Stray Birds
The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.
128
To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the
complete truth.
129
Asks the Possible to the Impossible, "Where is your dwelling
place?"
"In the dreams of the impotent," comes the answer.
130
If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.
131
I hear some rustle of things behind my sadness of heart,--I
cannot see them.
132
Leisure in its activity is work.
The stillness of the sea stirs in waves.
133
The leaf becomes flower when it loves.
The flower becomes fruit when it worships.
134
The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the
branches fruitful.
135
This rainy evening the wind is restless.
I look at the swaying branches and ponder over the greatness of
all things.
136
Storm of midnight, like a giant child awakened in the untimely
dark, has begun to play and shout.
137
Thou raisest thy waves vainly to follow thy lover. O sea, thou
lonely bride of the storm.
138
"I am ashamed of my emptiness," said the Word to the Work.
"I know how poor I am when I see you," said the Work to the Word.
139
Time is the wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes
it mere change and no wealth.
140
Truth in her dress finds facts too tight.
In fiction she moves with ease.
141
When I travelled to here and to there, I was tired of thee, O
Road, but now when thou leadest me to everywhere I am wedded to
thee in love.
142
Let me think that there is one among those stars that guides my
life through the dark unknown.
143
Woman, with the grace of your fingers you touched my things and
order came out like music.
144
One sad voice has its nest among the ruins of the years.
It sings to me in the night,--"I loved you."
145
The flaming fire warns me off by its own glow.
Save me from the dying embers hidden under ashes.
146
I have my stars in the sky,
But oh for my little lamp unlit in my house.
147
The dust of the dead words clings to thee.
Wash thy soul with silence.
148
Gaps are left in life through which comes the sad music of death.
149
The world has opened its heart of light in the morning.
Come out, my heart, with thy love to meet it.
150
My thoughts shimmer with these shimmering leaves and my heart
sings with the touch of this sunlight; my life is glad to be
floating with all things into the blue of space, into the dark of
time.
151
God's great power is in the gentle breeze, not in the storm.
152
This is a dream in which things are all loose and they oppress.
I shall find them gathered in thee when I awake and shall be
free.
153
"Who is there to take up my duties?" asked the setting sun.
"I shall do what I can, my Master," said the earthen lamp.
154
By plucking her petals you do not gather the beauty of the
flower.
155
Silence will carry your voice like the nest that holds the
sleeping birds.
156
The Great walks with the Small without fear.
The Middling keeps aloof.
157
The night opens the flowers in secret and allows the day to get
thanks.
158
Power takes as ingratitude the writhings of its victims.
159
When we rejoice in our fulness, then we can part with our fruits
with joy.
160
The raindrops kissed the earth and whispered,--"We are thy
homesick children, mother, come back to thee from the heaven."
161
The cobweb pretends to catch dew-drops and catches flies.
162
Love! when you come with the burning lamp of pain in your hand,
I can see your face and know you as bliss.
163
"The learned say that your lights will one day be no more." said
the firefly to the stars.
The stars made no answer.
164
In the dusk of the evening the bird of some early dawn comes to
the nest of my silence.
165
Thoughts pass in my mind like flocks of ducks in the sky.
I hear the voice of their wings.
166
The canal loves to think that rivers exist solely to supply it
with water.
167
The world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return
in songs.
168
That which oppresses me, is it my soul trying to come out in the
open, or the soul of the world knocking at my heart for its
entrance?
169
Thought feeds itself with its own words and grows.
170
I have dipped the vessel of my heart into this silent hour; it
has filled with love.
171
Either you have work or you have not.
When you have to say, "Let us do something," then begins
mischief.
172
The sunflower blushed to own the nameless flower as her kin.
The sun rose and smiled on it, saying, "Are you well, my
darling?"
173
"Who drives me forward like fate?"
"The Myself striding on my back."
174
The clouds fill the watercups of the river, hiding themselves in
the distant hills.
175
I spill water from my water jar as I walk on my way,
Very little remains for my home.
176
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark.
The small truth has words that are clear; the great truth has
great silence.
177
Your smile was the flowers of your own fields, your talk was the
rustle of your own mountain pines, but your heart was the woman
that we all know.
178
It is the little things that I leave behind for my loved ones,--
great things are for everyone.
179
Woman, thou hast encircled the world's heart with the depth of
thy tears as the sea has the earth.
180
The sunshine greets me with a smile. The rain, his sad sister,
talks to my heart.
181
My flower of the day dropped its petals forgotten.
In the evening it ripens into a golden fruit of memory.
182
I am like the road in the night listening to the footfalls of its
memories in silence.
183
The evening sky to me is like a window, and a lighted lamp, and a
waiting behind it.
184
He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.
185
I am the autumn cloud, empty of rain, see my fulness in the field
of ripened rice.
186
They hated and killed and men praised them.
