- Research book (a gem) that I discovered and used for this post: The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine: [Edited by Kaveh Akbar, Penguin Random House UK, 2022]
Rumi: 1207- Lift Now the Lid of the Jar of Heaven
Many Sufis believed that alcoholic inebriation might lesson the veil between this world and the next
Pour, cupbearers, the wine of the invisible,
The name and sign of what has no sign!
Pour it abundantly, it is you who enrich the soul
Make the soul drunk, and give it wings!
Come again, always fresh one, and teach
All our cupbearers their sacred art!
Be a spring jetting from a heart of stone!
Break the pitcher of soul and body!
Make joyful all lovers of wine!
Foment a restlessness in the heart
Of the one who thinks only of bread!
The name and sign of what has no sign!
Bread’s a mason of the body’s prison,
Wine a rain for the garden of the soul
I’ve tied the ends of the earth together
Lift now the lid of the jar of heaven.
Close those eyes that see only faults
Open those that contemplate the invisible
So no mosques or temples or idols remain,
So ‘this’ or ‘that’ is drowned in His fire
King David: 1000BC: The Lord’s My Shepherd: From The Kingdom of Israel
The ‘music of the ear’ that this beautiful psalm reflects has inspired poets of the spirit down through the ages.
The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want;
He maketh me to lie down
In green pastures: He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
My soul he doth restore again,
And leadeth me to walk
Within the paths of righteousness
E’en for his own name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff
They comfort me still.
Thou preparest a table for me
In the presence of mine enemies;
Thou anointest my head with oil,
And my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Mechthield of Magdeburg: 1207-1282
Of all that God has shown me
I can speak just the smallest word,
Nor more than a honeybee
Takes on his foot
From an overspilling jar
Basho: Japan 1644
In Kyoto,
Hearing the cuckoo,
I long for Kyoto.
Death-sick on my journey
My dreams run out ahead of me
Across the empty field
Kabir: 1440-1518: India:
A Celebration of oneness and mystery
According to the poet above, understanding this poem holds the key to understanding life, reality and the universe.
Brother, I’ve seen some
Astonishing sights:
A lion keeping watch
Over pasturing cows;
A mother delivered
After her son was born;
A guru prostrated
Before his disciple;
Fish spawning
At the tops of trees
A cat carrying away
A dog;
A gunny-sack
Driving a bullock-cart;
A buffalo going out to graze,
Sitting on a horse;
A tree with its branches in the earth,
Its roots in the sky;
A tree with flowering roots.
See the excellent article about “spirituality” and the distinction between the word “religion” and that of “spirituality”. See the excellent article about Spirituality: 38% of Gen Z Australians identify as spiritual and half of them believe in karma. Why is spirituality so popular? (Anna Halafoff, and Rosie Clare Shorter, Deakin University). The Conversation Magazine
Not all spiritual poetry is religious in the sense that most of us apprehend this concept: of belief in a Christian or other religious deity overseeing our actions here on earth. My own concept of spirituality is that we are all part of it, as a speck of sand is part of the whole beach, and a drop of water makes up the vast ocean. Divinity is in and of all of us, each one playing our own part in the whole structure of the cosmos or the universe. And our human brain is insufficient to comprehend the complexity of what this all means. Many wise poets down through the ages have wrestled with these thoughts and ideas and have managed to express in their own terms universal truths such as these examples given above.