WHO SAYS WORDS WITH MY MOUTH

All day I think about it. Where did I come from, and what am I
supposed to be be doing? I have no idea... My soul is from elsewhere,
I'm sure of that...and I intend to end up there. This drunkenness
began in some tavern. When I get back around to that place, I'll be
completely sober. Meanwhile... I'm like a bird from another
continent, sitting in this aviary. The day is coming when I fly
off... But who is it now in my ear who hears my voice? Who says words
with my mouth? Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I can't
stop asking... If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break
out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord,
and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here will have to take
me home. This poetry... I never know what I am going to say. I don't
plan it. When I am outside the saying of it, I get very quiet and
rarely speak at all..

 

CHICKPEA TO COOK

A chickpea leaps almost over the rim of the pot where it is being boiled.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

The cook knocks him down with the ladle.

"Don't you try and jump out.
You think I'm torturing you,
I'm giving you flavour
so you can mix with spices and rice
and become the lovely vitality of a human being.

Remember when you drank rain in the garden.
That was for this."

Grace first. Sexual pleasure,
then a boiling new life begins,
and the Friend has something good to eat.

Eventually the chickpea
will say to the cook,
"Boil me some more.
Hit me with the skimming spoon.
I can't do this by myself.

I'm like an elephant that dreams of gardens
back in Hindustan and doesn't pay attention
to his driver. You're my cook, my driver,
my way into existance. I love your cooking."

The cook says,
"I was once like you,
fresh from the ground. Then I boiled in time,
and boiled in the body, two fierce boilings.

My animal soul grew powerful.
I controlled it with practises,
and boiled some more, and boiled
once beyond that,
and became your teacher."

Coleman Barks

THE CAT AND THE MEAT

There once was a sneering wife
who ate all her husband brought home
and lied about it.

One day it was some lamb for a guest
who was to come. He had worked two hundred days in order to buy that meat .

When he was away, his wife cooked a kabob
and ate it all, with wine.

The husband returns with the guest.
"The cat cat has eaten the meat," she says.
"Buy more, if you have any money left!"

He asks a servant to bring the scales,
and the cat. The cat weighs three pounds.
"The meat was three pounds, one ounce.
If this is the cat, where is the meat?
If this is the meat, where is the cat?
Start looking for one or other!"

If you have a body, where is the spirit?
If you're spirit, what is the the body?

This is not our problem to worry about.
Both are both. Corn is corn grain and cornstalk
The devine butcher cuts us a piece from the thigh, and a piece from the neck.

Invisable, visable, the world
does not work without both.

If you throw dust at someone's head,
nothing with happen.

If you throw water, nothing.
But combine then into a lump.
That marriage of water and dirts cracks open the head and afterward there are other marriages.

Coleman Barks


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