Two hundred years ago Issa heard the morning birds singing sutras to this suffering world. I heard them too, this morning, which must mean, since we will always have a suffering world, we must also always have a song.
~ David Budbill, "What Issa Heard" in MOMENT TO MOMENT
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There was nothing in the Virgin's soul that belonged to the Virgin -- no word, no thought, no image, not intent. She was a pure, transparent pool reflecting God, only God. She held Love's burnished day; she held Love's night of planet-glow on shade inscrutable. God was her sky and she who mirrored God became Love's firmament.
When I so much as turn my thoughts toward her my spirit is enisled in her repose. And when I gaze into her selfless depths an anguish in me grows to hold such blueness and to hold such fire. I pray to hollow out my earth and be filled with these waters of transparency. I think that one could die of this desire, seeing oneself dry earth or stubborn sod. Oh, to become a pure pool like the Virgin, water that lost the semblances of water and was a sky like God.
~ "The Pool of God" from SELECTED POETRY by Jessica Powers