Robert Duncan
CIRCULATIONS OF THE SONG
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AFTER JALAL AL-DIN RUMI
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If I do not know where He is
He is in the very place of my not knowing.
If I do not know who He is
He is the very person of my not knowing.
His is the Shining Forth I know not .
My heart leaps forward past knowing.
*
Would I prune back the overgrowth of yearning?
Free today from the shadows of what has been?
Cut away the dead Love-Wood?
It
is as if Christ-rood never perisht.
It
is as if the God at Delphi still returnd.
Even now new shoots are returning toward Shrovetide,
fresh, tender. In the fullness of summer
they too will be rampant.
A thousand roots of feeling tamper the ground
for this abundance, this
spring water.
Ten thousand leaves of this green
work in the free-flow of the sun's light.
*
