Lead Poem

Jalaluddin Rumi
A New Rule

It is the rule with drunkards to fall upon each other,
to quarrel, become violent, and make a scene.
The lover is even worse than a drunkard.
I will tell you what love is: to enter a mine of gold.
And what is that gold?
The lover is a king above all kings,
unafraid of death, not at all interested in a golden crown.
The dervish has a pearl concealed under his patched cloak.
Why should he go begging door to door?
Last night that moon came along,
drunk, dropping clothes in the street.
“Get up,” I told my heart, “Give the soul a glass of wine.
The moment has come to join the nightingale in the garden,
to taste sugar with the soul-parrot.”
I have fallen, with my heart shattered –
where else but on your path? And I
broke your bowl, drunk, my idol, so drunk,
don’t let me be harmed, take my hand.
A new rule a new law has been born:
break all the glasses and fall toward the glassblower.

Walt Whitman
O Me! O Life!

O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless,
of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself,
(for who more foolish than I,
and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean,
of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and
sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest,
with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring-What good
amid these, O me,
O life?
Answer.
That you are here-that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on,
and you may contribute a verse.