The Bumble Bee

The happiest thing I saw today was a bumble bee when I went for a walk after work. I guess summer is coming. I looked for a poem about bees and came across this, yet it's the image of the voice of a violin lasting in the air and leading into a starry night that strikes me now.

A Song on the End of the World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightning and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and the moon are above,
As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
No other end of the world will there be,
No other end of the world will there be.

Czeslaw Milosz

Love

I started making Valentines's Day cards in work today for the children to being home to their mums and dads.  We cut out pink, red and purple hearts.  I suppose we will stick these to cards during the week and get the glitter out.  I hummed love songs while cutting, don't be cruel, a good heart, oh and prefab sprout - I must dig out their cd.  The children were highly amused.  I'm not in love myself and I can't decide whether to send none or three cards this year!  I'm not in love, romantically, but I am in love with a lot of things in my life.  My attitude to love has changed a lot over the past few years, or my opinion of it.  One of my colleagues believes Valentines is just a money making racket!  She's not alone here.

Anyway I do believe in being romantic.  I love roses and champagne.  But I don't really care about the day this year, honestly I don't (the lady doth protest too much methinks) but really I don't.  I'm quite happy. 

I like this poem by Czeslaw Milosz:

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

And below is another just found online, written by a sufi mystic:

Wonder

Wonder,
A garden among the flames!

My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka'ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.

My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith.

And from wikipedia another translation of Ibn Arabi:

My heart has adopted every shape; it has become a pasture for gazelles, and a convent for Christian monks.

A temple for idols, and a pilgrim's Ka'ba, The tables of a Torah, and the pages of a Koran.
I follow the religion of Love; wherever Love's camels turn, there Love is my religion and faith.