Our Existence which Is Praise
Our Existence which Is Praise
By Joshua Chalifour
The free existence
of emptiness
made our roof that goes over
one mountain.
Out of the window, what hope!
I begin this existence—
straw swept off from
this piece of mountain
to the emptiness of the words
that fear happening.
A dangerous place: made free
of presence.
And who was wanting straw is then pulled down,
to swoop out into emptiness.
Years work to own here-and-now.
They say the mountainous emptiness
of blanks comes for one and so
I swing my arm to lose emptiness.
Try praise, for love is meaning
that these tiny words
saying "existence" slant over
yet somehow for, much emptiness.
Out over the free of this world
of that which is love,
I'm blown free of emptiness.
This World which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness
By Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (translation: Coleman Barks) 1
1 Rumi (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī), “This World Which Is Made of Our Love for Emptiness,” in The Essential Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks (Harper, 1995), http://archive.org/details/essentialrumi00jala.
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
this place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of
dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece
of straw
blown off into emptiness.
These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
existence, emptiness, mountain, straw: words
and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.