~Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves…

“Of course, women, so empowered, are dangerous.”

~Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

One Heart

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.

~Li-Young Lee

One Canoe

People want what they want
and what they want is never one thing.
All that desire
sliming a space rock
Shivering the air
a loon’s cry.
There is only so much
you can care for or carry
and for this there is
no one canoe

~Maureen McClane

The Undiscoverable Self

“It has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within.

“And yet, the terror within is far truer and far more powerful than any of our labels: the labels change, the terror is constant. And this terror has something to do with that irreducible gap between the self one invents — the self one takes oneself as being, which is, however, and by definition, a provisional self — and the undiscoverable self which always has the power to blow the provisional self to bits.”

~James Baldwin

Thunder, Perfect Mind

I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter. . . .
I am she whose wedding is great,
And I have not taken a husband. . . .
I am shameless;
I am ashamed. . . .
I am godless,
And I am one whose God is great.

~from the Gnostic gospel of Mary Magdalene

Du kommst und gehst

Often when I imagine you
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer and I am dark, I am forest.

Rainier Maria Rilke

To Give Myself Utterly

I want to give myself

utterly

as this maple

that burned and burned

for three days without stinting

and then in two more

dropped off every leaf;

as this lake that,

no matter what comes

to its green-blue depths,

both takes and returns it.

In the still heart that refuses nothing,

the world is twice-born—

two earths wheeling,

two heavens,

two egrets reaching

down into subtraction;

even the fish

for an instant doubled,

before it is gone.

I want the fish.

I want the losing it all

when it rains and I want

the returning transparence.

I want the place

by the edge-flowers where

the shallow sand is deceptive,

where whatever

steps in must plunge,

and I want that plunging.

I want the ones

who come in secret to drink

only in early darkness,

and I want the ones

who are swallowed.

I want the way

the water sees without eyes,

hears without ears,

shivers without will or fear

at the gentlest touch.

I want the way it

accepts the cold moonlight

and lets it pass,

the way it lets

all of it pass

without judgment or comment.

There is a lake,

Lalla Ded sang, no larger

than one seed of mustard,

that all things return to.

O heart, if you

will not, cannot, give me the lake,

then give me the song.

~Jane Hirshfield