Our need of beauty
The eye is so wise, it keeps turning needing to touch beauty.
It keeps looking for a face, for a heart — that will caress you
like Hafiz.
—The Gift: Poems by Hafiz
Chelan Harkin is a young woman poet who has two small children. And in the middle of a remarkably busy and devoted family life, she has become one of the most successful young women poets in the world. I have never met her (and maybe never even talked on the phone, as I rarely talk on the phone to anyone). But we started exchanging some emails maybe three years ago, and she asked me to write a foreword for her first book: Susceptible To Light. She got connected to my Hafiz work when she was 17, and it became a milestone event in her life.
So here is that foreword. And if there was enough room, I would not mind it on my gravestone as my farewell. But there won't be enough— as I plan to be cremated and have my ashes scattered a couple places, and tossed into some prairie dog holes and also buried under an unmarked rock at my ranch in northern New Mexico, at a place where I sit and write haiku.
There is an advanced footnote I would like to add to this foreword, that you can find on the About page of my website. In the original though, I close it with a short story about poetry, and the value of remembering some great lines. The spiritual master mentioned was Meher Baba (who I’ve been hanging out with in sprit for some 50 years, as well as lived with his close ones in India, off and on over a twenty-year stretch). He spoke some words I feel are very relevant and have an undeniable physics to them that can easily enrich our lives. And India is where all of my poetry work began in the early ‘90s.
So here is that foreword I wrote for Chelan Harkin's wonderful book.
Our Need of Beauty
The beauty of art, and our great need for the company of beauty, is so well-articulated— to my mind— by Chelan in her first poem in this book where she says:
… our humanity can gather around it together and sing.
There is a wonderful utility in true art— for its creator, and then for any audience. We can share the creative flame in it; feel a needed warmth, comfort, inspiration, empowerment.
Words are such an integral part of the human experience. They can help relationships become stronger, deeper, richer. Or, so easily do the opposite. Words, just like gestures and expressions, seem absolutely vital to our species. Just as there are so many movements & sounds… of many other creatures—imperative to their miraculous worlds.
Indeed, look how we so gather around art— enshrine it in real ways: in the stadiums we build, where we can watch it in hopes of rising in some kind of nourishing standing ovation of applause of— yes, yes! Or with shouts, cheers, or wild dance… at some sporting event, or a rock concert. Or get very quiet, meditative, appreciative, in some museum with paintings, or sculpture, or historic artifacts that may hone your mind into the oasis of being present, to the extent of some silent applause, some sweet, gentle smile in your eyes, that lovers touching can know.
We seek a companionship with what is beautiful to us all day long. We are, for our own good, addicted to whatever degree of manna we can mine within our ken. And that is what has brought you to this book, or any book, or to any place— the hope for your wings to know less and less the constraints of any cage: physical, emotional, psychological. And sometimes just sitting quietly can best aid… your most expansive, so craved, moments of freedom.
We are crazy, blessed lovers of beauty who need to dissolve the shackle. A prerequisite to living is passion. Our cells pray, maybe just unconsciously, to know a more enlightened—awakened— self of giving and receiving, and taking less and less issue with others. Our sinew needs to give deep thanks to taste more realms of light. One withers without gratitude. The heart wants to boogie, to sing out some joy.
Every look into the sky, every step in the woods or in a park, or along a beach; every reach of your hand— for no matter what, is really sacred. For there is just one primal impetus in play. We are all gathered around the holy fire… and needing to become It. Some in line get nuts, even rabid; the wait and lack of true friendship is too hard. Use your intelligence around those still so struggling to evolve— to be more human, more kind and divine.
Going to close with a story about the value of poetry I heard from a Persian language teacher I once had in India, even though I never at all learned that language. Well, not in this life, anyway. That story goes:
That once he was standing before a spiritual master who loved the poetry of Hafiz, Rumi, Kabir, Mira, and Rabia and such. And this master said to this man: “Do you know the great value of memorizing beautiful poetry?”
And the Persian teacher answered from a few angles and apparently fell short, so then the master said:
Just as an expert chef could so easily improve the flavor of a pot of soup being cooked by adding in special spices, so too, one who memorizes lines of great poetry… begins to taste better to everyone they meet.
Poetry is the pinnacle of words, as are words of love. Thanks Chelan, for putting some very fine spices in our life-stews; helping us taste better.