questions I ask of You,
But Love asks no questions, and answers none.
I am lost, but in love I am lost in You.
In Your Presence my failings mean nothing.
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Peacock's Tale Musical Storytelling Sedgeford, UK
It's all right, folks, we're married. A marriage of melody and rhythm ( flirting with harmony & timbre.) Old married woke
folk, indie, Norfolk noir, beat poems, ghazals & Americana for the world from NW Norfolk. Maz lead & harmony vocals, acoustic guitar. Gaz lead & harmony vocals, drum & bass. Traditional tunes with contemporary beats.
garethcalway.blogspot.com/p/doin-different.html
... more
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