Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Poem for Tuesday


Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home
By Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks


All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to 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 other 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 cannot 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'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

--------


No, I didn't finish the laundry. No, I haven't started the news bullets. Yes, I did manage to get my older son switched from the Tuesday to Thursday Hebrew school class so he can do chorus and chess club after school on Tuesdays. Yes, I did call the periodontist to find out how much my younger son's gum surgery will cost, then I did call my husband and shriek, and then we both called Aetna to shriek some more. Yes, I did vacuum over the vents that were spewing dust into the house. Yes, I got my mother's housekeeper to come clean the kids' bathroom with her heavy duty cleaning stuff and not only could she not get the toothpaste out of some of the places they've gotten it into, she lectured me on keeping it better cleaned. Nothing like being lectured by a housekeeper on what a slob I am. Should I dock her pay for having spent so much time on the phone, heh, or take that as my guilt-in-due for letting the bathroom get so bad that I'd rather pay someone else to clean it than do it myself or crack the whip over my children to get them to do it right?

Anyway, must take younger son for aforementioned gum surgery in half an hour, so am having chaotic day as usual. And Lupin and Snape are both talking to me endlessly and want me to work on T&C 11 -- why does it always work like that, that they talk when I can't write? Even Dumbledore is talking to me, and I hadn't known he knew I was alive. And look! Gollum loves Sirius -- I knew it!

fangirls

What's Your Ultimate Fandom OTP?
Shiver My Timber--A Pirate RPG


A number of people on my flist are passing on voter registration information for US women; since I 1) suck and 2) am pressed for time, I am going to take the lazy way and link to 's post about the importance of the right to vote for women and 's Hobbits For Voter Registration, which has a link to MTV's Rock the Vote.

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