But God in shame hastens to hide its memory under the green
grass.
187
Toes are the fingers that have forsaken their past.
188
Darkness travels towards light, but blindness towards death.
189
The pet dog suspects the universe for scheming to take its place.
190
Sit still my heart, do not raise your dust.
Let the world find its way to you.
191
The bow whispers to the arrow before it speeds forth--"Your
freedom is mine."
192
Woman, in your laughter you have the music of the fountain of
life.
193
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.
It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
194
God loves man's lamp lights better than his own great stars.
195
This world is the world of wild storms kept tame with the music
of beauty.
196
"My heart is like the golden casket of thy kiss," said the sunset
cloud to the sun.
197
By touching you may kill, by keeping away you may possess.
198
The cricket's chirp and the patter of rain come to me through the
dark, like the rustle of dreams from my past youth.
199
"I have lost my dewdrop," cries the flower to the morning sky
that has lost all its stars.
200
The burning log bursts in flame and cries,--"This is my flower,
my death."
201
The wasp thinks that the honey-hive of the neighbouring bees is
too small.
His neighbours ask him to build one still smaller.
202
"I cannot keep your waves," says the bank to the river.
"Let me keep your footprints in my heart."
203
The day, with the noise of this little earth, drowns the silence
of all worlds.
204
The song feels the infinite in the air, the picture in the earth,
the poem in the air and the earth;
For its words have meaning that walks and music that soars.
205
When the sun goes down to the West, the East of his morning
stands before him in silence.
206
Let me not put myself wrongly to my world and set it against me.
207
Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.
208
Let my doing nothing when I have nothing to do become untroubled
in its depth of peace like the evening in the seashore when the
water is silent.
209
Maiden, your simplicity, like the blueness of the lake, reveals
your depth of truth.
210
The best does not come alone. It comes with the company of the
all.
211
God's right hand is gentle, but terrible is his left hand.
212
My evening came among the alien trees and spoke in a language
which my morning stars did not know.
213
Night's darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.
214
Our desire lends the colours of the rainbow to the mere mists and
vapours of life.
215
God waits to win back his own flowers as gifts from man's hands.
216
My sad thoughts tease me asking me their own names.
217
The service of the fruit is precious, the service of the flower
is sweet, but let my service be the service of the leaves in its
shade of humble devotion.
218
My heart has spread its sails to the idle winds for the shadowy
island of Anywhere.
219
Men are cruel, but Man is kind.
220
Make me thy cup and let my fulness be for thee and for thine.
221
The storm is like the cry of some god in pain whose love the
earth refuses.
222
The world does not leak because death is not a crack.
223
Life has become richer by the love that has been lost.
224
My friend, your great heart shone with the sunrise of the East
like the snowy summit of a lonely hill in the dawn.
225
The fountain of death makes the still water of life play.
226
Those who have everything but thee, my God, laugh at those who
have nothing but thyself.
227
The movement of life has its rest in its own music.
228
Kicks only raise dust and not crops from the earth.
229
Our names are the light that glows on the sea waves at night and
then dies without leaving its signature.
230
Let him only see the thorns who has eyes to see the rose.
231
Set bird's wings with gold and it will never again soar in the
sky.
232
The same lotus of our clime blooms here in the alien water with
the same sweetness, under another name.
233
In heart's perspective the distance looms large.
234
The moon has her light all over the sky, her dark spots to
herself.
235
Do not say, "It is morning," and dismiss it with a name of
yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that
has no name.
236
Smoke boasts to the sky, and Ashes to the earth, that they are
brothers to the fire.
237
The raindrop whispered to the jasmine, "Keep me in your heart for
ever."
The jasmine sighed, "Alas," and dropped to the ground.
238
Timid thoughts, do not be afraid of me.
I am a poet.
239
The dim silence of my mind seems filled with crickets' chirp--the
grey twilight of sound.
240
Rockets, your insult to the stars follows yourself back to the
earth.
241
Thou hast led me through my crowded travels of the day to my
evening's loneliness.
I wait for its meaning through the stillness of the night.
242
This life is the crossing of a sea, where we meet in the same
narrow ship.
In death we reach the shore and go to our different worlds.
243
The stream of truth flows through its channels of mistakes.
244
My heart is homesick to-day for the one sweet hour across the sea
of time.
245
The bird-song is the echo of the morning light back from the
earth.
246
"Are you too proud to kiss me?" the morning light asks the
buttercup.
247
"How may I sing to thee and worship, O Sun?" asked the little
flower.
"By the simple silence of thy purity," answered the sun.
248
Man is worse than an animal when he is an animal.
249
Dark clouds become heaven's flowers when kissed by light.
250
Let not the sword-blade mock its handle for being blunt.
251
The night's silence, like a deep lamp, is burning with the light
of its milky way.
252