Excerpt from "A Conference of Ghosts"

The Moths and the Flame

They gathered together fluttering in the night

To decipher the truth about the candle light.

Many went and came back with news,

One about the window through which it viewed

The glow of hope, another singed its wing

Against the lips of the flame, but still they

Could not tell the nature and the abundance

Of the fire that consumes with eternal delight.





“You do not,” said the mentor, “bear the signs

that show on those who fathom how it shines.”

Then another went and passed far beyond

Where the others had feared, wooing the light

Like a lover in the dark, dipping and soaring

In a trance before the glorious face at the heart

Of the fire, before its gaze. It was engulfed,

Wings, head, eyes, and body consumed.

When the mentor saw the sudden flare,

He said, “He knows, he has felt the truth

Beyond all knowledge, all words, all speech.”

To wander beyond reason, to stare death

In its depth, to give your body and soul

To consuming passion for what eludes

The mind. No Self clinging to flesh

Or desire for the world is admitted there,

Where identity disappears in rapture and love.

 

A Song to be sung with Fear and Trembling

Seagull overhead,

Scavenger King,

From what fable do you ride,

To what land will you glide,

What word bring

From mouths dry

From famine, eyes

Dark with ruin,

The flame from the sky,

The snarl of the air,

The whine of dogs

Licking at the trough?

 

The Cynic

Finally, we can die for something.

Finally, by the grace of God, we can leave

And travel to other lands to expend self-disgust.

The enemy is merciless and craven

and without shame, and so we will carve

our tons of flesh and draw our buckets

of blood to wash the gory face of Mammon.

 

Kali

You fell into the pit of my stomach

And I gave birth to you from my womb of tar.

Snakes squirmed around my spine and bit

the chakra of hate. I’ll bomb you into the Stone Age,

rip your hair by its roots and hold it

above the mouths of my devotees and feed

their frenzy. Die in me and see the impermanence that is life.

 

Ghost Dancer

Oh, you grass widows,

Oh, you grass widows!

When you look at your work, you will think of me!

-- from a legend of how Coyote learned the Ghost Dance

 

Invisible, dancing where bullets are ice

That melt in the air, cloaked in small pox,

Anthrax, the radiation of ions, ancestors

Appear before my eyes, come back,

Come back, come back to feed the orphans,

the widows, the men who long for their wives

In their beds at night. We will not die,

We will not die, we will not die,

the life beyond death protect me.

 

Maize and meat and the fields of plenty,

bring them in your hands of light, let clear

streams flow from your mouths,

Sing the song of the hawk on the wind,

Scatter the enemy with your piercing cry,

Bring this peace that fills our bellies,

Brings birth from the pyre, cleans

The graves filled with so many.

 

I will not die where death has no power,

The joints of my limbs will not break,

Blood will not flow from my heart,

For you are here, you are here, you are

Here, children beyond death, beyond death.

(c) copyright 2012 Charles David Miller. All rights reserved.

This excerpt is from a long poem on 9/11. The poem intersperses different shorter poems with passages from the Sufi mystic classic, The Conference of the Birds. The italicized part is a rendition of part of a poem from the translated version of the Sufi poem, The Conference of the Birds.

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